A new curiosity had emerged in the tribe recently: the clansmen discovered that Huo Shan had once again put on the face-covering scarf he had worn during the plague.
Unable to make sense of it, some clansmen went over to ask and got kicked for their trouble.
The chief had led people out of the tribe to hunt again.
A-Can, who served as both ancestral temple keeper and shaman, seemed to have come down with something too. Every day, he carried a Beast Hide Scroll around the tribe, showing his hide to everyone he met.
A little unhinged.
The clansmen were merely guessing. Shen Can had not gone mad, of course.
He carried the Beast Hide Scroll written in shamanic script and wandered all around the tribe.
He thought that since the children lacked talent, perhaps there might be some old prodigies. It was never too late to cultivate at eighty.
He did not mind them being old. First, he needed to solve the problem of going from nothing to something.
First there had been the Iron Wood Boat, then the shamanic blade. Once again, this proved that the Ling Yu Tribe had already applied shamanic arts to weapon forging.
Such a large tribe could apply it to weapons, so it had probably long since spread into daily life as well—planting, cultivating shamanic herbs, and so on.
A powerful tribe was truly strong in every aspect.
Several days later.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
At a stone shed in the southwestern corner of the tribal grounds, heat waves rolled forth as rhythmic hammering rang out.
Shen Can stood outside the stone shed, watching Huo Shi lead people in hammering rivets.
Ever since he had discussed going out with Huo Tang to survey the terrain and search for resources along the way, they had not found any mineral veins, but the clansmen had brought back quite a few scattered ores.
They were now forging the rivets that would be arranged across leather armor.
"Temple Keeper, did I forge them wrong?"
Seeing Shen Can stare fixedly inside, Huo Shi, the weaponsmith, stopped swinging his hammer.
"It's fine. You forged them very well."
Shen Can looked instead at another middle-aged blacksmith. "Do you recognize this character?"
"No."
The middle-aged blacksmith carried a sledgehammer whose head was bigger than his own skull.
"It just looks a little like a flickering flame."
Shen Can was overjoyed at those words.
This was truly too difficult. He had wandered all over the tribe for so many days, and everyone who looked at the shamanic script had eyes as clear and blank as A'Yu's.
Water and fire were different, but the flow of water and the flickering of fire had something in common.
"Uncle Shi, I'm taking him away. Recruit two more blacksmiths."
"Temple Keeper, what do you want me to do? I can forge iron."
Huo Zhong walked out of the stone shed with his hammer on his shoulder, looking puzzled.
Shen Can glanced at him, then thought better of it. The ancestors had never decreed that one could not carry a hammer while cultivating shamanic arts.
If shamanic arts were to be applied throughout the tribe, perhaps he could raise a shamanic-hammer blacksmith in the future.
"Come on. Up the mountain."
The stone steps outside the ancestral temple were covered with drying mushrooms and firewood that had yet to fully dry. Shen Can had to take a detour before returning to the ancestral temple.
The clansmen did not know that the ancestors did not actually eat firewood.
"Temple Keeper, what do you want me to forge?"
Shen Can led Huo Zhong into an ear chamber and handed him the Beast Hide Scroll covered in shamanic script.
"Look at this. Once you've looked enough, write it."
After giving Huo Zhong the hide scroll and brush, he had him copy the nine shamanic characters that formed the Water Control Art.
Watching Shen Can leave, Huo Zhong stroked his sledgehammer, then cautiously picked up the brush to examine it. His eyes were filled with uncertainty.
The brush in his hand seemed covered in thorns. The hand that never trembled while gripping a sledgehammer shook and quivered as it descended onto the Beast Hide Scroll.
Shen Can had no idea Huo Zhong's hand was shaking. He followed the passage into another cave illuminated by beast-oil lamps.
Inside this cave stood a miniature sand table.
The sand table was densely packed with tiny mountain peaks, marshes, rivers, and marked danger zones.
After the catastrophe, new tribes had yet to "refresh."
Huo Tang had now led people eastward again, to the Waterside Land. Since they had entertained the idea of relocating the tribal grounds, the tribe's focus would lean toward the eastern great marsh for a long time to come.
Of course, placing their focus in the east did not mean they would stop exploring the west, north, and south.
The vast mountains, forests, and land held far too many dangerous places. For now, they had only mapped out a rough frame, and it would take time to slowly fill it in.
Looking at the sand table, Shen Can saw that one flood had pushed Da Ye Marsh, originally five thousand li from the tribe, more than two thousand li westward. Such earth-shaking changes still left one stunned.
Even more shocking was that the damn Ling Yu Tribe could ride floodwaters across ten thousand li, roaming wherever they pleased.
They treated Da Ye Marsh like their own fish pond.
With such an enormous body of water, how many fish and beasts could they haul up in a single catch? The Ling Yu Tribe's temple keepers must have stabbed notches into their blades.
He was so jealous.
"A-Can, the hunting party led by Huo Ning has returned. They brought back a live Mystic-Marked Ox-bodied Wolf."
Huo Xian walked to the cave entrance and called out.
The effects of the flood were fading, and the desolate beasts had begun breeding anew, spilling out from the Giant Peak Mountain Range.
Relying on the Mafeisan Shen Can had formulated, the tribe had achieved remarkable results in capturing desolate beasts.
At the northwestern side of the tribal city, they had built a small secondary city. Using three separate small hills as boundaries, they enclosed it as a domestication ground, tossing all the captured Mountain-Cleaving Kui cubs inside.
As for taming them, they had not yet developed any truly effective techniques. For now, it was all carrot and stick, with the details still being explored.
In the fish pond at the northeastern corner of the city, they were also raising some fish they had caught.
Though they were worlds apart from Lingyu fish, the Blazing Flame Tribe improved with each passing day.
Now, whenever a hunting party returned, they tried their best to bring back the last desolate beast they killed alive.
They had once feared the beasts' struggles, but now every hunter carried Mafeisan.
After being force-fed some, the desolate beasts obediently followed them back to the tribe. Some even snored soundly all the way into the ancestral temple.
Inside the ancestral temple.
The strange-looking wolf with an ox's body lay sprawled across a wooden rack, still snoring soundly.
Shen Can gave it a pat.
"Still sleeping? I've come to collect what's yours."
This was an unranked desolate beast. It was not that the clansmen did not capture ranked ones.
Rather, there were rules for hunting. The desolate beast offered to the ancestors was always the final one; if they could capture it alive, they did, and if they could not, they let it be.
Sacrificing to the ancestors was important, but the clansmen's safety was important too. They could not sacrifice merely for the sake of sacrifice.
The Sacrificial Host plunders fifty-seven years of lifespan from an unranked Mystic-Marked Ox-bodied Wolf. Sacrificial Host: Shen Can Lifespan: 1998
He followed the usual procedure, letting its blood and smearing it over the stone drum and stone pillars, then cut up the meat and placed it on the offering table.
The ancestors were living well now.
They had fish when they wanted fish, and meat when they wanted meat.
After the ritual was complete, Shen Can noticed Huo Zhong watching from the ear chamber beside them.
The moment Huo Zhong saw him, he quickly drew back and continued lying prone over the stone table.
Shen Can went over to take a look. After all this time, the Beast Hide Scroll before Huo Zhong was covered in crooked shamanic characters.
Shamanic script was strange. Being able to copy its shape did not mean one could cultivate with it. Seeing its form yet understanding none of its meaning was precisely why the threshold was so high.
Shen Can did not yet have any proper method for teaching shamanic arts. He would first let Huo Zhong copy them until he knew them by heart.
Night fell.
Shen Can returned to the ear chamber.
At present, his deductions regarding shamanic arts had taken the form of one main line with several auxiliary lines.
His main focus was the shamanic characters forming the Lingyu Water Control Art.
Over this long period, he had gradually deduced thirty-four of them.
The shamanic blade Huo Tang had brought back contained four new characters, bringing the total to thirty-eight. These new shamanic characters also aided his deductions.
His auxiliary deductions included the shamanic medicine Mafeisan, an insect-repelling formula for wheat and millet, and a formula to neutralize Mafeisan.
However, the subsequent formula deductions had fallen out of step with the tribe's present reality.
To strengthen the medicine's effects, they either needed herbs with longer growth periods or needed to replace the herbs with different varieties. The tribe could do neither for now.
The insect-repelling formula for wheat and millet was fine. Wheat and millet were ordinary crops to begin with, and it was enough.
But Mafeisan was another matter. Wanting to optimize it under the existing conditions was like making things difficult for this Fat Tiger.
Yet both he and Huo Tang had begun considering relocating the tribe, and the Waterside Land truly could not do without this thing.
With the larger expanse of water, simply throwing Mafeisan into it was no longer suitable. It would be best to make anesthetic wooden spears and anesthetic arrows.
Night fell.
Shen Can lay down on his stone bed to rest.
Far away in the eastern Waterside Land, Huo Tang was still busy.
Inside a newly opened cave, he crouched by a bonfire and drew a map. On it was a small mountain marked in the shape of an ox nose.
"Have Huo Chi and the others, who went to Ox-Nose Mountain, returned yet?"
After some time, Huo Tang spoke up to ask.
If they wanted to establish the tribe in the Waterside Land, they naturally had to thoroughly understand the region. Only then could they assess whether it was suitable as a new tribal ground that would benefit the tribe's great development.
Thus, he had led Huo Yan's hunting party to roam the surrounding region again.
A hundred people had been divided into more than a dozen groups of varying sizes. Every day, they swept through every nook and cranny, striving to investigate every nearby place.
"Not yet."
Ox-Nose Mountain.
Whoosh!
Huo Chi fired an arrow into the darkness behind him, but a scream sounded ahead of him immediately afterward.
Splash!
Water surged, and Huo Zhi struggled wildly, but his entire body seemed to be bound within a ring of flowing water.
"Brother Chi, run, quickly... glug..."
Before Huo Zhi could finish speaking, water flooded into his mouth and nose, crashing into his chest and lungs as his whole body was dragged underwater.
"A-Zhi!"
Huo Chi shouted and nocked another arrow toward the darkness.
He could hear movement, but water sounded all around him, rendering it useless. The clansmen who had come with him vanished one after another into the night.
Before you continue