Chapter 821: What Era Is It? (1/2)

Amidst the croons of blessings, a hunting party from Ning Village once more headed into the forests of Qingqiu Mountain at the break of dawn.

There were approximately two hundred households in the village, and fifty men in the hunting party. The hunters were the strongest and most well trained in the village, and Ah Zhuang was their leader and the overall number one expert of Ning Village.

Lu Yun was allotted a longbow, ten feathered arrows, and a broadsword of fine iron. He wore a wicker basket on his back and brought up the rear.

Elderly craftsmen in the village had forged the bow and arrows, while the broadsword had been obtained through trading with others around the foot of the mountains. The broadsword in particular displayed exquisite workmanship. Its rows of delicate patterns weren’t just a decorative motif, but runes that referenced the laws of nature and imbued the weapon with strength to hew through obstacles. For Lu Yun, these runes were uncommonly useful.

Ning Village practiced a fledgling form of agriculture as they raised livestock—it wasn’t the completely primitive society he’d gathered at first glance. It was just that hunting was still the village’s preferred way of life.

……

“Hoi, Shan! You look all soft and gentle like, and you have a Tushan fox for a spirit creature pet. You’re from one of those big villages outside, aren’t you?” Ah Zhuang looked roughly three meters tall [1] and bulged with rippling muscles that felt like chiseled rock. He slapped Lu Yun’s shoulder hard, throwing him off balance and stumbling forward, almost falling flat on his face.

The men around them laughed uproariously to see Lu Yun’s discomfort, but he could tell that there wasn’t any derision in their laughter. They just honestly found things funny.

He panted a few times and shoved the broadsword into the wicker basket behind him, eliciting a round of protest from the little fox.

“Brother Ah Zhuang, I’m not with you guys to join the hunt. I can’t use any of the things you’ve given me.” He smiled ruefully.

“Take them, take them. How can a man be without a blade?” Ah Zhuang responded solemnly. “Dangers in the mountain aren’t limited to just those deadly beasts, there’s also a lot of wandering thieves and roving robbers. You’ll have to protect yourself if you run into robbers!”

Lu Yun nodded with resignation. What the village people meant by hunting was to check the traps they’d laid out yesterday and then set things up again. Actual chasing of game was in the rarity.

“Hush!” A man with a tanned face, so lean that he lacked any fat whatsoever, suddenly made a gesture. “This is the territory of the pixiu. We need to cross it silently so we don’t disturb it.” [2]

“Pixiu?!” Lu Yun’s eyes went wide. This was a divine beast long extinct in the world of immortals. Born with great strength, it could kill scaled-dragons and rip other divine beasts apart. Some primitive tribes even worshipped the pixiu as their totemic figure.

There are pixius here? He trembled, finding it very likely that he’d actually arrived in an exceedingly ancient era. However, he still didn’t know what point in history he’d landed in.

The fifty men slowed down their pace and stealthily crept past pixiu territory.

“Yip yip yip!” Curled up by Lu Yun’s shoulder, the little fox called softly at his ear.

“You say the pixiu noticed us a long time ago and has been observing us?” Though the little fox couldn’t speak, Lu Yun somehow understood her meaning. She nodded, then started miming again.

“What is she saying?” Ah Zhuang walked up curiously to them.

“She says that pixiu is the village’s guardian, that it’s the reason why the savage beasts in the mountain haven’t attacked Ning Village.” Lu Yun was a bit doubtful of what he’d translated.

According to some ambiguous texts and Zhaoqing’s memories, the pixiu were extraordinarily ferocious divine beasts. They swallowed people alive by the dozens, but this one was… the village’s guardian?