Chapter 70

This winter, Wu Mu’s hibernation time greatly decreased. Most of the time, he just became less active, preferring to lie in the nest, but he didn’t fall into a deep sleep like the first time.

Song Xu guessed it might be because he had become more beastman-like, leaning more towards being a beastman rather than a beast, so the influence of his beast form wasn’t as strong.

This was also a good thing for Song Xu, as she wouldn’t be so bored in winter and could drag Wu Mu to talk with her.

However, being cozy together in the warm house during winter easily led to specific activities. Wu Mu, no matter what he did in winter, was slow, but his snake-wrapping skills were formidable. After experiencing it a few times, Song Xu got used to going out on days when it didn’t snow. After all, once Wu Mu wrapped around and dragged her, it would be a long time before she could get free.

Some things couldn’t be entirely blamed on King Zhou; magical creatures that could turn into animals had some extraordinary talents.

After this activity, Song Xu had a new problem in her mind – about beastman reproduction. There were no reliable contraceptive measures at this time, and beastmen basically had no reproductive isolation, so it was natural that she and Wu Mu would have children, just not knowing what they would be. She had curiously asked the beastmen they met on the road about this issue and received various answers. Simply put, having children in the beastman world was like opening a blind box. You didn’t know what kind of form you would give birth to. But undoubtedly, the body would automatically adjust according to the species of the mother and child, and near the time of delivery, it would maintain the form most conducive to giving birth. If one lived with the same species for a long time and both partners had the same beast form, the child would most likely be of the same species. If not, the situation would be more complicated. The more likely scenario was inheriting the abilities of the stronger parent, with a slight chance of atavism, and you wouldn’t know what it was until it was born.

Song Xu calculated based on this probability and thought her next generation would likely be a snake.

A round, chubby mini snake, how exciting!

Thinking about raising a little snake from a young age, Song Xu looked at Wu Mu with shining eyes.

In spring, Song Xu indeed felt changes in her body, and Wu Mu noticed, too. This was evident in how he would swim to her side every morning in his beast form, sniff her abdomen, and no longer wrap her tightly with his tail, only wrapping around her feet. The prison warden snake’s control greatly weakened, making Song Xu quite arrogant for a while.

Then, one day, she laid an egg.

“A squirrel laying an egg, Darwin would call it a miracle!” Song Xu sat next to the egg, observing it. It was white, without any patterns.

“This should be a snake egg, right?” she asked Wu Mu.

The big snake coiled around her and the egg in the nest, rubbing his snout against her sweaty forehead. Song Xu let him rub a couple of times perfunctorily, then focused on the egg again, excitedly saying, “So, do we need to incubate it? What temperature is needed? Should you or I incubate it? Can squirrels incubate eggs?”

Then she watched the egg grow day by day, becoming so large that her squirrel beast form couldn’t cover it. The squirrel sat on the egg like sitting on a chair.

“It seems to be a large snake.” Song Xu nodded, pushing the egg to the snake’s abdomen, covering it with dry moss, and went out for some fresh air.

The squirrel, who had confidently said she would incubate the egg herself, couldn’t stand it after a few days and handed the task to the big snake, justifying it: “You’re a snake. Isn’t it natural for snakes to incubate snake eggs? You must be more professional than me!”

The novice snake dad could only coil around the small egg every day and sleep. Finally, the little creature inside the egg showed signs of hatching.

Song Xu stayed up all night watching the egg hatch, getting dark circles under her eyes. Influenced by her, the big snake also focused intently, resting his head next to the egg.

Under the watchful eyes of both, the egg cracked, and out came a sparsely feathered…

Song Xu turned into a question mark: “What is this? Is this a chick?”

An oval body, two tiny wings, a pointed beak, and two claws on the ground—wasn’t this a chick?

Song Xu crossed her hands, her expression deep and complex: “Encountered a low-probability event.”

She didn’t get the card she wanted, but from a probability perspective, her luck was working; otherwise, such a low-probability atavism event wouldn’t have occurred.

The “chick” chirped twice, unable to stand steadily in the nest, falling on its bottom.

Having no research on birds, Song Xu didn’t know what this little guy was, and the big snake didn’t know either. Song Xu, quite carefree, said they would know when the child grew up.

“Since it hatched overnight, let’s call it Yiye (One Night)!”

As the “chick” grew day by day, it developed more feathers, black and white.

Song Xu confirmed: “It’s a Luhua chicken!”

Of course, she was joking. From the Chick’s harder beak and large claws, it clearly belonged to the raptor group.

The Chick, still a fledgling, liked to step on the long body of its snake father, occasionally pecking at his scales with its beak like a chick pecking at rice.

This might have been learned from the squirrel mother, who often used the big snake as a cushion. The big snake let them step on him, not moving at all.

The Chick was an active one, possibly taking after the mother. As soon as it grew a bit, it liked to run around the cave, its footsteps crisp, leaving claw marks everywhere. It even tried to squeeze through gaps, and the big snake responsible for guarding could only use his body to circle it in the nest. But this method didn’t work once the Chick’s wings grew larger; it could flap and fly out of the snake’s encirclement. Only when resting would it calm down.

The squirrel squeezed her head under the big snake’s body, her tail covering the Chick, and the active Chick obediently lay under her fluffy tail.

Song Xu took him out to forage, wanting to see what he liked to eat. The Chick would dive into the grass, its fluffy body quickly disappearing.

Song Xu: “Haha, I feel like I’m raising a chicken… Hey, where’s the Chick?”

The big snake slithered into the grass, circling a patch of ground. Song Xu searched within this patch and finally found the runaway chick. He was pecking at a small mouse, not letting go.

Song Xu: “…” You’re still a baby. Why are you catching mice already? Is this the growth speed of children in the beastman world? Modern babies would be envious!

The Chick was good in every way, except in speaking, taking after his father, also a little mute. Song Xu hadn’t heard him say a word since he was born, worrying and teaching him to practice speaking every day, even making the big snake father, who hadn’t been taught for a long time, relearn to speak.

Sitting in the nest with his claws spread, the student chick watched the squirrel mother talk non-stop, responding with three chirps in one night.

In Song Xu’s impression, the first child, the Chick, seemed to grow up in the blink of an eye. When he learned to fly on his own, Song Xu finally confirmed he was a gyrfalcon, also known as a Hai Dong Qing.

Before he could fly, the Chick could catch mice with his little claws. When he first learned to glide from trees, he could catch rabbits. By the time his wingspan reached two meters, Song Xu and Wu Mu visited the beast tribe, and he caught the little beastmen in the tribe, innocently perching on a high branch while a group of crying beastmen clawed at the tree below.

Having never lived in a tribe, the Chick didn’t know he couldn’t catch them. He only knew not to catch his mother randomly, or he would be wrapped up by his snake father and unable to fly for a day.

“Chick!” The raptor, who had a proper name but was always called by his nickname and thus accepted it as his name, heard his mother’s call, flapped his wings, and flew down from the tree, landing behind his mother. He transformed into a little boy with white hair, black eyes, and black and white feathered clothes, with slightly sharp, hooked hands and feet.

This time, they returned to the tribe because Song Xu wanted to visit the tiger mother, but they were unlucky because Hei Sen had left the tribe again. She liked to roam around and was nowhere to be found at this time.
Only Uncle Wei Shan saw them and told them about the commotion Hei Sen caused when she returned to the tribe. She had unreasonably beaten up the tribe members who had driven Wu Mu away. The lion beastman who had advocated for Wu Mu’s execution was beaten several times, and in the end, the lion left the tribe to avoid Hei Sen.

Wei Shan invited them to stay in the tribe, but Song Xu refused. She wasn’t used to the complex and chaotic life of a mixed tribe, and she was also troubled by her second child with Wu Mu.

This time, the rare atavism card was a fluffy snow leopard. They returned to the tribe to see if there were any snow leopards and to ask about the best environment for a snow leopard to live in.

There were no snow leopards in the tribe. Snow leopards preferred living in high-altitude snowy mountains, which was quite troublesome.

“Since it’s black and white, let’s call it Wu Chang (Impermanence)!” Song Xu said to the newly born snow leopard, then called him by his nickname “Kitten.”

T/N: Wu Chang is from the Black and White Impermanence. Bai Wu Chang and Hei Wu Chang are the legendary Chinese underworld demons.

In terms of color, Kitten and Chick were both black and white, truly brothers.

“Let’s go to the snowy mountains!” Song Xu decided.

The snow leopard and the snake—one would want to hibernate in too cold a place, and the other was used to living in cold places—got along well. The big snake was very tolerant of his two completely different children, allowing them to step on him as they pleased. Chick pecked him, Kitten bit him, and he didn’t mind.

Eating, sleeping, and stepping on Dad became a traditional skill in Song Xu’s family.

Because of Kitten, they moved to the foot of a snowy mountain and lived there for a long time. The big snake stayed at the foot of the mountain while the mother and two children slept there at night and ran up the mountain during the day, playing wildly. In the end, it was the children who led Song Xu, as the young snow leopard learned to find his lost mother on the snowy mountain every day. This soft-voiced child liked to bite his own tail and sleep while biting his mother’s tail, or his father’s tail would do. His brother had no tail, which troubled him for a while. He had blue eyes, white hair, and naturally thick eyeliner, making his eyes look particularly large. As he grew older, the Kitten and Chick brothers ran around the snowy mountain as their mother had to accompany their father. After all, their father, missing them while they played outside every day, bravely climbed the snowy mountain alone and almost froze halfway, which sounded very pitiful.

In the beastman world, children were usually driven out by their mothers after reaching adulthood. Some who couldn’t be raised would start hunting on their own as soon as they could run and jump, gradually leaving the family.

There was no such habit in Song Xu’s family; everything depended on them. Chick never strayed far from them, becoming a large raptor with a wingspan of nearly three or four meters, living in a bird’s nest he made nearby. However, the clingy Kitten, possibly due to the nature of snow leopards, stayed in the snowy mountains and didn’t leave. But the separation was only temporary. One day, when Song Xu saw the snow leopard suddenly returning home to visit them, her joy was indescribable.

Years later, Song Xu had a third child. This time, it was still a rare atavism card. The third child was a girl, the only one born in human form. Three days after birth, she suddenly transformed into a beast form, a fish several meters long.

Song Xu watched in the nest as the child suddenly turned into a fish, much larger than her, and with one tail swipe, scattered the nest she had made. She immediately jumped up, rushed to the door, and called Wu Mu incoherently: “Wu Mu, fish, fish, fish! There’s a fish! What do we do?”

Having gathered the sea, land, and air, Song Xu watched as Wu Mu dragged their little daughter to the lake to swim. This fish looked very much like a blue whale. It definitely needed to be raised in the sea.

“Since it’s so big, almost filling the small lake, let’s call it Tian Hu (Sweet Lake).”

Unsurprisingly, Tian Hu never acknowledged this name, preferring to be called Big Fish by her mother.

So, Song Xu announced again: “Let’s go to the seaside!”

They called Chick, passed by the snowy mountain, and Kitten joined them voluntarily. They all went together to send the youngest child to the seaside.

There were more people this time, and the journey was more difficult than the first time. When water was scarce, Chick flew back and forth for dozens of kilometers, tirelessly bringing water for Big Fish to prevent her from dying of thirst on the way. When it got too hot, the snow leopard also collapsed, so the big snake dad had to carry him forward. But there were many happy moments too. The fish, who should have lived in the sea, learned what it felt like to roll in the grass with her mother.

In the pouring rain, Big Fish turned into a fish, lying on the grass and slapping her tail. The others watched from a tree hollow, hiding from the rain. With so many members, even finding a suitable tree hollow was difficult. They squeezed together, or simply all stepped on the big snake dad.

On more sunny nights, they would find an open space, and the big snake would circle them all with his tail, drawing a circle to rest. Big Fish envied her brother Chick for being able to fly in the sky. She wanted to fly, but Chick couldn’t carry her. Song Xu watched the siblings’ futile attempts, laughing until her stomach hurt as Chick was weighed down and couldn’t take off.

Big Fish envied her brother Kitten for running fast on the ground. She wanted Kitten to carry her, but Kitten couldn’t carry her either. Song Xu laughed until she cried, watching Kitten’s four paws tremble as he dragged his sister on the ground.

But when Big Fish reached the seaside, she found that even if she couldn’t walk in her beast form on land, she could carry her mother and brothers across the vast ocean. She knew this was her territory. At the end of the journey, they waved goodbye to each other.

“Parting will come, but I’m glad to have met you,” the mother said, kissing her head.

The lovely children came and went one by one, leaving only the squirrel and the snake. They hid from the rain in the tree hollow, the squirrel hiding under the snake during the thunderstorm, and the snake tightly coiling around her.

Years later, in the sky, on the snowy mountain, and in the ocean, their stories continued.

THE END >.<

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