Not long ago, the sow we brought back turned out to be pregnant, and she gave birth to sixteen adorable piglets in one litter.
This was a joyous occasion in the tribe, and Susu, being a woman, naturally possessed an overflowing maternal instinct.
This made Su Su happy for several days. Every day after work, the first thing she did was to check on the sixteen little piglets with their colorful plumage. She would never cook dinner for everyone until she had played with them enough.
Because of this litter of piglets, the mother wild boar's status in the tribe rose dramatically.
When people had some free time, they joked that the wild boar was being treated almost like a high priest.
The truth is, in the high priest's eyes, he had already placed these wild boars above himself.
Besides having someone carry water to bathe and cool the sows down every day, their feeding is also very particular. They are fed the same kind of food as humans, which is roasted potatoes.
Some even say that the wasteland we are reclaiming now was reclaimed to grow food for these wild boars.
I feel that this statement is a bit of an exaggeration. The amount of food produced by an entire hilltop is not something that a few wild boars can easily finish.
My thinking is that everyone is now in a state of final combat readiness. Since we don't know when the war will start, it's natural to have as much food and other supplies as possible.
It's not like what everyone says, that all the grain on the whole hill was prepared for a few pigs. Of course, allow me to be a little unkind and exclude myself first.
In addition to physical training, the leader has added a new training package for us since we returned.
It could have happened when the trees were being cut down, or it could have happened even earlier.
The leader had actually collected dozens of snakes of various sizes. Without exception, these snakes would raise their necks high and make a hissing sound as they breathed out.
At first I thought it was a cobra, but upon closer inspection I realized it wasn't a cobra at all, but a non-venomous snake called the three-lined serpentine snake.
Its behavior is somewhat similar to that of a cobra, except that only the neck of a cobra's body is raised.
This three-lined cobra is different. It can hold one-third of its body upright in mid-air in an S-shape, attacking people like a cobra.
Because their bodies are longer than those of a cobra when they are upright and constricted, they can directly attack a person's upper body or even face.
Although the three-lined coelacanth is a non-venomous snake, it is known for its fierce temper among snakes, and its violent nature can cause it to chase and bite people like a king cobra.
Moreover, its saliva contains an enzyme that, although not fatal, causes excruciating pain similar to that of a red imported fire ant sting, which usually lasts for one or two hours or more.
The chief distributed each snake to the people of the tribe, one snake per person in a clay pot. Even some of the tribe's children, who were only ten years old, received such snakes.
At first, I didn't know what the leader was going to do with these snakes, until he pulled out a handful of red beans from some unknown plant. The beans looked about the same size as soybeans.
Each earthenware jar was filled with a handful of these red beans. Then the chief actually made us squat down and use a pair of chopsticks that were a meter long to pick the beans out of the jars.
During this process, we can freely switch between our left and right hands. Of course, if you have a strong enough tolerance, it's also fine not to switch hands.
The standard for completing the assignment was to use chopsticks to pick out all the red beans from a ceramic jar containing a three-lined coelacanth.
The other indigenous people didn't show much emotional reaction, but they seemed to have anticipated it, as their faces still showed some pain, clearly indicating that they had experienced it before.
Dante, perhaps having never faced this test before, looked at the hissing, upright three-banded serpent in the terracotta pot and said to me somewhat reluctantly in a low voice, "..."
"Sir, isn't the chief going a bit too far? Could this cause someone to die?"
At this moment, I also frowned. These snakes attack extremely fast, and it's almost impossible to avoid being bitten by them.
However, the leader did not say that being bitten by a snake would disqualify one, so the leader knew that one would definitely be bitten, which is why he required that the red beans inside be removed to qualify.
At that moment, Su Su saw that the snake was obviously very fierce. She thought about how she was about to face such a terrifying creature, and her body trembled as she hid behind me.
The fear of snakes and similar animals is written into human genes; it is an instinct, not something acquired later in life. Even newborn babies have a natural fear of snakes.
I think there must be a reason why the leader specifically chose this kind of snake as the object of everyone's practice.
Perhaps he wanted to train everyone's ability to control their fear, since our enemy is very powerful and having a fearless heart is essential.
Furthermore, I feel that the greatest benefit of this kind of exercise is to improve our hand-eye coordination and enhance our reaction speed to external stimuli.
I smiled and patted Su Su, who was hiding behind me, to encourage her.
"Don't worry, these snakes aren't deadly, they'll just hurt a little. You even managed to do the homework of gathering twenty bundles of firewood, this won't be a problem for you either, right, Susu?"
After a moment of change in expression, Su Su became stubborn again. This girl, who had lost both parents, looked at the pottery jar with a determined gaze and nodded emphatically at me.
At this moment, a fellow became very interested in these snakes. Pat, who had been lazing around and sleeping, suddenly appeared like a free-roaming chicken in front of the pottery jar, ready to poison the snakes inside.
I kicked Pat in the butt and yelled.
"Go play somewhere else, this isn't food prepared for you."
Pat, who had been kicked to the ground, glanced at me defiantly, then flapped his wings and flew to a tree not far away. There, he stood with Top, who was sitting on a branch eating roasted potatoes, and recounted all my misdeeds.
Top just looked in my direction, grinned at me, and waved the half-eaten potato in his hand. Top was already used to this big idiot next to him.
Seeing that Top had no intention of paying attention to him and was instead continuing to befriend the guy who had kicked him, he realized that Top was not going to talk to him.
Pat was extremely unhappy and turned his head away, no longer looking at Top.
It's like a childish attitude: "I've been bullied, and you're not even helping me. I'm not playing with you anymore."
Since many of our people, like Dante and Susu, are encountering this topic for the first time, the chief personally came to give us a demonstration.
The leader, holding a pair of one-meter-long chopsticks, squatted down in front of a pottery jar containing a three-banded coelacanth, his eyes fixed on the coelacanth, which was raising its upper body and hissing warningly.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com