The fish in the basket have disappeared; the mixed race in the forest...
On a new day, Jiang Yunlan led the orcs of the gathering team out.
Yanlin wasn't in the cave when she woke up last night, and he didn't return even after she went out. She didn't know why Yanlin wasn't in the cave, but she remembered the scenes of the beastmen getting along. At that time, she vaguely realized that Yanlin didn't really want to stay here, and that Fenghong and the others didn't really like Yanlin.
So, the current situation is that Yanlin has left, but Yanshi doesn't want to leave and has stayed?
Jiang Yunlan looked at the rocks in the collection team's yard with a puzzled expression. She had thought they would leave together, after all, they had come together, and Yan Lin was still recovering from his illness and was injured.
Is he really okay, being an orc? Or is he just going out for a short trip, not leaving?
Jiang Yunlan pondered for a moment, then forcibly cleared her mind of those thoughts. Regardless of the circumstances, Yan Lin had simply made a choice that belonged to him.
"Lan!"
She heard Feng Hong calling her and looked up directly at Feng Hong, who had called her. Feng Hong, standing in the river, looked furious, clutching a broken vine in her hand.
The fish basket broke.
“These marks…” Jiang Yunlan took the fish basket fragments from Feng Hong and realized her almost furious reaction, “are marks left by the sharp teeth of an animal.”
The riverbank was marked with animal tracks, irregular circles. Strangely, these circles did not appear in pairs, but rather meandered along the riverbank like a circular stone path.
It appears to be a one-legged beast.
Cotton and Ah Bai's eyes widened when they saw the tattered trap. They hurriedly searched for other fish baskets, but only found fragments of vines. The two orcs sniffed, both angry and heartbroken, their ears and tails drooping sadly.
Waaaaah, all of today's fish is gone...
The orcs were in low spirits, and even the newly arrived Rock found it hard to accept the fact that his prey had been eaten by wild beasts.
At this moment, Jiang Yunlan remembered several traps that she hadn't checked. She had a bad feeling and frowned as she called the beastmen to the location of the traps.
The situation with the traps was pretty much as she had expected; several were broken. They were probably destroyed by the beast that had eaten the fish, likely because the traps had caught their prey.
She sighed, unsure whether to be thankful that they hadn't run into any wild animals, or to feel sorry for the prey that had been eaten.
"We need to make both the stone spears and the wooden armor today," Jiang Yunlan murmured.
She would never allow the river to be scavenged by wild beasts. Red soil, water, and fish were all things the beastmen needed. So, now only one path remained—
Kill that beast.
Having made her decision, Jiang Yunlan smiled as usual, reassuring the beastmen and telling them to leave the river. Her furry ears and tail didn't betray her feelings, but her clenched fists hanging by her sides trembled slightly.
She knew she would have to face the wild beasts of the forest someday, but she didn't expect it to come so soon, so soon that she wasn't prepared.
The transparent slime approached the trembling squirrel-beast cub. It looked into her eyes and tilted its round body.
It could sense that Jiang Yunlan was afraid. It didn't understand why she felt uneasy in a safe environment and asked in confusion, "The wild beasts aren't here, why are you afraid?"
Of all the orcs, only she exuded an aura of fear.
The tiny squirrel-like beastman cub opened her arms, obediently letting Feng Hong, who was close by, pick her up. Sitting on Feng Hong's arms, she didn't look at 022 but gazed at the receding river, hiding her fear.
She had never faced a ferocious beast directly, nor did she have the ability to kill one with a single punch. How could she not be afraid?
The lives of the orcs were in her hands.
Jiang Yunlan let out a silent breath, then smiled and said, "No, not at all. I guess I was just cold, that's why my hands were shaking."
She was lying. 022 realized it in a second.
Why lie? 022 couldn't understand, but it wouldn't delve into it. It knew she didn't want to say it, as she hoped, when she had simply been cold-hearted.
She was too calm; apart from 022, no orc noticed the fear hidden in her heart. The obtuse orcs couldn't read such subtle emotions, but they would listen to Lan.
The orcs, whose primary goal was to obtain food, did not gather berries today; instead, they stood in front of tall, sturdy trees.
"Lan, yo-woo-yo-woo?" Lan, is this the tree you want? Feng Hong asked, looking at Lan on her arm.
Jiang Yunlan still couldn't understand the beastmen's language, but she knew that the beastmen stopping meant they had found a usable forest. She decisively patted Feng Hong's arm, stepped down to the ground, and used her arm to measure the width of the tall trees, then turned around to look at the beastmen's figures.
The tree is the right width to be used for making armor.
After a difficult conversation with the beastmen, Jiang Yunlan, having reached a conclusion, saw two lemming beastman cubs brandish their claws and dig furiously at the base of the tree, creating a crack. The cubs were too fast for her to stop, and they ceased their work.
Jiang Yunlan was stunned. She saw Feng Hong stand in front of the tree and throw a punch at it, the fist so fast that it left an afterimage.
A tree so large that it would take an adult two arms to encircle it fell heavily to the ground with a loud thud.
Seeing this, Jiang Yunlan opened her mouth slightly in surprise and said with starry eyes, "Feng Hong is amazing!"
She knew, of course, that a cracked tree was easy to knock down, but the problem was, the crack on this tree was only about a hand's width wide. Clearly, it was because Maple Red was strong enough to knock down the tree with a single punch. With such immense strength, a stone spear she threw might very well pierce through the body of a wild beast.
Jiang Yunlan silently pondered where to have the orcs practice spear throwing.
In the brief moment she was distracted, the orc walked skillfully to the fallen tree and broke it into several pieces with practiced ease.
The tree trunks used to make maple syrup are also decomposed in this way.
The collection of tree trunks was complete. The orcs carried baskets full of long tree trunks back to their cave. It was past noon, but the orcs did not forget to eat their lunch on the way back.
As they drew nearer to the orcs' cave, Jiang Yunlan noticed something amiss when she saw the semi-circular platform. Maple Syrup wasn't waiting for them outside the cave; the platform was only covered with broad leaves laden with berries.
Maple Syrup has always been responsible for drying the fruit; if nothing had happened, she wouldn't have left the berries out to dry without supervision.
Jiang Yunlan was worried that something had happened to her. She frowned, grabbed Ah Bai's arm, pointed to the cave, and said to Ah Bai, who was holding her, "Go back quickly."
Upon receiving the command, Ah Bai immediately changed the way he carried Lan, supporting her with one hand and protecting her head with the other as he ran and flew back into the cave.
Inside the cave, Maple Syrup and Autumn Fruit stood around the wooden barrel where the prey was tied, their faces grave.
Jiang Yunlan saw Maple Sugar sitting peacefully on the ground, and the tension in her mind eased. She called out Maple Sugar's name, and Maple Sugar, sitting on the ground, turned around in a panic, clutching the dead badger in her hand.
Maple Syrup instinctively wanted to hide the badger behind her, but her hand froze in mid-air. She didn't dare look Lan in the eye, lowering her head like a cub who had done something wrong, and hesitantly moved the dying badger in front of her.
The badger had been behaving well yesterday; its sharp teeth and claws hadn't been removed. She hadn't expected it to attack her while she was feeding it. To control it, she grabbed its neck, but accidentally used too much force and strangled it to death.
"Lan, waah!" Maple Sugar stared at the ground, loudly apologizing to Lan, her voice filled with obvious sadness.
Lan likes keeping them and definitely doesn't want the badger to die. But her legs aren't as nimble as they used to be, so she can't catch a new three-white beast for Lan.
Maple Syrup felt uneasy and suddenly moved the badger in front of her, looking up at Lan. She didn't know if Lan would be angry or sad.
The tiny squirrel-like beastman cub approached her, pausing for a moment before speaking in a calm and gentle tone. She gestured as she asked Maple Syrup why she hadn't been sitting at the cave entrance waiting for the gathering team to return today.
It was difficult to communicate across different languages, and it took Maple Syrup a while to understand what Lan was trying to say.
Maple Syrup held up the dead badger for Jiang Yunlan to see, and then gave a live performance, reenacting what had just happened. Her performance was very successful, and Jiang Yunlan understood it at a glance.
“Since T was killed accidentally, let’s just process it into food.” Jiang Yunlan said, handing the badger and stone knife to Qiu Guo so that she could dissect it.
Maple Syrup froze, staring blankly at Lan, and was rewarded with a reassuring pat on the shoulder and a look of comfort.
“I will bring back another little beast like that,” Jiang Yunlan said. She thought Maple Sugar was unhappy because of the badger’s death, never considering that Maple Sugar was afraid that she would be sad.
Maple Syrup understood the comfort in her words, and looked at her gently, saying, "Lan, waah waah. Lan, I'll ask Maple Red to find you another Three-White Beast."
Everything that Gai Lan has must be included. If anything is missing, it must be replaced.
At this moment, Jiang Yunlan wouldn't understand Maple Sugar's thoughts. She only knew that Maple Sugar didn't seem so sad anymore, so she went to do other things without worry. She had observed Maple Sugar's body when she returned. Maple Sugar didn't have any new wounds, and her complexion was normal. She guessed that the reason she wasn't staying at the cave entrance earlier was simply because the badger had died.
So he really likes that little beast. Jiang Yunlan thought to herself, then called out the names of the beastmen in the gathering team, picked up the remaining stone knives in the cave, and led them to the semi-circular platform outside the cave to make wooden armor.
Once she's dealt with the wild beast, she'll set up more traps to catch prey, and maybe she can catch another one of those small animals.
The sounds of stone tools being struck and wood being chopped echoed from the semi-circular platform in the mountains. Fortunately, the clans in the forest were far apart, and most of them had long since left the forest, so no orcs would complain about them disturbing the peace.
Jiang Yunlan was worried that the two lemming orc cubs would dig at the wood with their claws, so she simply pushed them to polish the tips of the stone spears. While Feng Hong and the other three strong adult orcs were planing the wood, she and the half-grown Cotton were not idle either, using vines to string together the rectangular wooden plaques they had made.
As time passed, Jiang Yunlan, engrossed in armor making, suddenly heard the voice of Maple Syrup.
"Lan, dinner."
Jiang Yunlan suddenly snapped back to reality, realizing that it was almost dinnertime. Her rumbling stomach urged her to get out the food that needed to be cooked.
"I'm here." She said, getting up from the ground, and then the scene in front of her suddenly went black.
She steadied her swaying feet, calmly blinked, and waited for her vision to clear. This body, having died once, hadn't fully recovered, and excessive exertion would have negative consequences.
Seeing her reaction from a distance, 022 floated to her side and watched her.
The pitch-black screen gradually returned to normal, and Jiang Yunlan saw it through the blurry image. She smiled and said, "Let's go, 022, it's time to make the purple flower and chive soup."
She noticed last night that, apart from the rock and two lemming orcs, the other orcs here would choose vegetarian food over delicious meat.
The purple flowers of the wild chives, when cooked into a soup, have a slightly sweet flavor; overall, it's a fairly good dish. She's making this for the vegetarian beastmen, and also grilling a few skewers of red, flat-topped mushrooms.
The birds that ate red oyster mushrooms for two days in a row are still alive, and those red, flat-topped mushrooms are obviously edible.
Jiang Yunlan and Maple Sugar sat by the fire cooking food, the aroma spreading far and wide. The beastmen working outside the cave smelled the food and their weary arms suddenly felt stronger.
It's delicious food!
At that moment, Feng Hong on the semi-circular platform saw a golden leopard walking up the gentle slope. It carried its prey in its mouth, its eyes sharp, and its innate aura of a hunter was palpable.
Feng Hong subconsciously grasped a stone spear she had made, and heard Ah Bai whispering an explanation: "It's Yanlin."
She paused, a beat too late to catch the orcish scent emanating from the leopard, and awkwardly lowered her weapon, scratching her head. She wasn't used to the presence of carnivorous orcs.
Their orcish aura is always tinged with the smell of blood, making them difficult to identify.
The blond, black-spotted leopard, panting heavily, slowly climbed up, ignoring Feng Hong's reaction and heading straight for Lan. He entered the cave, nudged Lan's arm with his head, and tossed his prey into Lan's arms.
The small prey wasn't enough to fill the stomach of a leopard beastman cub; it was just a snack for Lan, not a proper meal. But it was the best prey that could be caught in the Rock Forest these days.
The sick leopard beastman shouldn't be hunting, but the beastmen of this clan were too weak to even hunt enough food for the young Lan, who was the clan leader. He had hands and feet, so he disdained to eat the clan's food.
He could tell that little Lan needed a lot of nutrition to nourish her body and needed to eat lots and lots of meat.
A note from the author:
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*This is the Beast World Information Station
New information has been unlocked: the ages of the orcs.
Jiang Yunlan: 9 years old
Lemming Orc, Mo Rong: 12 years old
Lemming Orc, Black Soil: 13 years old
Rock Goat Orc, Cotton: 14 years old
Sika Deer Beastman, Maple Red: 17 years old
Lop-eared rabbit-like beastman, Abai: 18 years old
Cheetah Orc, Rock: 18 years old
Sika Deer Beastman, Maple Syrup: 19 years old
Cheetah Orc, Rock Forest: 20 years old
Sika Deer Beastman: Qiu Guo: 38 years old
022: ? years old
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