Later on, no one in the tribe drank water anymore. They all crowded around the narrow cave entrance, mouths open, breathing like parched fish.

Henry Carter also stopped eating those foods that weren’t fully cooked, and absolutely refused to touch anything that had been left out for days.

The chief was very clever, following Henry Carter’s living habits in every way and treating them as the standard.

The benefit of this was that people in the tribe no longer died so violently.

The thick fog lingered for another ten days.

It wasn’t until a sudden strong wind blew the clouds and mist away that the world became clear again.

By this time, Henry Carter was already one meter tall.

A child one meter tall was already considered a youth in the tribe.

After all, even the tallest chief was only about 1.6 meters, and by the looks of it, weighed no more than 65 kilograms.

As his height and weight increased, Henry Carter’s strength also grew, but the increase was still within what Henry Carter could understand. He wasn’t able to move mountains and fill seas just because he was one meter tall and weighed 25 kilograms.

At most, he was just a bit stronger than the other youths.

Because of the mist, the cave became damp again.

The chief had the tribespeople bring in lots of damp firewood to dry on the platform, and also moved the stored food out of the cave to dry.

Then, he did something that Henry Carter found hard to understand: he set fire to the newly stored straw and wood inside the cave.

The cave quickly turned into a giant chimney, thick smoke billowing out from the back, filling the entire rear mountain with haze.

This time, the chief was very well prepared. As the dry wood in front burned, it dried out the wet wood behind, turning the cave into a kiln!

Henry Carter thought such a fierce fire would collapse the cave, but to his surprise, the cave was extremely sturdy. Aside from a lot of rocks falling, it didn’t collapse as Henry Carter had expected.

The landscape was completely changed by a flash flood.

What was once a gentle slope was cut into cliffs by the flood, and where there had been grassland, a huge river suddenly appeared.

This river was so vast that, standing at the cave entrance and looking out, Henry Carter felt a sense of witnessing the transformation of the world.

This river was bigger than any river Henry Carter had ever seen—at least five times larger than the Yangtze—splitting the land into northern and southern banks.

Because of this river, the tribe that had once lived among hills and mountains now became a riverside tribe.

Seeing this river, Henry Carter’s first thought was—his tribe’s main food from now on would be—fish.

He believed this river would disrupt the original ecosystem here.

This was the first time Henry Carter had seen a river not controlled by humans...

However, he wasn’t dissatisfied. An uncontrolled river was a disaster for any human settlement hoping for peace and stability.

Now, he was more worried that his own body would continue to grow uncontrollably. In just a month and a half, he had grown from an infant to a meter tall, which didn’t fit the normal pattern of human growth.

Thinking of this, Henry Carter couldn’t help but look down at the little bird between his chubby legs.

Fortunately, it still looked as delicate as ever, well-proportioned to his body, neither bigger nor smaller, and certainly not deformed.

Overall, his body was growing rapidly, but in a balanced way.

His mother was a foolish woman. She had no questions about her son’s rapid growth; instead, she always took him around to show off.

As for the people in the tribe, no one questioned this unscientific phenomenon.

Or perhaps, they thought children should grow up overnight and be able to join the hunt the very next day.

The chief was very cautious about the sudden appearance of the river. Even though the weather had cleared, he still forbade anyone in the tribe from approaching it, always feeling it was full of danger.

In fact, the chief’s worries were quite justified.

Because, over the next three days, the river gradually shrank, so the tribespeople knelt and worshipped it.

Only Henry Carter understood that the river wasn’t actually getting smaller, but deeper. The surging water was constantly eroding the loess plain, cutting downward as a matter of course.

Plus, with the rain stopped, there was less water feeding the river, which was another reason it seemed to shrink.

At this point, Henry Carter could already follow his mother out onto the plains to gather anything edible.

Henry Carter had been looking forward to finding his own food for a long time.

His body had grown so much that, no matter how full his mother’s milk was, it couldn’t satisfy this giant baby anymore.

However, the first time he set foot on the wilderness barefoot, he realized just how hard it was to find enough food in the spring.

The springtime wilderness was beautiful. Endless carpets of grass stretched from his feet to the horizon, the plains dotted with countless wildflowers, butterflies the size of a palm fluttered gracefully, and bees as big as fingertips busily gathered nectar.

Such scenery was truly beautiful, but it was something to be enjoyed only when full. When you’re hungry, no matter how beautiful the view, it can’t compare to a piece of bread.