Henry Clark looked at the distant, rolling mountains, then turned back to glance at the residential area of the tribe, at the houses near the foot of the mountain at the bottom of the tribe, and finally lowered his head to look at his fist, still stained with dried blood. It had only been half a year, and he had already become as much a savage as the natives—survival pressure really could accelerate this kind of assimilation.

What was life like in the civilized era? Henry Clark had dreamed of it a few times at night, but those images were growing increasingly blurry, even though it hadn’t even been a year.

Although things here were a little better than the uncivilized, cannibalistic savages that William Grant had described, it wasn’t by much.

In the past, even if he saw someone’s parents beating their child, Henry Clark would step in to mediate. If he saw an adult beating a child too harshly, Henry Clark would even get into a fight with them—never hurting the child. But now?

Of course, the environment was different, and the children of the tribe were not the same as those he’d met in his previous life. Even at the same age, their personalities were vastly different. Take the kids in the child cave, for example—even if you scared them off this time, next time, when food was at stake, they’d still rush in to snatch it, and each would be more ruthless than the last. When emotions ran high, they wouldn’t hold back like Henry Clark did; if they had a stone, they’d throw it, if they had a stick, they’d swing it. If you couldn’t beat them, you’d suffer for it. For instance, don’t be fooled by how much Scott Turner was trembling just now, looking terrified—next time, Scott Turner would still swing a stick or throw a stone at Henry Clark, joining David Reed and the others to snatch Henry Clark’s things.

Heaven knows, on the first day Henry Clark woke up in the cave, it was just in time for food distribution. Surrounded by those wolf-like gazes, Henry Clark thought he’d fallen into a wolf’s den. They were all just kids—the oldest was only thirteen, and many were as young as six or seven.

Savageness was contagious.

After resting, Henry Clark took two good-quality stones to trade with a stone tool maker for four palm-sized pieces of dried meat—two boneless, two with bones. He gave the ones with bones to Julius Caesar, ate one boneless piece himself, and used the last piece to trade for a small, cheap animal hide. Winter was coming, and he needed to prepare in advance.

When he returned to the child cave, it was just time for the tribe’s daily food distribution. The people in charge of transporting food had already prepared today’s share, stored in large stone vats. Only warriors who had awakened their totem power could lift such heavy vats.

The tribe provided food for the child cave until the children inside awakened their totem power. Once awakened, the children would leave the cave and build their own homes.

The food provided usually included some meat—not much, just enough to barely sustain the children’s basic needs, since meat was hard to hunt. Besides meat, most of the time it was plant-based food, like the red-haired fruit Henry Clark saw now.

It was a kind of tree tuber, reddish-brown, with many fine roots on the outside that looked like fuzz. The large ones were about the size of the pumpkins Henry Clark had seen in his previous life, and the small ones were about the size of an adult’s fist. The texture was similar to potatoes and quite filling. The only thing that troubled Henry Clark was the aftereffects of eating this red-haired fruit.

Medicinally, the red-haired fruit helped regulate the digestive system and relieve intestinal gas—in plain terms, it made you gassy. And it had a particular trait: if you didn’t eat any meat that day and only ate red-haired fruit, the gassy effect was especially pronounced, resulting directly in—farts. But if you ate some meat, the effect wasn’t as strong.

Most of the kids in the cave just ate and slept, slept and ate, with all their food coming from the tribe’s distribution. Only a few ever went out to find extra food. This meant that every time they ate red-haired fruit, the air quality in the child cave plummeted—the stench was something else.

Henry Clark’s face turned green.

“Hey, Henry!”

The person in charge of food distribution, Edward Wright, spotted Henry Clark and jogged over, handing him a large, cooked red-haired fruit—noticeably bigger than what the other kids got.

Edward Wright was one of the oldest in the cave, thirteen years old. Besides Edward Wright, there were two other thirteen-year-olds, but neither was as strong as Edward Wright. So Edward Wright had always been appointed to manage the cave, helping with food distribution every day. The benefit was that he could take a bit more for himself, which made him even stronger—he didn’t look like a kid living in a cave at all.

However, Edward Wright usually didn’t talk much with the other kids in the cave, spending his days outside and only coming back at mealtimes. He hadn’t spoken much to Henry Clark either, so why was he coming over now with such a big piece of food?

Henry Clark glanced at Edward Wright and took the red-haired fruit.

Edward Wright seemed to be in a good mood, even a bit excited.

“Henry, I’m going up to the mountainside tomorrow. I’ll be staying there all winter, so I’m leaving the cave to you,” Edward Wright said.

Henry Clark almost threw the red-haired fruit in his hand when he heard that. If Edward Wright wasn’t managing the cave anymore, it should be handed over to another older kid—there were two other thirteen-year-olds, and several who were twelve or eleven. Why pick him, who wasn’t even ten yet?

It wasn’t up to Edward Wright to decide who managed things, so Henry Clark asked, “Who said so?”