Qi Bai woke up the next morning and found that it was much brighter outside than usual. He walked out of the cave. The snow had stopped last night, but in just one night, the sky and the earth were already covered in white.
Qi Bai looked at the new world covered in silver. He picked up the soft white snow before seeing Lang Ze standing not far away. He made a snowball and threw it at Lang Ze.
Lang Ze was suddenly hit by the snowball and looked at the sky in surprise. It wasn’t until he heard Qi Bai’s laughter that he realized the snowball was thrown by QI Bai.
Hu Xue called out to Qi Bai and Lang Ze from a distance. “Everyone else has gone to look for the stone wall for digging caves. You should go and take a look as well. Priest Yang Luo said that the location of each person’s cave will be determined after breakfast.”
“Okay!” Qi Bai responded loudly, but he didn’t mean to leave. He ran to Lang Ze and said, “Lang Ze, do you have a place you want to live?”
Qi Bai didn’t need to go out and look for a place to live, because everyone decided to live in the Black Mountain, he had often looked around for possible places to live. He had already made plans to move out and was just waiting for Yang Luo and Hou Yan to give the order.
Now he asked Lang Ze this out of selfish motives. If Lang Ze hadn’t chosen a location, he wanted to take Lang Ze to see the side of his future stone house so they could continue to be neighbors.
Who would’ve thought that Lang Ze would actually nod? “I’ve found it.”
“Is that so…?” Qi Bai said with some regret.
Both of them already had a goal in mind, so there was no need to look for it on the spur of the moment. After Hu Xue and She Li put the ingredients needed for breakfast into the stone pot, Qi Bai took the initiative to take over their work and asked them to go to the mountain quickly to take a look.
Unlike the past when everyone would come and wait for the meal to be served around the stone pot, there were still not many people in the cave by the time breakfast was cooked. Qi Bai ran to the open space in front of the cave, raised his head and shouted to the stone mountain, “It is time to eat! Come down and eat.”
Finally, everyone ran down from the top of the stone mountain in all directions.
All the people gathered around the stone pit in the cave. As long as they were beastmen over the age of 14, they all had rosy faces. It was because Yang Luo and Hou Yan clearly told everyone that only beastmen over the age of 14 could move to a separate cave to live. Therefore, even though Zhu Ya and the others had participated in the competition in the tribe, they could only look at the others with envy right now.
The parenting relationships of the beastmen still retained many habits of animals. For example, parents would raise and teach their children under the age of 20. Once the children became adults, they needed to live alone. At this time, they would only have the tribe as a ‘big family’, and the concept of a ‘small family’ would be abandoned.
However, since dangers were everywhere in the beastmen world, it was difficult to raise children and many adult beastmen also died accidentally. This led to many orphans in the tribe. Children like Mao Bai, for example, would be raised by the tribe until they reached adulthood. Of course, such collective life definitely had many disadvantages. For example, the original Mao Bai was always bullied by other children due to his fur color.
The Black Mountain Tribe was now facing a dilemma. Most of the children here were orphans who had fled, but the adult beastmen in the tribe couldn’t take care of them. They could only let the older children move out to live on their own in advance. Of course, the children didn’t feel that they were kicked out of the collective cave. They only yearned for an independent life.
Yang Luo, the priest, and Zhu Zhu, the only old sub-beastman in the tribe, would stay in the collective cave. They had to take care of the younger children in the tribe. Fortunately, older children like Sun Qing could help. This meant they should be able to cope with it for the time being.
After a quick meal, everyone moved to the square in front of the cave. Yang Luo held up the bear bone staff in his hand and asked everyone who had participated in the competition yesterday to line up in order. Then he asked them to go forward one by one and choose a place on the huge stone mountain in front of them to build a cave.
The collective cave was on the left side of the angle between the two mountains. On the right was the open space that was previously used to store bamboo and wild boars.
Everyone had only cleared a small square for the time being, but there were actually many stone walls extending around it. Moreover, the Black Mountain wasn’t very regular, but it generally sloped upwards in a stepped manner.
This meant the tribe members had a wide range of choices. They could not only dig caves horizontally on flat ground but also choose stone walls on the vertical side of the mountain.
The first one to choose was Lang Ze. Lang Ze stepped forward and said something to Yang Luo and Hou Yan. Once Lang Ze finished speaking, the two of them took a few steps back, looked up at the position on the stone wall, and nodded.
Qi Bai was sitting at the back and couldn’t hear what they were saying. He just watched Yang Luo, who seemed a bit surprised after hearing Lang Ze’s request. He readily agreed and turned to look at Diao Lan, the number one person in the gathering team.
What Qi Bai didn’t expect was that someone in the tribe actually had his eyes on the same place. Once Niu Yong chose a stone wall, Qi Bai clearly heard a sub-beastman behind him sigh in disappointment.
In this way, the horned beastmen and sub-beastmen shouted in turn. Finally, it was Qi Bai’s turn.
Qi Bai walked to Yang Luo’s side, took him a few steps to the left, and pointed to an uneven mountain wall more than ten meters above the ground where it met the soil at the edge of the mountain. “Grandpa Priest, I want that stone wall. Is there anyone there?”
Yang Luo’s first reaction upon hearing this was to turn around and look at Lang Ze. He saw Lang Ze standing there indifferently, so he pulled Qi Bai aside and asked in a low voice, “Why do you still want to live with Lang Ze? Do you want Lang Ze to be the father of your child?”
Without waiting for Qi Bai to refute it, he continued, “No, I don’t agree. There might be no ordinary beastmen of your age in our tribe, but there are a few good ones among the underage slaves. You can pick any of them when you grow up and want to have a child.”
Yang Luo was still worried. Qi Bai and Lang Ze might seem to have a good relationship now, but who could guarantee that Lang Ze wouldn’t do anything bad to Qi Bai after knowing that Qi Bai was going to become Yang Luo’s student?
Qi Bai didn’t know why Yang Luo changed the topic so quickly. He shook his head like a rattle. What was going on? Spring hadn’t even arrived yet. Why were people thinking about having babies these days?
No, what did Yang Luo just say?
“Grandpa Priest, what do you mean that Lang Ze and I have to live together? Are we going to choose the same location?” Qi Bai reacted and asked in surprise.
Yang Luo looked at him suspiciously. “Didn’t you discuss this in advance?”
Qi Bai almost promised with a pat on his chest, but he shook his head firmly. “Absolutely not.”
Yang Luo raised an eyebrow. “What type of bad place did you choose? It is at the edge of the stone mountain. There is a large area of high stone half the height of a human there. It is too short to dig a cave there, and it would take too much time to repair and level it. There are so many stone walls on the stone mountain that are suitable for making caves. Didn’t you discuss it with Lang Ze in advance? Why did you choose such a place?”
He thought about it before saying angrily, “His position is very good. It might be connected to yours, but there aren’t many stones blocking in front of the stone wall.” So Lang Ze, the horned beastmen, was unreliable. Even if he wanted to live together, he occupied the good position himself and gave the difficult position to the sub-beastman.
The more Qi Bai listened, the brighter his eyes became. He had been wandering around the area for a long time, so he knew where Lang Ze had chosen after hearing Yang Luo’s description. It was right next door to him!
This was great. He didn’t expect that they would become neighbors again by accident.
Qi Bai was completely unaware of Yang Luo’s good intentions towards him and smiled. “Grandpa Priest, I really have valued this place for a long time. I want to live here. You will know in the future that this place is very good.”
After saying this, he pulled Yang Luo’s hand, motioning him to look at the back where there were several people waiting. He shouted to Hou Yan, “Grandpa Chief, I have already chosen the position I just pointed out to you. You guys can continue to help the others choose.”
Ever since Zhu Ya returned to the tribe, Hou Yan had become a bit more majestic than before. But most of the time, he returned to his previous honest appearance. He saw that Yang Luo had no intention of continuing to refute it, so he happily called for the people behind him to come forward.
Shu Lin saw Qi Bai coming back and asked hurriedly, “Where did you choose? It is my turn soon. Let’s be neighbors.”
Qi Bai pointed to the location he chose and said with joy that couldn’t be concealed, ‘I already have a neighbor.” Then he waved to Lang Ze, who was waiting on the side.
Shu Lin bumped into him. “You said we are good friends, but it turns out that a beastman is more important.”
Qi Bai was very tired. He thought, ‘Forget it. I won’t explain any longer. No one will listen.’
In the end, Shu Lin still became Qi Bai’s neighbor, but he was a downstairs neighbor. Shu Lin and Xiong Feng chose the stone wall below Qi Bai.
The stone walls had just been divided up, and no one had any intention of taking a break. They picked up their tools and were prepared to start digging.
The Black Mountain Tribe’s vigorous cave-digging life began.
Looking at the white snow on the mountain, Qi Bai thought of another important problem. He was only wearing a small animal skin skirt made of fur. A few days ago, he could still grit his teeth and resist the cold. Now he had to go to the mountain covered with snow and cold stones. He couldn’t work without any protection.
Since the beastmen could transform into animal form to resist the cold winter, Qi Bai had long discovered that the tribe members had no habit of wearing clothes. The beastmen also seldom went out in winter, let alone working outside on such cold and snowy days.
At this time, Lang Ze happened to come to find Qi Bai. Qi Bai looked at Lang Ze’s equally exposed chest and felt that he must make a piece of clothing to wear. He pulled Lang Ze back to the collective cave.
The process of making clothes wasn’t as simple as imagined. Not to mention other things, at least the needles, threads and cloth needed to be prepared in advance. This took a lot of time to make. Qi Bai didn’t have these tools now. In addition, he didn’t care too much about the style of the clothes as long as it could keep him warm and protect him.
Qi Bai took out his own sheepskin and measured it against his body. Then under Lang Ze’s puzzled gaze, he used a bone knife to cut two holes at the top with some heartache. He put his arms through the holes, wrapped the sheepskin around his body, and tied the sheepskin tightly around his waist with a straw rope. He made a rough, sleeveless coat for himself.
Qi Bai looked down at his feet again. He was afraid that his feet would get stuck to the stones when he stepped barefoot on the snow-covered stones. Qi Bai cut two pieces of leather from the hem of the coat, put his foot on the woolen side, and tied the excess fur around his ankles with a straw rope. He walked back and forth a few steps. The animal skin didn’t fit his feet very well, making it inconvenient to walk. But it wouldn’t fall off, so his feet were safe.
Qi Bai felt that he must not look very good now, but he still achieved the effect he wanted. The most important thing was that apart from the two pieces of leather on his feet, there were only two cuts in the animal skin on his body. This meant that after he took off the animal skin at night, he could continue to use it as a quilt.
In this way, his limbs might be exposed, but he was much warmer. “Lang Ze, do you want to make a piece of clothing and shoes? It is too cold outside. If we stand on the snow like this for a while, I’m afraid we will get frostbite.”
After Qi Bai put on his clothes, Lang Ze stared at him without blinking. Qi Bai had only tied the sheepskin to his body, but he felt that Qi Bai looked extremely handsome at this moment. After hearing Qi Bai’s question, he didn’t know what frostbite was but he took out his animal skin without hesitation.
Qi Bai used the same method to tie animal skins around Lang Ze as well.
Qi Bai and Lang Ze attracted everyone’s attention when they came out of the cave wearing these strange clothes.
Everyone would cover their bodies with thick animal skin in winter, but this was the first time they had seen ‘clothes’ that fit the body so well. Some of the little beastmen even squatted down and curiously touched the ‘shoes’ on his feet.
Tu Ya looked at the clothes on Qi Bai and said with a bit of envy, “Bao Bai, your clothes are really beautiful.”
Qi Bai smiled. “When you have your own animal skin, I will teach you how to make a better-looking piece of clothing than this.”
Niu Xi asked, “Can I also learn how to make a piece of clothing?”
Qi Bai nodded. “Of course.”
But at this moment, everyone didn’t know that their small wish would soon come true.
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