Crossing to Live in the Wilderness Plains 157
Chapter 157
Chen Qi brought back his backpack and called the two females who were going back to continue their guard duties to sit down. Now that everyone was busy hunting, there were not many females guarding the wall.
“Have you had breakfast?” Chen Qi asked as he took the food box out of his backpack.
As soon as the food box was opened, a strong fragrance spread out. Although the others had already eaten breakfast, they couldn’t help but swallow their saliva as they stared at Chen Qi’s food box.
“Yes… yes, roasted fish this morning,” one of the females said, covering his lips with his fist and coughing lightly.
Because he had been woken up too early and didn’t want to overthink, Chen Qi had made himself busy with something, so his breakfast today was quite rich.
The wooden food box was large, containing several bowls of steaming tofu pudding. There was also a bowl of ginger syrup for seasoning; they only needed to add it according to their taste to eat directly.
After harvesting the millet, part of it had already been dried and shelled. Chen Qi had originally wanted to brew some millet wine, but since the yield wasn’t large, he had to give up that idea for now. He had never eaten millet rice before, so today he used a little of it with some freshly picked wild vegetables to cook a pot of vegetable porridge.
The rest were fried dough sticks he had just tried making. Since there were no eggs or yeast, they hadn’t puffed up well — they were flat and small after frying, not fluffy and appetizing like the ones he used to buy from breakfast shops.
Although they didn’t look great, the fried food smelled delicious. Chen Qi had already tasted one right after frying; it was a little hard, but still crispy and decent enough. He planned to let others try them too.
He took out a few clean cups from his backpack, then pulled out a bamboo tube filled with soy milk and poured each person a cup, inviting everyone to eat together.
Crossing to Live in the Wilderness Plains (CLWP) is translated by Betwixted Translations. The site you’re reading this chapter on stole our translation.
In front of the food, the beastmen hesitated only briefly before sitting down unceremoniously. They had all eaten Chen Qi’s food before. Although they sometimes tried to imitate his cooking, the taste of the same ingredients was worlds apart. So whenever Chen Qi came up with something new and offered it to them, the beastmen of Qi Ze City were always delighted.
Of course, they never ate Chen Qi’s food for free. Sometimes they helped him with small tasks, and sometimes when they went out to gather wild fruits or caught extra prey, they would bring some to him.
“Isn’t this stuff fried with meat?” Ye Huo asked, biting into one of the misshapen fried dough sticks.
“It’s made from the powdered pulp of rice berries. If you like, I can teach you when you have time.”
Since learning to read and write, Ye Huo had spent most of his time studying. In cooking, he had only learned a few ways to handle fish. Sometimes the fish tasted better when simply grilled, so he didn’t bother experimenting further. As a result, he and Ale ate very simple meals every day. Seeing Chen Qi make so many different dishes just for breakfast surprised him greatly.
“Is this hard to learn?” Ye Huo glanced at the two boxes of carved wooden characters at his feet, a conflicted look in his eyes. He was currently focused entirely on studying the script and barely had time for cooking. Ale was either out hunting or patrolling every day and had no time to learn this either. Even if Chen Qi offered to teach him, Ye Huo didn’t dare to agree right away.
“It’s not difficult — just a bit troublesome in the preparation stage.”
Ye Huo sighed. “Then I’ll learn it when I have time after winter.”
Chen Qi nodded.
The other two female guards said nothing. They didn’t have mates, and their main duties were hunting and defense. Although they loved eating Chen Qi’s food, they didn’t care much about food when eating alone. Their current cooking skills already made food taste much better than before, so they had little interest in dishes that took too long to make. Being able to enjoy a shared meal occasionally was already satisfying enough.
The females ate quickly; by the time Chen Qi was halfway through, they had already finished. After briefly cleaning up their bowls and chopsticks, they returned to their posts to continue their guard.
After breakfast, Ye Huo took out the paper and dye-fruit mixture again to continue printing the Thousand Character Classic, while Chen Qi took out a needle and thread to bind the printed pages together.
Because he had work to keep his hands busy, even though Chen Qi occasionally let his thoughts wander and looked out toward the plain beyond the city, a morning’s time was enough for the two of them to finish making the last two copies of the Thousand Character Classic.
Crossing to Live in the Wilderness Plains (CLWP) is translated by Betwixted Translations. The site you’re reading this chapter on stole our translation.
At noon, the females on defense duty didn’t need to go home to cook lunch; Ali had already prepared it and brought it up for everyone.
Chen Qi took out two copies and handed them to the two females on guard duty. Then he gave Ali the dozens of bound books and asked him to distribute them among the rest of the tribe.
Ali picked up a few books and flipped through them. Even though the words inside were identical, he still found it a little amazing. “With this book, everyone should be able to learn the characters much faster.” Ali carefully packed the books into a cloth bag. “Lately, the ones learning to read have started exchanging their daily diaries. Many of them, while writing, have to run all the way to the city gate to look up words. Once they have this book, they’ll be really happy.”
“Exchange diaries?” Chen Qi asked in surprise. He had suggested that the beastmen could try writing down what they saw each day, but he’d never mentioned sharing their diaries with others. He hadn’t expected them to come up with that idea themselves.
“En.” Ali nodded.
“At first, it was because Ajing wrote something about Ayao in his diary. Ka Luo wanted to read it, but Ajing said that if he wanted to see it, he’d have to exchange his own diary for the day. Somehow, that turned into everyone swapping diaries with others.” Ali slung the cloth bag over his shoulder with a grin. “I have to say, Ajing’s writing is pretty interesting. Are you heading home now? The sun’s too hot at noon—better wait until afternoon to come back here. Don’t pass out from the heat, or Aze will be heartbroken when he returns in a couple of days.”
Before Chen Qi could reply, a wolf’s howl suddenly rang out in the distance. The female who had been crouching in the shadow of the watchtower stood up and looked toward the source of the sound. Then he shouted to Chen Qi and the others, “It’s the hunting team—they seem to have encountered a dragon!” After that, he cupped his hands around his mouth and let out a loud warning howl toward the sky.
Before long, the call had spread throughout the city. The females of the tribe all climbed onto the wall, while Ali, with the bag of books on his back, hurried back into the city to organize the non-combatants and send them to gather at the school. Before leaving, he told Chen Qi and Ye Huo to head back soon and not stay on the wall too long. With their partners away, the other beastmen might not immediately think to check on their safety.
By the time Azhang reached the wall, Chen Qi could already see what was happening outside the city. Behind the hunting team were more than twenty ironshell-drakes—perhaps the same group that had attacked Qi Ze City some time ago.
Ahxu and Ale still had several large fish strapped to their backs that they hadn’t had time to process. The ironshell-drakes weren’t as fast as beastmen, so the hunting party didn’t seem strained in their running. Rather than being chased, it looked more like they were deliberately luring the ironshell-drakes toward Qi Ze City.
Crossing to Live in the Wilderness Plains (CLWP) is translated by Betwixted Translations. The site you’re reading this chapter on stole our translation.
Azhang’s brow twitched. He ordered the beastmen on the wall to throw down rope ladders and lower the wooden bridge over the moat.
Once the hunting team had crossed the bridge, Ahxu waved for it to be pulled back up. But instead of climbing the wall, the females of the hunting team lined up at the moat’s edge, as if waiting for the ironshell-drakes to arrive.
From atop the wall, Ye Huo leaned out anxiously and shouted down, “Ale! What are you doing? Get back up here—the ironshell-drakes are almost here!”
Ale looked up, saw Ye Huo, and grinned broadly, flashing his white teeth as he waved, but he showed no intention of coming back.
Chen Qi glanced from the females below to the oncoming dragons, and his heart gave a little thump. He could already guess what the females were planning. With a quiet sigh, he patted Ye Huo on the shoulder and said reassuringly, “Don’t worry, the ironshell-drakes won’t be able to hurt them.”
Ye Huo hadn’t been present during the previous dragon attack, and though he’d heard others describe it afterward, his instinctive fear of dragons made him panic. “How could they not be hurt? Those things are about to crash right into them!” The ironshell-drakes’ heavy armor alone could crush a full-grown beastman, and their sharp teeth could easily tear one apart.
Chen Qi didn’t bother to explain further; he simply gestured toward the approaching herd. “Don’t panic. Just watch.”
The moment he finished speaking, the ironshell-drakes that were about to reach the females suddenly tumbled one after another with loud splashes into the moat—hidden beneath a cover of dry grass. Ye Huo stared in shock as more than twenty dragons vanished from sight, leaving behind only furious roars and the faint trembling of the wall from their impacts.
Ale cheered, leaned forward to peek at the moat below, then shouted up at the wall, “Come down and help us peel off their shells!”
The other hunters’ faces lit up, and they all leaned forward curiously to get a look at the fallen dragons. Were they lying belly-up down there? With legs that short, it wouldn’t be easy for them to get back up again.
Sure enough, from the looks on the females’ faces below, Chen Qi could tell they had their eyes on the dragons’ iron shells. The beastmen must have been thinking about the last batch of iron tools ever since they saw how the iron shells could be used. Now they were planning to collect more.
Azhang’s face darkened when he heard Ale’s shout. So they had intentionally lured the ironshell-drakes here. Still, he didn’t scold them. Instead, he told one of the females to report to the tribe that the danger was over, and then ordered the coverings of woven bamboo over the moat to be pulled away. The twenty-some ironshell-drakes were revealed before everyone’s eyes.
Having dealt with ironshell-drakes once before, the beastmen worked much faster this time. By the time Aze hurried back to Qi Ze City, what he saw was a lively scene of people busily stripping ironshells, with the bodies of the massive beasts piled up around the moat like little hills.
……
I was only gone a few days… what on earth happened in the tribe?
Words from the Translation Crew
Miiya: Ale is definitely one of my fave side chars.
Translator: Miiya
Editor: MushroomKnight73
Proofreader: Yume
Editor stepping into the realm of MTL translating, starting with CLWP. Support this translation with a Ko-fi. Three Ko-fis will add an extra chapter from the stockpile to the next weekly release.
