Chapter 6 – Troublesome (2/2)

Fishing and hunting were often combined, and since there wasn’t much luck in fishing, the tribe mainly relied on hunting, added by the lack of domestication and farming. That was also the main cause of the food crisis within the tribe.

Food is the cause of everything. Children in that cave were already slobbering after Caesar as he walked around with all the meat under his skin.

“What should I do?” Shao Xuan sighed again, and he began to blame the old Shaman who had given him a patterned plate, then never showed up again.

People, especially kids with no totem power were forbidden to go into the black swamp, or enter the waters, but no one said anything about wolves. So once in awhile when they were nearby, Caesar would go to the black swamp to find something to grind his teeth, for example, some odd beetles living there. Time after time, the guarding warriors would turn a blind eye to Caesar’s coming.

Animals have sensitive instincts for danger, so naturally Caesar would only wander around the edges, for he knew the black swamp was filled with risks.

This time, Caesar came back with something in his mouth. When he got near, he spat out a black lump in front of Shao Xuan.

It was some worm that Shao Xuan had never seen. Unlike the beetle last time, this worm was much softer and was as big as Shao Xuan’s palm with a flat oval shape. It had many thin and long feet, and it was as black as the swamp.

When it was in Caesar’s mouth, it used its feet to poke at Caesar’s nose.

Caesar had taken back a few worms in the past, perhaps he was doing it for entertainment. After all, there were not many creatures that could be found nearby the tribe. And chasing rabbits only existed in his dreams. It’s pretty sad that Caesar, a wolf, had to deal with worms all the time.

Just as Caesar was trying to recapture the fleeing worm, Shao Xuan discovered that the worm spread out large quantities of black bubbles from its mouth and the bubbles covered the worm as a whole. Caesar did not like those bubbles, so he had to let go of the worm.

The black bubbles gathered and finally it was as large as a football with the worm in its center. Caesar circled around the ball made from bubbles yet did not bite. The bubbles must have really tasted bad, because obviously, Caesar hated them.

About fifteen minutes later, Caesar gave up on the worm inside the black ball, and turned back to look for some stone worms in the gravel yard.

However, Shao Xuan was quite interested in that worm, so he pulled out his stone knife and poked onto the ball. Surprisingly, soft black bubbles became hard and crisp as time went by. And the black “football” broke into halves at Shao Xuan’s poking. The worm hidden inside ran out in panic and fled toward the black swamp. It had shrunk by more than half and now looked shriveled.

Shao Xuan squatted down instead of chasing the worm and took a careful look at the “ball”, which had already been broken into two pieces.

By picking up the half spheres with the stone knife, Shao Xuan found out that the two parts were pretty light in weight, and it required some strength to crush.

After working on one half-sphere and eventually crushing it, Shao Xuan set his sight on the other half. He called back Caesar after some time thinking, and walked towards the river with the intact black half-sphere.

Even if the tribesman came to the river, they too would only carefully move about the shoal, as the shoal was still considered safe.

Of course Shao Xuan was not looking for trouble, so he remained at the shore. God knows what kind of weird creatures were in the waters. He was just going to try an experiment with the half-sphere, to prove his guess.

Shao Xuan untied the straw rope he had on his waist, and tied one to the end of the black half-sphere, with the other end being held in his own hand. He then tossed the black half-sphere into the waters.

As expected, the black sphere-half floated on the surface of the water.