Chapter 83 – Going back (1/2)

Translated by Sunyancai

“Ku Sha Roots, Flowing Blood Leaf, the Seven-Forked Palm, Blood Veins Flowers…”

While Ta, Tuo, and the others were counting the plants that they had already captured, Shao Xuan was counting the days that they had been out hunting. If you calculated carefully, you’ll realize that it was time for them to head back home, for every hunting trip had its time limit.

Ever since they had captured the Green Thief, people in the hunting group would always set a few traps before night fell. However, there was no harvest at all. No useful thing was caught ever since. It was indeed pure luck that helped them capture the Green Thief the other night.

Meanwhile, for the days after, Shao Xuan had been following the team here and there all day long. He was not so helpful with the tasks, given his fighting ability. However, he required no babysitting from the others. In fact, Shao Xuan was more than helpful to the team since he could take care of himself.

These days, Shao Xuan had encountered quite a lot of mysterious things. One time, they almost confronted the Tearers when they were trying to find a plant called the Seven-Forked Palm.

The Seven-Forked Palm was an odd plant. When it senses danger, it would close up the thick bark-like leaves, and warp its core into a hard solid pinecone, while secreting some Tearer-attracting liquid. If the hunting group had been hesitant for even a second, they would have been besieged by a large group of Tearers.

Meanwhile, Tuo had finished the counting.

“Compared with the harvest from our last hunting trip, this we found two kinds of plants less,. However, this time we found the Wind Ball and the Green Thief, which are incomparable, thus guarantees this time’s hunting mission to be a huge success.”

Judging from his facial expression, Ta was also quite relieved. Indeed, they had achieved more in this hunting trip. “We’ll count the species again when we reunite with Ah-Wei. Perhaps they have found the other two species.”

Wei was a senior totem warrior who was almost the same age as Ta. Since the advance group was divided into two smaller hunting groups, he led the other two dozen warriors.

Ta then said to the others, “Let’s get some rest today. Tomorrow we will return.”

“Understood, boss!” said the people. They already felt quite eager to go back home, and they looked forward to sharing their experiences with the other teammates in the advance group, as well as their relatives in the tribe.

Shao Xuan also couldn’t wait to go back home, but not because of the Green Thief. He wanted to head back soon because he had some bird eggs in his animal skin bag.

Today, instead of staying in the tree hole, they were staying in a new place for the night. In order to find the plants on the animal skin roll, they had to sleep at different locations. The other night they were sleeping in some leaves, which meant that they had to roll the leaf with themselves inside, and spend the night while in that leaf. The plants leaves were ham-like. Although they were supposed to be pointing up to the sky, twenty-one of its leaves were rolled up and hung there. Each leaf roll had a person sleeping inside.

Tuo said that the peculiar plant had a repellent effect against bugs, and it was also on their hunting list. Warriors would roll themselves up with its giant leaves when they could not find a proper shelter to stay at night. By doing that, they could avoid being attacked by the nocturnal insects. However, it was not doable in the day, for the leaves on that plants would always become hard and impossible to roll during daylight.

This was a very fancy experience for Shao Xuan. As for the bird eggs in his animal skin bag…well, he planned to bring them out as an experiment.

Most of the plants would die when brought out of this forest. Then what would happen to the bird eggs?

The plants in here were quite abnormal, would the insects and bugs also be peculiar since they diet on the plants? Furthermore, could it be speculated that the birds should be more special, since they diet on the fruits and insects? Perhaps the birds contain more nutritional value or medicinal efficacy? Then what about their eggs?

The shelf life of raw eggs was longer than the cooked ones. Shao Xuan did not cook those odd-looking bird eggs as well, since he assumed the same theory would work for them.

The second day, Ta led the group to run back to the rendezvous, where they met the other hunting group. Someone was wounded on their side. Luckily, it was not severe.

The other twenty warriors were totally stunned when they heard about the Green Thief, with their eyes fixed on the stone box covered by the leaves. They wanted to open it and see for themselves, however, all of them knew it at heart that it was not the time.

They took a lift on the backs of the giant dragonflies when they came here from the top of the mountain, and they would be needing their assistance on their way back.

When the sun almost set, all warriors in the advance group waited at some place. One of them climbed up high on the top of some tall plant to scout the location of the army of dragonflies. After all, each return route was not absolutely fixed.

“Over there! Hurry!”

“Hurry, hurry, hurry! Or we won’t make it today! We don’t want to wait until tomorrow!”

Shao Xuan did not have to carry those boxes with plants inside, instead, all his luggage was in his animal skin bag. So compared to the others, he could travel light.

At that time, all of the warriors hurriedly ran towards the direction of the dragonflies in order to catch the lift in time. Shao Xuan felt like as if he were in his former life, catching a bus. Alas!