“Aside from the red grass, there’s…… a lake? Is that lake’s light red from the blood of the sacrifices?” Yuan Zhan asked.
Yan Mo looked at him in surprise, “You don’t know that that is……” Ah, it would be weird if they know. He almost forgot what colour of salt they eat in the Yuanji tribe.
People in the Yuanji tribe probably only know salt as that type of dark yellow crystal-like rocks.
“That is what?” Without knowing why, Yuan Zhan felt that this is an extremely important thing. He stared at the boy and asked more.
Yan Mo didn’t answer the question right away and first said, “We can’t leave this place. Because even if we run away now, we still have to come back in the future.”
“Come back? Why?” Meng also moved closer and asked.
“Because… there’s salt here.”
His short reply shocked the two warriors.
Yuan Zhan was the first to react, he grabbed the teen and demanded, “Where’s the salt?”
“Haven’t you seen it already?” Yan Mo brows knitted together. This boy’s grip was really strong.
If not because I need him to do hard labours…… A certain someone pressed down his dissatisfaction.
Yuan Zhan’s head snapped to the red-purple lake with a force that made one think he would twist his neck off.
Meng hadn’t realised it yet, he looked all around, “Seen what? Where is the salt?”
“That’s called red salt.” Yan Mo pointed to the lake and calmly explained, “Do you see those crystals? Those are unrefined, you can eat it directly and the side effects from that salt crystal’s toxins is about the same as the salt Yanshan tribes offer. But if you add it to certain water and repeatedly boil and refine it, you can get fine salt that doesn’t have other smells. Fine salt… As long as you eat it once, you will understand its benefits.”
Yuan Zhan and Meng didn’t understand some of Yan Mo’s words, but they understood what the whole paragraph meant.
Meng was stunned and in disbelief. He pointed at the boundless lake ahead, stammering, “Y-you mean… All tha-that transparent rocks around the lake are all salt?”
“No.” Yan Mo shook his head.
Meng exhaled. Ah, he knew it! If all those rocks around the lake are salt, will they still need to use salt sparingly? They can just put in a whole bunch whenever they eat.
Yuan Zhan was not as simple-minded as Meng. He recalled the ocean the little slave told them before. What about this place? Could this lake’s water be…
Yan Mo confirmed his speculation, “In addition to those crystals, all the lake’s water can crystalise into salt if you dry them in the sun.”
“What?!” Meng felt lightheaded. “You mean that big, big… big lake, all that water can become salt?”
Yuan Zhan looked very calm, except for his slightly trembling hands.
Meng’s reaction was the most genuine and direct. He couldn’t believe it. He followed behind Yan Mo like a tail and kept repeating, “Really? Is this real? There’s really so much salt? You’re not lying to me, are you? Maybe… Maybe I’m already dead, mountain god ate me and I’m dreaming now.”
“If you’re already digested how can you still fucking dream?” Yan Mo got annoyed with his pestering and broke into curses.
Meng clutched his hair with both hands, his face still looked dazed.
Yan Mo could understand Meng’s state of mind. As someone who had lived in the modern era, salt was nothing rare. But for the people native to this era and place, don’t mention getting some of this salt, just seeing such a big salt lake can make them so happy they can drop dead.
Now that Yuan Zhan had calmed down a bit, his brain started to turn as quickly as usual, “A salt lake this big in this place, there’s no way no one had discovered it before. If no one had ever found it then that means there are no other tribes around here within five days’ walk.”
“What if someone had discovered it?”
“Occupy it.” Yuan Zhan confidently said. “But there’s no trace of other people at all. No tent marks, no marks of paths in the grasses. That proves that even if someone knows there’s a salt lake here, no one dares to get closer.”
“Because of mountain god Jiu Feng.” Yan Mo muttered.
Yuan Zhan nodded, “Yes. Because of mountain god Jiu Feng.”
Yan Mo’s face pulled down, “That’s why we can’t just run away like this. If we make Jiu Feng angry by escaping, we can’t hope to come back or get any salt from here again. By the way, are you hungry? Since we’re not running away, why don’t we find something to eat?”
Yan Mo didn’t know when the silly bird would come back. Having these two big guys here and not using them was such a waste. He happened to want to explore the marsh where the seepweed grows.
This abrupt change of topic that came out of nowhere turned Yuan Zhan silent, Meng on the other hand got excited. He had already seen the fish swimming around in the stream, what made him excited was, he can smear salt on his fish today!
And so, when Jiu Feng came back with a horned bull in his claw and a stem of fruits in his beak, he saw the three two-legs he had trapped had gotten out of the thunder’s mouth shrubs.
However, none of the three two-legs ran away. They squatted together on the clearing in front of the stone pillar, busy doing something.
How did they get out? Jiu Feng was amazed.
“Around here, aside from those things you call seepweed, there’s only thunder’s mouth and wild grasses. How do you want me to get twigs to make drill?” Yuan Zhan felt exasperated by the little slave’s pickiness. Why couldn’t he just eat it raw? It’s just a bit fishy smelling, it’s already good he got something to eat.
“There’s rocks here.” Meng picked up two pieces of broken stones from below the pillar, presenting it like precious treasures to Yuan Zhan.
Yuan Zhan bared his teeth, “Too small! Can’t be used!”
Meng pushed Yuan Zhan away and curiously moved closer to Yan Mo, “Xiaomo, what are you doing?”
Yan Mo wiped his sweat and said rather flippantly, “I’m using salt crystals to make a convex lens, when I was little I’ve used a convex lens to light a fire on toilet paper.”
“Xiaomo, what are you talking about?” Yan Mo’s words made Meng feel all confused.
Yan Mo sat down on the ground and threw away the salt crystal. He plopped down with legs opened wide, not caring that he’s not wearing a thread now. “So exhausting. Trying to make convex lens out of this is really too fanciful. So many impurities, the transparency is low. Even if I managed to make one, the effect won’t be that good. I quit. Give me the fish, eat it raw! Even if there are parasites, just think about it later.”
Yuan Zhan and Meng both looked up, and jumped out preparing to defend and attack though they already lost their spear.
Yan Mo was a step slower to notice the shadow on top of his head. When he looked up he immediately saw a huge horned bull dripping with blood.
*Thump!* The sound of that heavy thing hitting the ground made one feel that the ground was also shaking.
Having dropped the horned bull, Jiu Feng circled the three people from the sky with the fruit still in his beak.
Yan Mo instantly jolted up and shouted to the other two, “Give up resistance, don’t let out any intention to attack, relax!”
Giving up resistance and alert was easier said than done. Yuan Zhan and Meng who had suffered in the hands of Jiu Feng know in their mind what Yan Mo said was likely to be the correct choice of action, but they’re still afraid this mountain god human-faced bird-daren would swoop down and peck their eyes or slash open their skulls.
“Jiu Feng! Mountain god-daren, this way!” Yan Mo ran to another space to the side, looking up and waving at the bird from time to time, while running farther from the two.
This counted as saving others, didn’t it? One person had to give him -50 points if not -100 points!
Jiu Feng was staring at the new two-legs below him. Then he caught the little two-legs’s voice, and he saw the little two-legs slowly getting farther from this place, so he didn’t care about the other two big ones anymore and went after the little one.
Yan Mo looked at the human-faced bird descending to his side from the air. He carefully inched closer to the bird folding away his wings. “You’re back. We didn’t run away, we only came out to look for food. You also know, we were hungry.”
Jiu Feng didn’t understand little two-legs’s words, but seeing him continuously rubbing his stomach and opening and closing his mouth, Jiu Feng guessed that he’s hungry. He stretched his head down to deliver the fruit on his beak to the little two-legs’s mouth.
The interaction between the huge human-faced bird and the boy shocked Yuan Zhan and Meng.
The young boy Yanmo was not only not afraid of the human-faced bird, he also dared to stroke the bird’s bead after taking the food.
“The mountain god really had acknowledged him.” Meng mumbled.
At this moment, Yuan Zhan felt something strange inside him. What he felt was like pride, and also like sullenness when a good thing was going to be taken away by someone else.
Yan Mo looked at the large pieces of fresh beef that Jiu Feng wanted to share with him and licked his lips. If only he can light up a fire.
Jiu Feng looked at him with a tilted head, “Gruuru, gruruu.” Aren’t you gonna eat? This just died, not rotten yet.
“Fire, I want fire.” Yan Mo mimicked the sound of thunder and lightning with his mouth, his finger pointed at the ground then made a movement like there was a burst of fire there.
Jiu Feng: “Gruruu, ruuru.” Do it again, do it again!
Yan Mo did it a few more times and even went through the effort of changing the final movement, trying to make the other party understand what was “fire”.
Jiu Feng happily bent down and picked the most tender part of the horned bull. He tore it out and gave it to Yan Mo as a reward.
Yan Mo held the piece of meat dripping with blood, stood in silence with streaming tears for a few seconds before resolutely burying his teeth into the meat.
On the other side, Yuan Zhan and Meng who had been thrown into the middle of the thunder’s mouth bushes watched as Yan Mo was forcing himself to eat, and just drooling over the food.
Hungry Meng made a ruckus, “Xiaomo, throw a handful here, mountain god-daren doesn’t even give us a piece of hair! He also took all our fish! Xiaomo, there’s no way you two can finish that big bull, ah!”
Yuan Zhan sat in the open space, not saying anything. It’s not that they couldn’t go out, but every time they did, Jiu Feng would fly over and sweep them back into the clearing with a flick of his wings.
After getting burned several times, they had become well-behaved, and didn’t try to go out after Jiu Feng had pushed them in again.
When mountain god-daren was full, he generously gestured that the leftover meat was for the little two-legs. Yan Mo looked for a chance to give them the meat he had torn out with his hands and teeth. Only then did they have something to fill their stomachs.
At nightfall, Jiu Feng took Yan Mo back to the nest. This time it was not the nest on top of the pillar but his other nest on a cliff wall.
While Yuan Zhan and Meng were left there, surrounded by the thunder’s mouth bushes, forgotten by the mountain god-daren……
Edited by Silversun
Comments