Chapter 9

Chapter Seven: The Magic Wasn't So Magical

In the past few days, Yun Chuan did not drink water, especially not the water stored by the tribe.

The water in the puddles was already infested with thin red worms, and drinking such water had a ninety percent chance of not surviving until the sky cleared.

If he was thirsty, he would rather crawl to the cave entrance and breathe the thick fog, taking a few breaths to moisten his mouth.

He also did not allow his mother to drink water, bringing her to the cave entrance to breathe the fog together. After all, if she fell ill, he would no longer have safe milk to drink.

Eventually, the entire tribe stopped drinking water, all crowding at the narrow cave entrance, opening their mouths to breathe like thirsty fish.

Yun Chuan also stopped eating food that was not fully cooked and refused to touch food that had been left for many days.

The tribal chief was very smart, following Yun Chuan's living habits and treating them as a rule.

The benefit of this was that the tribe no longer suffered from rampant deaths.

The dense fog lasted for ten more days.

Until a sudden strong wind blew away the fog, and the world became clear again.

By this time, Yun Chuan was already one meter tall.

A one-meter-tall child in the tribe was already considered a teenager.

After all, the tallest tribal chief was only about 1.6 meters tall, and his weight would not exceed 130 pounds.

As his height and weight increased, Yun Chuan's strength also increased, but the increase in strength was still within his understanding. He did not have the ability to move mountains and fill seas when he was one meter tall and weighed fifty kilograms.

At most, his strength was just a bit greater than that of other teenagers.

Due to the fog, the cave became damp again.

The tribal chief had the tribe bring a lot of damp firewood to the platform to dry, and also moved the stored food out to dry.

Then, he did something that Yun Chuan found hard to understand—he lit the reeds and firewood stored in the cave.

The cave quickly turned into a large chimney, with thick smoke rising from the back of the cave, spreading over the entire back mountain.

The tribal chief's preparation was very thorough. The dry firewood at the front dried the wet firewood at the back, turning the cave into a kiln!

Yun Chuan thought such a fierce fire would collapse the cave, but unexpectedly, the cave was very sturdy. Although many rocks fell, it did not collapse as Yun Chuan had expected.

The landscape was completely changed by a flood.

The originally gentle slope was cut into a cliff by the flood, and a large river suddenly appeared where there was once a grassland.

This river was so large that it gave Yun Chuan, standing at the cave entrance, a sense of the vast changes in the world.

This river was larger than any river Yun Chuan had seen, more than five times larger than the Yangtze River, splitting the land into northern and southern banks.

This river turned the tribe, which was originally located in a hilly area, into a river-dwelling tribe.

Seeing this river, Yun Chuan's first thought was that the main food of his tribe from now on would be fish.

He believed that this river would disrupt the original ecosystem.

This was the first time Yun Chuan saw a river that was not controlled by humans...

However, he was not dissatisfied. An uncontrolled river is a disaster for a human settlement.

He was more worried that his body would continue to grow uncontrollably. In one and a half months, he had grown from an infant to one meter tall, which did not conform to human growth patterns.

Thinking about this, Yun Chuan could not help but look down at his little bird between his two fat legs.

Fortunately, it still looked delicate and proportionate to his body, neither growing larger nor smaller, nor becoming deformed.

Overall, his body grew quickly but in a balanced way.

His mother was a foolish woman. She had no questions about her son's rapid growth and instead often took him around to show off.

As for the people in the tribe, they did not question this unscientific phenomenon.

Or rather, they believed that children should grow up overnight and be able to hunt with them the next day.

The tribal chief was very cautious about the sudden appearance of the river. Even though the weather had cleared, he did not allow the tribe to approach the river, always feeling that it was full of danger.

In fact, the tribal chief's concerns were justified.

Because in the following three days, the large river was slowly shrinking, and the tribe knelt and worshiped the river.

Only Yun Chuan understood that the river was not shrinking but becoming deeper. The surging river was continuously eroding the loess plain, and with the rain stopping, the river had less water to replenish it, which was another reason for its shrinking.

By this time, Yun Chuan was already able to follow his mother to the wilderness to collect any edible things.

Yun Chuan had been looking forward to finding food on his own for a long time.

His body had grown, and his mother's milk, no matter how abundant, could no longer satisfy him.

However, when he first went barefoot into the wilderness, he realized how difficult it was to find enough food in the spring.

The spring wilderness was beautiful, with an endless carpet of grass stretching to the horizon, countless wildflowers scattered among them, and palm-sized butterflies dancing, and finger-sized bees diligently collecting nectar.

Such a scene was truly beautiful, but it was something to appreciate after eating. When hungry, even the most beautiful scenery was not as practical as a piece of bread.

His mother, like a tank, charged through the grass that was half a person tall, shouting loudly to clear the way for her son.

Yun Chuan closely followed his mother, always feeling that there were indescribable dangers in places he could not see.

Apart from snails, there were few edible things in the grass, but his mother always found things that delighted Yun Chuan—like various eggs.

After finding two fist-sized goose eggs, his mother deliberately avoided the crowd, and the mother and son hid in a grass nest, cracking the eggs and laughing foolishly as they savored the rare delicacy.

After eating the goose eggs, his mother eliminated the traces of their snack and continued to search for food in the grass with her fat son.

Yun Chuan looked at the large areas of marshland left by the receding river, where the sky was full of flying birds, some of which would suddenly fall.

When they flew up again, they often had a fish in their beaks.

Seeing this, Yun Chuan suddenly felt he should go there.

Although his mother was reluctant, she could not resist her son, who had raised her status in the tribe, and unwillingly followed him to the marshland.

The situation in the marshland was in line with Yun Chuan's judgment, even exceeding it. He did not expect there to be so many fish in the marshland.

In a two-foot-square puddle, there were densely packed fish heads. The fish were not large, the largest being only palm-sized, and in the shallow water nearby, Yun Chuan even saw large fish flapping their fins and running in the shallow water.

This was not a marshland but a rich fish pond.

Seeing so many fish, his mother jumped into the shallow water, grabbing a fish in her mouth and two in her hands, then stared blankly at the pool of fish.

Her gaze suddenly fell on her fat son. She jumped out of the water, stuffed a fish in his mouth, and placed two live fish in his hands before jumping back into the water.

Yun Chuan sighed and spat out the fish, breaking off a tender willow branch and threading it through the gills of the fish, then shouted to his mother, who was holding fish in her mouth and hands, "Catch fish!"

Seeing Yun Chuan's new invention, his mother was delighted, threw the three fish on shore, and continued to catch fish.

In a short time, Yun Chuan had strung up more than ten fish, each string weighing at least five or six pounds, which was the limit of their strength.

His mother was already obsessed with catching fish. Even when Yun Chuan shouted to wake her from her harvest-induced trance, she was still unsatisfied with the current harvest.

His mother came ashore, holding two one-foot-long carp. This time, she did not hand the fish to Yun Chuan but brutally twisted off the heads of the carp, cut them with a stone, and tore off the skin, eating a raw fish herself and preparing a raw fish feast for Yun Chuan.

Yun Chuan had never eaten a one-foot-long carp before. At that time, a palm-sized carp was already considered large.

When eating carp, they were not eaten raw but were carefully fried after removing the scales and innards, and if they wanted fish soup, they would add water to cook it into a milky white broth...

"Eat!"

His mother's eyes were full of indulgence, and her mud-covered hands held a fish with the bones removed, making it impossible for Yun Chuan to refuse.

The fish meat was sweet and crispy, with a slight earthy smell and some soft bones, but it was the best food Yun Chuan had eaten in this world, aside from his mother's milk.

This made Yun Chuan think that carp should be eaten this way.

"Go back?" Yun Chuan asked his mother.

His mother understood the meaning of these two words from Yun Chuan's body language, but she did not seem to want to return to the tribe and continued to peel another fish...

Thus, his mother ate four fish, and Yun Chuan ate two. After confirming that Yun Chuan could not eat any more, she hung the fish on the willow branch and carried Yun Chuan through the damp grass back to the tribe.

His mother's pace was fast, and Yun Chuan had to run to keep up. Even so, they returned to the cave when the sun had already set.

His mother's harvest was so great that when they returned to the tribe, everyone was amazed, and the amazement quickly turned into a celebration.

Yun Chuan thought his mother would tell the tribal chief the source of the food, but she did not say a word. After the fish were roasted, she took two fish, one for herself and one for her son.

The roasted fish, without scales or innards, smelled good, but Yun Chuan could not eat it and offered it to the tribal chief.

The tribal chief was clearly puzzled when he received the roasted fish but still took it.