Chapter 39: Survival After Calamity

Chapter 39: Survival After Calamity

At this moment, a dramatic scene unfolded.

The death of the tribe chief sent the barbarians' morale plummeting to rock bottom, and panic began to spread.

This was a primitive tribe with only a few hundred members, a society that had yet to develop agriculture and still relied on fishing, hunting, and gathering for sustenance.

Whoever could bring back more prey, feed the tribe, and protect its people would become the chief.

Much like the alpha male of a monkey troop, the competition for chieftainship was always fierce and brutal, with constant challenges from rivals. When a chief grew old and weak, the wiser ones would voluntarily step down through "abdication," while others would be killed in challenges by younger, stronger competitors.

Thus, every sitting chief was the strongest and most fearsome warrior in the tribe.

The death of such a figure dealt a devastating blow to these loosely organized, undisciplined barbarians—its impact was unimaginable.

...

Just as Chen Shouyi was preparing to seize the moment and flee toward the passage, the barbarians on the two canoes hastily grabbed their paddles. Several of them pushed with all their might, and the two canoes gradually freed themselves from the stranded beach, one after the other, slowly drifting toward the sea.

Chen Shouyi ran a few steps before realizing there was no movement behind him. He couldn’t help but glance back.

They were… running away?

Seeing this, his mind struggled to process it. Out of habit, he kept running a few more steps before stopping.

Wait—if they’re fleeing, why am I still running?

Wouldn’t that make me seem guilty, as if I lacked confidence?

Snapping back to his senses, he immediately turned around and retraced his steps.

Only when his feet touched seawater did he finally stop.

From a distance, he fired several arrows into the sky and roared in a threatening, almost cathartic voice:

"Come back! Let me kill you all!"

"I’ll cut off your… uh—"

He suddenly faltered, realizing he didn’t know the word for "heads." He hadn’t learned that vocabulary yet.

But this didn’t diminish the effect. The barbarians, watching this mysterious figure with a terrifying weapon firing relentlessly, grew even more terrified and rowed with desperate urgency.

To begin with, the Tree God’s divine decree had been rather vague.

As a divine creature that had yet to ignite its divine flame, its abilities were quite limited. Its premonition of danger was only a vague sense that the threat lay to the north.

But the exact degree of danger? It couldn’t say. The premonition was too indistinct—it might have been a minor threat resulting in the deaths of a few believers, or it could have been a crisis severe enough to destroy even the Tree God itself.

Yet once the decree was issued, the barbarians inevitably overinterpreted it.

This operation had mobilized most of the tribe’s able-bodied men, clearly treating it as a threat capable of wiping them out.

But before they could even fully land on the island, nearly half their numbers had been killed or wounded, and even their strongest chief had fallen to the enemy.

This not only confirmed the accuracy of the divine decree but, in the eyes of the barbarians, elevated Chen Shouyi to the status of a man-eating demon.

...

After venting for a while, Chen Shouyi watched as the two canoes rowed farther and farther away. Finally, he collapsed onto the sand.

He felt utterly drained, as if every ounce of strength had left his body.

He… had actually survived?

He had survived being hunted by twenty-three barbarians!

He fell backward onto the sand, closing his eyes as he let the rain pour over him. The corners of his mouth couldn’t help but curl into a faint smile, which soon grew wider and wider.

The feeling of being alive was fucking amazing!

……

The rain gradually lessened, and before long, it stopped completely.

As the dark clouds dispersed, sunlight spilled across the land.

After lying there for a full half hour, he finally stood up and walked toward the corpses.

His soaked clothes clung awkwardly to his body, and his shoes were filled with water, making a squelching noise with every step—an intensely uncomfortable sensation.

He simply took off his shirt.

But he kept his shoes on. This wasn’t some carefully sifted artificial beach; it was littered with sharp gravel and broken shells. With his soft, untested soles, he’d probably be bleeding in no time.

Only two barbarians lay on the sand—the first one he had killed and the tribe chief.

The ones in the sea didn’t need his attention.

The rich population of small marine life in the shallows would serve as the best scavengers. Before long, those bodies would be reduced to bare bones.

He first inspected the corpse of the ordinary barbarian, only to find that aside from the animal hide it wore, the man was utterly destitute. As for that stinking, tattered hide, he couldn’t even be bothered to glance at it.

Chen Shouyi hoisted the corpse onto his shoulder, waded into the sea, and casually tossed it away—done and dusted.

Then he approached the tall, powerfully built barbarian tribe chief.

Compared to the ordinary barbarian, this leader was far more well-off. The oiled, smooth, water-resistant animal hide around his waist alone looked extraordinary, faintly emitting a soft glow.

Unable to resist, Chen Shouyi touched it—and was surprised by its warm, almost silky texture, which even seemed to repel his fingers slightly.

Clearly, this hide didn’t come from any ordinary beast.

But when he thought about it, it wasn’t particularly useful either. It was just a novelty. Was he really going to wrap himself in it or make a coat out of it?

Still, despite the disgust, he yanked the hide off the corpse.

After all, it was a trophy. Even as a mere collectible, it wasn’t bad.

"Huh? What’s this?"

As soon as he pulled the hide free, something the size of a longan, pointed at both ends like a seed, rolled out.

Chen Shouyi’s gaze was immediately drawn to it.

It bore mysterious patterns yet had a semi-transparent, crystalline quality, shimmering with an enchanting halo under the sunlight—radiant and mesmerizing.

This exquisitely crafted object seemed completely out of place among these primitive barbarians.

If it hadn’t been obtained from elsewhere, then it must have formed naturally.

As if under some spell, the longer Chen Shouyi looked at it, the more fascinated he became. His heart pounded, and he reached out to pick it up.

But the moment his fingers made contact with the mysterious "seed," before he could even examine it closely, something strange happened.

A faint, whisper-like voice seemed to murmur in his mind—soft, seductive, impossible to ignore.

His thoughts began to blur, as if sinking into a dream.

Yet even as his consciousness wavered, his subconsciousness instinctively resisted.

Gradually, the voice shifted from seductive to threatening, from friendly to terrifying, as if countless subtle voices were interrogating and scolding him from within.

Then, the mysterious whisper suddenly turned fearful, as if it had suffered a great fright. It let out a sharp scream before rapidly fading into the distance.

He shuddered violently and snapped back to reality.

He only felt as if his mind had briefly wandered, with no memory whatsoever of the previous voices.

When he looked down at the mysterious "seed," he was shocked to find that it had cracked all over as if weathered, its once-mystical and enchanting glow completely vanished. It no longer held any of its former allure.

"Huh? Why does my body feel so hot?"