Ordinary (Please Recommend and Bookmark)

"Brat, where do you think you're running?" Shi Linhu sprang in front of the fleeing Shi Lin.

He grabbed Shi Lin with one big hand, as if he were picking up a chick.

"I'll beat you to a pulp, you little brat!"

"Dad, Dad, I was wrong! I was wrong! Don't hit me anymore! You'll cripple me!" Shi Lin swung back and forth in the air.

Shi Linhu felt a little softhearted, so he gave him a few smacks on the backside.

"Ah! Ah! Dad, stop! It hurts so much!" Shi Lin grimaced in pain.

"That'll teach you to run! That'll teach you to run! Are you still going to run now?"

Shi Linhu carried Shi Lin briskly through the village, scolding him the whole way. Before long, they were back home.

Stone Village wasn't very large. Men, women, old and young numbered a little over three hundred in all. Their houses were built of giant stones, simple and natural.

At the village entrance stood a section of enormous Lightning-Struck Wood, over ten meters in diameter. Its only willow branch had lost its lustre in the morning glow and now looked utterly ordinary.

"Well, well, Little Lin's been beaten by his dad again!" one of the clan elders teased.

The villagers turned at the sound and burst into laughter.

"Oh, Little Lin got beaten again!" the children laughed.

"Yiya, Brother Lin, what happened? Uncle Lin Hu beat you again? Was it because you stole some beast milk? It's okay, Little One has beast milk. Just come find me." Little One clutched his jar of beast milk and spoke in a babyish voice.

Shi Lin felt rather embarrassed and hurriedly asked Shi Linhu to put him down. But Shi Linhu didn't let him go; instead, he gave him another smack on the backside.

"Ow! Ow! It hurts so much!" Shi Lin felt as if his bottom were on fire.

At last, Shi Linhu put him down. Shi Lin clutched his backside and could only keep saying, "It hurts."

Everyone burst out laughing.

"Come on, break it up. Go eat!" Shi Linhu barked.

The villagers laughed as they dispersed.

"Come on, Lin, let's go home and eat!" Shi Linhu pushed Shi Lin, who was still rubbing his backside.

"Hey! Hey! Dad, slow down!" The two of them went home, but the village was still bustling.

"Oh, there's Earth Dragon meat! Give me a piece!"

The children were lively and restless. They couldn't sit still even at mealtime; quite a few came out of their homes clutching pottery bowls and gathered together.

The area around Stone Village was lush with trees and grass, and full of ferocious beasts. Yet even with the mountains at their doorstep, the villagers' food was relatively meager: coarse wheat cakes, wild fruit, and a little meat in the children's bowls.

In truth, the lack of food had always been a serious problem for Stone Village. The mountains were extremely dangerous, and the strange beasts and fierce birds were too powerful and terrifying. Every hunting trip could cost someone their life.

If they had a choice, the villagers wouldn't enter the mountains. Going in meant the possibility of bloodshed and sacrifice.

Food was precious to them and couldn't be wasted. Every child understood this from a young age: hunger, food, hunting, life, and blood were all bound together.

At the village entrance stood the courtyard of the old chief, Shi Yunfeng. It was built from giant stones and stood right beside the charred, enormous Willow Tree. In front of the stove in the courtyard, white liquid boiled in a pottery pot, filling the air with the scent of milk. Shi Yunfeng was simmering beast milk, occasionally adding herbs and stirring slowly with a wooden spoon.

Before long, the old man called, "Little One, come eat."

Little One had lost his parents at six months old and had grown up drinking the milk of a hundred beasts. Now he was a year and a few months old. Ordinary children would have been weaned long ago, but he still drank with relish and refused to stop. The older children often teased him for it.

"Yiya, huff... I can't run anymore." He had been tirelessly chasing the Five-Colored Sparrow and was already panting. Now he plopped down on the ground.

"Little One's having his milk!" a group of older children jeered.

"You little monkeys, weren't all of you his age once?" the old chief chided with a laugh.

"We weren't still drinking milk at a year and a half, hehe."

Faced with the older children's teasing, Little One just smiled innocently, his bright black eyes narrowing into crescent moons. Unbothered, he sat by the pottery pot and spooned up the milk, eating with relish.

After breakfast, several of the village's oldest men came together to Shi Yunfeng's courtyard. Though their hair and beards had long since turned white, they were still full of vigor.

"Something's been wrong lately. At night, huge beasts keep passing by, making an awful racket. Something must have happened deep in the mountains."

"Mm. I woke up several times last night, chilled to the bone. Some prehistoric ferocious beast or giant insect must have passed through."

One after another, the old men spoke. Some furrowed their brows while others pondered, discussing the recent signs of danger. They felt that something out of the ordinary was happening.

"I think something extraordinary may have appeared deep in the Great Wilderness, drawing the attention of some Primordial Remnants in the surrounding lands. They're all heading there," the old chief Shi Yunfeng said after thinking it over.

"Could a Mountain Treasure have appeared?" One old man's eyes immediately widened, his hair and beard bristling in alarm.

The others looked startled too, their eyes burning with excitement. But soon the fire in their eyes died away. That kind of treasure wasn't something they could obtain. It lay deep in the mountains, where no one could enter.

In all these years, no one had ever made the journey in and out alive. Powerful species of every kind roamed the mountains. Even if everyone in Stone Village went in together, they wouldn't make so much as a ripple.

"Chief, it's been a while since we last went into the mountains." Just then, a burly adult man entered the courtyard. He was the leader of the hunting party and would also be Stone Village's next chief.

"Things have been unsettled lately," the old chief Shi Yunfeng said with a frown.

"But we're really running low on food," Shi Linhu said. He was exceptionally tall, over two meters, and carried a broad sword weighing more than three hundred pounds. Built like a human bear, his body was covered in bronze-colored muscles that rippled like serpents and pythons.

"The children need to grow. We can't let them go hungry. We'll have to think of something," one of the elders said.

"The nights may be restless, but nothing unusual has happened during the day. I'll take some men out. If we're careful, it should be fine," Shi Linhu said.

At last, dozens of strong young men gathered at the village entrance. Led by Shi Yunfeng, they went to the Lightning-Struck Wood nearby and solemnly prayed to the Old Willow Tree.

"Sacrificial Spirit, please protect our people. Let the children bring back plump game and return safely. With sincere hearts, we will worship and nourish you for generations."

As the chief and several elders prayed, all the young men grew solemn and paid their respects. Many women and children came too, praying silently that their loved ones would return from the hunt unharmed. The mountains were far too dangerous. Beyond the village protected by the Willow Tree lay a completely different world, teeming with terrifying birds of prey and gigantic beasts.

"Dad, be careful!" Shi Lin called to Shi Linhu.

"Don't worry. Who do you think your dad is? Go on back!"

And so, the strongest men in the village set out with giant bows and broad swords, heading into the mountains and marshes. A wild, primordial aura surged toward them.

As the hunting party disappeared into the distance, the old chief Shi Yunfeng led a group of children to the grass at the village entrance. They sat down cross-legged, and he said, "All right, you little monkeys. It's time to study hard."

The children immediately looked glum, their spirits sinking. They reluctantly settled around him, like leaves wilted by the sun.

"Grandpa Chief, those bird-squiggles and turtle-scratches are as complicated as ghost symbols. They're so hard to learn. Why should we bother memorizing them?"

"Exactly! The archery my dad teaches me is much more useful!"

The children all looked miserable and resisted the idea.

"You little ones really don't understand. Bone Texts are symbols that powerful Primordial Remnants manifest naturally on their bones. They contain mysterious, unfathomable power. So many people wish they could learn them, but have no way to do so. Once you master them, you'll be many times stronger than your fathers," the old chief scolded, exasperated.

"Grandpa Chief, show us the power of Bone Texts," one of the older children said.

"Little One, come here," the chief called to him in the distance.

Little One had finished chasing the Five-Colored Sparrow and was now tugging vigorously at the tail of a Big Yellow Dog. At the call, he turned around in confusion, let go, then toddled over. Blinking his bright eyes, he asked, "Yiya, yiya, what is it, Grandpa Chief?"

"Use the Bone Text I taught you," Shi Yunfeng said.

"Okay." Little One was very obedient. He held out both hands and pressed his lips together, straining with all his might until his cheeks turned red.

A humming sound rang out. A patch of light appeared in his palm, revealing a strange character that looked as though it had been cast from metal, with a metallic sheen and texture. Soon, another appeared in his other hand.

Little One took two steps forward and lifted a blue-gray stone taller than himself.

"Impressive!" the children cried. He was only a little over a year old. How could he lift such a large stone?

"Little One, you used all your strength just to drink milk, didn't you?" an older child teased.

"Yiya, yes, I used up all my strength." Little One dropped the stone and sat down on the ground, grinning without a care in the world. His smile was pure, and the symbols in his palms quickly dimmed and vanished.

"Grandpa Chief, is this the mysterious power of Bone Texts you've been studying for over ten years?" The children's eyes lit up, a complete change from their lack of interest moments earlier.

"Don't get too excited. This is only enough to set you on the path. It's still far from the Heavenly Bone Texts of ancient legends." The old man nodded, then shook his head.

"Grandpa Chief, tell us about the outside world," the children said, their faces full of hope.

Everyone in Stone Village knew that when the old chief was young, he had traveled with more than a dozen powerful clansmen to the far reaches of the land and roamed the outside world.

But over a decade ago, only two men had returned, covered in blood. One of them died not long afterward. Shi Yunfeng alone had survived.

All these years, he had been studying the mysterious Bone Texts. From time to time, he experimented on the strongest villagers. The children knew all too well that whenever their fathers, strong as tigers and dragons, were summoned, they would let out heart-rending howls in the stone courtyard. It had instilled in the children an early aversion and awe.

Only in recent years had the old chief's experiments eased enough that the villagers were no longer so afraid. And Little One, who had grown up on the milk of a hundred beasts and food from a hundred households, had been adopted by him and become the ideal subject for his research.

"The outside world..." The old man's gaze grew distant with memories. After a moment of recollection and melancholy, he said, "The world is vast, boundless. Traveling from one region to another can mean hundreds of thousands of miles. No one knows just how vast it truly is. A person could walk their whole life and never leave a single region. The Great Wilderness stretches on without end. It's difficult for people from different regions to communicate, because the roads are simply too dangerous. The land is full of powerful species, terrifying and mysterious. Even a tribe of hundreds of thousands or a magnificent city could be destroyed overnight by a few Primordial Remnants. Of course, there are also humans so powerful they're almost beyond imagination, with the supreme strength to rival other species. Their divine might is unmatched, and they can be called the human race's young prodigies."

The children felt awe, but they were also full of longing, curious about the unknown world. Someone asked, "Are there earthly treasures and immortal medicines in the mountains that can transform a person overnight? How mighty are the strongest prodigies of the human race?"

The old man smiled. "If you want to know, make yourselves strong first."

"If we master the mysterious power of Bone Texts, can we travel through all the regions of the world?" Some of the children looked wistful.

Shi Yunfeng patted one child on the head. "Forget other regions. Even in our own, it would be extraordinary for some remarkable person to cross half the land!"

All the children stared blankly.

"All I can do is set you on the path. How far you go after that will depend on you. What I teach you shouldn't be any worse than what children your age learn in the outside world." At the end, a strange light appeared in the old man's eyes as he touched a peculiar jade bone in his arms.

The children gathered around the old chief and finally settled down, listening attentively to his lessons until noon, when they dispersed.

"This is so hard. The chief said it might take years before even a few people can incorporate a little Bone Text into their bodies, while most people may never succeed."

"But Little One is only a tiny tot, and he did it." Little One blinked his big eyes, looking utterly innocent. Then he went back to tugging on the Big Yellow Dog's tail, while the Big Yellow Dog barked in even more innocent protest.

"Little One, Little One, ask Grandpa Chief to teach me this Bone Text power too. I want to learn!" Shi Lin caught up with Little One and said.

"Sure, Brother Lin. I'll ask Grandpa when I get back!" Little One said with a smile.

Little One had a lovely smile, his eyes like crescent moons. His little face was fair and rosy, round and chubby, utterly adorable.

"Thanks, Little One!"

"Yiya, it's nothing!" Little One blushed a little.

The red sun sank in the west. In the evening glow, all of Stone Village was dyed a soft golden color. Gibbons cried and tigers roared in the distance, while the rows of stone houses here stood sacred and serene, like temples from an ancient age.

Several dozen people appeared on the horizon, their long shadows stretching across the ground in the setting sun. The outlines of their bodies were edged with golden light from the sunset, making them look towering and powerful. Nearly every one of them was dragging a huge beast behind him. They had returned with a full haul.

"They're back!" A group of women and children who had been waiting at the village entrance for a long time cheered. The unease and fear in their hearts vanished, and they shouted with joy.

"Dad and the others made it back safely!"