Fill the Belly

Yuan Ming flexed his limbs and found that the muscles around his wounds still hurt when pulled, but compared to yesterday, he was much better.

After giving it some thought, he decided not to risk hunting beasts just yet. Instead, he planned to make some traps and see if he could lure and catch small animals such as wild rabbits or field mice.

Once he had eaten and drunk his fill and regained his strength, he could go hunt wild beasts.

With that thought in mind, Yuan Ming began gathering tough vines and branches from the surrounding area while keeping an eye out for suitable places to set the traps.

He had little experience or memory when it came to trapping beasts. He could only rely on vague impressions to make a few snares and traps. Whether or not they would catch anything depended entirely on luck.

While setting the traps, however, he gathered some wild fruit.

Some were as large as apples, plump and purplish-red all over. Some were as small as pellets, a pleasing deep crimson. There was also one kind that looked very much like raspberries, covered in densely packed tiny beads and exceedingly tempting to look at.

Yuan Ming did not recognize a single one of these wild fruits. He had picked them only because the hunger gnawing at his belly had grown increasingly fierce, and he could no longer wait for his traps to display their might.

He had been deeply conflicted while picking them, afraid of bringing back poisonous fruit. He could only make a rough judgment by checking whether there were signs of wild beasts having eaten them.

The few kinds he brought back to the cave had all been carefully selected.

After blocking the cave entrance with tree roots, Yuan Ming hesitantly picked up the smallest fruit, one resembling a red raspberry, placed it in his mouth, and bit down.

Sweet, refreshing juice instantly flooded his mouth, making his eyes widen involuntarily.

After a small taste, Yuan Ming found that he felt nothing unusual, so he continued eating.

Once he had finished the little red fruits, they had done no more than satisfy his taste buds. His hunger had not eased in the slightest.

So Yuan Ming began trying the second kind, crimson fruits as small as cherries.

Their color was even more vivid than that of the red raspberries. Crystal-clear, plump, and smooth, they looked as though they ought to taste delicious.

Yuan Ming picked one up and put it in his mouth, but the instant he chewed it, he was bitterly disappointed.

A sour, astringent, numbing juice mixed with hard flesh spread through his mouth. The sensation was even more intense than chewing a huge handful of Sichuan peppercorns.

Yuan Ming spat out the fruit pulp with repeated "Ptoo, ptoo!" sounds, his tongue hanging out.

But when he wanted to use the raspberry-like fruits to wash away the taste, he discovered that he had unknowingly eaten every last one of them.

Helplessly, the numbness in his mouth not only failed to fade with time but grew stronger and stronger, even spreading to his cheeks.

He had no choice but to pick up the last kind of fruit, the purplish-red one as large as an apple, and take a bite.

"Crunch."

The instant the skin of the purplish-red fruit broke, a faintly sweet and sour flavor immediately covered the numbing taste. Replacing it was an indescribable fragrance.

It was like the scent of oranges and apples blended together. The more he smelled it, the more it rushed straight into his mind, impossible to resist.

"Delicious!"

Yuan Ming could not help taking a deep sniff. The moment the rich scent rushed into his nostrils, his vision suddenly blurred, his entire body became incomparably stiff, and he toppled straight over to one side.

"Poi... poi... soned..."

Yuan Ming's stiff tongue could no longer properly say the words "poisoned." Then his eyes rolled back, and he fainted.

When he woke again, it was already evening. The setting sun outside could not shine through the cave entrance at all, leaving the underground cave somewhat dim.

Yuan Ming pushed himself upright with one hand and moved his limbs. Aside from a slight soreness and swelling, he found nothing obviously wrong. His head was not even groggy, as though he had merely taken a nap.

He rubbed the space between his brows, glanced at the unfinished wild fruit on the ground, and his stomach growled again.

"I can't keep going like this. Forget killing a wild beast for its essence blood—I'll probably starve to death first and become food for the beasts."

After a brief consideration, Yuan Ming stood and walked out of the cave.

Seeing that night was about to fall, he quickened his pace and returned to the river.

Since wild fruit could not be eaten carelessly and could hardly fill his belly anyway, he might as well come back and catch some Piranhas to stave off hunger.

Yuan Ming walked to the riverbank and looked at the muddy, rolling waves, wondering how he should fish when he suddenly heard waves of beastly roars coming from the mountain forest behind him.

He immediately tensed up. After running several steps, he sprang upward, leaping more than two zhang into the air. He caught hold of a horizontal branch on an old tree and climbed up.

Keeping low, he peered down from above in the direction of the sounds, but the mottled branches and leaves in the distance blocked his view, and he could see nothing.

After some hesitation, Yuan Ming still swung through the forest, carefully making his way toward the source.

After leaping across seven or eight trees, Yuan Ming stopped atop a massive towering tree. Though he was still more than ten zhang away, he could already see what was happening through the gaps in the branches ahead.

Bang!

A dull impact rang out. In the forest ahead, a green wolf was knocked over by a gray wolf a full size larger. Its body slammed sideways into an old tree, making the tree shudder violently as leaves rained down in a rustle.

After the green wolf rose, it did not pause for an instant. It leaped up and pounced directly at the gray wolf, and the two tore into each other.

Watching this scene, Yuan Ming could not help frowning.

The green wolf that had broken the tree earlier moved in an indescribably strange way. No matter how he looked at it, something seemed off.

Before he could figure it out, the battle between the two wolves had already reached its end.

Even before Yuan Ming arrived, they had inflicted grievous wounds on each other. Neither had much fighting strength left. The gray wolf had clamped its jaws around the green wolf's throat, but its own abdomen had also been torn open, blood and entrails spilling all over the ground.

In the center of the clearing, only the dying whimpers of the two wolves remained.

"After wearing out iron shoes in vain, I find it without any effort at all. Looks like my luck isn't bad." Seeing this, Yuan Ming was overjoyed.

As long as he could obtain the beast blood from those two wolves, wouldn't that mean he had completed the mission?

"It has to be while they're still warm. Once they're dead through and the blood congeals, it can't be drawn out." Yuan Ming's heart tightened, and he quickly swung over in that direction.

Yet the instant he leaped up, he saw a sight that sent a chill down his spine.

The blue wolf whose throat had been bitten through began to shrink little by little beneath his gaze. From under its broad wolf hide emerged two human feet, then its lower legs, until it finally transformed into a complete human body.

That blue wolf had actually been a Furred Beast Hide transformed by one of the Wildlings who had traveled with him earlier.

At the sight, Yuan Ming froze mid-motion and stopped atop an old tree, a bleak sorrow welling up in his heart.

It was precisely that momentary pause that saved his life.

The grass and shrubs below rustled violently as hyenas, earth-brown all over and covered in coarse mottled fur, charged out from every direction. They moved with astonishing speed, rushing straight toward the gray wolf's corpse and tearing into it.

Before long, one hyena discovered the Wildling's corpse. It clamped its jaws around his ankle and dragged him out from beneath the blue wolf Furred Beast Hide, immediately drawing the scramble of two other hyenas.

The three hyenas tore at the Wildling's body and swiftly devoured it clean, leaving behind nothing but a pile of white bones.

Watching the gruesome scene below, Yuan Ming was thankful that he had not gone over. Otherwise, surrounded by those dozen or so hyenas, there would have been absolutely no chance of survival.

It was only a pity about that gray wolf. There was certainly no way to collect its beast blood now.

Yuan Ming remained crouched on the tree, watching the entire savage feast without daring to make the slightest sound.

After about the time it took to burn a stick of incense, the hyenas finished feeding. They had eaten the two corpses clean, not even sparing the organs and intestines, leaving only heaps of bare bones before departing together.

Yuan Ming patiently waited in the tree for a long while. Only after seeing that no other beasts appeared did he swing down from the tree.

After landing, he saw the mess scattered across the ground and smelled the reek of blood in the air. To his surprise, he did not feel nauseated. Instead, he sensed a thread of enticing sweetness within that bloody odor.

From the remaining gray wolf skeleton, he found several bones that had not yet been gnawed clean. Clutching them to his chest, he climbed back up the tree, and only once he was safe did he begin gnawing on them.

By this point, Yuan Ming's mind had become incomparably calm. He no longer thought about useless things, merely considering coolly what he needed to do next to complete the mission and return alive to report back.

Tomorrow was the final day. He did not have much time left.

After finishing the gray wolf's flesh and blood, Yuan Ming tossed the bones down from the tree. When he rose to his feet, he immediately felt a stream of heat spread from his lower abdomen, warming his entire body.

"This flesh and blood is actually so nourishing. A good deal of my strength has returned too—it's far better than river fish or wild fruits." Yuan Ming rejoiced inwardly, jumping down from the tree and landing steadily on the ground.

He went to the gray wolf's remains and selected several sharp ribs, then picked out two shinbones three or four feet long and bound them together with a vine.

When he turned around, Yuan Ming saw the scattered bones of the Wildling's corpse. After some hesitation, he gathered them together and buried them beneath earth, stones, and leaves.

"Dust to dust, earth to earth," Yuan Ming murmured.

With that, he stood up and glanced at the blue wolf Furred Beast Hide that had fallen nearby. He still resisted the urge to take it, then dragged that bundle of beast bones away.

Not long after he left, a figure stood with his hands behind his back atop the old tree where Yuan Ming had hidden, at a point rising above the entire forest canopy. He was tall and imposing—it was Elder Huohuo.

With a light tap of his toes, he drifted down from the treetop and bent to pick up the blue wolf hide.

"This man from the Central Plains is rather interesting." Elder Huohuo glanced in the direction Yuan Ming had left, the corner of his mouth twitching faintly.