Chapter 16

Wu Mu waited on the side, watching Song Xu try to catch the glowing bugs. But after a long time, she just stood there, occasionally exclaiming, “Wow.”

Why wasn’t she catching them? Hadn’t she caught and put several glowing bugs in the stone cave before?

Wu Mu glanced at the fluttering butterflies and then at Song Xu, guessing she could not catch these flying bugs. So, he swam to the center of the butterfly swarm and caught several with his hands.

The captured butterflies struggled in his fingers, their glowing wings fluttering and scattering luminescent powder, which stained his fingers with blue specks. Some startled butterflies flew away to the tree trunks, while others followed Wu Mu, the intruder, fluttering around his hair and cheeks and even landing on his tail. When he turned back to Song Xu with the butterflies in hand, the scene was as dreamy as the forest princess stories she had seen as a child.

Wu Mu handed the unfortunate butterflies to Song Xu, signaling her to take them.

Song Xu didn’t intend to ruin the atmosphere, but Wu Mu acted first. She took a butterfly to examine it closely, but unfortunately, the glow faded shortly after it was in her hand. Regretfully, she let it fly away.

Wu Mu had no deliberate romantic intentions; he just brought Song Xu out to play, as they usually do by water. After Song Xu had enough fun, he led her back. Bird calls occasionally came from above, sounding more penetrating and widespread in the nighttime forest.

Having just seen the butterflies, Song Xu felt a rare, subtle emotion, like walking with a male classmate for the first time. She kept a certain distance from Wu Mu, but as the strange sounds around them increased, she moved closer and finally clung to his arm.

“Is there something moving behind that tree?” Song Xu asked.

Wu Mu: “…”

“Is there a shadow over there?” Song Xu asked again.

Wu Mu: “…”

“What is making that noise? It sounds very close!” Song Xu turned her head warily, clutching Wu Mu’s arm tightly. “Really, there’s a shadow moving and making a humming sound!”

Wu Mu expressionlessly flicked his tongue, catching the scent of a wild boar.

It was a wild boar digging for food. He wasn’t very hungry and didn’t intend to bother it, but Song Xu was twisting his arm into a knot, so Wu Mu had to respond. He thought for a moment about what to call it: “…wild…boar.”

Song Xu: “Ah, it’s a wild boar? Phew!”

Her fear disappeared instantly, and her courage doubled, sounding slightly disappointed.

“It seems to be having a midnight snack. What’s it eating? Let’s go see!” Song Xu approached, and the wild boar, sensing danger, turned and ran away with a grunt.

Song Xu, who had interrupted its meal, didn’t care about its grumbling as it ran away. She squatted by the hole the boar had dug with its tusks and unexpectedly found a piece of plant tuber.

The root had been gnawed on one side. When Song Xu pulled it out with the soil, she found several more connected tubers in the pit. It was food—a new type of edible plant she hadn’t discovered before!

Song Xu excitedly dug up the soil, unearthing all the roots of various sizes from the pit. The largest was as big as her palm, while the smallest was about the size of a ping-pong ball. Initially, she thought the tuber resembled a sweet potato, but upon closer inspection, it didn’t quite look like one.

Oh well, as long as it’s edible. Unexpectedly, her evening walk yielded a surprise harvest. Song Xu happily carried the pile of food back to the stone cave to figure out how to eat it, forgetting about the butterflies.

One raw, one boiled, one roasted.

Song Xu planned it out and began trying each method, inviting the snake to taste it as well. She started a fire to cook in the middle of the night, waking the sleepy snake by holding his head.

“Try this, it’s delicious!”

Wu Mu had his mouth stuffed with food. The soft, sweet taste felt familiar, reminding him of something he had eaten in the tribe before. He wasn’t just like an ordinary big snake that swallowed prey whole; he used to eat cooked meat and plant fruits like the beastmen. But before Song Xu appeared, he had lived on the simplest survival standards for long. His throat moved as he swallowed the food, and Wu Mu stared blankly, recalling for a moment.

Song Xu still held his head, asking, “How is it? Tasty, right? I just tried one, and there are several more. Let’s split them.”

Wu Mu suddenly said, “Wild… yam.”

“Wild yam?” Song Xu repeated, suddenly understanding. “You mean this is called wild yam? You’ve eaten it before!”

This was the first time Song Xu learned something new from the snake. The original body had never eaten this wild yam, so it wasn’t in her knowledge base.

Since the snake knew about it, Song Xu thought that plenty of wild yams must be growing around here. She would look for them next time. The food she usually ate wasn’t easy to store, and having no food reserves at home always made her uneasy… Suddenly, her fingers, which were holding Wu Mu’s head, were licked by something wet and slippery.

Song Xu retracted her fingers. Wu Mu licked off the wild yam residue from her hand, pulled her hand away, and lay back down.

Song Xu: “…” She looked at her fingers, then at the snake’s calm expression.

In the middle of the night, Song Xu was too full to sleep. She picked up a charred stick and started drawing snakes on the stone wall: twisted tails, disproportionate upper bodies, and smudged faces. After finishing the first one, Song Xu sighed, holding her bulging stomach. This was the precious artwork left by ancient ancestors: simple, rough, and natural. When she filled the entire stone wall with snakes, she suddenly realized it looked scary. Especially since her grass nest was right under the stone wall, she saw countless twisted black lines jumping in the firelight when she looked up. She silently crawled up and squeezed into Wu Mu’s grass mat, pulling his snake tail over her stomach.

After staying up late the previous night, Song Xu couldn’t get up the next day. Usually, she was full of energy, dragging the big snake out to forage and play, but today, she was lying on the grass mat, refusing to get up while the big snake was already up and ready to go out.

In a daze, Song Xu felt a hand shaking her, then shaking her again. She squinted her eyes open a crack and saw Wu Mu’s face magnified before her. He opened his mouth, seemingly saying two words.

Song Xu mumbled, “Mm-hmm, mm.” The next second, she was asleep again.

In her dream, she was riding a bumpy car. When the car finally stopped, the sunlight became intense, shining on her eyelids and stinging her face. Small bugs buzzed around her cheeks, and frogs croaked incessantly in her ears.

Song Xu scratched her face and suddenly sat up from the grass, realizing she had been moved from the stone cave to a grassy field. There was no river around, but there were many small ditches filled with wild grass. She stood up and looked around, feeling lost.

“Where is this place? How did I get here? Where’s the snake?”

After taking a few steps, Song Xu stepped on the tip of a tail and realized that the snake was lying not far from her, its belly swollen, hidden by the thick wild grass.

Seeing the snake’s bulging belly, Song Xu understood that it had just finished eating. It had really improved; it used to go out to eat without her, but now it knew to bring her along, even moving her while she was asleep.

Song Xu stretched lazily, looked around this unfamiliar place, and began her exploration. She walked to a small puddle to drink water. The small puddle was covered with thick wild grass, which filtered the water to make it clear. She drank, washed her face, and skillfully plucked some serrated leaves by the riverside to chew on. These leaves grew almost everywhere by the water. When chewed, they had a faint fresh lemon scent, and she often used them to clean her teeth and mouth.

Large beasts had trampled the wild area by the puddle, flattening the wild grass into the mud. As Song Xu passed by, she suddenly saw some familiar root tubers in the turned-up mud.

Upon closer inspection, the chaotic footprints in the mud seemed to be left by wild boars. Song Xu grabbed the beast’s tooth knife from her waist and started digging. Moments later, she exclaimed in surprise, “Ah! There’s more! So many!”

Holding two large root tubers, one in each hand, Song Xu ran to Wu Mu, dropped the tubers, and lifted his snake head, “Did you bring me here today to dig for wild yams?”

Wu Mu had followed the traces of wild boars, as wild yams were their favorite food, and following them usually led to a good find.
Wu Mu opened his mouth to hiss, but an excited Song Xu had already planted a heavy kiss on his head and praised, “You’re amazing!”

In the culture of beastmen, all intimate behaviors were for reproduction, and kissing was not considered an intimate act. They didn’t even define kissing, and it was rarely seen among beastmen.

Wu Mu was stunned by the sudden kiss, slowly flicking his tongue, and raised his head to watch Song Xu happily run back to the mud area where the wild yams grew.

Song Xu had a great harvest today. No matter the time, harvesting always brought the simplest and purest joy—even if she was busy all day with a sore back and covered in sweat, seeing the pile of wild yams in the stone cave made her genuinely happy, and she hummed a song involuntarily.

Before going to sleep, her excitement slightly subsided, and she realized she was covered in sweat.

“Shall we go soak in the river?”

The river surface was probably the brightest place at night, with the moonlight shimmering on it. Song Xu entered the water, the cool river water enveloping her, washing away the sting of the day’s sun and the heat of her sweat, making her sigh in comfort.

Various animals often came to the riverbank to drink water, making it somewhat muddy. Song Xu wanted to swim to the center of the river but was a bit afraid of what might be in the water at night.

“Wu Mu, come swim!” she called back to the big snake, but there was no sign of him on the grassy bank. Suddenly, there was a splash, and she felt something wrap around her ankle underwater. Wu Mu emerged from the water; he had quietly slipped in without her noticing.

Song Xu lifted her foot and followed the snake’s tail upwards, clinging to Wu Mu’s back, one hand on his shoulder. “Wu Mu, take me to the center of the river.”

The wet Wu Mu sank into the water. His long tail moved gracefully in the water like a mermaid – just with a longer tail. As the flowing river water washed over them, Song Xu worried about being swept away, so she held tightly to his neck and wrapped her legs around his thick tail.