Chapter 53

It started raining. Before the rain, the experienced giant tiger sensed the signs and took her two cubs to shelter in advance.

Song Xu saw her sleeping on the beach and thought she didn’t have her own nest. Only then did she realize she had a shelter nearby. On a rocky shore by the sea, there was a spacious cave. When they reached the cave, the giant tiger found it difficult to jump up while holding a long snake in her mouth, so she let the snake climb up on its own.

Song Xu clung to Wu Mu’s neck, hanging on him. Due to her small size, she was lucky not to be grabbed by the giant tiger. Having lost her rationality, the giant tiger didn’t seem to realize that the two cubs were now adult beastmen. She still treated them like children, dragging them along by biting them.

The rocks below the cave formed a staircase, allowing the giant tiger to jump from one step to another easily. The snake climbed slowly, his head reaching the fourth step while his tail was still at the giant tiger’s feet.

The giant tiger waited for them to reach the cave before jumping up and resting her head on a smooth stone inside. The rain poured down, and the wind blew in, making it a bit cold. The temperature in this place was strange: hot during the day, freezing at night, hot on sunny days, and cold when it rained.

Song Xu looked at the snake and then at the tiger. She moved to the tiger’s side and buried herself in its fur, feeling warm instantly. Although Wu Mu didn’t speak, Song Xu saw his hesitant eyes and wondered if she had made the right choice. She beckoned him to join her under the fur blanket for warmth.

Wu Mu hesitated, more accustomed to fighting the giant tiger than this intimacy. Still, he eventually compromised, leaning against the giant tiger and awkwardly wrapping his tail around both the tiger and the squirrel.

The three beastmen, one sane, one not, and one in between, watched the heavy rain outside. The cave faced the sea. The distant gray sea was either misty or wavy. The rain hitting the rocks and water created a noisy sound. Lying quietly watching the rain on a rainy day was pleasant, even though there were many unresolved worries, but those were problems for after the rain.

Song Xu’s feet were under the tiger’s belly, her head resting on the snake, lying horizontally and thinking about something.

When the rain lessened, the giant tiger stretched lazily, her truck-like body elongating. She shook her big head, her fur layers distinct, with a small patch on her belly messed up by Song Xu’s feet standing out. The giant tiger didn’t mind, and like all cats after waking up, she looked back at the two in the nest, swiped their heads with her tail as if greeting them, and then leaped out of the cave. She was going hunting and didn’t plan to take the two, probably thinking they were a hindrance.

Song Xu watched the tiger’s descent and exclaimed, “Those forearm muscles, she’s a real boss.”

A sudden image of a gangster woman with a tiger tattoo on her arm popped into her mind.

Shaking her head, Song Xu quickly got up and shook Wu Mu, “Quick, while Hei Sen is not home, let’s go catch some fish to fill our stomachs!”

Hei Sen was a big tiger who was afraid of water. Seeing them in the water, she would roar and drag them back, so their chances to enter the sea were rare.

Song Xu didn’t particularly like fish but would go with Wu Mu whenever possible. She always worried that in his state, Wu Mu might forget who he was while swimming and forget to come ashore. Also, she could give him some advice on what to eat.

“Don’t eat that, Wu Mu. Many jellyfish are poisonous. Let’s swim a bit further.” Song Xu stopped Wu Mu from trying to eat a jellyfish, reminding him, “Even though you’re a venomous snake, it doesn’t mean you’re immune to poison, especially from the sea. You’ve never eaten it before, so don’t eat randomly. Let’s eat something normal.”

Wu Mu was easy to feed, eating whatever he encountered. When he bumped into a giant sea turtle, he opened his mouth to swallow it, but Song Xu stopped him.

“No! It’s all shell. What are you eating? Turtle shells are hard to digest! Let’s just eat some regular fish.”

Wu Mu ate a bellyful of fish while Song Xu emerged from the sea with a large bunch of seaweed, smiling brightly, “Great, we have seaweed for dinner!” She hadn’t eaten crispy seaweed in a long time.

They walked up, dripping wet, just as the giant tiger returned with prey. One side was at the forest edge, the other by the sea, unable to see each other’s expressions, but Song Xu felt like a child caught red-handed by a parent after playing in the mud. Strangely, she didn’t have such experiences as a child.

The big tiger dropped the primitive beast in her mouth and roared, chasing the snake around the beach, while Song Xu was once again spared due to her small size and the snake’s cover. After driving them back to the cave, the giant tiger didn’t let them off, blocking the entrance, her massive body silhouetted against the light, looking majestic and fierce, her open mouth still bloody from the prey, enough to scare anyone with a weaker heart.

Song Xu crouched beside Wu Mu, trying to minimize her presence, silently chewing on seaweed while listening to the giant tiger’s scolding. The language barrier wasn’t an issue; she could guess that a fierce mother tiger’s reprimands would be the same as any other mother’s.

“Roar roar! Roar! Roar!”

“Hei Sen is saying: ‘I told you not to go into the sea, but you didn’t listen! Itchy skin, huh?'” Song Xu whispered to Wu Mu, translating.

“Roar roar! Roar!”

“And this one means: ‘You even took Song Xu with you, how daring!'”

Wu Mu believed her simultaneous translation, his eyes showing self-doubt. He wondered why Song Xu could understand Hei Sen’s words while he couldn’t.

The giant tiger finally stopped roaring and placed the primitive beast’s carcass before the two cubs. Even though she had tried twice before and they hadn’t eaten it, she still brought food back, trying to feed them. After a few days of mutual torment, the giant tiger realized that these two cubs didn’t like eating primitive beasts but preferred catching fish in the sea and nibbling on leaves in the forest like some primitive beasts.

Why were her cubs different from her? The giant tiger couldn’t ponder such complex questions but understood their diet.

Song Xu noticed that the giant tiger mother, after another hunt, didn’t bring back a primitive beast but dragged back a tree with numerous greenish-yellow fruits.

Song Xu had never seen these fruits before. They looked like mangoes and smelled fragrant up close. The generous tiger mother brought back food in such a grand manner. With its fruits, flowers, and leaves, this tree would last Song Xu for many days.

Moreover, the tiger mother tried to catch fish for Wu Mu by the sea but couldn’t overcome her fear of the ocean. She hesitated to go too deep and paced irritably in the shallow water. She ended up scooping up some shells, crabs, and a slow-moving sea turtle.

Looking at the overturned beach, with rocks lying around and the sandy area in disarray, she flipped over the large rocks to find edible food. Feeding her cubs was her instinct. Accepting that her cubs were strange, long, and small furry creatures and their different diet, the tiger mother took on the responsibility of finding food for them. She was a powerful tiger beastman, probably never worried about food, but her cubs wanted fish, which was a real challenge for her. A giant tiger on the beach every day, with not much harvest, hurt her confidence. So, her attitude towards the sea became increasingly fierce, roaring at the sea to vent her frustration. She no longer stopped Wu Mu from catching fish himself, though she seemed a bit depressed, sharpening her claws on the rocks as if asking, “Are my claws not sharp enough?”

Song Xu saw this and couldn’t help but laugh, helping her clean the sand from her claws. The giant tiger’s paw pads were thick, and her hidden claws were sharper than any bone knife Song Xu had used, with long fur between the toes that Song Xu wanted to trim.

Wu Mu returned, dragging a fishing net filled with various strange things, a bountiful harvest. With the big fruit tree brought back by the tiger mother, Song Xu didn’t need to search for food and focused all her energy on making tools. She resumed her old craft, finding vines in the forest, peeling off the rough outer skin, and using the flexible inner fibers to weave a large fishing net. The fishing net was given to Wu Mu to catch fish, making it easier and faster than catching them by hand and allowing him to bring back more.

The tiger mother had eaten too many primitive beasts and become a bit dull, but Song Xu thought they couldn’t just give up. They had to stop eating primitive beasts. Now that the tiger mother accepted that they didn’t eat primitive beasts but fish, the next step was to get her to eat fish with them.

To awaken the giant tiger’s memories as a beastman, Song Xu made a wooden basin from a tree trunk, skewers for grilling fish, and large shells for cooking fish soup. The piled-up branches smoked, and orange flames sprang up, reflecting in the giant tiger’s golden eyes, casting flickering shadows. For a moment, distant and lively sounds echoed in her ears, with beastmen in the tribe using bones to make sounds, accompanying those dancing around the bonfire.

Someone was calling her name, Hei Sen, Hei Sen!

But the scene quickly disappeared. The giant tiger stared at the fire, her claws itching to move, and she slapped the fire.

Song Xu: “…Ah!”

After many twists and turns, they finally got the fire going, grilled fish, cooked shells, and octopus ready.

Song Xu threw a few greenish-yellow fruits into the fire. Finally settling down temporarily, she decided to seize the opportunity to make some good meals for the snake and the tiger. Of course, if the food didn’t turn out well, there was nothing she could do, given the lack of seasonings.