Mixed race clans remaining in the forest
Jiang Yunlan was suddenly given a piece of fruit to eat. Her teeth hit the fruit, and the sourness made her body shudder.
"Thank you," she said, her words slightly mumbled as she ate the sour red fruit.
Seeing that the squirrel-beastman cub was able to eat and sounded a bit more energetic than before, Feng Hong patted the cub's shoulder with relief and encouraged it, "You have to survive."
If there are too few people in the tribe, it will be difficult to survive in this forest, and there will be no way to migrate away in the future.
Jiang Yunlan couldn't understand the language she was speaking, so she could only respond with a bright smile.
Swallowing the fruit with difficulty, Jiang Yunlan couldn't help but rub her sore cheeks and continue observing the beastmen of this clan. After eating five red fruits for dinner, she was finally about six or seven tenths full, in a state of being a little hungry but having regained her strength.
The beastmen ate their food quietly, their bodies, ears, and tails covered in mud, with dirty, messy haystacks under their bottoms.
Seeing their equally worrisome sanitary conditions and smelling the foul odor in the cave, Jiang Yunlan suddenly felt a wave of dizziness wash over her.
No, hygiene must be improved. She doesn't want to get sick from hygiene issues so soon after transmigrating. This is a primitive society; there's no line between illness and death.
Once Jiang Yunlan realized that she would be living in the primitive beast world in the future, she wanted to run back to Blue Star and return to the 21st century as soon as possible.
She didn't really care about anyone on Earth, but it's hard to go from luxury to frugality, and she genuinely wanted to go back. Unfortunately, she had already lost her life, and the body she was using was the one left to her by the original owner, so there was no way for her soul to travel back. Perhaps her body had already been buried.
She doesn't have any so-called system or cheat codes, so wanting to go back in time is just wishful thinking.
The only non-existent transparent slime, 022, who could possibly take her back, was squatting next to a pile of bamboo tubes. Knowing she could hear it, it continued to recount its observations as if no one else was there.
She remembered what 022 had said: it wanted to record the civilization of this planet.
It's impossible for it to go to Earth.
Was she going to make a deal with this unknown creature? But she had nothing, and the only thing she could trade seemed to be her own soul.
Jiang Yunlan fell silent. Even if she could go back, did she really want to take this beastman's body with her? There were probably no monsters on Blue Star. Even if she successfully made the deal with 022, she wouldn't have a legal identity back on Blue Star. She wouldn't be able to move around freely, find work to support herself, and would have no way to reintegrate into human society.
Even if she wanted to contact the government, how could she prove that she was Jiang Yunlan? She simply had no way to prove it.
There were too many things weighing on her mind, including the orc who had given her a second life. She didn't know the wish the original owner had made when she accepted her, and she hadn't fulfilled the original owner's dying wish. She couldn't use someone else's body and then give nothing in return.
After much deliberation, Jiang Yunlan decided to put aside the idea of going back and focus on the present.
She will be staying in this clan for a long time and needs to gain a voice within it. Even if she can't become the leader, she should at least become an orc whose opinions the leader can heed; otherwise, her options will be limited.
For example, right now, she desperately wants to give the cave a thorough cleaning and wash every member of her tribe clean. But no orc will listen to her, and no orc can understand what she's saying.
Jiang Yunlan sadly agreed, "Is the first step to gaining a voice to learn a new language?"
She was overcome with grief. How long would it take to go from understanding orcish to speaking it fluently? How much longer would she have to endure this terrible environment...?
She was downcast for a while, while Feng Hong beside her had already finished eating with great relish. She then pulled each of the able-bodied tribesmen in front of her and taught her to pronounce their names.
Jiang Yunlan repeated their names more than a dozen times, struggling to memorize their pronunciation.
The good news is that she and the orcs have exchanged names.
The bad news is that no orc likes to pronounce her name in its entirety. They all choose to call her "Lan," the last character of her name.
022 seemed unable to understand the beastmen's language either, and floated over as they introduced themselves. She had to admit that the mysterious 0t22 had a memory several times better than hers; she could repeat their names after hearing them only once, with almost identical pronunciation, and her brain worked like a robot.
Jiang Yunlan didn't know why, but she always felt that she could read disdain in its unchanging eyes.
She fell silent. She hadn't expected learning the orc language to be so difficult; she had to repeat a name more than ten times to remember it.
"Lan".
Hearing Feng Hong's call, Jiang Yunlan looked in the direction of the sound and saw her coming over with a flat, long stone and a stone knife.
“Stone,” she said, pointing to the round stone.
“A knife,” she said, pointing to a flat stone shaped like a teardrop.
Jiang Yunlan resigned herself to continuing to learn the clan's language and attempted to teach Feng Hong in reverse, instructing her to pronounce their Chinese pronunciation. To her surprise, her reverse teaching was quite successful; Feng Hong learned to pronounce it after only two repetitions, while Jiang Yunlan's tongue was still tied in knots.
She fell silent again, her eyes suddenly filled with sorrow.
A gentle pressure suddenly came from her shoulder. She looked up and saw Feng Hong sighing and comforting her. Feng Hong's eyes seemed to say: This cub doesn't seem very bright.
"It's normal that most people would have a hard time learning your almost identical 'woo-ah-yo-ah' sounds." Jiang Yunlan gave a tired smile.
Perhaps having witnessed her extremely poor language skills, Feng Hong didn't use any other items to teach her to read. Instead, she brought some stones and taught her how to make a stone knife.
When Feng Hong found her, she noticed that she had nothing but the dry, stiff animal hide she was wearing. She would need a suitable stone knife for protection. With only six orcs of her tribe still able to move around, she would eventually become a member of a gathering team, going out to gather food with everyone.
Even though she was just a cub.
Jiang Yunlan gladly accepted the unpolished stone handed to her by Feng Hong. Before the last ray of sunlight disappeared, she smashed and tapped the stone, trying to shape the natural boulder into a suitable form.
022 Knowing that she could see him, he seemed unafraid of being caught and landed right next to her to watch the birth of the stone knife up close.
She saw its movements, then silently looked away as if it didn't exist. A subtle understanding was reached between the human and the wondrous creature in silence.
Jiang Yunlan broke several stones, and after much difficulty, she managed to forge the rough shape of a stone knife. By then, night had completely fallen.
She saw the night in this world clearly.
Two moons hang in the sky, gradually drawing closer to each other as time passes. This is a world with two moons, unlike Earth.
The soft moonlight fell, illuminating the cave entrance and allowing the fireless clan to see the surrounding light.
The orcs lived in caves halfway up the mountain, and dared not make too much noise because they had no fire to protect them, for fear of being discovered by wild beasts. Their clan had no strong carnivorous orcs, so they were no match for wild animals.
The cave gradually quieted down, with snores rising and falling.
Jiang Yunlan was used to falling asleep after midnight, and she didn't really feel sleepy at this time, but her exhausted body was making her drowsy. Helpless, she carefully turned to her side and lay down on the edge of a haystack, a little away from the two lemming orc cubs beside her.
She couldn't stand the strange smell emanating from them, and she wasn't used to sleeping next to others.
Before she closed her eyes, the last thing she saw was 022 floating out of the cave. This strange, slime-like creature seemed to be leaving. She didn't get up to chase after it, but instead let herself drift off to sleep.
Given the choice between the uncertainty of returning to Earth and the precious second life, she naturally chose the latter.
The next day, Jiang Yunlan opened her eyes and saw sunlight streaming into the cave, illuminating the entire cavern. Feng Hong and the others weren't inside; they had probably gone out.
In the morning sun, Maple Syrup sat on the edge of the cave entrance, still chiseling at the round tree trunk, which was half her arm's length tall, with a stone knife. The trunk, cut into sections, was two-thirds the width of its height, and a square had already been carved out in the middle.
Hearing Jiang Yunlan get up, she turned slightly to the side and spoke gently, "Lan, you're awake."
Jiang Yunlan only understood her own name. She responded with a smile, then swayed and walked over, leaning against the wall, her steps uneven. She had strength yesterday, but today it felt as if all her strength had been drained away, leaving her body weak and limp. It was as if, after taking over the body, she had inherited all the negative effects along with it.
Seeing that she was still alive today, Maple Syrup was finally relieved and handed her her breakfast of four hawthorns.
Maple Syrup had seen an orc in a similar condition; that orc had also fainted from hunger and was fed by Maple Red. She regained her strength immediately after eating and returned with Maple Red and the others, full of energy. All the orcs thought she was cured, but she never opened her eyes again on the second day after arriving at the clan.
The strikingly similar scenes made Maple Sugar worry that Lan might end up like that orc, falling asleep and never waking up again.
Jiang Yunlan let go of the wall and collapsed to the ground, panting heavily, her head still spinning. She felt as if she had just recovered from a serious illness; her body was weak all over.
She had just recovered when she saw Maple Syrup gesturing as if to eat, urging her to eat breakfast quickly.
Seeing this, she gestured as if eating and said the word "eat," deliberately feigning confusion. Maple Fruit naturally understood, smiled, and brought the red fruit to her lips, saying confidently in Chinese, "Eat!"
Jiang Yunlan was satisfied and obediently accepted the food and ate it. She couldn't learn the beastmen's language, so why not teach them Chinese in various ways?
The tricked maple syrup was clearly unaware of the wickedness of modern people. She watched her finish eating before turning her attention back to making the wooden version of "bamboo".
Two lemming orc cubs brought hollow bamboo with them when they fled to the forest. Since those hollow bamboos could hold water and food, the same things could be stored by hollowing out the middle of a piece of wood.
Maple Syrup wanted to make portable wooden buckets so that Maple Red and others traveling would have containers to hold their food. This way, they wouldn't need to wrap the fruit in leaves and vines anymore, and they wouldn't have to worry about the fruit falling out of the leaves.
If there weren't so few orcs in their tribe, the two lemming orc cubs wouldn't have become part of the gathering team this year.
A clan without offspring is destined to perish, and she does not want her current clan to fall to that point.
Her original clan of deer-beastmen had migrated away, leaving her and four other deer-beastmen unable to travel to the cave. Fortunately, her younger sister, Maple Red, volunteered to stay behind and bring back food and find new beastmen, so she once again had a clan to live in.
Maple Syrup cares deeply about every member of her tribe and is eager to quickly make an enlarged version of the wooden "bamboo" container. Only with such a container can she bring back more food and prevent her tribe from starving during the snow season.
Her quiet, anxious movements as she planed the wooden bucket made Jiang Yunlan frown, as if she were about to break the wood in her hands in two.
The dozens of failed attempts she casually tossed aside were in such a sorry state, while others were clearly made when she first didn't know how to plank wood, and were quite bizarre.
The orcs seem to be much stronger than the humans on Earth.
Seeing that Maple Sugar was about to overdo it again, Jiang Yunlan's eyelids twitched suddenly, and she suppressed her urge to call her name in a soft voice, "Maple Sugar".
Hearing the cub's soft voice, she subconsciously stopped what she was doing and looked at the squirrel-beastman cub with a puzzled expression.
Jiang Yunlan looked at the half-finished wooden bucket she had barely managed to save, and gestured as she discussed with her, "I'll make this."
She watched Lan's actions, reading them several times before she understood, feeling conflicted. She worried that Lan was just curious and wanted to play with the barrel, but then realized that she was no longer in a position to carve barrels.
If she continues like this, the wooden bucket in her hand will only become more garbage.
"Lan, here you go." Maple Syrup gave up the half-finished product in her hand, frowned deeply as she looked at the pile of failed products, and picked up a brand new tree trunk to start chiseling from scratch.
Perhaps she is not suited to do this; it should be done by someone from her tribe who is capable of it.
A note from the author:
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The orcs' names aren't actually pronounced in Chinese. The orc names you're seeing now are Chinese translations sent by 022 from the future. So, Maple Syrup's name isn't pronounced "fengtang."
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