Yan Mo thought that he’d get a lengthy lecture, but Yuan Zhan and Meng said two paragraphs and that was it.
As he understood it, the content of their words were basically:
When a warrior finds that somewhere on his forehead is getting hotter one day and stays hot for some time, that means that they will upgrade soon. If they do upgrade, they will feel that their five senses have become sharper than before and their body’s strength and speed will improve as well. Naturally, they will be a stronger fighter. If they fail to upgrade, there’s no difference from before, they won’t feel any changes.
If they can’t figure out if they have upgraded or not, they can ask someone else to check their face after three days. This was because there will be an obvious change on their faces after they upgrade. Within three days of a successful upgrade, a mark of tattoo will naturally appear on said warrior’s face. The tattoo will look different for each tribe.
The forehead again!
It looked like the pineal glands of these native people were serving a mysterious function. Can he infer from this that the reason his world’s modern people don’t have powers is due to devolved pineal gland?
He had itched to gather those people with self-proclaimed superpowers, open the brains and check their insides. Too bad he had never realised that wish until he left his world. If he had gotten his way he would know now whether those people’s pineal glands look different from the average people.
What to do? There’s that desire to dissect Yuan Zhan’s brain and check it thoroughly again.
As if sensing danger to himself, Yuan Zhan asked again, “Can i go out now? My body is getting wrinkly.”
“No. There’s ten minutes left.” For his own convenience and usage, Yan Mo had spent these two days instilling the commonly used terms for time and measurements into their heads. He didn’t care whether they really understood it.
Yuan Zhan didn’t know how long ten minutes was. In short, he could only keep soaking in medicine until the boy agreed to let him out.
To wave away the desire to dissect someone, Yan Mo could only ask another question to satisfy his curiosity. “Where did the warrior training method come from?”
“You don’t even know this?” Meng was puzzled, “Didn’t your priest or someone in your tribe tell you?”
Yan Mo tried hard to remember, and something flashed through his mind. He quickly grasped onto that memory. “The training method is related to the three cities?”
“Yeah.” Meng nodded and told Yan Mo an old story that every warrior in Yuanji can’t be more familiar with.
The story was that a long time ago, someone had come to the area claiming he was from the three cities’ holy temple. He told several tribes the training method for warriors in exchange for a large quantity of beast bones. What these tribes had in common was that they could understand the messenger’s words, or at least they understood the rough meaning.
When these tribes trained using that person’s training methods, many of their warriors became stronger, that’s how the legend of the three cities spread.
“Why did he want so much animal bones?” Yan Mo, being the conspiracy theorist he was, didn’t think for a second that the three something messenger was doing it from the goodness of his heart. The other party should have gained a lot more than what he had paid.
Meng shook his head, “Don’t know.”
“So many bones, how did that person take it away?”
“Don’t know.”
“Did he come alone? How did he get here? Did he walk or ride a horse or some other special means?”
Meng looked at Yuan Zhan with a plea for help.
In the name of friendship, Yuan Zhan stopped his family’s slave from torturing his companion. He waved his hand, “Don’t ask him more. I don’t think even the old priest Qiu Shi knows any more details, that was before our clans merged. I only know that before my clan’s priest died, he told us if there is a level five warrior in the tribe, they can head to the three cities. But no one knows how to actually go to the cities, and no one has ever reached level five to this day.”
“Really?” Yan Mo felt that something was strange. He fell into deep thoughts. “Tell me the training methods you have, don’t leave out any detail. If this method is really as useful as the story said, why haven’t any of you broken through level five?”
Yuan Zhan’s face changed, “You mean, there’s something wrong with that three cities messenger’s training method?”
Yan Mo didn’t dare guess what actually happened, “From what I’ve seen, your bodies are capable of reaching level three even with some common or normal training. That training method hasn’t helped your warriors reach fifth and above levels, not even producing that many level four warriors. To be honest, having this training method isn’t much different from not having it. Though I don’t know how you guys train, I think what that messenger gave you is an exercise method and can train soldiers, but it’s a beginner level plan that’s been modified.”
Yuan Zhan and Meng didn’t know what army and soldiers were, but they understood the general meaning of those words. Both of them frowned as they thought about the story again.
After this conversation, two more days passed. Today was the eight day after the snow first fell.
The weather was not bad today, Yan Mo didn’t want to spend it tanning the animal skins. He dumped them all to Er Meng and ran off to the salty marsh to pick up seepweed seeds that hadn’t fallen to the ground.
The seepweeds of this world were more cold-resistant. They stayed stark red even after the snowfall. Not many plants had shed their seeds and were wilting, but Yan Mo guessed that the rest of the fruits will fall after one more bout of rain or snow.
Yuan Zhan had a smooth upgrade and his body was recovering well. He felt bored at the house so when he saw Yan Mo heading to the marsh, he ran after him.
The boy was working hard to gather those five-angled fruits so Yuan Zhan who was behind him also picked the fruits, he gathered them on his fur skirt.
Not knowing why himself, Yan Mo turned around, and saw the young man next to him. He knew that there’s a meaning behind those tattoos on his face, but never expected that the tattoos were not etched by human hand, and naturally created by the body.
The young man had three identical little black triangle patterns lining up neatly on his left cheekbone. And two days ago, there were only two triangles there.
Feeling the boy’s gaze on himself, Yuan Zhan turned his face around so he could see clearly. “People of my tribe believe these triangles represent the earth and the lines of mountains.”
“Then that round cyclone-like mark on Meng’s left cheek with three wavy lines making a vortex, what does that represent? Wind? Speed?”
“Cyclone? Vortex?”
Yan Mo explained those words and Yuan Zhan laughed. “Really looks like that. Should be wind, ba. In our stories, the Feisha clan are descendants of the wind god and a desert king scorpion.”
Man with scorpion? Alright, it’s God and scorpion… He really shouldn’t be surprised.
“Then that means, Meng might awaken wind ability in the future?”
“He might.” Yuan Zhan suddenly took the boy’s hand. Yan Mo felt the atmosphere was strange and was about to wriggle away his hand when Yuan Zhan put the seepweed fruits he had picked into Yan Mo’s hand.
Yan Mo looked at the small fist of seepweed fruits in his palm without a word to say. After a few moments of silence, he stored all the fruits in his healer pouch.
Yuan Zhan pulled on his animal skin clothes and continued to pick fruits. “Not everyone can awaken their tribe’s blood ability before becoming a warrior and becoming a warrior doesn’t mean you’ll definitely awaken your ability. But the fact is there’s a higher possibility of awakening after becoming a warrior and reaching higher levels. Our chief is like that, he suddenly awakened his ability when he got to level four.”
“Oh? What type of ability did he get?”
“His eyes.”
“Eyes? You mean eyesight? He can look farther away? Ah right, Bing seems to have a good eyesight too.” Heiyuan people might be good at being archers.
“More than that.” Yuan Zhan looked like he didn’t know how to explain, He thought for a bit before saying, “For the chief, our movements are very slow. For example if I hit you now you might not even see it coming. In the chief’s eyes, not only can he see the move of a fist coming at him, it’ll look very slow to him. As long as he moves faster than me, he can hit my face before my fist hits him.”
Hm? Isn’t this like a hawk-eye system? Yan Mo’s hands felt itchy. He really wanted to slice open that chieftain’s eyes and see what’s inside.
“Move out from Jiu Feng’s nest, stay in the house.” Yuan Zhan suddenly said.
Yan Mo’s hand paused. He felt a hand rubbing his butt, and in this place there’s no such thing as underwear…
That means, he really guessed right about his gaze that day, didn’t he?
Yan Mo didn’t avoid his touch and didn’t swat that hand away. He only said in a bland manner, “Do you want to be a chieftain? Chief of a tribe that belongs to you.”
The rough hand stroking him paused. “A three-people tribe?” There was self mockery in his voice.
“We can think how to pick a few people from Yuanji, like the group, Lie or Cao Ting.”
The hand left Yan Mo’s butt. “I also want to. But Yuanji tribe is too far from here, we will spend a long time if we go back. They can’t come over during winter, unless Jiu Feng is willing to carry Lie and others over.”
“There’s no way Jiu Feng will agree. I’m already surprised he brought you two here to accompany me.” Yan Mo suspected that the others had to be either down or dead when he first saw Jiu Feng catching these two back. He only found out that the others were okay after asking the two. They had found something that seemed like a salt mineral that had come out to the surface. They were planning to take some pieces back so that the priest can have a better look at them. If they can get salt out of the rock, they will try to completely control that area next spring.
So if there were no other incidents, they would have arrived at the tribe already.
Yuan Zhan was just talking without thinking, he didn’t actually mean it. If Jiu Feng went to pick Lie and others, the warriors would definitely attack the moment Jiu Feng appeared above the tribe. No matter whether Lie and others were brought back in the end, the battle between the bird and Yuanji tribe will cause many deaths in the tribe.
“Even if there’s no way to take the Yuanji people over, it won’t always be just the three of us.” Yan Mo didn’t want to bring the Yuanji people over in the slightest. At least, before he had a firm foothold and his own power, he couldn’t. Those people’s respect for the strong overwhelmed everything else. If they arrived here before he’s strong enough, they would definitely usurp him. He’s not planning on handing over any of his work on a silver platter.
“You want to go out and look for other tribes?” His hand was back on someone’s butt. Little slave’s body was warm, it felt good to touch.
“En.” Yan Mo endured and endured. He’s not in the position to fall out with the owner of this shit hand.
“You want to subdue a tribe with just the three of us?” Yuan Zhan was a very realistic person. “Maybe Jiu Feng can join the fight, but, do you want tribesmen or slaves?”
Yan Mo didn’t plan to use force at all. Even if he did it would be just to scare them, not to hurt them. “We have our brains to make plans, we can try reaching out to weak tribes with no salt and food…”
“When they find out we’re only three people, and we have this big salt lake and forest, those weaklings will turn into wolves in one second!” Yuan Zhan himself was going to turn into a wolf any second now. He wanted to push down his little slave, his future priest-daren.
Yan Mo leapt up. “You’re right, that’s why I want—”
“Cheeeirk——!” Before Yan Mo could finish, Jiu Feng’s screech came from above. His call wasn’t shrill, but it pierced through the air. It sounded like he’s warning and scaring something off.
It happened again. He can understand what Jiu Feng’s screech means, “Those two-legs came again! I’ll drive them away!”
If this wasn’t his mind playing tricks, if what Jiu Feng called two-legs was humans, then the ones coming were… humans?!
This is really a pillow arriving when he wanted to sleep! Did his luck turn for the better? Yan Mo turned around in high spirits and ran to the direction Jiu Feng flew off to.
Yuan Zhan glanced at his hands that were inches from touching the little slave. Suddenly he wanted to kill a bird.
Edited by Silversun
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