The Primitive Adventures of a Chipmunk 43

Chapter 43

“—Yong, Hong Yong, come up quickly, the Lord Priest is calling you!”

The wind was biting, and the river water was bone-chillingly cold. It took courage just to scoop water to wash your face in the morning, but a group of beastmen, as if they couldn’t feel the temperature, were soaking in the frigid river, repeatedly lifting their back baskets.

They had probably just gotten in the water. The beastmen were full of energy. After watching from the bank for a short while, Hua Shi’an had already seen them catch three fish. The sound of water and cheers were endless, completely drowning out the sub-beastman’s shouts.

Finally, with a shout that used all his strength, the busy beastmen heard the commotion.

Hong Yong looked around, and seeing the small team of four on the riverbank, he raised an eyebrow, casually tossed the back basket in his hand into the water, and then waded through the river and rushed to the bank.

With a damp, watery vapor and a biting chill, the stern beastman was like a gust of wind. In the blink of an eye, he was standing in front of the crowd, looking down at Hua Shi’an. “Lord Priest, why are you here?”

“Yo, you only see the Lord Priest in your eyes? Aren’t we people?” The numbness in his mouth had passed, and Yan Zhile was back to his old self, his mouth full of sarcastic jokes.

At these words, Hong Yinglan quickly gave him a meaningful look and sucked in a breath of cold air for him.

Having belonged to the same Red Pine Tribe, she knew very well that this young hunting team captain looked cold and aloof, but in reality—he was even colder, with a very bad temper.

The air froze for a moment, and no one spoke. Just as she thought the beastman was about to explode, Hong Yong suddenly smiled, turned his head, and greeted the three of them as well.

Before Hong Yinglan could recover from her shock, Hong Yong lifted his chin, his gaze intentionally or unintentionally sweeping over the not-so-full back baskets behind them, and asked again, “You guys haven’t been out for long, have you? Why are you back so soon? Did something happen?”

Yan Zhile immediately nodded. “That’s right! Something happened, a great thing. Guess what we found in the forest—”

“Stop messing around.”

Chang Yueyue couldn’t take it anymore and said irritably, “As soon as your mouth is better, you start chattering non-stop. Take a break. Let the Lord Priest say the important things.”

Realizing his mistake, Yan Zhile pinched his own mouth with two fingers.

His little actions were quite cute. Hua Shi’an’s peripheral vision swept over him, and he let out a soft laugh.

Business was important. After laughing, Hua Shi’an looked up and met Hong Yong’s gaze, his expression instantly serious. “It’s like this. We found traces of mountain goats a little deeper in the pine forest. The four of us definitely can’t catch a mountain goat, so we came back specially to tell you. We wanted to ask if you’re confident in catching one, and if you want to take the hunting team to look for it.”

“Mountain goats?” Hong Yong’s pupils contracted sharply, and he was instantly energized, asking one question after another, “How many? How big? What do they look like? Are they the same kind of mountain goats we caught before?”

Goodness, his reaction was quite strong. Hua Shi’an quickly waved his hands. “Calm down first. I said traces of mountain goats. We only found their droppings. We didn’t see the mountain goats themselves.”

Hong Yong frowned. “Are mountain goat droppings very special? How do you know the droppings you saw are definitely from mountain goats?”

“Yes, mountain goat droppings are very special.” Hua Shi’an endured the discomfort and roughly described them to him, then added, “Most importantly, we found the droppings around a Sichuan peppercorn tree.”

Hong Yong: “What’s a Sichuan peppercorn tree?”

“A newly discovered plant. We’ll talk about that later.” Hua Shi’an continued, “Sichuan peppercorns are beneficial to some animals. Some wild beasts will specifically look for Sichuan peppercorns to eat by smell, and mountain goats are one of them. Combined with the Sichuan peppercorn tree, and the size and shape of the droppings, I guess it’s nine out of ten a mountain goat.”

Having become the captain of the hunting team at such a young age, Hong Yong was not a hot-headed fool who made decisions on a whim.

After hearing Hua Shi’an, he nodded thoughtfully, then raised a new question, “Even if it really is mountain goat droppings, who knows when those droppings were left?”

“No more than three days.” Hua Shi’an was about to touch his nose, but his hand inexplicably froze in mid-air. He coughed lightly to relieve the awkwardness. “I touched them. Although they were hard, they weren’t that hard, and the smell was obvious.”

“T-Touched them?” Yan Zhile couldn’t help it. His little face contorted in undisguised disgust. “Lord Priest, you actually touched mountain goat droppings?”

Hong Yinglan was also taken aback. “Why would you touch them? Those are droppings.”

Sub-beastmen didn’t understand the ways of hunting, but Hong Yong knew them all too well.

When they went out hunting, they often picked up wild beast droppings to track them by their hardness and smell. The Lord Priest had never hunted before, but he actually knew this method. And the key was that he wasn’t afraid of getting dirty and used his hands directly…

The beastman’s gaze towards Hua Shi’an underwent a subtle change, with admiration, worship, and a hint of almost imperceptible affection.

It was an unintentional act. Hua Shi’an was just too lazy to explain. Unaware of the beastman’s overthinking, he looked at the dazed Hong Yong and lifted his chin slightly. “So, what do you say? Want to take a gamble?”

He was a young beastman after all. Although he had his concerns, he was not lacking in courage. Hong Yong no longer asked any more questions and decisively nodded. “Let’s go!”

“Everyone in the hunting team, get your things and come ashore, quick!”

Hong Yong turned his head and shouted to the river. As soon as he finished speaking, the tall and sturdy beastmen in the river, like wild horses crossing a river, rushed ashore with their back baskets and their meager harvest.

Without any preparation, without any tools or weapons, Hong Yong led a group of beastmen who had just emerged from the water, unarmed, and followed the small team of four into the forest.

Why does this feel a bit unreliable? Hua Shi’an muttered in his heart.

Since coming to the Giant Tree Forest, besides the fish in the creek, the hunting team had only caught one green iguana. Could such a makeshift team, with half its members missing, really catch an agile and alert mountain goat?

Lowering his expectations as much as possible, Hua Shi’an had already prepared for a fruitless effort. But when he entered the forest and found the inconspicuous Sichuan peppercorn tree, he suddenly saw hope again.

After countless outings, the beastmen of the hunting team had a perfect tacit understanding.

Hong Yong walked around the Sichuan peppercorn tree once. Without a word, he just raised his hand above his head and waved it forcefully. In an instant, the group of beastmen disappeared, and in their place were small, cute squirrels of various shapes and colors.

The harmless squirrels were like a group of well-trained hunting dogs, small but not weak. Without needing any command, they scattered in an orderly fashion. The smaller ones leaped onto branches and climbed up large trees, while the larger ones quickly squeezed into the bushes, using their flexible beast forms and keen sense of smell to search for traces of prey in the jungle.

Born of this jungle, they were extremely fast. In just a few breaths, the group of squirrels had perfectly blended into the jungle and disappeared completely. The rustling of the wind blowing through the leaves gradually faded, the bushes swayed, and a few fallen leaves occasionally drifted down from the sky.

The surroundings returned to silence. Hua Shi’an finally reacted and quickly called the sub-beastmen to squeeze into the bushes with their back baskets. “It seems they didn’t plan to take us with them? Let’s go. They went that way. Let’s follow and see.”

“Lord Priest.”

Before he could take a step, Hong Yinglan grabbed his hand and stopped him. “The hunting team is looking for prey. If they really find it, they’ll definitely start hunting right away. If we follow them like this, won’t we scare the prey away and disrupt their plans?”

“Oh, right!” Hua Shi’an, who hadn’t thought that far, was stunned.

“Then what do we do?” Yan Zhile’s heart was itching. He also wanted to follow and see.

Chang Yueyue: “Let’s just forget it. The hunting team has its own hunting methods. We shouldn’t cause trouble. Let’s just wait for them here.”

“How can we do that?”

He had thought it was Yan Zhile who had said that, but when he turned his head, he saw that the person who had spoken was actually their Lord Priest.

Hua Shi’an took off his back basket and placed it on the ground, putting his coir bag and stone knife into it as well. And then—the slender, black-haired young man disappeared, and a small, furry chipmunk looked up and chirped.

“Oh, right!” Yan Zhile was overjoyed and quickly took off his back basket. “They have their beast forms, and so do we! Let’s follow and see. We just won’t get too close.”

“I almost forgot. Quick!”

“Are we really going to follow the hunting team? It’s so, so exciting.”

The back baskets and hoes were placed under the Sichuan peppercorn tree. The little squirrels’ four legs were a blur as they squeezed into the bushes.

The beastmen were too fast, and they had been delayed by the Sichuan peppercorn tree. Now, they couldn’t even see their shadows. But after turning into a squirrel, Hua Shi’an clearly felt… his nose was even more sensitive than a dog’s.

The earthy smell and the smell of rotten leaves in the air became crystal clear, and the scent left by the animals also became clearer, including the one left by his companions not long ago.

Following the scent, they didn’t have to worry about getting lost. The four little squirrels were full of energy.

They ran for a long time, through the bushes, through a large birch forest. The ubiquitous giant redwood trees gradually became fewer, and it was as if they had strayed into spring, arriving at a forest of evergreen cypress trees.

The cypress trees were tall, and their lush green canopies blotted out the sky. The bushes growing freely in the forest were particularly lush. The scent of their companions was getting stronger. They were clearly nearby, but their vision was blocked by the layers of branches and leaves, and they could barely see anything.

Led by the chipmunk, the four little squirrels climbed up a tall cypress tree as if on flat ground. From a high vantage point, without the annoying branches and leaves, they easily found the companions they had been chasing, and also—the prey they had been longing for.

The little squirrels were not very well hidden, or rather, they weren’t hidden at all. About twenty meters diagonally ahead, the squirrel team was in pairs, each occupying a cypress tree. They lay quietly on the trunks, their gazes firmly locked on the bushes below.

It seemed they had found the prey’s lair. In the unusually lush bushes, a large patch of white was particularly conspicuous. It was like a thick layer of snow that had fallen in the harsh winter, furry and thick.

It was a large herd of mountain goats. Both male and female, each had sharp ibex horns on its head. Unlike the mountain goat that had fallen into the trap, this herd of goats was large, with thick fur, and at the same time, their aggressiveness… was almost non-existent.

These were red sheep, also known as Siberian ibex. They had a gentle temperament, were naturally timid, and were typical social animals. Some were huddled together sleeping, some were wandering around, and some were grazing with their heads down. Hua Shi’an roughly counted, and there were at least twenty of them.

Red sheep had a characteristic. There was usually a sentinel sheep in their herd, specifically responsible for keeping watch. Once it sensed danger, it would release a signal, and then—run, the entire herd would flee together.

And at this moment, with the hunters hanging above their heads, the naturally alert red sheep did not sense any danger. They were in a state of extreme relaxation, eating and sleeping as they pleased.

Are they not afraid of people? No, they were not afraid of squirrels.

A red sheep had already discovered the squirrels on the tree trunks, but the small, harmless little squirrels were like a few buzzing mosquitoes to them, posing no threat at all.