Chapter 5

Chapter 3: The First Battle at Yun Chuan

When the last trace of dawn disappeared from the horizon, Yun Chuan found himself standing in front of a massive cave.

In front of the cave was a wooden fence, with many sharp wooden stakes crisscrossing it. This fence was clearly for defense.

These things were relatively normal, but what was disturbing were the few rotten, stinking human heads impaled on the highest stakes of the fence.

After the owner of the thigh returned inside the fence, he threw Yun Chuan and the beef he was carrying onto a pile of food, which made Yun Chuan feel extremely bad.

Indeed, he was lying on a cold, skinned piece of beef, and it was likely a cow's leg. The hair on the cow's leg was very stiff, pricking his back painfully.

He struggled to roll off the pile of food and aimed for an unoccupied corner, intending to crawl over quietly.

The people inside the fence were all very happy, probably because they had obtained enough food. They were cheering around a much larger pile of food, and no one paid attention to the small pile.

Yun Chuan crawled quickly on the ground; he didn't want to become part of the food.

However, his body was caught by a withered, claw-like hand. The calluses on the palm rubbed against his body like sandpaper.

Yun Chuan didn't cry; instead, he lifted his head to look at the owner of the hand.

It was an extremely old woman.

Perhaps the oldest woman Yun Chuan had ever seen. Her body was as black as ink, and every rib was clearly visible under her skin. Her breasts were shriveled and hung like two broken bags. She had no teeth, and one eye socket was a terrifying black hole, while the other eye was mostly covered by a white film.

Her hair was sparse, and she hugged Yun Chuan tightly, pressing him against her chest. Her toothless mouth spewed a rotten smell as she shouted at others.

Yun Chuan, in close contact with her, found her body as cold as a corpse. Only the rapid rise and fall of her chest from shouting made him realize she wasn't dead.

Unfortunately, her shouting didn't attract anyone's attention. Yun Chuan noticed that everyone was roasting meat with wooden sticks, completely ignoring the old woman's cries.

He couldn't understand a single word she was saying.

Yun Chuan was very hungry!

He started to cry loudly.

After shouting for a while and seeing no one respond, the old woman stopped and carried Yun Chuan to a fire. She found a young woman with large breasts and handed Yun Chuan over to her.

In this woman's arms was another child, who was suckling vigorously. Yun Chuan pounced and latched onto the other breast, sucking hard.

The taste of human milk was the ultimate delicacy for an infant, but for an adult like Yun Chuan, it wasn't particularly good.

As he swallowed mouthfuls of milk, his hunger quickly subsided. He felt as if every cell in his body was rejoicing. The milk seemed to turn into nutrients as soon as it entered his stomach, a very strange sensation.

At this moment, every extra mouthful meant becoming stronger, so Yun Chuan didn't hesitate.

Not only that, he even used his foot to push the other child's face away from the breast.

The young woman was eating meat and was unaware of the battle taking place in her arms.

After drinking from one breast, Yun Chuan decisively switched to the other, displacing the weak child.

The child's body was dirty, and the woman's body was also dirty and covered in ash. In this battle for food, Yun Chuan quickly made himself even dirtier, dirtier than the other child.

Yun Chuan drank all the milk from both breasts. The dirty child, unable to get any milk, started to cry.

The woman, who was eating meat, looked down irritably and saw two children in her arms, with the oldest one-eyed woman standing nearby.

She angrily threw the crying child to the old woman but held the plump Yun Chuan even tighter.

Yun Chuan cooed and wrapped his arms around the woman's neck, rubbing his face against her fat face.

Clearly, the young woman enjoyed the affection of this quiet child and put a lump of chewed meat into Yun Chuan's mouth...

Yun Chuan swallowed it...

Yun Chuan swallowed it!

To survive, Yun Chuan swallowed it decisively.

After all, seeing the dirty child suckling the shriveled breasts of the old woman, he knew that food was extremely precious at this moment.

Becoming a dirty child and replacing the other dirty child was very important for Yun Chuan.

Only by fully integrating into the tribe could he survive.

Like two eaglets in a nest, only by pushing the other one out and killing it could the other one grow strong and survive.

Yun Chuan was one of those eaglets, and an outsider at that.

Hiding in the young woman's arms, Yun Chuan sadly observed the group of people sitting around the fire. From their eating habits, it was clear they were a group of uncivilized—savages.

Their tools were extremely primitive: wooden sticks, bamboo spears, and sharp stone blades and hammers were all they had.

As for eating, although they had moved beyond raw meat, they were only roasting it, and sometimes not even that.

After confirming the identity of these people, Yun Chuan thought long and hard but still found it unreasonable to discover a tribe of savages near Kunlun Mountain.

The young woman sucked on a cow's leg bone, filled her mouth with bone marrow, and, for some reason, passed it mouth-to-mouth to Yun Chuan.

Yun Chuan chewed the mucus-like bone marrow and, with all his strength, swallowed the motherly offering.

The beef feast lasted until midnight.

Yun Chuan was carried back to the cave by the young woman. The cave was filled with dry grass and various animal skins.

As soon as they returned to the cave, Yun Chuan heard the rustling sound of bugs crawling down the rock walls, like rain.

This sound was not unfamiliar to Yun Chuan. In the depths of Kunlun Mountain, he had battled these creatures in a hotel.

The young woman casually threw Yun Chuan onto a sheepskin and lay down on a stone bed, snoring loudly.

A tall savage guarded the cave entrance, tending to the fire.

The fire served not only to keep them warm but also to provide protection.

At first, Yun Chuan could see the bugs crawling down the walls in the flickering firelight. Later, he saw centipedes, spiders, and other creatures emerging from the cracks in the rocks, which terrified him.

Clearly, their target was the tribe in the cave.

The young woman who had just fed him slept soundly,

Yun Chuan was wide awake!

He wasn't sleepy. He had intended to seriously reflect on his experiences that day, but he spent the entire night battling bugs, centipedes, spiders, and other creatures.

The young woman was very popular, and many men came to her during the night. However, she seemed to be sleeping, allowing the men to move on her.

This was hard for Yun Chuan to understand.

However, this showed that the women in the tribe belonged to everyone, meaning everything in the tribe belonged to everyone.

This was a tribe still in the communal ownership period.

Yun Chuan studied geology, and his field of study did not include modern times. The time span of human existence was too short in geological terms.

However, because mining had a historical tradition, and tradition was a human characteristic, Yun Chuan was familiar with ancient human evolution.

If women belonged to everyone, then children must also belong to everyone. After squashing a bug, Yun Chuan finally understood why he could pass as the young woman's child.

Perhaps the child he had kicked away was not hers either.

Indeed, when the sun came up, the woman woke up looking confused. After Yun Chuan cooed a couple of times, the young woman was pleasantly surprised to see him.

She picked up Yun Chuan, kissed him, and then left the cave to sit on a rock and breastfeed.

The morning sun, like it had been fished out of water, was wet and rosy, gradually fading to white as it climbed the sky.

Perhaps because the woman had eaten well the night before, her milk was abundant, and Yun Chuan was well-fed.

After feeding Yun Chuan, the young woman casually threw him on the ground and left the camp with a large basket.

The men had left even earlier, and when the women left, the cave entrance was filled with children.

The older children followed the women.

Six elderly men and women watched over the children.

Among them, the one-eyed old woman was searching the group of children for the white child she had seen the night before, even though she was nearly blind.

Yun Chuan watched as she passed by him. At this point, he was dirtier than the other children, especially after rolling in the ash and getting wet, which gave him a layer of ash on his body.

It wasn't that Yun Chuan didn't care about being clean; the ash layer reduced the likelihood of being attacked by fleas, centipedes, and other venomous insects.

The dirty Yun Chuan was clearly different from the white child in the old woman's mind.

The old woman searched the group of children, examining each one, and then, exhausted, leaned against the rock wall.

She had lost a unique child forever.

The old woman remained motionless against the rock wall, her one eye wide open. When Yun Chuan saw the ash fall into her grayish-white eye and she still didn't move, he knew she was dead.

The remaining elders didn't discover the old woman's death until noon. They carried her body to the cliff and threw it over, then continued to lean against the rock wall, basking in the sun.

There was no sadness, no regret, and no funeral.

The death of a person was as natural as a withered flower, a dead blade of grass, or a disappearing cloud.