Crossing to Live in the Wilderness Plains 184
Chapter 184
As summer arrived, the trees in the tribe grew tender green leaves, and as the temperature rose, the leaves grew faster. After the thunderstorm ended, they had basically turned emerald green, full and lush, showing no sign that a few days earlier they had been nothing but bare branches.
With the end of the thunderstorm, Chen Qi had never expected that the migration of animals back to the Dora Plains would be accompanied by a disaster.
Just as dawn broke, a mass of dark shadows swept across the entire Qi Ze City. They rushed into the newly grown trees, pecking at the tender leaves while screeching loudly. The newly sprouted leaves were bitten into pieces and fell to the ground.
Chen Qi was awakened by these loud noises.
He habitually reached out to touch the person who should have been sleeping beside him, but touched only empty space. The spot beside him had long grown cold, and he had no idea when Aze had risen.
He looked up toward the window. The sun had just risen, and the sky was still a little dim. Although the annoying sound of rain had stopped, another kind of incessant chirping continued nonstop, giving Chen Qi a splitting headache.
The hall was quiet. The place where the fire was usually lit held no warmth; there was no cooked food on the stove, and even Ajing’s door was wide open, looking as if no one was inside.
Chen Qi pushed open the main door suspiciously and walked out.
If someone with trypophobia had been there, they might have fainted from the sight. The tall fig tree in the yard was packed with dense clusters of red-billed sparrows on every branch. They screeched with their mouths wide open, flying up in fright whenever the beastmen jumped beneath the tree, only to circle a few times and crowd back onto the fig tree shortly after.
Aze leaped up the tree and back down repeatedly. His messy black hair was covered in feathers, and his exposed skin bore many scratches. They looked frightening but were not bleeding; someone unfamiliar might have thought they were marks from a certain kind of exercise. His fingers had fully beast-transformed, the sharp claws smeared with bits of flesh.
Crossing to Live in the Wilderness Plains (CLWP) is translated by Betwixted Translations. The site you’re reading this chapter on stole our translation.
Ajing looked no better. He stayed half-crouched, and whenever the red-billed sparrows left the fig tree, he kicked off the ground and jumped into the air, his sharp claws always managing to grab a few. The little wolf cub beside him cooperated by slapping to death any birds Ajing caught that were still able to fly, using its now-larger paw.
A pile of bird corpses had already gathered beneath the fig tree, clearly showing that they had been busy hunting birds since early morning.
Chen Qi’s eye twitched as he interrupted the group of them. “What are you doing?”
Aze jumped down from the fig tree. His clothes were stained with fresh bird droppings. “Go back inside first. You should come out after I chase these annoying birds away.”
Chen Qi looked at the bird flock whose numbers seemed hardly reduced. Not only their own yard but also the newly planted fig tree next door at Ka Luo’s house was packed with the sparrows. Even the red-fruit trees on both sides of the road, which had only grown to a little over two meters tall, were full of them. Many birds circled overhead, seemingly searching for branches and ready to land at any time.
“Are you planning to catch them bare-handed?” Chen Qi looked at their empty hands, and the headache from the birds’ shrieking intensified.
“We tried using fishing nets, but these birds are too small and escaped right through the mesh. We couldn’t catch them at all,” Ajing explained, pointing at the discarded fishing net.
The fishing nets in Qi Ze City were meant for large fish. Compared to these birds, it was like elephants versus ants, so naturally, they couldn’t catch them with such nets.
At that moment, the fence gate of Chen Qi’s courtyard was flung open. Azhang rushed in looking disheveled. Chen Qi immediately pushed him inside to escape the noise. After patting his ears and driving away the unbearable sound, Azhang spoke urgently, “You see how things are now. We tried several ways to get rid of them. There are too many of them, and they are too fast. It’s nearly impossible to kill or catch them. Do you have any way to solve this?”
When the red-billed sparrows had first arrived at the tribe, Azhang had led people to stop them. But none of their methods had worked well. The birds were too numerous and too small to catch, and they showered them with fresh droppings. Their shrill voices tormented the hearing-sensitive females. If they stayed in Qi Ze City for a few days, Azhang feared he might lose control and chop down all the newly grown trees. That was why he had hurried over to ask Chen Qi for a solution.
Chen Qi looked at a bird that the little wolf cub had just slapped dead. Although it looked similar to a red-billed sparrow, it was actually even smaller. Its call was not merely noisy—it carried an irritating quality that made people agitated just listening to it. “Do these birds appear every time they migrate back?”
“Rarely,” Aze replied, shaking his head. He had never seen them in the tribe before, though he had encountered them several times while hunting on the plains. Their calls were irritating and their numbers overwhelming, so he usually avoided them; being surrounded by them would be troublesome.
Crossing to Live in the Wilderness Plains (CLWP) is translated by Betwixted Translations. The site you’re reading this chapter on stole our translation.
Chen Qi lowered his head to think for a moment, then asked Aze to fetch a soft branch and bend it into a semicircle. He then made a long cloth pouch and handed it to Azhang. “Try catching them with this.” He briefly explained how to use it.
Azhang took the cloth catcher and had Aze drive the birds off the fig tree. Once the dense flock rose into the air, he lifted the catcher and lunged toward them. Because he was inexperienced, many birds escaped even after entering the pouch, but he still caught nearly a dozen—much faster than grabbing with bare hands.
Azhang immediately stomped the struggling birds dead inside the cloth pouch. After greeting Chen Qi, he ran off excitedly with it. He had watched Chen Qi make it, and the steps were easy. After teaching the others, he was sure they could drive away the annoying flock.
On the first day after the thunderstorm, all of Qi Ze City plunged into a grand, city-wide bird-catching campaign.
After catching birds for a while in the yard with Aze and Ajing, Chen Qi was covered in droppings. He had no idea how the birds managed to excrete while flying at high speed. Unable to tolerate it any longer, he ran back home, bathed several times, and wiped himself repeatedly with figs to remove the smell before finally feeling clean.
Thanks to the simple, useful cloth catcher, by midday, the black swarms of the flocks that had packed every tree in Qi Ze City were mostly cleared. Many birds sensed danger and fled before being caught, but they still left piles of corpses throughout the city.
Chen Qi had just finished bathing when he saw two people and a giant wolf-god covered in droppings, and he told them to clean themselves at once.
Aze tossed Ajing and the little wolf cub into the washroom first, then fetched a large wooden storage crate used in winter for meat. He gathered the bird corpses into it, filling more than one full box.
“Chen Qi, Chen Qi.”
Chen Qi followed the voice. Ka Luo was half-leaning over the courtyard wall. He looked even more bedraggled than Aze, but his eyes shone brightly. Holding up a limp bird, he asked excitedly, “Chen Qi, can this be made into food?”
Chen Qi’s mouth twitched. He understood the gleam in those eyes—it was the look of a glutton discovering a new ingredient. “Go clean yourself up first, then come back. I’ll tell you whether it’s edible.”
“Got it!” Ka Luo cheered. As he walked back inside, he shouted to Ake, who was still cleaning, “Ake, pick up all these birds! Don’t throw any away. I’ll cook something delicious for you later!”
Ake pinched the small bird between his fingers. It was only slightly larger than two of his fingers and covered in feathers. He did not know how much meat it had. Could it really be eaten?
Crossing to Live in the Wilderness Plains (CLWP) is translated by Betwixted Translations. The site you’re reading this chapter on stole our translation.
Many people in the tribe had now learned different ways of cooking. Chen Qi did nothing complicated—he fried, sautéed, and pan-seared some portions. But because the birds were tiny, the prep work was the most troublesome part.
Ka Luo leaned forward and inhaled deeply over the table full of cooked bird dishes. He and Ake had been awakened early by the annoying birds and stayed busy until they finally drove them away. They had not eaten breakfast and were starving, so he did not stand on ceremony with Chen Qi. He grabbed his chopsticks and heaped a large bite of each dish, commenting, “This fried bird meat is the best. Even the bones are fried crisp. Not like the stir-fried one—the bones inside are still hard and make my teeth hurt.”
Ajing nodded in agreement and reached his chopsticks into the plate of golden fried bird meat, bringing back a bowlful.
The little wolf cub, with strong teeth, did not mind the hard bones. It happily crunched meat and bone together before swallowing.
Chen Qi watched them chew loudly, his teeth aching in sympathy. Other than the crispy fried batch, he could not chew the bones in the other dishes, making them troublesome to eat. Eventually, he simply fried all the remaining bird meat and had Ka Luo, now full and energetic, distribute some to others and teach them how to handle the birds.
So on the first day after the thunderstorm, besides being swarmed by a large flock of annoying birds, Qi Ze City also discovered a delicious new food. Later on, whenever they encountered the dense, dark masses of red-billed sparrows in the wild, the beastmen no longer silently detoured around them. Instead, they would start thinking about how they could treat themselves to an extra meal that night.
Of course, that would all come later.
Words from the Translation Crew
Miiya: 3 of 3 for the week.
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.
Finally caught up!