Chapter 5

The stone village of the Black Python Tribe was built in a perilous canyon between two mountain ridges. The surroundings were also in a mess from yesterday's flood; however, the stone walls, piled up from huge rocks, were seven to eight meters high, blocking the flood from entering the village.

Apart from defending against the mountain floods that rushed down from the ridges, the walls were built high and thick mainly to guard against wild beasts from the deep mountains and sudden attacks from other tribes.

The stone village, situated at the mouth of the canyon, also sealed off the path into the mountains, enclosing the deep mountains to the south as the hunting grounds of the Black Python Tribe.

Although the deep mountains of Python Tooth Ridge were teeming with game, they also harbored more dangers.

Not to mention other savage creatures, a single Black Scaled Fox could crush the entire stone village to pieces.

At this moment, thinking about it still made one shudder. If this Black Fox had survived and come out of the mountains, the Black Python Stone Village would likely have been the first place to be bloodily washed.

More than a thousand people lived in the village, which, compared to the dense population on Earth, was just a small village. However, on the northern slope of Python Tooth Ridge, it was considered a fairly large village.

When Chen Xun climbed up the stone ridge in front of the village, he could see the situation inside the village walls at the canyon mouth. Hundreds of low, ramshackle mud and wooden houses were scattered around, with a few tall stone halls surrounding an open square in the center.

That was the public hall, where the clan held meetings and conducted rituals, and it also served as the ancestral temple and public warehouse of the Black Python Tribe. Normally, only the shaman Zong Tu and his underage grandson Zong Ya lived inside.

The adult males, led by the tribal warriors, would leave the village to hunt in the mountains, often taking several days to make a significant catch. The women and the elderly would gather fruits and wild vegetables near the village.

Without farming or animal husbandry, relying solely on hunting and gathering wild vegetables and fruits, while also preventing fierce beasts from coming out of the mountains and attacks from other tribes, it was no easy task to sustain a population of over a thousand.

Surviving in the wilderness was extremely difficult.

The entire village was filled with children, regardless of gender, running around bare-bottomed. Children over eight or nine years old were considered teenagers in the Black Python Tribe. They either went out with the women and the elderly to gather wild fruits, vegetables, and grains, or they practiced martial arts under the guidance of the remaining warriors.

When they saw the group carrying the giant beast, the bare-bottomed children and the young martial artists all rushed out, trampling the muddy slope, running around the beast, and singing wild songs that sounded like noise to Chen Xun.

However, all of this filled Chen Xun's heart with warmth. This was the place that had taken him in and provided him a place to live for the past three years.

After a heavy rain yesterday, the village had no drainage system, so it was muddy and filled with puddles everywhere.

Chen Xun was carried on Zong Ya's back, and he was brought into the village with deep steps and shallow steps.

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The hut made of stone and wood had half a foot of water inside.

Sitting on the stone bed covered with animal skins, Chen Xun saw that Zong Ya was restless. He knew that the soul sacrifice feast was a rare grand ceremony for the Black Python Tribe, and Zong Ya, still a teenager, was curious. So he urged him to go to the stone hall to help:

"There's nothing wrong with me. Go find Grandpa quickly. He might have something to ask you to do."

"Are you really fine?" Zong Ya had wanted to run over to see Grandpa, Uncle, and Nan Liao discussing the soul sacrifice, but he was worried about Chen Xun's injuries.

"What could be wrong with me?" Chen Xun said.

"Alright, if anything happens, have someone call me. Here, take this." Zong Ya pulled out a small animal skin package from his chest, handed it to Chen Xun, and quickly left the hut.

He was so anxious that he forgot to lower his head when he left the hut and hit the door frame, almost collapsing the shabby hut.

Chen Xun shook his head and smiled bitterly, then opened the package Zong Ya had given him, only to find another Black Python Pill.

Zong Ya was practicing martial arts and was at a critical stage of breaking through to the third level and advancing to the intermediate stage of martial arts. This Black Python Pill was saved for him by Grandpa Zong Tu.

Chen Xun knew that Zong Ya was not talkative but had a straightforward personality. Once he gave something, he would never take it back, which made Chen Xun feel a bit troubled. He could only keep the Black Python Pill close to his body for now.

In the early days of his stay in the Black Python Tribe, Chen Xun lived in the public stone house with Zong Tu and Zong Ya.

However, not only was he an outsider, but even the children of the Black Python Tribe had to be self-sufficient by the age of thirteen or fourteen.

After living in the public stone house for a few months, with Zong Ya's help, Chen Xun found a piece of empty land near the public stone house, cut down trees, and built this hut for himself.

The hut was simple, with leaky walls, a mud stove, a stone bed covered with animal skins, and a few cracked pottery jars. But this was Chen Xun's home in the Black Python Tribe and in this wild mountain.

After taking the Black Python Pill given by Zong Sang, Chen Xun's body had mostly recovered, except for the scars on his body, which would take a few days to heal.

After eating the roe deer meat, to save energy, he had thrown away the medicine basket. To avoid delaying his future mountain herb gathering, he now had to weave another medicine basket with mountain vines.

Chen Xun could only use various methods to push his body to its limits to develop potential and strengthen his body, which was very exhausting.

Although Chen Xun's strength and physical condition were comparable to the second or third level of martial arts, the initial stage martial artists of the Black Python Tribe, besides being physically strong, were also proficient in bow and spear combat skills.

The intermediate stage martial artists, who had awakened their martial souls, were like killing machines in Chen Xun's eyes. They were the core and main force of the Black Python Tribe in the deep mountains of Python Tooth Ridge, hunting and fishing.

Chen Xun did not have the qualifications to be a main force. Each time he followed the Black Python martial artists to hunt and fish, the food he received was very limited, far from enough to meet the demands of his special training method.

Fortunately, over the past three years, Chen Xun had learned the tribal script from Grandpa Zong Tu and could identify thirty to forty types of herbs in Python Tooth Ridge, which became his means of survival in the village.

There were about three hundred adult males in the village, and about a hundred of them were practicing combat skills. However, only a few had the patience to learn all six hundred or so tribal script characters and could identify and refine the twenty to thirty herbs needed to make the Black Python Pill.

Even Zong Ya, under the strict guidance of Grandpa Zong Tu, barely managed to learn all the tribal script characters. But if he were asked to learn the refining of witch medicines, he would rather hang himself from a stone beam with a rope.

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After Chen Xun finished weaving the medicine basket, Zong Ya came to the hut again and gave him a large piece of roasted mountain pork, which was dripping with oil.

Chen Xun's appetite was now very large, and he couldn't eat the Black Python Pill as a meal. After returning and weaving the medicine basket, he hadn't eaten for half a day. Seeing the dripping pork, his stomach growled, and he started to eat it greedily.

Zong Ya lay on the stone bed covered with animal skins, his head on the pillow. He saw a few scrolls of animal skin books scattered at the head of the bed, all about the refining of witch medicines. He found them headache-inducing, but he couldn't understand why Chen Xun could read them with great interest. He turned over and asked:

"You don't really want to stay in the village for the rest of your life as a witch doctor, do you?"

The "Western Wilderness Scripture" was also obtained by Grandpa Zong Tu by chance. The Black Python Tribe mainly recorded events using nitro-treated and thinned animal skins, written with a black tree sap from the mountains. The turtle shells inscribed with tribal script were considered "sacred objects" in the Black Python Tribe.

If he couldn't leave Python Tooth Ridge, Chen Xun thought that his best future in the Black Python Tribe would be to become a witch doctor. He had recently been learning the refining of witch medicines from Grandpa Zong Tu.

These animal skin books were given to him by Grandpa Zong Tu.

Although the natural herbs and minerals in Python Tooth Ridge were different from those on Earth, Chen Xun believed that some principles of medicine were still the same, which was his advantage in learning to refine witch medicines in the Black Python Tribe.

However, the Black Python Pill, which could develop human potential and refine blood, required the secret techniques of the Black Python Tribe to refine.

As an outsider, Chen Xun could not practice the secret techniques of the Black Python Tribe. Even if he stayed as a witch doctor, he could only improve and modify ordinary witch medicines based on his knowledge from Earth, but he would ultimately only be an ordinary witch doctor.

Thinking about whether he would ever have the chance to leave the mountains of Python Tooth Ridge and see the outside world, or even the faintest chance to return to Earth and reunite with his family, Chen Xun felt a deep sadness.

Seeing Chen Xun lower his head in silence, Zong Ya knew what he was thinking. He peeked out the door, seeing no one passing by the hut, and told Chen Xun:

"During the meeting in the stone hall, Grandpa said you have done a great deed this time and should be accepted into the tribe. In the end, Uncle Nan Liao and the others reluctantly agreed to let you participate in the soul sacrifice in three days. If you gain the recognition of the ancestral spirits during the sacrifice, you will be taught the martial arts techniques."

"But I am not a member of the Black Python Tribe. How could I possibly gain the recognition of the ancestral spirits of the Black Python?" Chen Xun smiled bitterly.

Although Chen Xun had not practiced the secret techniques of the Black Python Tribe, he had learned some basic principles from Zong Ya.

Not to mention Python Tooth Ridge, even the thousands of savage tribes around Mount Tu all had the blood of the ancient savages in their bodies. However, after tens of thousands of generations, the blood of the ancient savages in most people's bodies had become very diluted.

The early stages of martial arts training mainly involved physical endurance and strengthening the blood and qi. After awakening the martial soul, one truly entered the first step of martial arts training.

Only by awakening the martial soul could one truly activate the mysterious power of the ancient savage blood, refining the muscles, bones, and flesh.

When the physical body was refined to the point of transformation, the martial artist could condense the first drop of ancient savage blood, and the martial artist would become a powerful and invincible Heavenly Savage.

The Black Python Tribe was once a famous large tribe in Python Tooth Ridge, with dozens of stone villages and tens of thousands of people. They even built a city in the wilderness south of Python Tooth Ridge. However, thirty years ago, the last Heavenly Savage of the Black Python Tribe fell, and the tribe quickly declined. The remaining members were driven to the deep mountain stone village north of Python Tooth Ridge.

Chen Xun had no idea what the soul sacrifice was, but he knew that he had been brought to this world from Earth for no apparent reason and had no connection with the ancient savage blood of the Black Python Tribe. How could he possibly gain the recognition of the ancestral spirits of the Black Python and awaken the martial soul?

Zong Ya scratched his head, not knowing how to explain it to Chen Xun, but he told him Grandpa's words:

"Grandpa said that all things have spirits, and all human races in the eight wildernesses are descendants of the gods and demons, with a common origin. Grandpa said that this is an opportunity you deserve, and whether you can succeed or not, you must try to know."

No matter how slim the chance, as long as there was a chance, Chen Xun had some hope.

"Grandpa said he would find you when he has time to talk about this. Don't tell him I already told you." Zong Ya was afraid of being scolded by Grandpa and gave Chen Xun an extra warning.