Lan conjured up a mixed race clan from the Fire Forest.

After bathing in the river, Jiang Yunlan returned shivering, using animal hides to cover her body.

She sat with her legs bent in the empty spot left by the orcs, hugging her legs, and held up a clean, damp animal hide to dry in front of the fire.

She saw her reflection: a thin, pale body with bright, lively black eyes and ear-length black-gray gradient hair. She was… a child who looked no more than ten years old. Perhaps even younger; her height barely reached Ah Bai's waist.

Jiang Yunlan found it hard to describe how she felt when she saw "herself" clearly.

Black hair, black eyes. She didn't know whether she should be grateful that the original owner of this body shared this similar feature with her. It could remind her, long afterward, where she came from.

Jiang Yunlan spent a while mentally preparing herself to warm herself by the fire before she could calmly walk out of the river and onto the shore. But compared to the carefree beastmen who didn't seem to care at all, she appeared much more shy.

She strongly suspected that the beastmen had not yet developed a sense of gender, and that they wore grass skirts and animal skins only for warmth. She had long noticed that the beastmen all had very thick pectoral muscles, and their upper bodies were always bare, making it difficult to distinguish their gender with the naked eye.

She thought that in primitive times, when people couldn't even get enough to eat, beastmen wouldn't have had anything like a sense of shame.

Looking at the clean-washed beastmen, Jiang Yunlan realized that among all the beastmen, only she and Ah Bai had fair skin. But her whiteness was an unhealthy, deathly pallor, most likely related to the fact that this body had died once.

The sheep-orc cotton and the two lemming orc cubs are all black-skinned, and should be naturally black-skinned.

The heat from the fire warmed her entire body. Jiang Yunlan touched the dried animal hide and silently put it back on.

The animal hide she was wearing was a single, large piece, making it difficult to put on. She had to use a stone knife to cut a section of the hide at her waist, creating a strap-like device. Now, she only needed to tie knots at her shoulders and waist to put on her clothes. Fortunately, the hide she was wearing was long enough to cover her thighs.

Maple Red, Black Soil, and Ink Velvet also had animal hides, and they quickly followed her example, holding up their cleaned hides to warm themselves by the fire. When the three beastmen saw Lan put her hides back on, they also hurriedly put on their dried hides, tying them in a knot at their waists.

The hides of the three orcs were not long, as if a whole hide had been split in two.

Jiang Yunlan suspected that Feng Hong and Feng Tang shared a single animal hide, as did the two lemming orc cubs. This puzzled her greatly; for the original owner of this body to possess an entire animal hide as an orc, her original clan must have been very powerful.

From this perspective, the original owner of this body should not have starved to death in the forest.

She was somewhat worried. Could the crisis of the original owner dying be the same crisis as the crisis of Maple Sugar and the others losing most of their people and having to go and pick up other beastmen?

Was it a natural disaster or a man-made one?

Knowing too little information, she could only suppress her worries. What she needed to do now was to bring more food to the clan and improve the orcs' fighting strength.

As long as the orcs become strong, they need not fear any crisis.

The hottest part of the day had passed. Jiang Yunlan looked up at the cloudless, azure sky and gestured to the beastmen that it was time to go back. She needed them to find materials to make traps on the way back; otherwise, they would return to the cave too late.

The beastmen all listened to her and naturally agreed.

While Jiang Yunlan was taking a bath and warming herself by the fire, the two beastmen, Abai and Mianhua, who had warmed themselves up early, gathered vines, leaves, and dry grass around her to make simple grass skirts to cover their upper and lower bodies. They also made clothes for the other three beastmen who did not have grass skirts to wear.

Perhaps because they weren't covered in mud, they felt a bit cold in their upper bodies. If Jiang Yunlan were to hear what they were thinking, she would surely say helplessly that they felt cold because they had left the fire.

But Jiang Yunlan didn't have mind-reading abilities; she couldn't hear the beastmen's thoughts. At that moment, she was leading Heitu and Morong in a search for long branches suitable for making torches.

Starting a fire is too difficult; she will take the embers back to the cave.

Feng Hong was left behind to watch the fire. She followed Lan's instructions to fill a wooden bucket with water and then put the bamboo tubes she had brought into the river to fill them with water. The bamboo tubes she brought only had a small opening, unlike the bamboo tubes in the cave which had their ends cut off, so she didn't have to worry about spilling all the water while running with them.

She filled the water containers, and Jiang Yunlan finished making the torches. There were two torches in total; Feng Hong took one and Cotton took the other.

Jiang Yunlan originally wanted to make three torches so that Abai could take one as well, but she saw Abai prick up his ears and hesitate. He seemed reluctant to refuse her request, frowning in distress, but firmly refused. He needed to carry Lan back to the clan and couldn't take fire; Lan would get hurt if she touched it.

Ah Bai was so determined to carry her back to the cave that she had no choice but to regretfully give up the third backup fire source, extinguish the fire on the bank with river water, and helplessly let Ah Bai pick her up and go back with the beastmen.

Perhaps because she was the youngest, the beastmen were surprisingly nervous about her. The two lemming beastmen cubs could walk on the ground carrying fish in forks, but she had to be carried by Ah Bai, the fastest runner.

Jiang Yunlan, the little adult, sighed silently. She wasn't used to such intimate gestures and preferred to walk on her own.

Unbeknownst to her, Ah Bai beside her breathed a cautious sigh of relief. The rabbit-beastman, whose ears usually drooped, perked up as soon as he picked her up, automatically going into alert mode.

In less than a day, Ah Bai had already deeply realized the importance of Lan, and kept in mind what Maple Sugar had said when they went out.

We must protect Lan well.

Yes, we must protect Lan well. Lan is an extremely important being; she is the one who will make the clan even stronger.

He had finally been accepted and didn't want to lose the clan that had accepted him. He hoped the clan would become better and better, stronger than any other clan.

Jiang Yunlan and the other orcs headed back the way they came, occasionally picking up supplies in the forest, and returned to the cave just as dusk fell.

Maple Syrup remained seated at the cave entrance, in a spot where they could easily see their return, quietly chiseling at the rough tree trunk.

At the cave entrance, a taciturn middle-aged deer-beastman was forging the stone knife that Jiang Yunlan hadn't finished. There were too few beastmen who could move around in the cave, and most of the stone knives in the tribe, including the one Jiang Yunlan used today, were made by her.

"Sister, sister!" Before Feng Hong had even climbed to the cave platform halfway up the mountain, her voice had already reached Feng Tang's ears.

Hearing her sister's excited voice, Maple Syrup knew they had brought back something good today. She quickly put down the things and looked up, her eyes filled with anticipation.

A vibrant orange-red hue caught Maple Syrup's eye. She stared at the fire Maple Red was holding, frozen in place, and exclaimed in astonishment, "Fire?!"

"Where did this fire come from? Was it tamed by Lan?" She blurted out Jiang Yunlan's name, using the question in her mouth, but in her heart she was certain that the fire was brought by Lan.

She suddenly realized that Lan must have gone out to bring back fire!

Upon hearing this, Feng Hong grinned foolishly, puffed out her chest with immense pride, and said, "It wasn't tamed, it was created by Lan!"

"?!"

The orcs in the cave were shocked. Even the three old orcs lying on the innermost side couldn't help but move their bodies and open their cloudy eyes to look at Lan who had returned.

Wise one, Lan, could you really be an orc sent by the Beast God?

Jiang Yunlan didn't notice Maple Sugar and the others' reactions. As soon as she returned to the cave, she asked Ah Bai to put her down, hurriedly grabbed two torches to relight the fire, and then threw the torches into the fire.

“Sister, look, we brought back fish. There are so many!” Feng Hong pushed two lemming beastman cubs carrying fish in front of Feng Tang, her tone filled with obvious satisfaction and joy. “Lan taught us how to catch fish, and I caught one too.”

Of the four orcs who went into the river, she only caught one fish, one less than Cotton and Mo Rong, and a full four less than Black Soil. She could only compare herself to Jiang Yunlan, who had speared a fish once to demonstrate. But she wasn't discouraged at all; she just felt that being able to spear back a fish was fantastic.

She brought food back to the tribe again!

Behind her, Jiang Yunlan heard her own name interspersed among the "ooh-ah-yo-ah" sounds, but she skillfully ignored them and told Mianhua and Abai, who were carrying wooden buckets, to put the two buckets down.

After spending some time with the beastmen, Jiang Yunlan realized that they would call her "Lan, Lan" and only speak when she looked over.

Upon returning, 022 overheard the orcs' conversation and immediately floated over to record their language. Recording language was its top priority.

"We didn't pick any fruit today, but Lan told us to collect lots and lots of things," Feng Hong said, taking the bamboo tube tied to her waist with vines and putting it away. The two lemming beastman cubs nodded repeatedly and also took the fish off their harpoons and put them in the food storage area.

Maple Syrup listened to their story and looked at Jiang Yunlan with curiosity.

Jiang Yunlan had just finished inspecting the two wooden barrels and a pile of miscellaneous items, and told Mianhua and Abai to carry the things and follow her.

"Maple syrup, bamboo tube, water, I need these." She walked up to the maple syrup, gesturing as she expressed her thoughts in the simplest of words.

She saw Maple Sugar smile, handed her what she wanted, and then pointed to everything in the cave, telling the orcs, "Lan can use anything from our tribe. We must all listen to Lan."

These words are tantamount to transferring the position of clan leader. Lan can replace her as clan leader at any time, if she so chooses.

She was a warrior. If it weren't for the orcs discovering traces of a giant beast on the edge of the forest during the flower season, the chieftain wouldn't have led his people away, and she wouldn't have suddenly become the new chieftain without any real understanding of the situation. She had no desire for the chieftainship; all she ever wanted to be was a warrior who protected the clan.

Jiang Yunlan didn't understand what Maple Syrup was saying, nor did she know why the beastmen were all looking at her again. All she knew was that she had received the bamboo tube and water, and that Maple Syrup had agreed to let her use them.

She couldn't understand the beastmen's reaction, but she didn't force herself to figure it out. She gestured for Maple Syrup and the others to wash their hands and faces with the water in the wooden bucket, then took the bamboo tube and found the ginger she had found that day. She ran to the fire, ready to brew ginger soup for the beastmen.

The vegetation in the Beast World looks different from that on Blue Star, but fortunately, ginger still retains about 70% of the resemblance. She broke open the yellowish-brown root and ate a small piece before recognizing ginger.

She guessed that the orcs had eaten ginger before, but excluded it from their diet. This was because when the orcs saw her wanting to eat ginger, they made faces as if they were being spicy, spitting out the ginger a few times.

Jiang Yunlan found five pieces of wild ginger today, each only about half the size of her palm. She decided to keep two pieces for breeding, wash and slice one piece and put it in a bamboo tube to boil over a fire, and save the remaining two pieces for winter.

"Gurgle, gurgle."

Steam rose from the bamboo tube placed over the fire; the ginger soup was ready.

Before boiling the ginger soup, Jiang Yunlan punched two holes in the bamboo tubes and threaded a branch through them before placing them on the fire to roast. At this point, you only need to hold the two ends of the branch that is threaded through the bamboo tube to take the bamboo tube off the fire.

The freshly boiled ginger soup was very hot, so she set it aside to cool, then hung up a bamboo tube to continue boiling the ginger soup while waiting for dinner.

She was waiting for the maple syrup to distribute the food.

Eleven fish were caught today, just enough for one fish for each of the orcs. She had already decided that once she got her share, she would tell Maple Syrup about grilling the fish.

She doesn't intend to force the beastmen to change their diet, but she will subtly entice them to make changes with the aroma of cooked food.

She waited and waited, making ginger soup, but instead of the assigned food, Maple Syrup led her to the food storage area. There, Maple Syrup gestured, asking her if she wanted fish or fruit today.

Jiang Yunlan's pupils dilated in shock, and an exclamation mark popped into her mind.

Wait, is this something I can comment on? Well then, I'll step in.

A note from the author:

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This story is fictional and may include food based on real-world examples, as well as original creations or creatures. Please do not attempt to find historical accuracy in the source material.