Winter was the season for losing weight. Animals would fatten themselves up in autumn, then curl up in their nests when the snow came and sleep through the winter in comfort, proudly calling it hibernation.
There was another kind of animal that couldn't stuff itself into a fat ball within a single season, so it could only stockpile food to eat slowly through the winter. These animals didn't hibernate, either, but instead moved around within a small area near their nests. Little squirrels were one example—and the Han Tribe was another.
However, not every tribe could store enough food to survive the winter like the Han Tribe. The Black Rat Tribe to the east of the Han Tribe was one such example.
The Black Rat Tribe was a medium-sized tribe, with a population of over 150—slightly fewer than the Han Tribe's current numbers. Their tribe differed from the Han Tribe in one major way: their beliefs.
The Black Rat Tribe worshiped its own god, and had a shaman specifically responsible for communicating with that god. Their tribe had no position of Elder, so the task of passing down knowledge was also handled by the shaman.
Who knew how many generations ago, when the Black Rat Tribe had fewer than fifty people, life had been just as difficult as it once was for the Han Tribe. Then, one year, a long winter brought them a food shortage crisis. The tribe's Hunting Team had no choice but to venture out into the bitter cold in search of food.
They were fortunate, though. Just as they were about to give up, the Black Rat Elder of that time happened to discover a large rat covered in black fur. The Elder followed it all the way and eventually found the rat's burrow.
Cold and starving, the Elder had no strength to catch the rat. He could only dig open its nest. The rat had already fled, but it had left behind a burrow packed with stored food: a kind of nut with a very thin shell that tasted excellent. Thanks to it, the Black Rat Tribe survived the disaster.
The Black Rat Elder believed that the black rat was a god. It had learned of the tribe's crisis and come specifically to guide the Elder to save them. From then on, the Black Rat Tribe began worshiping black rats, and their Elder became a shaman after receiving guidance from the divine.
This belief system was much like shamanism: eat whatever you came across, and worship whatever you ate. The only slight difference from shamanism was that, by shamanistic standards, they ought to have worshiped nuts instead.
This winter, the Black Rat Shaman of the nth generation claimed to have received guidance from the divine, saying that this winter would last even longer than those of previous years. He was deeply worried that their stored food would not last until spring next year, so he had the Chieftain lead the Hunting Team out to search for food.
And so, the Chieftain of the Black Rat Tribe, Big Mouse, set out hunting with nineteen underlings. At first, the twenty of them hunted only around the Black Rat Tribe, but they caught very little. They preferred digging up the food stored in rat burrows, and they were quite skilled at that.
But it wasn't long before they noticed something strange. At the edge of the forest west of their tribe, thick black smoke often rose into the sky, lasting for an entire day each time. It was also very regular: every three days, it would rise for one day. This strange phenomenon quickly caught their attention.
It was the dead of winter, after all. If it had been summer, when the weather was dry, starting a fire might have been understandable. But now the ground was covered in snow, and the fires were being lit with such regularity. That could only mean humans were deliberately burning something.
But when had anyone appeared to the west?
Long ago, they had reached the edge of the forest to the west, but there had been a river eight or nine meters wide there, and they had not yet been capable of crossing it. After that, they had never gone so far again. Judging from where the smoke was rising now, it was clearly near the river.
Big Mouse immediately reported the matter to the Black Rat Shaman. The shaman wasn't particularly surprised. So what if there were people? Their tribe wasn't small, and there was no need to fear others. He didn't care about that at all. Instead, he was very interested in the fact that these people were making fires.
In the Rat Shaman's understanding, fire was used to cook food. If they were making fires so often, did that mean they had a lot of food? Otherwise, why make fires? And if they were using them for warmth, why not keep them burning all the time?
The Rat Shaman was baffled, so he ordered Big Mouse to take some people and investigate—to see what kind of people they were, what they were doing, and whether they were cooking food. If possible, they could make contact with them. Perhaps they might even learn something.
Big Mouse thought about it and agreed. Since they were neighbors, they ought to learn more about them. Thus, he led the team out to carry out this diplomatic mission.
Meanwhile, in the Han Tribe, Luo Chong was holding a language and mathematics exam inside the cave. Two vats of freshly roasted Sugar-roasted Chestnuts stood in front of him, along with a large bowl containing roughly twenty-odd chestnuts. A candidate with a mournful expression stood before him, watching helplessly as Luo Chong took another chestnut from the bowl.
The exam covered the more than five hundred commonly used characters written on the rock wall—all characters everyone could encounter at their current stage. In fact, there were only a little over three thousand commonly used Chinese characters. The remaining tens of thousands were obscure characters, some of which a person might never see in their entire life.
Each candidate brought a Pottery Bowl to Luo Chong. Luo Chong would first fill it with Sugar-roasted Chestnuts—about eighty chestnuts. Then he would randomly point out eighty characters on the wall and have the candidate read them aloud. Every mistake cost one chestnut. If any remained at the end, the candidate had to count them. If the count was wrong, all the chestnuts were confiscated, and dinner was cut in half.
The students were terrified of this "exam." It was far too difficult. The Chieftain was practically saving food by changing the rules of the game.
Luo Chong didn't see it that way. They had been studying for almost two months, and it was only five hundred characters. He wasn't even asking them to write them—just to recognize them.
And besides, was counting from one to eighty really that hard? He hadn't even made them do addition and subtraction yet. They only had to count. If they couldn't even manage that, what the hell were they eating dinner for?
Every member of the tribe wore a mournful expression and envied Six-Finger and Mutong, who were firing the Brick Kiln outside. The two of them were exceptions. Six-Finger was the sort Luo Chong had given up on, due to the innate intellectual impairment caused by inbreeding. That wasn't his fault.
As for Mutong, he was too clever. He still hadn't recognized all the characters, but he could already count into the hundreds. Luo Chong had only taught them to count to one hundred, yet this fellow had drawn inferences on his own and thought of two hundred and three hundred. Thus, he was an exception as well.
At present, Mutong and Six-Finger were leisurely eating Sugar-roasted Chestnuts. Whenever they had nothing to do, they would check the fire in the kiln and toss in a bundle of firewood after a while.
The work wasn't tiring, only rather dull. It wasn't cold, either. Though it was winter, the two of them guarded the kiln entrance and were hot enough to sweat. Taking their circumstances into account, Luo Chong had also given them some pine nuts and chestnuts as snacks—a benefit of the job.
The two had been tending the fire from last night until this afternoon. By now, the temperature inside the kiln was very high. Through the viewing hole, the brick blanks had already been fired to a dazzling red. It was time to pour in water and seal the kiln. Mutong patted Six-Finger and told him to return to the cave and call people over to work, while he stayed behind to keep watch.
Six-Finger nodded, climbed up the slope to the surface, and headed straight for the cave without looking back, leaving Mutong alone at the underground fire pit.
"Whoa—oh!"
During the brief interval when Mutong was alone on guard, Rou Rou's great roar suddenly came from beside the top of the kiln. It was followed by the sound of Rou Rou running, and then by human voices shouting. Not knowing what was happening, Mutong climbed up from the underground fire pit to the surface.
The moment his head emerged, he saw more than a dozen spears whooshing toward Rou Rou. Terrified, Rou Rou bolted, charging toward the cave while bellowing, "Oh! Oh!"
Six-Finger had already reported the situation to Luo Chong. He was preparing to lead people out to pour water into the Brick Kiln when, the moment he exited the cave, he saw Rou Rou being hunted down.
"Fuck! Who the hell dares kill my Rou Rou? Grab your weapons, all of you!"
Before you continue