Crossing to Live in the Wilderness Plains 008
Chapter 8
When Aze returned home, Chen Qi was sitting by the fire, studying the green fruit. The fruit’s skin was very thick. Chen Qi tried several times to break it open, but he only managed to peel off a tiny bit of the skin. After a while, he gave up. He looked up and saw Aze come in carrying a small antelope that had been processed. “You’re back?”
“En, I’m back.” Aze set his load down, walked back to the door curtain and reset the appearance of the curtain with the wood to fix its position, reopening a gap.
Chen Qi coughed lightly, pulled over the hide-bundle Aze had brought back, opened it and exclaimed, “So many apples!” After a quick count, there were as many as 15, each about the size of a fist. They were very red and very pretty.
“Apple?”
“Eh, that’s what my family calls it. You call them red berries?” Chen Qi remembered that when he’d first offered the fruit to him, Aze had once said its name.
“Apple is a nice name.” Aze took the small antelope to the front of the fire. There were racks over the fire that had long been set up, so all he had to do was skewer the antelope onto a wooden stick and roast it.
Chen Qi picked up an apple and wiped it carelessly with his sleeve, then he took a bite. A sweet, slippery juice filled his mouth instantly. However, the taste was very different from the apples he was familiar with. It’s more suitable to say it’s similar to a persimmon, Chen Qi silently commented. Then he rolled the green fruit with thick skin in his hand and asked, “Aze, what kind of fruit is this? The skin is so thick that I can’t break it open.”
“This is a green fruit. We eat it together with the skin.”
Chen Qi frowned and looked at it. Is the skin really edible? He’d tried eating a grapefruit without peeling it, but it was not very delicious. “Aze, can you help me cut open this fruit?”
Aze thought for a moment but did not take it. Instead, he set the antelope in his hand over the fire and went over to the stone bed. The bed was covered with a layer of hide. Aze groped in the hide and came back with a white, bone-like object in his hand and handed it to Chen Qi. “Here, this is for you.”
“What is this?”
Aze pursed his lips, with a slightly boastful expression. “The horn of the stegosaurus I captured on my own when I came of age. Though it was only a young stegosaurus.”
The stegosaurus’ might was even superior to the hyena-drake’s. Their size was huge. An adult stegosaurus could grow up to ten times the size of an adult male elephant. Their entire bodies were covered with a layer of long hair. They looked a bit like the mammoths of ancient times, but their noses were shorter and thicker, and they had long, sharp, pointed horns. The body of an adult stegosaurus was about 3 to 4 meters long. Their spines were very straight and could hardly bend. This also caused them to move slowly and only be able to attack one thing at a time.
Aside from being a vegetarian species, the reason stegosauruses were not a more dangerous threat than the hyena-drakes was because they were not social creatures like the hyena-drakes were. Stegosauruses would live alone as adults. They had a strong sense of territory and it was almost impossible to find a second stegosaurus in the vicinity of one.
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 took the horn curiously. The horn was not big, only as thick as half of a little finger and was not as wide as a palm. It resembled the blade of a fruit knife and felt cold to the touch. Chen Qi carefully held both ends of the horn, put the green fruit on the ground, brought the horn down along the middle of the fruit, and effortlessly cut the fruit in half. Chen Qi could not help exclaiming, “It’s so sharp!” It’s like a knife!
Aze reminded him, “The horn is very sharp, and you can easily hurt yourself if you are not careful. Chen Qi, remember to wrap it in animal skins when you use it, and don’t hold it directly.”
“That’s alright, I just need to make a knife handle.” Chen Qi couldn’t help but flick at it with his finger and the horn made a crisp ringing sound. There’s no metal in this thing, right? Going back to making a knife handle, Chen Qi turned to ask, “Aze, do you have resin or something very sticky?”
“Something very sticky?” Aze cocked his head and thought. “Do you mean the fruit of the gum tree?”
“Rubber* tree? You have glue here?”
*胶树 jiāo shù – jiāo can mean gum, glue or rubber. Shù means tree
“Yes, the fruit of the gum tree becomes very sticky when burned. Our house is built by combining burned gum fruit with soil and stone slabs.”
Chen Qi opened his mouth in surprise, then ran to the wall to touch it. The combined materials were very hard. It was just like concrete. Is the adhesive strength of this glue that good? Nature is really amazing. Could there be many more things from my old world that would exist here in other forms? Chen Qi’s eyes couldn’t help but light up at the thought of this possibility. As long as he makes good use of it, even in this primitive society, he wouldn’t need to live like a savage. “Aze, Aze, can you get that gum fruit?”
Aze did not quite understand why Chen Qi was so excited when he heard about the gum fruit. “There is a gum tree not far from here. My house was built with the gum fruit from that tree. If it’s not picked, the fruit of the gum tree can grow on it for more than ten years. Eat something and rest for today. I’ll pick it tomorrow.”
The venison they ate at noon was cold and hard, so Chen Qi didn’t eat much since he was tired of the taste. This time, he smelled the fragrance of the roasting meat, and his stomach growled twice in succession. To cover up his eagerness. Chen Qi carefully put the horn aside and picked up the fruit that he’d cut. There were many soybean-sized pips embedded in the flesh. He gave it a lick and frowned at the sourness.
Aze noticed with amusement, then he sliced some almost fully roasted antelope meat along with the skin and offered it to him. “This kind of green fruit is very sour and very difficult to eat. We wouldn’t eat it unless we were really hungry. Just throw it away, you don’t need to eat anymore of it.”
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 threw a piece of venison into his mouth and chewed it to remove the sour taste. The venison was roasted just right, but the bitterness from the salt stone was still unpalatable. It completely destroyed the taste of the venison, not to mention the monotony of eating roast meat for several consecutive days was also a bit off-putting. As he chewed, he looked over at the halved green fruit. Although it was very sour, it did quite resemble a lemon. After thinking about it, he squeezed out a few drops of juice onto the barbecued meat.
He put the piece of venison with the green fruit juice into his mouth and Chen Qi’s eyes lit up. The sour taste melted into the meat and covered up the bitter taste of the salt stone. He would not get tired of eating it. He picked up another piece and brought it over to Aze’s mouth. “Aze, try it.”
With a strange expression, Aze looked at him and opened his mouth to accept the meat being fed to him. Chen Qi asked expectantly, “How is it?”
Seeing Chen Qi’s expression, Aze unconsciously slowed down his chewing speed. It wasn’t until Chen Qi showed a little anxiety in his eyes that he smiled and slowly commented, “It’s much better than just smearing the salt stone on it.”
Chen Qi breathed a sigh of relief. It seemed that the taste of the beastmen was the same as his own. These past few days, he’d watched Aze eat nothing but the bitter, salt stone coated meat and he’d started to question whether his own sense of taste was different from that of the beastmen. “Of course, the roasted meat needs seasoning. The salt stone contains too many impurities.” Chen Qi joyfully handed the other half of the green fruit to Aze and let him use it on the meat himself.
Aze took it and squeezed the juice onto the roasted antelope. While Chen Qi was immersed in eating, he quietly sliced some more of the fruit juice-seasoned antelope meat and placed it on the cattail leaf in his hand.
The two ate and drank till they were sated. Chen Qi was originally going to sleep by the fire, but Aze didn’t let him. He dragged Chen Qi to settle him into the only stone bed and went back to the fire to lay down a piece of hide for himself.
Since he was always worried, not to mention sore after waking up, Chen Qi did not have very good experiences sleeping in a tree the first two nights. Now he was incredibly tired, so he didn’t hold himself back in front of Aze. He took the coat, bundled it for a pillow and had a good sleep.
The next day, Chen Qi opened his eyes and noticed the black ceiling, which was really blackened and not just dark because of the dim lighting. He looked closely and realized that it was because of the traces of smoke from the firepit. Chen Qi’s head was full of black lines. Sure enough, lighting a fire in the house was not a scientific act.
Aze was not in the room. The ceiling of the room was too low. It would be quite depressing to stay in for a long time. The door curtain was still half open from being propped up last night. The sun shone through the opening, bringing light into the room.
He opened the door curtain to go out and was directly confronted by the wilderness. That’s right, you didn’t read it wrong. It was a wilderness surrounded by semi-dry weeds. It was not much different from the plains he’d seen before. Not far away was a tall tree with a radius of nearly one meter. It was covered with banana-like leaves or fruits. Chen Qi was not very good at distinguishing between the fig leaves and fruits.
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 took a few steps outside and found that Aze’s house was quite long, which he hadn’t noticed since it had been too dark to see clearly last night. Now he went around to the back and discovered that there was another room. But why was the door for the back room and the one for the front room facing in opposite directions? Wouldn’t it be more convenient to have them closer together? Now, in order to go to the other room, he’d have to make a big circle around the house.
Chen Qi opened the door curtain to the back room and found that it was a sundries room. Half of the room was filled with chopped wood alone. Other spaces were littered with animal skins and pottery plates and pots. By the door was a hide-wrapped bundle of something that looked familiar. It looked like the one Aze had held and brought into the room last night. Chen Qi crouched down curiously and opened it. Some shriveled fruits rolled out from within it. Chen Qi smiled helplessly and put the hide back in its place.
Upon returning to the front door, he saw Aze running back from a distance, carrying two pheasants, with a thin layer of sweat on his forehead. He saw Chen Qi and smiled like usual. “You’re awake.”
“En, it’s so early and you already went hunting.”
“Ake actually asked me to hunt with him on the plains this morning. I promised to pick gum fruit for you today and I’ll take you to the tribe later.” Aze paused. “If you want to live in the tribe, I can help you find a better empty house.”
Chen Qi didn’t answer. He didn’t want to live in Aze’s house. If he was to live here, he must build another one. However, he didn’t mind going to the tribe to check out the situation there before deciding.
Words from the Translation Crew
Miiya: 2 of 3 for the week.
Translator: Miiya
Editor: Avalie
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.
