Chapter 8

Chapter Six: A Time of Great Abundance

The heavy rain continued, showing no signs of stopping.

In the gorge below the cave, the floodwaters surged, growing more violent since they formed half a day ago, roaring as they rushed past the cave entrance.

The floodwaters carried large boulders, trees, and even some wild animals. Some of the boulders were as big as houses, and their impact was so powerful that they seemed to shake the entire mountain when they hit the bends in the valley.

Yun Chuan sat in his mother's arms, gazing at the storm outside the cave, lost in thought. He knew that the natural environment in the primitive era was harsh, but he hadn't expected it to be this severe.

No wonder ancient myths often spoke of the heavens leaking. Such heavy rain could indeed be described as the heavens leaking, without any exaggeration.

There was no Nüwa to mend the sky.

Looking at his mother's worried face, Yun Chuan suddenly felt that, at this moment, there must be a Nüwa in her heart.

The flood in the mountains was a dynamic force that could change the landscape. Yun Chuan didn't know what the place where he would grow up would look like in the future.

Looking around, countless waterfalls cascaded down the mountains, including above the cave.

The tribal leader ordered the cave to be covered with thick grass curtains to prevent moisture from seeping in.

Yun Chuan's act of setting the cave on fire a few days ago turned out to be a good thing. The fire dried out the moisture in the cave, otherwise, it would have been a damp and wet place.

A good place naturally attracts intruders.

Especially during the heavy rain, animals that had lost their hiding places quickly discovered this dry cave.

The first to appear were large numbers of snakes, spiders, scorpions, and centipedes.

Fortunately, there was a group of hungry people in the cave, and these crawling creatures all became their food.

Their method of obtaining food was extremely simple: they just needed to remove the grass curtain, replace it with a new one, and they could happily catch the creatures attached to the curtain.

Their movements were very skilled, and it seemed that both adults and the older children acted quickly.

Whatever they caught, they would throw into the fire behind them, and there were people specifically responsible for roasting the cooked creatures, pulling them out of the ashes.

Larger creatures like snakes were not treated this way. Instead, their heads were twisted off, and their venom glands removed before they were hung above the fire to roast, hanging like dried beans. They didn't remove the internal organs, as they were also considered food.

Yun Chuan didn't touch these things. This was actually very dangerous. He had seen people bitten by venomous snakes, stung by scorpions and centipedes more than once, and even his mother was stung by a scorpion the size of a finger, right on her ankle.

Her ankle swelled visibly, but she didn't care; she was more concerned with catching more scorpions.

Not only that, she even brought Yun Chuan to help because he had accidentally shown that he could use chopsticks to pick up scorpions.

Between being stung by scorpions and catching them, Yun Chuan chose to catch them. Soon, he discovered that when people were in dire straits, they could unleash tremendous potential.

After catching eight scorpions and accurately throwing them into the fire, Yun Chuan thought that if he couldn't catch flies with chopsticks in the future, he would feel he had let down the suffering he endured now.

Doing these things had its benefits, such as having an endless supply of protein. Yun Chuan had already gotten used to eating roasted centipedes and scorpions.

With the abundant protein and his mother's milk, Yun Chuan's body grew significantly in less than five days.

He was aware of this.

However, no one in the tribe noticed, not even his mother. Yun Chuan was now twice as big as the other children his age.

Yun Chuan was catching scorpions, centipedes, and various other crawling creatures, and even the infants were doing the same. Yun Chuan watched as a small child caught a centipede and, laughing, put the wriggling creature into his mouth. Yun Chuan tried to use chopsticks to take it away, but it was too late.

By nightfall, the child was dead.

A man picked up the dead child and threw his small body into the rain like a stone. The others continued to catch the crawling creatures.

Yun Chuan originally thought that the heavy rain would be a time when the tribe, which mainly survived by hunting, would go hungry. However, he didn't expect that this rain would bring them an abundance of food.

Yun Chuan originally thought that the main targets of hunting were wild animals like deer, wild boars, wild sheep, wild rabbits, wild chickens, and fish. He didn't expect that their main hunting targets were various insects.

"Roar," a long, wild animal's howl reached Yun Chuan's ears.

Yun Chuan didn't move, but his gaze fell on the tribal leader.

The tribal leader remained calm. After hearing the sound, he led a group of men with bamboo spears, wooden stakes, and stone axes out of the cave.

The people in the cave didn't pay much attention to the mournful howl. Men and women continued to busy themselves with harvesting the various crawling creatures that kept entering the cave.

"Roar—"

The sound outside was louder and closer, filled with a threatening tone.

He wanted to lift the curtain to see the battle outside, but the curtain was covered with various venomous creatures, so he gave up the idea.

Eleven people went out, and Yun Chuan counted. He used chopsticks to pick up venomous creatures while keeping an eye on the curtain.

After an unknown amount of time, the eleven people returned, all wet. Two of them were injured, severely, and fell asleep as soon as they returned.

From the sound, Yun Chuan thought the roaring wild animal outside was a tiger, and it must be a very large one.

The tribal leader threw a small dog into the pile of food.

It was wet and seemed to be dead.

Yun Chuan poked the dog-like thing, and it suddenly lifted its head and bit his finger fiercely. Surprised, he tried to pull back, but realized the bite wasn't powerful. It was a puppy with only its milk teeth.

He pulled back his chubby hand and carried the wet, kitten-sized thing to the tribal leader.

The tribal leader was drawing on the dark rock wall with a stone.

The drawing showed a large stick figure leading ten smaller stick figures in battle against a wild animal.

The wild animal in the drawing was very large and fierce.

The tribal leader used a lot of ink on the wild animal, so Yun Chuan not only recognized it as a tiger but also a saber-toothed tiger, which was supposed to be extinct.

The tribal leader had drawn the tiger's two teeth so large that they protruded from its mouth, each about a foot long.

Yun Chuan had seen tigers before, but their mouths were usually closed, and only when they opened their mouths could you see their two-inch-long fangs. This one's fangs were so large they couldn't be hidden.

Thinking about a fierce beast like this outside the cave, Yun Chuan hoped the drawing was the tribal leader's exaggerated artistic creation, not a realistic depiction...

"Wolf!"

The tribal leader looked at the thing in Yun Chuan's arms and finally spoke.

Yun Chuan tightly held the wolf pup and repeated, "Wolf!"

The tribal leader took the wolf pup from Yun Chuan and casually threw it into a shallow puddle. Not only that, he rubbed the wolf pup with ashes.

After washing it three times, he threw it back to Yun Chuan. By then, the wolf pup was shivering and looked like it was about to die.

Yun Chuan carried the wolf pup to the fire to warm it up.

His mother and the others were still busy, not only at the front of the cave but also at the back, where, despite being a cliff, it was no different for centipedes and snakes, just a bit more time-consuming.

After the wolf pup's fur dried, it looked much better, though its fur was grayish-blue, indicating it was a gray wolf pup.

The tribal leader didn't kill the wolf and seemed to have given it to Yun Chuan to raise. Now, whether it would survive depended on whether it could eat these insects.

Fortunately, the wolf pup was fierce, eating centipedes, scorpions, and even challenging snakes.

It seemed to prefer raw food over cooked, which made Yun Chuan realize that anything that could survive in this land was not simple.

They all chose to live without hesitation, even though Yun Chuan couldn't find a reason for their survival in their lives, he had to admit they really wanted to live.

To be honest, their lives were just about eating, drinking, defecating, and mating. Even such a basic life was at the most fundamental level.

Compared to the life Yun Chuan imagined, their quality of life might not even surpass that of pigs in a pigsty in the future.

Since they could struggle to live with all their might, Yun Chuan felt he should have a stronger and more sufficient reason to live, and live better than others.

When the spiders, centipedes, scorpions, and various insects gradually decreased, it signaled that the heavy rain was about to end.

The rain lasted for seven days and seven nights.

When the rain stopped, Yun Chuan ran out to look and then came back.

Because he couldn't see anything.

Outside the cave, the fog was so thick it was almost solid.

According to Yun Chuan's common sense, fog shouldn't appear after heavy rain, but here, the fog appeared and was so thick it was almost impenetrable.

Sometimes the wind would blow the fog away, revealing a sliver of sky. At such times, you could see the deep blue sky and the scorching sun hanging in the sky.

The thick fog, almost like clouds, hung low overhead and sometimes fell to the ground when blown by the wind.

Thunder always appeared in the sky, and Yun Chuan saw a bright spot in the fog that would suddenly explode.

The sound was deafening, and immediately after, a phenomenon he had never seen before appeared—short rain.

Why was it called short rain? Because the distance from the cloud layer to the ground was no more than ten meters.

Each time the thunder struck, the thick fog would rain, and after the rain, the fog would become lighter. Then the sun would evaporate the water on the ground, forming thick fog again, endlessly.

People who didn't die during the rain died after the fog appeared.

This year was bad; all the infants except Yun Chuan died.

Two children who had barely survived infancy also died, and the two men injured by the saber-toothed tiger also died.

Their wounds became infected, and one man's wound on his belly exposed his internal organs. Yun Chuan even saw his intestines moving.

The tribal leader was a very decisive person. He personally killed the two injured men who were still alive, using a stone to crush their heads.

After killing them, he dragged their bodies out of the cave and returned after a long time.