Volume 1: Farming Chapter 7 Uncle Ashan
The brother who ate all the wild vegetables was named Niu Jiao. This name can well represent the casualness and unconventionality of the snow wolves in naming... After the biological mother gave birth to the child, she just named the child whatever she liked . There was no meaning or blessing in it.
This detail clearly shows the difference between the Snow Wolf people's culture and human civilization. In survival, the Snow Wolf people, who are not naturally the biggest enemy, have not developed a sacrificial culture and totem worship out of awe of nature like humans. They do not believe that their lives are controlled by some unknown god and are relatively natural nonbelievers. When Xiao Yun thought about this from his own name, his uncle's name, and Brother Niu Jiao's name, Xiao Yun, as the successor of communism (in his previous life), naturally deepened his identification with the Snow Wolf people... If he were thrown into a tribe with an old priest who could tell who could die, Xiao Yun would probably think about escaping all day long.
In addition to this advantage of not being superstitious, there are many things about the Snow Wolf People that Xiao Yun can agree with. For example, their social form is still in a very primitive tribal form, that is, there is no particularly clear concept of a small family. The entire tribe is a big family. If something happens to the biological father or mother of a child in the tribe, for example, the original owner Ayun's mother was a tribal warrior who was borrowed to fight and could not come back, then the child would be raised by the tribe. They have a strong habit of protecting their own people and will not exclude, expel or abandon their fellow tribesmen because of paternal or maternal blood issues.
The tribe that Xiao Yun belongs to is now raising four orphaned cubs (including the original owner Ayun). Two of them are a few years older than Ayun, and one is a few years younger than Ayun. When Niu Jiao was dealing with a wild boar in the open space in the middle of the tent circle, the three children who went out to pick up cow dung came back together.
Cow dung is an important fuel. Snow wolves are resistant to cold, but that doesn’t mean they like to be cold. Especially in autumn, in order to prepare fuel for the winter, they must collect cow dung as much as possible. This job is not easy on the grassland, because the pastures of the snow wolves are very large and far away from the tribe. They are likely to be attacked by wild beasts on the way back and forth, so they will not be allocated to the original owner Ayun and the nanny Sal...
Xiao Yun squatted outside of Sal's tent and silently observed the three snow wolf children who had just returned. They used a trawl made of some vines and grass to pull back a mountain of cow dung, and were piling it on the open space outside the tribe. To be honest, if it weren't for the original owner's few memories, he would not have dared to believe that these were actually snow wolf cubs - each of them was about the same height as his cheap uncle Ashan, only slightly different in muscles. Even the kid who was a few years younger than the original owner Ayun and should be only fourteen at most this year was of the same character... Being surrounded by such a group of perverted brothers, it was impossible not to understand the original owner's inferiority complex and self-abandonment.
What's worse is that the youngest kid is a female... Although there is no trace of feminine curves on her naked and dirty upper body, the animal skin she uses to cover her butt is larger than others, and there is a layer of something that should be linen inside the animal skin... The Snow Werewolf Tribe cannot weave cloth, so even the roughest cloth is valuable, and females are given priority in the tribe.
Of course, there is an exception in this werewolf tribe now. If Thrall, a human, had been shirtless like the werewolves, he would have frozen to death in the winter, so most of the cloth in the tribe is wrapped around him...
Xiao Yun suddenly thought of something and looked up into the distance outside the tent circle. The sky was very blue, with few clouds on the horizon. The monsoon on the grassland seemed to be dispersing the water vapor floating in the sky... The climate on the grassland was not the temperate climate with four distinct seasons that Xiao Yun was familiar with. This place seemed to be at a higher latitude, with dry and long winters. The earth was covered with heavy snow for at least four to five months every year. The long winter would increase the difficulty of hunting, and the cold-resistant snow wolves would not have an easy time in winter.
He put on the clothes of a snow werewolf and did not feel cold even though he was only wearing animal skin underwear. But judging from the reaction of Thrall, who was wrapped up thickly and did not dare to go out, the average temperature on the grassland should be below 15 degrees now, which means that the long winter is not far away from him.
"The snow werewolves are resistant to cold, perhaps this is just their optimistic view. From the original owner's memory, there seems to be no old people in the snow werewolf tribe. Snow werewolves who have passed their prime often die in the winter of that year... Could it be that they consumed too much vitality to resist the cold when they were young, and once they are past their prime, they can no longer bear it, and their lifespan has come to an end?"
Xiao Yun pressed his fingers on his forehead, thinking about the survival problems faced by the snow werewolves. Don't say it, you won't feel it unless you think about it carefully, but if you think about it carefully, it's quite shocking: the snow werewolves will also wrap themselves in fur to keep warm after it snows, but the fur owned by the tribe he has seen is completely different from the finished fur coats sold on Earth - without considering the comfort of wrapping the roughly processed animal skins around the body, it is not reliable to rely solely on fur to resist the cold weather without wearing warm cloth clothes inside.
"The relatively wealthy Tiger Tribe and the Minotaur Tribe in the southeast of the grassland that is good at planting have elderly people. It is impossible that the Snow Wolf Tribe does not have an elderly population... I remember that farmers also overdrawn their vitality to work, and the average life expectancy of the poor masses was only in their forties... The longest-lived Snow Wolf could only live to sixty or seventy years old at most. They are essentially the same, right?"
"Then the first thing to solve is the problem of running with fruit. Regardless of whether my guess is right or not, overdrawing vitality to resist the cold is not a good idea. When there is no way to replenish energy consumption with sufficient food, keeping warm is the top priority."
Xiao Yun made up his mind, stood up and walked towards the three snow werewolf cubs who were piling cow dung.
"Wool...wool."
Xiao Yun thought for a long time but couldn't find the names of these three peers from the original owner's memory. He could only wave and greet the only little snow wolf girl whose name he could call out.
Yangmao, who was piling cow dung on top of the dung pile, looked at him in surprise... To be honest, this little girl named Yangmao really gave people a sense of gender confusion. A characteristic of a teenager's body is that it is slender. This tall and thin little girl with long arms and legs looks like a handsome male supermodel popular in Europe and the United States... Especially since she was only wearing relatively elegant animal skin shorts, her exposed strong limbs and flat and thick chest had a wild beauty between a teenager and an adult man...
"Ayun, what's wrong?"
The original owner probably had never dealt with these people of his own age, and the tone of his reply was obviously a bit strange.
"Well, you still have to go to the ranch to pick up cow dung. I'll go with you." Xiao Yun tried to be as natural as possible.
The three werewolf boys all showed incredible shock on their faces at the same time...
Xiao Yun: “…” How lonely is this autistic child of the original owner in normal times!
"Can't I go?" Xiao Yun pretended to have a pitiful expression as if to say, "I really want to play with you guys."
"Ah, we can go, let's go together!" The three snow wolf boys had never seen the tactic of playing hard to get before, and nodded hurriedly.
Xiao Yun secretly made a scissors hand gesture and immediately blended in... uh, participated in the labor and helped build the cow dung pile.
The original owner should have had a mental illness, but the people in this place... probably don't even know what psychology is, let alone understand what mental illness is. So there is no one to comfort him or help him return to normal life. The society of the snow werewolves is relatively simple, and they will not force the cubs of the tribe to do things he doesn't want to do. Over time, the original owner became the most special existence in this tribe - others don't approach him, and he doesn't deal with people other than his uncle.
But in fact, with the simple and completely straight-line thinking of the Snow Wolf Man, getting along with them was not a problem at all. Xiao Yun helped to pile up the cow dung for a while, and told a few teenagers about the delicious wild vegetables he found when he went out hunting alone, which even the Bull Horn praised. This immediately aroused the interest of the teenagers. Before he could make any suggestions, the three Snow Wolf Man teenagers volunteered to find wild vegetables together. There was no doubt or objection at all...
Of course, for a city kid like Xiao Yun, whose rural life experience is limited to winter and summer vacations, it still takes some mental preparation to directly touch cow dung with his hands. However, after discovering that cow dung is not as smelly as the snow wolf manure (……), it doesn’t matter anymore…
After piling up the cow dung, the four young men walked towards the pasture together. Niu Jiao, an adult snow wolf who was cooking a wild boar, just glanced over here and didn't say a word to stop Xiao Yun from going out - snow wolves don't have such delicate nerves to be overprotective.
The herding experience passed down from generation to generation has taught the Snow Wolf people that cattle and sheep cannot be kept on the same piece of land all the time. If they eat all the grass roots, the land will become wasteland next year. So when Xiao Yun followed the Snow Wolf boys to the place, he did not see any cattle or sheep. He only saw vast grasslands after grazing, with a much lower density of green plants and livestock excrement everywhere.
"It's impossible to find wild vegetables in a place that has been ravaged by more than 2,000 cows and sheep..." Xiao Yun muttered inwardly, and turned to fool the young men, "We can pick up the cow dung later, why don't we look around first to see if there are any wild vegetables?"
The few Snow Wolf boys probably had never dropped their work to do "idle things" before, so they were a little hesitant. Xiao Yun thought about it and added, "Wild vegetables are like wild fruits. Eating them won't make your teeth bleed or your mouth ulcer. Some wild vegetables can even cure diarrhea. Eating them won't cause diarrhea."
Xiao Yun was not kidding. Snow wolves who ate meat for a long time all had some symptoms of vitamin deficiency, such as bleeding gums, severe stratum corneum on the skin, mouth sores and other minor ailments. Plantain could indeed cure dysentery. What was more troublesome for him was how to make these young people believe what he said.
"Really?!" Several young men's eyes lit up, "Okay, okay, then let's go find some wild vegetables!"
Xiao Yun: "..." You don't have any doubts about this word in your mind, right? !
This small snow werewolf tribe has a total of 32 members including Xiao Yun, including four children. In addition to the original owner Ayun, the other three are usually responsible for some simple and less dangerous work.
Among the remaining people, including the original owner's uncle Ashan and Niu Jiao who hunted the wild boar, there are a total of five snow wolves with strong combat capabilities who can serve as warriors to go to the battlefield when necessary. These five people usually do not participate in grazing work, but specialize in hunting around the tribe and driving away stray foreigners (those who have combat capabilities and will threaten the tribe members, but Thrall does not count).
The remaining 23 tribesmen are the main laborers for herding... After all, they have to look after more than 2,000 cattle and sheep on a prairie full of dangers, and fewer people cannot do it . The tribesmen in charge of herding will take turns to come back every day, half of them will eat and rest in the tribe, and when there is other work in the tribe, they will also draw people from the herding people to ensure that there are at least five adult snow wolves looking after the grassland where the cattle and sheep are.
Ashan, who had just found his nephew, was in charge of patrolling the area near the grassland that day. The tribe had just arrived at this southwestern border, and the large wild beasts around had not been driven away. When Ashan, carrying a longbow, trotted up a low hill, at the end of his sight, a determined scorpion-tailed lion was lying on the edge of the primitive jungle in the west, staring at him.
This scorpion-tailed lion was driven away from the grassland by Ashan. It was an adult scorpion-tailed lion. Ashan could not catch up with the opponent's speed when he was not using wolf form, so he could only drive it into the forest. Obviously, this former grassland beast was not willing to give up, and it was still wandering around after more than ten days.
Ah Shan raised his hand and pointed at the beast with fierce eyes from a distance, not caring whether the beast could hear him or not: "Don't come near the pasture, or I will kill you even if I have to starve you for two days."
At such a long distance, the manticore certainly couldn't hear Ashan's voice, but the beast's instinct still made it sense the danger, so it retreated back into the jungle with its tail between its legs.
Ashan pulled the longbow and walked down the hill, continuing to patrol the surroundings. This area had abundant water resources and was second only to the territory of the Tauren, but it was too close to the primitive jungle and was infested with wild beasts, so it was not favored by other tribes... This was not a big problem for the snow werewolves. They always protected the cubs of the tribe very well, and the cubs who were responsible for grazing were also watched over by their biological father, the Mother Goddess, at all times.
As he walked, Ashan was pleasantly surprised to find a fruit tree. He quickly looked at the landmarks around him, noted the location of the tree, then climbed up the tree, found the intact fruits from among the many empty shells pecked out by birds, and carefully wrapped them with the animal skin wrapped around his waist.
The Snow Wolf people didn't know what vitamins were, but they knew that not eating plants for a long time would make them sick, so even though they didn't like to eat them, they would plant black beans. If they saw wild fruits, they would not let them go - fruits that had been pecked by birds were definitely edible, and they would not even bother with poisonous fruits that birds would ignore.
A bag of wild fruits was more popular with the tribe than catching a wild animal. After collecting wild fruits, Ashan had completed his mission ahead of schedule. He walked back happily with the animal skin bag on his back. When he passed through the grassland during the recuperation period, he was shocked to find that his nephew, who never played with others and made him worry a lot, was actually walking in front of him with the cubs in the tribe, dragging cow dung, and his laughter could be heard from a distance.
Ah Shan rubbed his eyes to make sure he saw it right, and quickly ran to catch up: "Ayun?"
"Ah, uncle." Ayun had a smile on his face when he turned around to look at him.
"..." Ashan was dumbfounded, and suddenly moved. He stretched out his big hand like a palm-leaf fan, grabbed Ayun's head and stuffed it into his arms. Since Ayun became sensible and discovered that she was weaker than the other tribesmen, he had not seen Ayun so happy.
Xiao Yun struggled hard: "......!!"
"Yangmao, why don't you bring Ah Yun with you to pick up cow dung?" Ah Shan was extremely happy. "You must remember to bring Ah Yun with you in the future."
"Uh..." The snow wolf girl Yangmao was holding a large bundle of wild vegetables tied with straw in her arms. She looked at Ayun who was struggling desperately, then looked at Ashan who was smiling happily, and swallowed her saliva, "Uncle Ashan, Ayun doesn't seem to be feeling well..."
"Huh?" Ashan quickly let go.
Xiao Yun's face turned pale and he staggered back a few steps. He firmly raised his thumb and compared it to his uncle: "You are worthy of being Uncle Ashan, what a great move you have to kill my sister in his arms..." He rolled his eyes and gave up.
Before he fainted, Xiao Yun swore that he would force all these wild snow wolves to take a bath before he made a woolen sweater...
