Yan Zheng glanced at the sky and said, "Alright, let's go. It's a time when food is scarce in the forest, and it's quite dangerous there at night."

Yan Zheng bundled up the remaining firewood and put it on the deer's back.

Jiang Xi didn't ride the deer on the way back. The nights here are still quite cool, and they need to light a fire at night. They also need to collect firewood along the way, so walking is more convenient.

By the time they reached the cave, it was already getting dark. Yan Jing'an hadn't returned yet, so Yan Zheng first tidied up the earthen stove, brushing away the accumulated ash, and then lit it.

The straw curtains on the door and the cracked straw curtains on the inner wall were removed and taken away. The inner room is drafty and no one can sleep there at night, so the three of us will have to make do and sleep together in the front hall tonight.

Jiang Xi found the broom they had left behind. Actually, it wasn't much of a broom; it was just a haphazardly tied bundle of straw, and one side was already worn down. She swept away the fallen leaves and withered grass that had been washed into the cave by the water, bit by bit.

"Chirp chirp".

While sweeping the floor, Jiang Xi suddenly heard birds chirping again.

She smiled slyly, gently put down the broom, and said, "Let me see what kind of bird it is."

As she spoke, she stood up and looked up at the top of the cave, but after looking around for a while, she couldn't see the bird's nest.

Jiang Xi asked in bewilderment, "Strange, could it be in the inner room?"

Muttering to herself, she stepped inside.

Yan Zheng saw this and quickly said, "Don't do anything bad, they're just living peacefully at home."

He hadn't forgotten when Jiang Xi taught him to trap bird nests when they were little. Back then, Jiang Xi in the yard was Yan Zheng's biggest headache. Even though she was a girl, she would either climb trees or steal bird nests, take the baby birds out of the nests, and insist on raising them herself. Naturally, she didn't raise them well, and the hungry baby birds would wilt. Then she would cry and ask Yan Zheng to put the birds back.

Jiang Xi knew he was talking about her childhood, so she quickly replied, "I know, I'm not a child anymore, life is precious, okay? I was just looking... Ah, what is that?"

Before Jiang Xi could even look up after entering the inner room, she saw a pair of round, white eyes in the corner. They were completely black, and the dim light made it difficult to see anything clearly, but those eerily white eyes were the most frightening thing about them.

Jiang Xi's heart pounded; she was so scared her heart felt like it was going to jump out of her chest.

Unconsciously, she stepped back and bumped into Yan Zheng who came in. Jiang Xi quickly hugged his waist and hid in his arms.

Yan Zheng, a seasoned fencer, had much better eyesight than Jiang Xi. He quickly recognized what it was and reassured her, "It's nothing, it's nothing, it's just a small animal."

Only after he finished speaking did Jiang Xi dare to slowly raise her head.

Yan Zheng patted his back and whispered, "Go and get the torch from your backpack."

Jiang Xi nodded gently: "Then be careful." With that, she stepped out and hurriedly went to get the torch she had prepared earlier from her backpack, and lit it with a lighter.

When he went in with the torch, Yan Zheng was already squatting in the corner examining the situation.

Jiang Xi quickly grabbed a torch and went over.

It was an animal entirely black, somewhat like a leopard, over a meter long, its entire body pitch black. At this moment, it lay helplessly in the corner of the cave, with a pool of red and black blood beneath it. What Jiang Xi had just seen were its eyes, wide open.

Yan Zheng, who was observing carefully, put his hand on its neck.

Jiang Xi quickly stopped her, saying, "Be careful."

"It's alright, she's already dead."

Jiang Xi was somewhat taken aback: "Dead?"

Yan Zheng touched its belly: "It was a female leopard. She died in childbirth. She passed away before she even gave birth."

Jiang Xi moved her lips, but was speechless for a moment.

Just then, Yan Jing'an's voice came from the doorway: "Jiang Xi? Yan Zheng?"

“Inside.” Jiang Xi’s voice was somewhat hoarse.

Yan Jing'an walked in following the sound: "What are you looking at?"

Yan Zheng said, "There's a leopard here that died in childbirth."

Yan Jing'an approached to examine it: "It's a black leopard, one of the world's rarest animals."

Recalling previous reports, he said, "For five whole years after the cold wave, no one in the world saw them. Everyone thought they were extinct."

Yan Zheng frowned: "Leopards usually don't appear in grasslands and deserts, I didn't expect to find them in tropical forests."

Jiang Xi suddenly felt that something was wrong.

"She's dead, so where did the bird calls we just heard come from?"

As if in response to her question, the birdsong that had been chirping earlier rang out twice more.

Yan Jing'an quickly approached and opened the mother leopard's belly.

Jiang Xi then noticed what appeared to be a hidden pocket under the mother leopard's belly, with a small head lying inside with its eyes closed.

Suddenly pulled away, a chill ran through him, and the little guy let out two weak chirps.

Yan Zheng and Jiang Xi were both stunned. This... how come this leopard is like a kangaroo, with a pouch?

Seeing their surprised expressions, Yan Jing'an said helplessly, "Many things here are quite different from yours."

Jiang Xi looked at the tiny creature still in its larvae in the pouch and stammered, "What about him? He's so small, what should we do?"

Sadly, his brothers and sisters, the little lives he never met, never had the chance to see the world before they went with their mother leopard.

Yan Zheng said in a deep voice, "The mother leopard still has some warmth on her body, so she must have died just within the last hour or two, but she definitely has no milk left."

Yan Jing'an sighed and said, "I doubt it's even had its mother's milk yet. Even if we take it back, we might not be able to keep it alive."

Jiang Xi looked at the little guy with heartache: "But if we leave him here, he will definitely die."

"Then let's take him with us." With that, Yan Zheng took off his cloak and put it in his arms. He gently lifted the little leopard out of the pouch, wrapped it tightly with the rabbit fur side of the cloak, and took it out to place it near the earthen stove.

The little guy seemed to be so hungry that he was too weak to move. He lay listlessly in the cloak, and his cries were weak and feeble.

"What can I feed it?" Jiang Xi asked worriedly.

If it were herbivores, it would be fine, but it's mammals.

They didn't have goat milk either, and then she remembered something: "When I was little, I often heard the grandma next door say that when they were little, their children didn't have milk to drink, so they were fed rice porridge."

Although it may be an exaggeration, this is the only one I can think of right now.

"Why don't we cook some root and yam porridge and feed it some soup to help it get through the night?"

Yan Jing'an, who was standing to the side, suddenly said, "We'll go back tomorrow. Do you remember the murals in the cave? I remember they depicted the animals they raised, including one that looked like a sheep. I'll go look for it when we get back tomorrow."

Jiang Xi's eyes lit up when she heard this, but then she thought it wouldn't be that easy. Putting aside whether she could find it or not, even if she did find it, how to bring it back would be a problem. Inanimate objects are easy to catch, but living ones are not so easy to bring back.