Looking out as far as the eye could see, countless waterfalls cascaded down everywhere within sight, including above the cave.

The chieftain ordered thick grass curtains to be hung over the cave entrance to prevent dampness from seeping in.

Henry Carter's act of setting fire to the cave a few days ago had now turned out to be a blessing—the blaze had dried out the moisture inside the cave. Otherwise, the cave would have been a damp, soggy place by now.

A good place naturally attracts intruders.

Especially during the torrential downpour, animals that had lost their hiding places were the first to discover this dry cave.

The first to appear were large numbers of snakes, spiders, scorpions, centipedes, and other such crawling creatures.

Fortunately, there was also a group of hungry people in the cave, and without exception, these crawlers all became their food.

Moreover, their method of obtaining food was extremely simple: just take down the grass curtain, replace it with a new one, and they could happily catch the crawlers clinging to the curtain.

Their movements were very skillful; it seemed that both adults and half-grown children were all quick and efficient.

No matter what they caught, they would throw it into the fire behind them, and then someone in charge of roasting would pull the cooked crawlers out from the ashes.

Large food like snakes, of course, were not handled this way. Instead, their heads were twisted off, venom glands removed, and then they were hung above the fire to roast, dangling down like drying string beans. As for the innards and such, they didn’t remove them—after all, that was food too.

These things were not touched by Henry Carter. In fact, this was quite dangerous; he had seen more than once people bitten by venomous snakes or stung by scorpions and centipedes. Even his mother had been stung by a scorpion no longer than a finger, right on her ankle.

That ankle swelled up visibly, but his mother didn’t care at all; she was more concerned with catching more scorpions.

Not only that, she even pulled Henry Carter over to help, because Henry Carter had inadvertently shown that he could use chopsticks to pick up scorpions.

Faced with the choice between being stung by a scorpion and catching scorpions, Henry Carter chose to catch them. Soon, he discovered that when pushed to the brink, people could unleash tremendous survival potential.

After catching eight scorpions in one go and tossing them accurately into the fire, Henry Carter thought that if he couldn’t catch a fly with chopsticks in the future, he wouldn’t be living up to the hardship he was enduring now.

There were benefits to doing these things: there was an endless supply of protein to eat. Henry Carter had already gotten used to eating roasted centipedes and scorpions.

With plenty of protein and the stimulation of breast milk, in less than five days, Henry Carter's body had grown noticeably bigger.

This was something Henry Carter himself was well aware of.

But no one in the tribe noticed, not even his mother found it strange. Now, Henry Carter was already twice as big and sturdy as the other children his age used to be.

Henry Carter was catching scorpions, centipedes, and all sorts of crawlers, and even the nursing children were catching them. Henry Carter watched as a very young child caught a centipede and, smiling, put the still-wriggling centipede into his mouth. He tried to snatch it away with his chopsticks, but was a step too late.

By nightfall, that child was dead.

A man grabbed the dead child and, as if throwing a stone, tossed the small corpse out into the rainy night. The others continued busily catching crawlers.

Henry Carter had thought that during such torrential rain, this tribe, which relied mainly on hunting to survive, would go hungry. Unexpectedly, the heavy rain brought them an abundance of food.

Henry Carter had thought that the purpose of hunting was to catch wild beasts, wild cattle, sheep, deer, rabbits, pheasants, fish, and the like. He hadn’t expected that their main hunting targets were all kinds of insects.

"Awuu," a long, wild beast’s howl reached Henry Carter's ears.

Henry Carter didn’t move, but instead fixed his gaze on the chieftain.

The chieftain was very calm. Upon hearing the sound, he led a group of men, picked up bamboo spears, wooden spikes, and stone axes, and walked out of the cave.

The people inside the cave didn’t care much about the piercing howl either. Men and women alike continued busily harvesting the endless stream of crawlers crawling in.

"Awuu—"

The sound outside grew louder and closer, filled with menace.

He really wanted to lift the curtain and see what was happening outside, but the curtain was crawling with all sorts of venomous insects, so he gave up on the idea.

Eleven people had gone out—Henry Carter had counted. As he used chopsticks to pick up venomous insects, he kept an eye on the curtain.

He didn’t know how much time had passed, but the eleven who had gone out all returned. The chieftain’s group was soaked, two of them badly injured, and after coming back, they collapsed and fell asleep.

Judging by the sound, Henry Carter thought the beast roaring outside must have been a tiger—a very large one.

The chieftain tossed a puppy into the food pile.

It was soaking wet, seemingly dead.

Henry Carter poked at the dog-like thing, and it suddenly lifted its head and bit his finger fiercely. Startled, he tried to pull back, but found the bite had no real force—it was just a puppy with only milk teeth.

He pulled back his chubby hand, picked up the wet little creature—barely bigger than a kitten—and brought it to the chieftain.

The chieftain was drawing on the pitch-black rock wall with a stone.

The picture showed a big stick figure leading ten small stick figures in battle against a wild beast.