The stone fortress of the Wumang tribe was built in a perilous gorge between two mountain ridges, and the surrounding area had also been left a complete mess by yesterday’s flood. However, the fortress walls, piled high with giant stones and standing seven or eight meters tall, blocked the floodwaters from rushing into the settlement.

Besides withstanding flash floods cascading down from the mountains, the walls were built tall and thick mainly to defend against wild beasts from the deep mountains and sudden raids from other tribes.

The stone fortress stood alone at the mouth of the gorge, sealing off the road into the mountains from this pass, and claiming all the deep forests to the south as the Wumang tribe’s hunting grounds.

Although the deep mountains of Mangya Ridge were teeming with endless game, they also meant greater dangers.

Not to mention other wild and exotic creatures—even a single Black-Scaled Jiao could trample the entire stone fortress to dust.

Thinking about it now was frightening. If that Black Jiao had made it out of the mountains alive, the Wumang stone fortress would likely have been the first place to be slaughtered by it.

With just over a thousand people living together as a clan, it would only count as a small village compared to Earth’s densely populated areas, but on the north slope of Mangya Ridge, it was considered a rather sizable settlement.

Ethan Brooks walked up the stone ridge in front of the fortress and could see the scene inside the fortress walls at the mouth of the gorge: hundreds of low, scattered earthen and wooden houses, with several tall stone halls surrounding a spacious square at the center.

That was the public hall, where the clanspeople held meetings and rituals. It was also the ancestral shrine and communal storehouse of the Wumang tribe. Usually, only the shaman Edward Clark and his underage grandson Henry Clark lived there.

The adult men, led by the warriors, would leave the fortress to hunt in the mountains, often being gone for several days before returning with any results. The women and elders gathered fruits and wild vegetables near the settlement.

With no farming or animal husbandry, relying solely on fishing, hunting, and wild mountain produce, while also having to guard against fierce beasts and raids from other tribes, feeding a thousand people was no easy task.

Survival in the wild was extremely difficult.

The whole settlement was full of children, boys and girls alike, running around naked; those over eight or nine years old were already considered youths in the Wumang tribe. They would either go out with the women and elders to gather wild fruits, vegetables, and grains, or stay behind to train diligently under the guidance of the warriors.

A Wumang youth like Henry Clark, who had reached the age of fourteen, was already considered an adult in the settlement, expected to take on more responsibilities, go out hunting and fishing with the warriors, and even participate in the bloody battles between tribes over hunting grounds.

Seeing the crowd carrying the giant beast, the naked children and the training youths all swarmed out, trampling through the muddy, flood-washed slopes, running and shouting around the Jiao beast, singing wild songs that sounded like nothing but noise to Ethan Brooks.

Yet, to Ethan Brooks, all of this felt heartwarming—this was the place that had sheltered him and given him a home for the past three years.

It had just rained heavily the day before, and with no drainage facilities in the settlement, everything was muddy and waterlogged.

Ethan Brooks lay on Henry Clark’s back, letting him carry him into the settlement, stumbling through the mud.

※※※

The makeshift shelter of stone and wood had half a foot of standing water.

Sitting on the stone bed covered with animal pelts, Ethan Brooks noticed Henry Clark was a bit restless. Knowing that the Soul Sacrifice Beast Banquet was a rare grand event for the Wumang tribe, and that Henry Clark was still a curious youth, he urged him to go help at the stone hall:

“I’m fine here. Go find Grandpa—maybe he has something for you to do.”

“Are you really okay?” Henry Clark had long wanted to go see Grandpa, Uncle, and the southern Liao people discuss the soul sacrifice, but he was still worried about Ethan Brooks’s injuries.

“What could possibly be wrong with me?” Ethan Brooks said.

“All right, if you need anything, just have someone call me. Here, this is for you.” Henry Clark took a small animal skin pouch from his chest and stuffed it into Ethan Brooks’s hand, then turned and left the shelter.

He was in such a hurry that he forgot to duck as he left, banging his head on the door frame with a “thud,” nearly collapsing Ethan Brooks’s already shabby shelter.

Ethan Brooks shook his head and smiled wryly, opening the item Henry Clark had given him—unexpectedly, it was another Wumang Pill.

Henry Clark was training as a warrior and was at a critical stage of breaking through to the third level and advancing to mid-tier. This Wumang Pill had been saved for him by Grandpa Edward Clark.

Ethan Brooks knew Henry Clark wasn’t much of a talker, but he was straightforward—once he gave something away, he would never take it back. This left Ethan Brooks with no choice but to keep the Wumang Pill close for now.

In his first few months with the Wumang, Ethan Brooks had lived in the public stone house with Edward Clark and Henry Clark.

But not to mention an outsider like him—even the children of the Wumang tribe had to fend for themselves by the age of thirteen or fourteen.

After living in the public stone house for a few months, with Henry Clark’s help, he found a patch of empty ground nearby and built this simple shelter of his own.

The shelter was crude, with drafty walls. Aside from a clay stove, a stone bed covered with animal pelts, and a few chipped pottery jars, there was nothing else. But here, Ethan Brooks had found a place to settle in the Wumang tribe, in these wild mountains.

After taking the Wumang Pill given to him by Zong Sang, Ethan Brooks’s body had mostly recovered, except for the scary-looking scars that would take a few more days to fall off.

After finishing the roe deer meat, at night he threw away his medicine basket to save his strength. Otherwise, if he didn’t want to delay future trips to the mountains to gather herbs, he would have to weave a new medicine basket from mountain vines.