Chapter 33 – The length of a finger (1/2)

Translated by Sunyancai

People in the tribe resumed the usual pace of life after the hunting team had left.

However, compared to last year, it was quite different with the bustling by the riverside. After experiencing the initial fear of the unknown creatures in the river, people began to tend to be less afraid of water creatures because of the benefits brought by the big-mouthed piranhas.

It turned out that the creatures in the river were not so dreadful. One could capture enough food as long as one stayed careful.

Kids in the orphan cave lived a stable life under the management of Tu and Ba. Every day they would go fishing, and with the food provided by the tribe, had grown much stronger than before. They also became more and more united as time went by. They had to be united, for each and every single person’s capacity was limited after all, so they had to act as a unit in order to be dominant when fishing.

As for stone worms, Shao Xuan would take Caesar to dig some up every two days, after which he asked the kids in the orphan cave to store them for later use.

However, stones could never trap stone worms. Someone had tried to store stone worms within a stone jar, only to discover the jar broken and the stone worm gone the next day. However, Tu made an important discovery from this accident. Wooden jars and straw ropes could trap the worms better than stoneware. Even though the stone worms could not be kept for a long time, they could definitely be trapped for one or two days, preventing Shao Xuan from having to go to the orphan cave every day.

It soon became routine for Shao Xuan to search for stone cores at the training ground in the mornings, and, in the afternoons, go to old Ke’s place to learn crafting skills.

Over ten days passed, and Shao Xuan felt that he had much more strength than when he had newly-awakened. He became more skilled in controlling his totemic power, and could switch the two kinds of powers inside him more freely.

It seemed that learning stone crafting skills had many benefits to mastering totemic power.

Shao Xuan went through the woods like a nimble monkey, heading towards the place he had chosen yesterday. As his figure went by, the branches shook slightly, as if blown by a slight breeze.

Caesar ran behind him.

Being still within the range of the area guarded by warriors from the tribe, Shao Xuan did not worry about the presence of some ferocious beasts, yet controlled his sound on purpose in preparation of future hunting missions. On many occasions, warriors were required to move in silence as they had to approach the game quietly and hide their presence. A slightly larger noise could easily disturb the beast they were after, or draw some other fierce beast’s attention.

In the several mountains of the training grounds, Shao Xuan saw many newly-awakened kid like himself, including Sai.

“Hey, is that Ah-Xuan?” Sai’s father questioned, watching the figure flash by. For normal people, Shao Xuan was very fast and hard to see, but for an experienced warrior who had been awakened for a long time, he could be spotted easily.

Sai was constantly jumping with a giant stone in his hands and had jumped over a hundred times already. By the time he looked in the direction his father was looking, Shao Xuan had already disappeared.

“What are you looking at? Continue jumping!” Sai’s father hit him on the butt with a stone stick and yelled, “You are worse than Ah-Xuan, who is two years younger than you!”

“Why do you say that?” Sai was obviously not convinced.

“Hey, how dare you talk back at me? It’s what I say it is! Now continue to jump and you may only rest when you’ve jumped two hundred times!” Sai’s father hit him twice more with the stick as he spoke.

“I’m already at a hundred and seventy two!” Sai had calculated in his mind and knew he only had to jump another twenty-eight times. He was happy about that and wondered whether to hunt for flying stone squirrels, or to find some snacks. He wondered whether he could still find that green fruit that tasted crispy the other day.

Sai swallowed his saliva as he thought, but suddenly he heard his father shout again, “Do you take me for a fool who could never calculate correctly? You’ve only done hundred and twenty-seven! You have to jump another seventy-three times!”

Sai was so angry that he nearly tossed that giant stone away. However, his father was like that. He was never wrong, so Sai had to admit defeat no matter what. He would get beaten up by his father if he argued.

Fuck!

Sai could not blame his dad, so he blamed Shao Xuan instead, planning to vent his anger later.

Shao Xuan, on the other hand, was not aware that he was hated again, and kept looking for fine stones as usual. There were a lot of stones in the training grounds, but those that could be used to craft into stoneware were quite rare. Even when he relied on his special ability to sort out different levels of stones, it still took him a lot of time to find acceptable ones. This was because sometimes, even fine stones might not be suitable for carving. Every morning, Shao Xuan would spend a few hours selecting stones, after which he would take back those which had fine quality and were suitable for carving.

After these days of learning from old Ke, Shao Xuan had made big progress in identifying different stones. He no longer saw all the stones at the same level as he had in the past.

When Shao Xuan was looking for stone cores, Caesar would dig holes in the mountain or catch flying stone squirrels out of boredom. So every time Shao Xuan finished selecting stone cores, he would find a few dead flying stone squirrels lying beside Caesar’s feet.

Sometimes, Shao Xuan would feel sorry for Caesar. He was a wolf, yet he was kept by Shao Xuan in that way.

In the afternoon, Shao Xuan went to old Ke’s place with the selected stone cores.

Old Ke taught Shao Xuan how to determine the best striking angles and striking surfaces of a stone, and which kind of stone was suitable for being crafted into which kind of stoneware. Then, old Ke watched as Shao Xuan carved off stone flakes while he sat beside him.

Shao Xuan took a hammer and started striking and carving after he took off his animal skin jacket and became topless.

For the first few days, Shao Xuan’s animal skin jacket was soaked in sweat after he finished striking. Water would come out with just a little twist. So later on, Shao Xuan would take off his jacket and put it aside when he was working, so that it didn’t get smelly.

Ding!