Papa sat on the Stilt House veranda in an undershirt, a cigar held between his fingers—a gift from the Westerners. He sat motionless, the smoke he exhaled shrouding him in shadow and obscuring his expression.
The smoke gradually rose.
Bird's-eye view of the place where Papa sat.
It was a low-lying basin.
Thousands of species of trees tangled together, crowding toward it. Rigra Island had only this little patch of fertile soil, and everyone fought over it. They desperately drove their roots into the earth, scrambling over one another, even killing their own kind!
Leaving their bones here.
All to propagate more successfully.
The muddy river took a bizarre course, twisting and turning as it rampaged through the fertile land. All kinds of bodies floated on its surface—human, animal, and inhuman.
Clusters of Stilt Houses hid among the trees, invisible from outside.
Papa lived here.
This was the Wilds he had painstakingly cleared after obtaining reclamation rights from the Westerners. Some Wilds were not unclaimed land—in certain places, every inch of soil was soaked in blood.
It was not yet dark, but someone with a whip was already ordering everyone to stop work. No one objected. They all knew that once night fell, danger lurked throughout the darkness. The shamans outside were like the giant pythons and hippos in the river, watching hungrily for prey to fall into their mouths.
No one knew what those Indigenous People Shaman were doing.
But they knew people had been disappearing and dying lately.
Without even leaving their bones behind.
It might have been the Indigenous People in the jungle.
As Grandfather put it, they were Wild Tribesmen!
Wild Tribesmen ate people!
The "Piglets" firmly believed this.
So around Papa's Rubber Plantation, Banana Plantation, and Oil Palm Plantation, enforcers armed with torches and weapons