Chapter 17

The fur clothing on her body didn’t cover her legs, so Song Xu could clearly feel the snake’s tail moving against her skin. Every muscle in the snake’s body would tense slightly as it swam; the cool, smooth sensation was distinct and thrilling.

Green algae, similar to hornwort, grew abundantly along the riverbank. As they swam through the water, she could see the shadows of large patches of green algae on the riverbed and small fish darting among them. The shimmering waves on the river surface reflected on Wu Mu’s body as he occasionally surfaced, and the dark snake scales also reflected a hazy glow.

Holding onto his shoulder, Song Xu gradually felt less afraid in the water. Her legs, which had been tightly wrapped around him, relaxed and began to move with the current, occasionally brushing against his tail.

Song Xu could swim but wasn’t very good at it. She used to swim in indoor pools, which were clear and bright. Now, swimming in a wild river felt completely different.

Leaving the riverbank, unable to see the dark riverbed, made one suspect that huge black monsters were lurking below. In the center of the river, there was a large tree. When the water was shallow, it formed a small floating island. When the water was deep, the island was submerged, leaving only the tree half-submerged.

The big snake stopped by the tree, wrapping his tail around the branches. His upper body lay on a branch, his long hair dripping wet, with fine strands sticking to his back like messy threads.
Moonlight filtered through the sparse branches, gently illuminating him. It was so serene and beautiful that Song Xu couldn’t help but reach out and touch his waist.

Wu Mu flicked his tail tip indifferently, showing no reaction. Song Xu sighed again, “You’re so beautiful, darling.”

In the beastman world, beauty and strength are advantages when seeking a mate. However, as a half-beastman, Wu Mu had never been praised like this before. But his… partner, from the moment she met him, had been praising him almost every day. Before this, Wu Mu didn’t know there were so many ways to compliment someone. Sometimes, she would praise him for doing nothing, and even for the most ordinary things, she would express her excitement and affection. Even when he spoke, she would show a look of satisfaction and joy if he said two more words. She gave him countless positive emotional feedbacks. This strong feeling of being loved and needed was something Wu Mu had never experienced before, and he was undoubtedly attracted to it. He couldn’t express himself as eloquently as Song Xu, and his actions often left him unsure of how to convey his feelings. His face showed no clues, but the tip of his tail had already quietly wrapped around Song Xu’s ankle.

Song Xu noticed that she was “tied” again and lifted her foot with a laugh, “Look, an anti-drowning rope!”

The river water splashed, nightingales sang on both banks, and a gentle breeze blew over the water. Song Xu soon felt sleepy, transformed into a squirrel, and nestled in the tree branches to sleep. Wu Mu didn’t wake her, resting on the branches for the night as well.

The next day, they returned. Song Xu, rubbing her sore back from the branches, went to sort out the wild yams they had dug up the previous day and suddenly shouted, “Thief!”

The number of wild yams didn’t match; a few small ones were missing, and two large ones had big bites taken out of them. Judging by the bite marks on the yams, the culprit was likely a mouse. There were many forest mice in the woods, adept at digging. Song Xu had encountered many, often hearing rustling sounds while walking, mainly from the forest mice. The only large snake living here didn’t eat small creatures like forest mice, so without a natural predator, their numbers were high, and they were very active. Song Xu had tried eating them once when she first arrived but later avoided them, not attempting to eat them again.
Without various seasonings, the meat of these wild animals was generally gamey, some even foul and bitter, making it inedible.

Previously, Song Xu’s stored food was not to the mice’s liking, so they coexisted peacefully. But this time, the wild yams, which the mice also loved, were stolen by them overnight.

“I won’t let these petty thieves get away with it!” Holding a beast tooth knife, Song Xu set out to capture the culprits.

With her keen sense of smell, Song Xu tracked the scent left on the wild yams to a tree hole a few hundred meters away from the stone cave, where she found a nest of forest mice.

These forest mice also stored food in their burrows. Song Xu dug open the dirt hole and not only found the stolen wild yams but also discovered the mice’s stored food, which looked like last year’s nuts. There was quite a lot, enough to call it a well-stocked granary.

“Stored food? Hand it over!” Song Xu shook the fat mouse’s tail in her hand. “Your property is confiscated.”

She returned to the stone cave with a bag of loot and a forest mouse, tying the mouse to a large tree branch with thin grass ropes.

Wu Mu still had the wild yams Song Xu had placed in his tail before she left as a precaution against further theft. Seeing her tie the mouse to the branch, he thought she was going to roast it. But instead of lighting a fire, she sat in front of the mouse with a serious expression, holding a twig, and said, “Do you know what your behavior is? It’s burglary, and you should be punished! You little thief!”

The mouse squeaked in panic as the twig poked its belly.

Song Xu picked a nut from the mouse’s stored food, cracked it open, and ate it before the mouse. “See, if you steal someone else’s food, your home will be robbed, too!”

Wu Mu confirmed that the mouse was just an ordinary forest mouse, not a beastman. Why was Song Xu talking to it like this?

“It…”

The snake’s sudden voice attracted Song Xu, and she saw his confusion. He slowly said, “It… doesn’t understand.”

“I know, but it doesn’t stop me from talking to it,” Song Xu thought to herself. Wasn’t she just bored?

“Alright, after you go out, you need to reform and be a good mouse, understand?”

The mouse, after being lectured, was released. It was so frightened that it didn’t dare move for a while until Song Xu poked its belly with a twig, and it scurried away.

Song Xu dropped the twig and announced, “I need to make a storage cabinet to store food so our home won’t be robbed again!”

But before she could make the storage cabinet, where to store the food was a problem.

Song Xu approached Wu Mu, smiling sweetly, “Wu Mu, your little hiding hole up there is nice, cool, and dry. Can I temporarily store the food there?”

And so, the snake’s hiding hole became a temporary food storage.

Looking around, his stone cave was almost filled with Song Xu’s miscellaneous items.

The forest was full of old trees, each with its own territory, with battles fought between the roots and the canopy. The roots in the soil grew desperately, absorbing water and nutrients, while the canopies fought fiercely for sunlight and rain. Like solar panels, each tree hoped to get more sunlight to produce more energy.
Some trees would fail in these battles, and their only fate was death. Trees could die in many ways: blown down by the wind, struck by lightning, strangled by vines, eaten by insects, hollowed out by ants, or simply dying of old age. When a big tree fell in the forest, it created a clearing. Song Xu liked these small clearings, as the sunlight made them more vibrant than other places. At the base of the fallen trunk, countless new saplings began to compete, growing taller each day with enough sunlight. Moreover, the fallen tree would become her playground or dry firewood.

Song Xu searched the forest for something that could serve as a storage cabinet and found a recently fallen tree that was hollowed out. She laboriously dragged it back, removed the excess branches, and kept only the bottom part.

Looking at her work from different angles, Song Xu thought it was more suitable as a place for a squirrel to sleep rather than a storage cabinet.

That night, she didn’t sleep in her grass nest but crawled into the hollow tree trunk, finding it quite novel. There happened to be a knot in the middle of the trunk with a hole in it, where she stuffed her furry tail.

From the outside, Wu Mu saw what looked like a squirrel tail sticking out of a tree trunk, which was somewhat amusing. The snake didn’t understand what was funny; he only knew that seeing his partner’s tail wagging and hearing her giggles from inside the trunk made him want to share in her happiness.

Feeling lonely when ignored was a new emotion for him. He coiled around the tree trunk to sleep, and in the morning, Song Xu crawled out, realizing she had been a “squirrel sandwich” all night.

She thought to herself: Does the snake want a pillow?

The long, hot summer made it hard to work, and she only wanted to nap in the shade. The sound of the river was as lulling as her teacher’s lectures used to be. The days of dozing off in class while memorizing texts and writing exams seemed distant. Song Xu occasionally missed the past, but not for long. Her classmates used to call her a freak, and maybe she was one, adapting so quickly to life as a beastman.

“Wu Mu, I want to swim again,” Song Xu requested.

After experiencing night swimming, Song Xu often wanted to dive into the water. Why bring the snake along? To guard against crocodiles, of course.

The snake was easily tamed and slipped from the branch into the water. Song Xu happily grabbed his arm and dove in.

The river during the day was a completely different scene from the night. Green water plants and small fish, river clams, and snails spit out soft flesh from the sandy bottom, and the roots of aquatic plants trailed in the water—all in stunning 4K clarity.

The lone tree in the river center, where they had slept at night, was now crowded with visitors during the day. A flock of egrets perched on the branches, waiting to catch fish.

Halfway through, Song Xu climbed onto the snake’s back, watching the elegant fishermen easily catch fish, and enviously said, “I want to eat fish too.”

“First, I’ll go ashore and weave a fishing net. Do you think a grass net would work…”

Wu Mu’s tail flicked in the water, stunning a passing big fish, which floated belly-up to the surface.

Holding the several-pound fish, the squirrel exclaimed in shock, “Hiss!”

Wu Mu: “Hiss hiss.”