On the mountaintop, Huo Tang said nothing, staring into the distance for a long while.
They had traveled a thousand li east of the tribe, far beyond the range the tribe had ever explored.
Using the tribal maps they had gathered beforehand, they had found the locations of five tribes in succession.
Then, relying on the maps found in those five tribes, they had continued eastward.
They selected useful supplies and gathered them all in hidden places, intending to move them back to the tribe on the return journey.
But now, the terrain marked on the maps had become a vast watery kingdom stretching for thousands of li. All they could see were mountain peaks rising from the water.
"Chief, how about we keep searching around the mountains? I refuse to believe there isn't a tribe right on the edge of the flooded region."
They had come so far, not to stare at water. Everyone felt unwilling to accept it.
Huo Tang took out the maps and began searching through them. Though the terrain had changed, they could still serve as some kind of reference.
"Head northeast."
When faced with disaster, human tribes would not sit and wait for death. They would surely migrate to higher ground.
They had yet to encounter any scattered survivors on this trip. Gathering some of them was one of the purposes of their journey.
They could also help carry supplies on the way back.
The edge of the marshlands interlocked with the mountains like the teeth of a dog. In some places, shallow water had turned into mudflats; in others, the water was deep; elsewhere, shallow water, deep water, and land were jumbled together.
Huo Tang led everyone carefully along the shoreline. From time to time, they climbed to mountaintops to look into the distance, searching for signs of cooking smoke or campfires.
Survivors who had endured natural calamities needed food if they wanted to stay alive.
If a tribe had failed to salvage its food stores, fishing by the water became their means of survival. After all, with marshes everywhere, even farming required suitable land.
"Look for smaller mountains with gentler slopes. See if there are any terraced fields that have been cultivated."
Fish by the water, farm on gentle slopes.
Relying on Huo Tang's experience, the group soon spotted a gently sloping mountain range stretching more than ten li in the distance.
The southern side of the mountain was gradual, and beside the water lay a patch of tiered fields.
"Chief, look! There are boats in the water."
"There aren't many people."
From afar, there did not seem to be many cultivated fields or cave dwellings on the gentle slope.
There were no children playing in sight.
On the distant waters, more than a dozen dugout canoes and a crudely assembled wooden boat were fishing.
After traveling so far and finally encountering these people, the group was delighted. There were not many of them—just enough for the tribe to absorb and integrate.
"Chief, should we go down directly?"
"Wait until the people on the boats come ashore, then we'll go down."
Huo Tang looked around. Though they had come to gather survivors, not capture slaves, bringing those survivors under their wing still required some means.
Their group had one Heavenly Vein warrior, three Mountain Opening warriors, and more than forty Stone Splitter Martial Artists. Under the cover of night, they quietly made their way up.
Night fell.
Every household on the slope was quiet, with only the smell of roasting fish drifting through the flickering campfires.
Near the water's edge, a campfire burned, with two warriors standing watch.
They had even dragged their dugout canoes up the slope, watching the water vigilantly as though some terrifying desolate beast lurked beneath its surface.
"Who's there!"
Footsteps sounded in the darkness, instantly putting the two guards on alert. One drew his wooden bow to its full extent.
The other gripped his spear and fiercely struck the battered pot hanging before the campfire.
With a clang, people in the caves and houses were startled awake.
One after another, they emerged clutching whatever weapons and tools they could find.
Everyone huddled together like birds startled by the twang of a bowstring.
Campfires were lit one after another, illuminating the hillside.
Huo Tang's group was revealed. Of course, that was also because they had made no effort to conceal themselves.
Tribal warriors were easy to distinguish. Generally speaking, the sturdier and more powerfully built they were, the stronger they were.
Huo Tang appeared with only three others, while the rest of his clansmen stood separately in the distance, looming in and out of sight.
Yet every one of them wore hide armor, held iron weapons, and had eyes that gleamed brightly. At a glance, they were clearly not comparable to this group of refugees.
In contrast, the refugees from this remnant tribe pushed forward a scar-covered warrior in his thirties.
The women behind him clutched tools and crowded together. Though panic showed on their faces and they cursed their own plight inwardly, their eyes still glared furiously at their surroundings.
"We will never be slaves! Fight them!"
"Shi Fu, fight them! At worst, we die!"
"Fight! I want revenge for my son!"
Seeing the crowd united against a common enemy, Huo Tang signaled for his clansmen not to move and said, "My Blazing Flame Tribe does not capture slaves."
No one relaxed in the slightest. They continued watching Huo Tang warily, gripping their assorted "weapons" even tighter.
Huo Tang's gaze fell upon the man leading them.
"If my tribe had come to capture slaves, would we have given up such excellent cover of night and allowed you the chance to be on guard?"
Shi Fu gripped a heavy blade. Calling it a heavy blade was only because the forging craftsmanship was poor, forcing them to make the blade thicker and heavier. It looked more like a strangely shaped club.
"We do not welcome you. Please leave."
Shi Fu said, "As you can see, we are merely a group of survivors who escaped from the floodwaters. We have nothing.
"If you wish to eat fish, today's catch is all here. It will be enough to feed you warriors."
"My tribe is developing and needs to take in outsiders. Since your lives are so difficult, you may join my Blazing Flame Tribe."
Huo Tang looked at the fish they had caught. They were all small fish, and even the largest was less than a foot long.
Other than fish, there was almost no desolate beast meat to be seen throughout the settlement.
Unfortunately, even after Huo Tang spoke of recruiting them, no one present relaxed at all.
Or rather, they simply did not believe him.
"Stop lying to us! My tribe was doing fine hiding in the mountains from the flood, but you people suddenly attacked. The old and weak of the entire tribe were slaughtered, the able-bodied and children were taken away, and only a few of us escaped by sheer luck."
A one-armed man with a scarred face rushed out, clutching a fishbone knife and trying to drive its tip into Huo Tang.
Before he could get close to Huo Tang, Huo Bai kicked him flying.
"My Blazing Flame Tribe has never committed slaughter, nor have we ever captured our own people as slaves."
Shi Fu caught the one-armed man, then helped him back to his feet.
Huo Bai had held back greatly. Otherwise, the one-armed man's organs would likely have been shattered, and he would already be dead.
Shi Fu held back the one-armed man, who still wanted to charge forward, and looked toward Huo Tang.
"All of us are people from small tribes. We survived by luck and came together. We have nothing. Does your tribe truly wish to take us in?"
"My Blazing Flame Tribe is the same. We were merely luckier than the other tribes, having endured both the flood and the plague."
Huo Tang spoke without the slightest trace of looking down on them.
"A-Zhao, those people who slaughtered the tribes rode ships as large as mountains. They rode floodwaters and waves as though walking on level ground, and the armor they wore was beyond anything we could dream of. They are not the same as these people."
Shi Fu's words made the tense crowd come to their senses.
"Look at them, everyone. Aren't they different from those on the giant ships?"
The one-armed man dropped to the ground with a thud. "They weren't human. My child was only seven—only seven—and they threw him into the jaws of those savage fish."
"Our chief had half his body bitten away by a monstrous fish in a single exchange. I jumped into the water and fled with my youngest son, but he is gone too."
The howls and sobs caused the tiny settlement's atmosphere to sink at once, with choking cries rising one after another.
"In the second month after the flood covered the mountains, ships as large as mountains appeared outside our tribal lands. Monstrous fish dragged them by their prows as they rode the wind and broke the waves.
"The monstrous fish were impervious to blades and spears, and could even climb the mountain slopes. They ate anyone they saw.
"Cages hung everywhere on the ships, packed tightly with countless people.
"The Stone Rock Tribe was breached in the blink of an eye. The old and weak were thrown into the water to become fish food, while the able-bodied were seized and locked in cages. Then the giant ships broke through the waves and departed."
Before the campfire, Shi Fu sat collapsed on the ground, trembling all over. Immense terror filled his eyes, and he could not even hold onto the weapon in his hand.
"While hiding in the mountains, I even saw them hang people on hooks as fish bait, using them to catch desolate beasts in the water."
In the darkness, the campfires flickered.
A chill ran down the backs of Huo Tang and the other clansmen.
Without knowing it, they had brushed past a great crisis.
Perhaps the Blazing Flame Tribe's location was too close to the Giant Peak Mountain Range, where mountains rose and fell in endless ranks and sailing was inconvenient. That was why they had escaped this disaster of tribal extinction.
The several hundred survivors on the slope came from several tribes. Not long after the flood, huge ships had come riding the waves and directly broken into their tribes, slaughtering and capturing people.
As for where the great ships had come from, they did not know. They only knew there had been more than one—twenty or thirty of various sizes, forming a great fleet.
That night, Huo Tang led his people to stay in the tiny settlement.
There was no resistance to absorbing these survivors from many tribes.
Those who had escaped death time and again had already become numb.
Rather than understanding that they had to join a tribe to survive, it was more that they had already resigned themselves to drifting with the current, taking one step at a time, with little left to hope for.
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