The old woman applied the dark green herbal juice all over Chen Ke's arms. Chen Ke thought it was just ordinary mosquito repellent, but to his surprise, his arms soon showed signs of warmth.
Chen Ke's heart skipped a beat. Seeing that the old woman had scooped out another dollop and was about to smear it on him, he quickly stood up.
Turning to Luya, he asked, "Have I ever used this before?"
Luya: "Baoqi grass? No, this kind of grass is hard to find, and there isn't much of it in our tribe."
Chen Ke immediately understood. This thing looked like grass, but it was very rare. Chen Ke's previous silly appearance was not worthy of using it.
No, could his current symptoms be an allergic reaction?
The cave was dark, so Chen Ke quickly went to the entrance to get a clear view. After observing for a while, he saw that his arm was only slightly warm and there were no other unusual symptoms, so he stopped worrying about it.
Let's leave the injury for now and see how things develop.
The old woman in the cave didn't show any expression when she saw this. She put the herbal juice back into the stone bowl and continued to pound it. After the rain stopped, the men would go out hunting, so they would have to pound more of the herb juice.
Luya chased after Chen Ke as she ran out, "Chief Bu Ke, what are we having for dinner tonight?"
One sentence almost made Chen Ke stumble. Could it be that the chief was going to cook dinner for them? In this short period of time, Chen Ke realized the "importance" of the position of chief of the Youqi tribe.
However, the wise man Lacha came over at this moment and said, "Chief Buko, we only have two pieces of dried meat and some Lili fruit left. Even if we cook them all, it won't be enough for our entire tribe to eat."
Fortunately, it was just a matter of running out of rice, not that he was required to cook.
Just as Chen Ke was about to say, "Let's do it all then," someone from the sheltered part of the cave spoke up, "Chief Bu Ke, Wise Man Lacha, we won't eat it. Let's cook it all for the hunting party's warriors."
Chen Ke looked in the direction of the sound and found more than a dozen people sitting or lying in the sheltered corner. They were all emaciated, old or disabled.
The speaker was an elderly man with several gruesome scars on his chest that testified to his former bravery and ferocity as a warrior. However, now his limbs were emaciated, his body was withered and his eyes were filled with despair and death.
“Yes, we don’t think we’ll make it through the winter. Let’s give it all to the soldiers. They need to be well-fed to have the strength to hunt,” another man with a missing leg said.
This man had a resolute face and looked to be no more than thirty or forty years old. Apart from having a broken leg, his body looked quite robust, but he was already sitting among the group of people "waiting to die".
Chen Ke examined his severed leg. Judging from the jagged wound, it was clear that some wild animal had bitten off his leg while he was still alive. He had survived by sheer luck, and the wound had healed entirely thanks to his own physical abilities. New flesh and old skin and scabs grew together haphazardly, creating a horrifying and disgusting sight.
These people were probably all warriors of the Youqi tribe before, but no matter how brave and skilled they were or how much they contributed to the tribe, once they got old, disabled, or unable to move, they could only wait to die or be abandoned.
This is not because the tribe is heartless, but because of the harsh living conditions. If they cannot feed the warriors who go hunting when food is scarce, the warriors will not have the strength to hunt and the end result will be that everyone in the tribe will go hungry.
If those completely incapable of movement are not abandoned during the migration, the likely consequence is that the entire tribe will fail to reach the southern wilderness and freeze to death during the winter.
Everyone understood this principle, and none of the people waiting to die complained. However, the entire tribe was shrouded in negativity and sorrow during the winter.
Instead of answering, the wise man Lacha looked at Chen Ke and asked for his opinion.
"Chief Buko, how do you plan to distribute them?"
Chen Ke: ""
Chen Ke suddenly felt like a patriarch holding a large spoon and distributing food, with a group of hungry family members below him. He estimated there were more than a hundred people, but there was only one bowl of food, and no matter how he distributed it, it was wrong.
"Let the wise one decide. I'll go out and see if I can find any more food." Chen Ke glanced at the "food" piled up in the corner: two arm-length pieces of dried meat and a bunch of dark, unappetizing fruits. Even if the soldiers ate it all, they still wouldn't be full.
And then look at those towering figures, each over two meters tall...
Sigh, it's not easy to avoid going hungry.
As the wise man Lacha watched Chen Ke's departing figure, he nodded to Luya and said, "Do it all. The heavy rain should stop tomorrow."
Luya's eyes suddenly lit up, and she ran excitedly toward the women who were preparing to cook, shouting as she ran.
"All done! All done! The wise man Lacha said the rain will stop tomorrow, and the warriors must eat their fill before they go hunting!" The small cave was instantly filled with excited cheers.
"Ahhh, that's great! The rain is going to stop! The rain is going to stop!" the women in the cave cheered.
The men then took out their stone axes and spears and began to polish them, filling the cave with the sound of grinding stones.
Chen Ke turned back to look at the wise man Lacha in surprise. How did he know the rain would stop tomorrow? Did he really have that kind of mysterious ability to predict the future, or was it just a wild guess?
As a result, the wise man Lacha had already turned and walked into the cave, leaving Chen Ke with a mysterious and unpredictable back view.
Chen Ke suppressed his thoughts and turned to the children. He knew clearly that he was not on the same level as the soldiers. Although he also wanted to join the ranks of those "sharpening their knives to hunt pigs and sheep", it was obvious that he was of a height and should join the ranks of those catching crickets at the cave entrance.
“Foolish—Chief Buko.” Clearly, the children were not yet used to his new identity.
"Weren't you supposed to be catching crickets? Where are they?" Chen Ke asked, noticing that they had dug a fairly large hole but hadn't seen any crickets.
The children's thoughts were simple. The respected wise man Lacha said that Buko was the leader chosen by the serpent god Manwu, so Buko was no longer the fool he used to be, but their new leader, and they would respect him from now on.
“Chief Bu Ke, the Slippery Insects are not easy to catch. We need to dig deeper to see them.”
"Yes, his hole is really deep." The children didn't laugh at Chen Ke for not knowing how to catch crickets; instead, they lay naked on the ground and dug with twigs.
Finally, when they dug down to a depth of one meter, Chen Ke saw two dark tentacles.
"We've found it! We've found it!"
"I see the whiskers! I see the whiskers! Get ready to catch it!"
Three or four children quickly lay down at the entrance of the cave, their eyes fixed intently on it, while the other two children sped up their work.
When Chen Ke first heard the name, he thought it was a soft, finger-sized worm. But when the children actually dug out all of these worms, even the well-informed Chen Ke was somewhat surprised.
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