I am a Primitive Man
Chapter 910: The Divine Son — “Holy crap!”
A great battle erupted between humans and monkeys, ultimately ending with the humans’ retreat.
Amid the monkeys’ swaggering display of dominance and their excited chittering cries, the humans carried away large quantities of fruit and continued southward.
They walked as they ate, leaving a trail of orange peels behind them.
The sweet-and-sour taste of the oranges made everyone feel an urge to turn back and start throwing stones at those monkey troops again.
However, when it came time for dinner that evening, they all discovered the price of eating too many oranges.
At dinner, many people found their teeth aching from the sourness and didn’t dare bite hard on their food…
While the people of the Green Sparrow Tribe sat around a fire in their temporary camp, eating and savoring the sharp, lingering sensation in their teeth, firelight was also flickering inside a building in Jincheng.
Led by the older female primitive, several people sat around inside the room.
A pottery jar set over the fire was steaming, the fragrance of food wafting through the room as everyone eagerly waited for it to finish cooking.
After a while, the older female primitive stood up and put wild vegetables into the pottery jar.
Then she walked into an inner room and brought out a container commonly used by their tribe, something resembling wood. From it, she poured out some white substance.
This white substance was not pure; it was mixed with considerable dirt and impurities.
But clearly, the older female primitive and the others didn’t care about that at all.
As soon as she poured it out, everyone’s gaze in the room converged on her—more precisely, on her hands.
Looking at the white substance in her palm, their eyes became especially eager.
Some couldn’t help swallowing several mouthfuls of saliva.
They all knew very well how delicious food became once this white substance was added.
The older female primitive moved with extreme care, afraid of spilling even a little.
This substance was extraordinarily precious, just as precious as the small number of pottery vessels in their tribe.
It was so valuable because neither of these things could be produced by their own tribe; they had been exchanged from other tribes at the cost of large amounts of food.
Because they were scarce and required such a high price, they cherished them greatly, moving with utmost caution—afraid of breaking the pottery, and even more afraid of wasting the incredibly precious and delicious substance in her hand.
She carefully extended her palm over the steaming pottery jar and let the precious substance fall into it, gently patting her hand back and forth so that as much of what clung to her palm as possible would fall cleanly into the jar.
After finishing this, she repeated the same action, adding roughly the same amount of the white substance into another steaming pottery jar.
Then she carefully sealed the container holding the white substance and returned it to its original place.
While she was doing this, a male primitive squatting by the fire—responsible for tending the flames and checking whether the food was ready—picked up a long-handled container tied to a pole and dipped it into the jar, stirring the food to make it evenly mixed.
He then handed the long-handled container to the older female primitive as she came back out, so she could ladle the delicious food into other containers.
Before long, everyone was eating the exceptionally tasty food.
All of them, including the older female primitive, ate with great greed and enjoyment.
Not only did they completely finish both jars of food, but they also rinsed the cooking pots and the containers they ate from with water over and over, and drank every last drop.
Because the white substance was so precious, they couldn’t eat food seasoned with it every day; they could only enjoy it once in a while.
That made it all the more delicious.
Night fell. Stars sparkled in the sky. Outside, it was pitch black, but inside, thanks to the fire, it wasn’t very dark.
After eating, everyone quieted down, lying in small groups on dried hay.
No one spoke. They lay silently, savoring the meal’s wonderful taste.
Many fantasized about how wonderful it would be if they could eat such delicious food, made with that white substance, every day.
They would be unimaginably happy.
But they knew this was impossible because exchanging for that delicious white substance would consume far too much food. Their tribe simply didn’t have enough to trade for so much of it.
Thinking of this, many couldn’t help letting out long sighs, feeling deeply disappointed…
Early the next morning, after eating, they once again left the slave yard of Jincheng under the older female primitive’s leadership, carrying tools and heading elsewhere to continue gathering food…
Meanwhile, among the mountains that looked as though a paint palette had been overturned, Han Cheng and the others—also having finished breakfast—had packed their gear, shouldered their backpacks, carried weapons and tools, led their livestock, and set out from the temporary camp to continue southward.
Those oranges that burst with juice when dropped had all been finished the day before.
Remembering the painful sourness from eating too many oranges, everyone behaved much more cautiously this time and didn’t dare eat large quantities.
Some people even developed aftereffects—just seeing the oranges made them start salivating…
As the sun rose and set, stars shifted across the sky, and time quietly passed amid autumn winds and steady footsteps.
The vast mountains that once seemed insurmountable were gradually left behind with each step…
“Whew—”
Seeing the terrain suddenly open up before them, Han Cheng and the others all let out long breaths.
Even though this wasn’t their first time traveling this route, passing through here again still filled them with joy.
At this moment, Han Cheng suddenly understood why this place was called the “Land of Abundance.”
It wasn’t only because Li Bing and his son had tamed the raging waters of Shu by building irrigation works like Dujiangyan, turning a flood-prone land into fertile fields.
Another reason was the stark contrast before and after.
After crossing mountains and ridges, suddenly discovering such a vast expanse of flat land, anyone would feel compelled to praise it.
“Let’s go! We’re heading down!”
After standing there and looking into the distance for a bit, Han Cheng took a deep breath and spoke to everyone.
Fresh out of the mountains, everyone was energetic and excited. At Han Cheng’s words, they all cheerfully followed him into action.
Before long, they descended the small hill and reached the plain, wading through tall, old grass as they continued southward.
In high spirits, they walked much faster than usual, covering significantly more ground by evening than on previous days.
Judging by the markers they had left before, they would reach Jincheng around midday the next day.
If not for the lack of roads like a “bronze highway,” making nighttime travel unsafe and easy to get lost, Han Cheng might even have pushed everyone to travel through the night…
“Let’s go! At noon, we’ll eat at Jincheng!”
The next morning, after breakfast and packing up, Han Cheng stood there and called out loudly to everyone, his emotions clearly excited.
After so many days on the road, they were finally about to reach their destination, and everyone felt eager with anticipation.
At his words, they all responded in agreement and unconsciously quickened their pace, following their Divine Son toward Jincheng, which was now not far away.
They were eager to build it up as quickly as possible and to plant rice on a large scale…
At almost the same time that Han Cheng and the others were thinking of Jincheng, the older female primitive and her group also walked out of the slave huts at Jincheng.
“@#4E4…!”
The older female primitive spoke excitedly, and those listening couldn’t help but grow excited as well.
Before long, they all took their tools and hurried off together, following the older female primitive, each one brimming with energy.
This was because, just the previous afternoon, while gathering fruit, they had discovered a large patch of these delicious little fruits in a place some distance away.
If they could gather all of those fruits, it would provide a major safeguard for their lives once the weather turned cold.
These small fruits were what their tribe most liked to collect before winter.
Not only were they very tasty, but more importantly, they could be stored for a very long time—even until the next year, when flowers bloomed, and trees grew thick with leaves, they would still not spoil.
Because of this, whenever they stored fruit, they always prioritized collecting these small fruits.
Now that they had discovered so many at once, how could they not be happy?
Driven by high spirits, they hurried along, quickly leaving the slave yard of Jincheng far behind until it disappeared from sight.
The slave yard then became completely quiet, with no one left behind.
Normally, someone would stay to tend the fire and watch over the rice laid out to dry, but this time, because the newly discovered patch of tasty fruits was so large and so far away, everyone went together, and no one stayed behind.
Still, they were quite safety-conscious. Before leaving, they covered the burning fire in the room with ashes and moved everything nearby aside, so the flames wouldn’t spread and burn down their living place after they left.
This had another benefit as well: embers covered in ash were less likely to go out.
If the trip didn’t take too long, when they returned and brushed away the ashes, they might still find embers that hadn’t fully extinguished.
All it would take then was adding some dry grass and blowing on it a few times to reignite the fire—much faster than starting a new one by drilling wood.
These were bits of life experience they had accumulated over long years of living.
“We’re almost there!”
The sun rising in the east gradually slid across the sky, and before they realized it, it had moved from the east to the south.
As time passed, Han Cheng and his group kept closing the distance to Jincheng.
Gradually, the surroundings grew increasingly familiar.
Coming to a large tree with some of its bark stripped off, Han Cheng spoke excitedly to everyone.
Because they were nearing their destination, no one stopped there; they continued southward.
After walking a little further, they could see the slave yard from afar, standing on slightly higher ground.
“Look! That’s Jincheng! Those are the houses we built last time!”
Someone in the group who had come with Han Cheng before and helped build here pointed excitedly at the buildings and spoke to everyone.
Already moving quickly, the group sped up even more and advanced rapidly toward it.
Many people’s thoughts had already flown to the miraculous crops—rice and sweet millet stalks.
As for Han Cheng, his heart had long since flown to the rice they had discovered in the wetlands; he was itching to skip the slave yard entirely and lead everyone straight there to see the rice.
But reason prevailed.
After all, everyone was still carrying many packs and supplies; taking all that wouldn’t be convenient. It was better to put everything down at the slave huts first and then go lightly equipped.
They had already waited this long; a little more wouldn’t matter.
With that thought, the Green Sparrow Tribe group, led by Han Cheng, quickly closed the distance to the slave huts, with Fujiang the dog trotting along beside Han Cheng.
“Holy crap!”
Even though Han Cheng’s self-control was usually excellent and he rarely swore, at this moment, upon seeing what lay before him, he couldn’t help but curse.
It wasn’t that his manners failed him—there were simply no other words that could express his feelings right now.
Li Taibai’s refined “Yi xu xi!” was far too elegant for this situation.
Following his gaze, they saw that the open space in front of the slave yard—which should have grown wild with weeds after their departure—not only hadn’t grown any weeds at all, but instead had large quantities of rice laid out there to dry!
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