As Dusk fell and the twilight deepened, in that rarely-visited virgin forest, a boy of about seven or eight years old was running frantically up the mountain like a madman.
"Why do all my loved ones have to leave me one by one? It was like that in my past life, and it's like that in this one! I won't! I absolutely won't! In this life, I will never compromise!"
The mountain path was rugged and plagued by venomous creatures, growing more dangerous the higher one went, but the boy paid it no heed.
Just as the sky was about to turn completely dark, the boy finally arrived at his destination, a cliff face covered in cave openings.
The Heavenly God Cave, the legendary place where the servants of the heavenly gods lived.
There was a tradition in the village: before the bitter cold of each year arrived, children with disabilities or elderly people who were frail and had difficulty moving were sent into the Heavenly God Cave to serve the heavenly gods, which would pray for favorable weather and peace for the village in the coming year.
This legend could fool the ignorant villagers, but it could not trick this boy named Chen Mu.
Because he had been reborn into this world with his memories intact, in his past life, he had been a programmer on Earth who had accidentally died of overwork during a 996 blessed shift, only to wake up as an infant.
In this life, he was born in a village deep within the Wilderness; the village was very primitive, with underdeveloped agriculture and animal husbandry, and the villagers' main sources of food were still picking wild fruit and hunting beasts.
This led to frequent food shortages in the village, which was why such a custom existed-the so-called serving of the heavenly gods was nothing more than sending people without labor capacity into the cave to starve to death!
"Duoduo! Where are you?"
Seeing that the sky was about to turn completely dark, Chen Mu anxiously shouted toward the cliff face.
After a while, amidst the dim night, a tiny head poked out from one of the cave openings on the cliff and cried out with a wail: "Wuwu... Brother! Bro... I'm here..."
"Duoduo!"
Seeing the little girl at the cave opening, Chen Mu was pleasantly surprised and hurried to run toward her.
The cave opening where the little girl was located was more than two meters above the ground, and in the night Chen Mu could not see the rock face clearly, groping around for a while before he found a vine and climbed up along it.
"Duoduo, don't be afraid! It's fine, brother is here!"
After climbing up into the cave, Chen Mu hurriedly hugged the little girl and gently comforted her.
"Wuwu... Brother, I'm so scared... I thought I'd never see you again."
While comforting the little girl, Chen Mu observed the surrounding environment; though it was certainly joyful to find the person, the danger had not been lifted at this moment.
Having lived two lives, he possessed wisdom far exceeding that of his peers. Night was the paradise of predators, and he currently had no way to bring Duoduo back to the village by himself, nor was spending the night in the wild an easy task.
For now, the people who brought Duoduo here during the day should have cleared out the cave simply, so the current location was still relatively safe.
Chen Mu looked deep into the cave and could vaguely see a jumble of human skeletons, along with some venomous snakes and rodents crawling about, which made one's hair stand on end.
However, no matter what, they had no other choice and could only spend tonight here first.
Taking advantage of the lingering white in the sky, Chen Mu hurriedly climbed down the cave, found some dry firewood in the surroundings, and threw it up into the cave with force.
Chen Mu's luck was not bad; the autumn climate was dry and it had not rained in the past two days, so he quickly found enough dry firewood.
By this time the sky had turned completely dark, with no moon in the sky and only a few stars, so Chen Mu could only rely on his memory and the faint starlight to carry a few pieces of dry wood and climb up into the cave once more.
While climbing, a slippery sensation brushed across the back of Chen Mu's hand, and he guessed he had touched a snake, scaring him into exerting frantic strength as he scrambled rapidly upward toward the cave where Duoduo was.
After climbing into the cave and feeling no pain from a bite on his body, he finally breathed a sigh of relief.
He fished two pieces of flint out from the animal-skin clothing at his chest, skillfully igniting the dry grass, and before long a bonfire was burning within the cave.
Illuminated by the firelight, the entire cave became clear, and the snakes, insects, rodents, and ants in the corners all fled far away, the warm firelight making both Chen Mu and Duoduo feel much more at ease.
Although the flame could expel ordinary beasts, it might also attract powerful wild barren fierce beasts, so Chen Mu circled the bonfire with a high ring of mud toward the direction outside the cave, which couldn't completely isolate the firelight, but at least made it less conspicuous from a distance.
After finishing all this, Chen Mu was also tired and sat beside the bonfire to rest.
"Duoduo, you must be hungry? Brother will rest for a moment and then go find you something to eat!"
Looking at the younger sister sitting by the bonfire and nodding obediently, Chen Mu felt a pang of heartache inside.
When Duoduo was first born she was no different from other children, but as she grew older, the villagers discovered that she had vision problems, unable to clearly see anything beyond a meter or two.
As someone who had experienced modern civilization, Chen Mu quickly figured it out: Duoduo was suffering from congenital high myopia.
A condition like nearsightedness was a very common problem in modern civilization, but in a primitive society, it was an incurable fatal disease.
As a matter of course, during this year's ceremony of sacrificing to the heavenly gods, Chen Mu was locked inside the house, while Duoduo was sent to the Heavenly God Cave here by the villagers.
Resting for about ten minutes, Chen Mu's stamina recovered quite a bit. He was also extremely hungry now and cast his gaze toward that pile of skeletons deep within the cave.
After lighting the bonfire, most of the venomous snakes and rats in the cave had fled outside the opening, but there were definitely leftovers in the depths.
The pile of corpses emitted a foul, disgusting stench, and the venomous snakes and rats surviving here were mostly vicious and fierce to the extreme, so Chen Mu did not dare to be careless, picking up a thick wooden stick and carefully rummaging through them.
"Squeak-squeak squeak~~~!"
When he flipped over a piece of human breastbone, three or four large rats startled and scattered in all directions. With quick eyes and swift hands, Chen Mu swung several blows at one of the rats, papapa, beating it into serious injuries on the spot.
The injured rat was still struggling desperately, but Chen Mu showed no mercy, smashing it with several more sticks until this rat finally stopped moving.
Although the dead rat looked dirty and ugly on the outside, in the eyes of the current Chen Mu, it was a delicacy. Only people who had experienced hunger would understand how precious food was.
A single rat was not enough to fill the stomachs of the two of them, so Chen Mu continued to search inside, and a dozen minutes later, Chen Mu harvested another two rats and a long snake as thick as two fingers.
Estimating it was enough to eat, Chen Mu turned to leave, but at that moment the corner of his eye noticed an out-of-place white streak beneath a large rock by his feet.
Curious, Chen Mu pushed the large rock aside and discovered that a yellowish-white hard object was buried beneath it, the exposed part carved all over with uneven patterns, looking archaic and mysterious.
Growing even more curious, he scraped away the soil on both sides and dug out this hard object.
"Huh?"
Only then did Chen Mu see clearly that this hard object turned out to be a turtle, a white turtle only the size of a palm.