Chapter 6 Human Shaped Flame
Because he walked too much during the day, the pain on his left leg increased. Donford Wu didn’t have a deep sleep that day, and when it was three in the morning, he was woken up by a weird noise coming from the outside.
The noise still continued even after he woke up, the noise should be coming from a large animal, it was kind of like the noise a cow would make, but compared to a cow, it was deeper and shriller. Its position should be around the south eastern side of the valley, which was downstream from the place he use to rest at.
Donford Wu has never heard this kind of noise before. According to the noise, it seems to come from an animal that is huge in size, and the noise seems to have mixed in painful and angry noises cries. Showing that it was fighting with something.
With curiosity in his heart, Donford Wu propped himself up with a tree branch and went out of the cave. Today was the first day of the month, there was no moon in the sky, so there was no illumination outside. At the south eastern side of the valley, was a faint fire, the intensity of the flames flickered while fluttering without aim.
Fumbling to the top of the cave, what he saw was a horrifying and bizarre scene. Around ten kilometers away from his position in the valley, there was a huge snake like animal climbing up the cliff on the east side of the valley, its body was well twenty meters long, it’s width wider than a meter, the shape of its body was like that of a python, but it absolutely wasn’t one. This was because its head was different from a normal python, even though he couldn’t see the finer details because of the distance, but he could see that its head was much wider than a python, it was more like a cow head. Not only that, from the way it moves up the cliff, this fellow most likely had claws.
Even though the huge unknown animal was horrifying, but the thing that really frightened Donford Wu was the monster’s opponent, it was a human shaped red hot flame that was bouncing up in down from the valley and into the air, it would sometimes send out a round fireball to attack the cow headed monster, planning to force it back down to the valley.
Being hit by a fireball, it gave a blood-curdling scream, but it didn’t turn back down to the valley, but rather increased its climbing speed. When it almost reached the top, the human shaped fire closed in on him, Donford Wu couldn’t see what exactly happened. He only saw that after the fire reached the monster, the monster screamed in pain before falling down to the bottom of the valley.
Then, the human shaped flame also went down to the valley, its brightness vanishing, setting the valley back into darkness.
Only until then did Donford Wu wake up from his daze. He was sure what he just saw wasn’t some kind of illusion, that cow headed snake body monster does exist, and he was sure it was defeated by that human shaped flame. Four thousand years ago at the Xia dynasty, it would be normal for huge unknown animals to exists, but what was abnormal was that human shaped flame. The flames was in the shape of a person, and it clearly had a plan on attacking that monster. If there really was a human inside the flames, how could that person withstand the flame’s temperature, how could he float in mid-air? And if it wasn’t a man inside, how could it attack with human tactics?
Just when he was in deep thought, the valley was filled with light yet again. The light didn’t fly up, but rather followed the valley upstream, after a few minutes, it left the valley and arrived at a wide and open area. There, it waited for a short period of time before lifting off and flying towards the east.
Because the distance was shortened, Donford Wu could clearly see that there was a person inside the flames, even though he couldn’t tell if it was a man or women, old or young, but he was sure there was a person inside those flames.
The incredible scene left Donford Wu unable to sleep, sitting on the mountain top, he went into a daze. He originally thought that the only difference between the Xia dynasty and modern times was in technology and civilization, but he discovered that the problem wasn’t so simple. Not only that, his confidence was greatly affected, if that person inside those flames suddenly rushed over and attacked him, it would be as easy as crushing an ant.
Five o’clock in the morning, the mountain was once again showered in a light rain. It rained frequently at this place, it could rain up to four or five times during peak hours, but the amount of rain was not a lot and the duration wasn’t long either.
With the sun coming through the hazy mist, Donford Wu left the cave. Using his dagger to smooth out two Y shaped tree branches to use as crutches, he went down to the valley, following the shoreline downstream, he went to the place of battle between the monster and the human shape flame.
Because of the injury on his leg, his speed was extremely slow, only after two hours did he reach the valley downstream. From very far away, he saw the corpse of the monster, the insides of its stomached spilt out on top of shore. His guess yesterday was correct, the monster had four claws, similar to those of crocodile’s. There were many burn marks on its body, there was only a small space the size of a palm that was not burnt. With its head spilt in two, the ** (this was in the raws) between blood and filth scared people with just the sight.
This humongous creature’s stomach was slit open, exposing the smelly intestines to the outside, mixed in with the organs was a horrible scene were corpses half melted by stomach acid was shown.
Downstream a few hundred meters was a narrow black cave entrance under the cliff, half of the entrance was covered by water. With the messy scratch marks, it was easy to see that the monster use to live here.
Donford Wu didn’t stay there for long. While going back, he felt fear slowly creep into his heart, the human shaped flame from last night was most likely a shaman from the Fire clan, coming here to find the murderer of his three clan’s men. If it wasn’t for this monster swallowing the corpses as a shield and scapegoat, they would most likely find the real murderer, him.
Going back upstream to the flat area, an anxious Walda Ming ran towards him, saying something to him in a worried voice.
Donford Wu smiled at her, Walda Ming most likely discovered that he wasn’t in the cave, so she ran here to come find him.
With the language barrier, the two people were unable to chat anymore. Walda Ming supported Donford Wu back to the cave, giving him a small pot, Donford Wu reached out and grabbed it, finding half a pot of congeee inside.
“I ate already, bring it back to your children to eat.”
Donford Wu placed the pot down.
Walda Ming confused once again tried giving it to him again. Donford Wu carefully put it down on the ground and pointed at his lips.
“I ate.”
Walda Ming suspiciously stared at Donford Wu, Donford Wu smiled back at her.
Walda Ming didn’t try again, carrying the pot she walked out the cave, before leaving, with a serious expression she pointed at Donford Wu’s leg, then pointed at the cave, meaning his leg was injured, don’t walk around
Donford Wu replied with a small smile, using his gaze to send Walda Ming out. He has never seen Walda Ming’s husband, her house in the village was the most broken, she also went to the stream to catch food under danger, this clearly showed that something happened to her husband. Saying it simpler, Walda Ming was most likely a widow.
Sending out Walda Ming, Donford Wu once again thought of yesterday. He wasn’t sure it was a shaman of the fire clan that borrowed the power of flame to fly, but he was sure it must be an expert in Qi, people trained in Qi in modern times, even though they couldn’t borrow flames to fly, but they could use hard Qi to kill an ox, it was also possible to use light steps to fly across roof tops.
He was a soldier, soldiers believed in materialistic things, but this didn’t affect him on the existent of Qi. Special troops also had to practice hard Qi techniques, if he didn’t believe in Qi then why the fuck would he practice it.
Sitting down for a while, Donford Wu once again left the cave, he couldn’t move quickly, so he the only thing he could hunt were snakes. At the west side of the mountain ridge, there was a small stream in between the cave and village. Going there to take a drink, he cleaned out the snake meat and went back to the cave. Compared to the shore, he liked this place more, even though he had to move rather far to drink water, but here he could avoid the rain, and the because the terrain was a higher, it was also rather cool, not attracting that many flies.
He ate grilled snake meat this time, the people in the village already knew of his existence, there was no reason to hide.
Snake meat had that fishy taste to it, eating too much would make people irritated. As the old saying goes, rest for a hundred days after taking a beating. It was bad for the leg injury not to rest for three months, Donford Wu couldn’t keep eating this stuff for that long
He could always use his dagger as a flying knife, but the dagger couldn’t be flown too far, and in the worst case it didn’t kill the animal, it might take away the knife running away. Thinking carefully, Donford Wu decided to make a bow.
Making a bow wasn’t too much of a difficulty to him, bamboo was plenty where he was. The curve of the bow, the length of the arrows, the placing of feathers, this was all in the training material of the special troops, finding most of the materials, he remembered that there weren’t any thing to use as a bow string. He first thought of using the monster’s muscles. Even though using animal muscle to make bow strings was a long and ancient practice, but the process of making it was too complicated, and it also needed to be drenched in oil for a long time before he could begin the process.
Doing nothing for a while, Donford Wu’s brain had a sudden spark of inspiration. He took off his body armor. The body armour’s bullet proof layer was made with layers of special fibers, it had extreme toughness and elasticity, but because it was interwoven, he had no way to only take off one layer, so he could only use his dagger to slowly cut off a single strand.
It could be considered that he made best use of the material, even though the body armor could withstand bullets, but against sharp and piercing objects, it didn’t have much use. Saying it simply, the body armor couldn’t withstand pierces, so it didn’t have much use.
Cutting off the fiber, it didn’t seem different from normal silk on the outside, and cutting off a bit didn’t destroy the main body of the body armor, putting back on the body armor. Starting a fire, Donford Wu began making a bow and arrows.
Working on it till midnight, the bow and arrows was finished, because he couldn’t stand all too well, he could only shoot it up to a hundred meters, and its effective range was only forty or fifty meters, minus the target knowing about it.
In the afternoon of that day, Walda Ming came by, seeing the situation inside the cave surprised her. Inside and outside the cave was a mess of bird feathers, Donford Wu was currently outside cave grinding a kind of bird’s bone.
Seeing that Walda Ming came by, he pointed at the waterfowl outside the cave, this was species of large birds that lived by the stream and the reason why he caught them was because he needed their bones to make arrows. Bird bones were extremely hard, the holes inside the bones allowed blood to flow out at quick speeds, in a world without metal arrow heads, he could only use this to replace them.
Seeing the waterfowl made Walda Ming extremely happy, putting down a pot, she picked up the arrows outside the cave to take a closer look.。
Donford Wu momentarily stopped working and titled his head to look at Walda Ming, according to the way she moved, she wasn’t unfamiliar to arrows, but for some reason, the people living here hunted very rarely.
The men inside the village went to the mountain on the northern side every day to excavate. If he wasn’t wrong, then that place should be a small scale open-air copper mine, mining was the job of the men of the village.
With the main force of labor mining, where did the village’s source of food come from, relying on women surely wasn’t the answer. The most possible answer was that the village wasn’t the only one. It was only a single village of many in the Gold clan, they mined for the Gold clan and the Gold clan routinely gave them food and rations.
But he wasn’t sure if this was true or not, because of the language barrier, he had no way to ask further to make sure.
“Come here, come here.”
Donford Wu waved at Walda Ming
Walda Ming placed the arrows back down, turning around she went over.
Donford Wu picked up a stone on the ground and drew a square and four circles, then pointed at Walda Ming saying, “Walda Ming”. Then, pointing back at himself, “Donford Wu”. At last, pointing at the stone in his hand.
“Xi Ya.”
Walda Ming said.
Donford frowned, then placing the stone on the southern small circle.
Walda Ming didn’t understand what Donford Wu was trying to say, because of the language barrier, they could only use gestures, making the results make them look like two idiots.
Helpless, Donford Wu once again picked up another rock, Walda Ming once again said,
“Xi Ya.”
Donford Wu picked up the stone he placed down on the southern circle, copying her pronunciation but with an emphasized questioning manner, “Xi Ya?”
This time Walda Ming understood, she picked up a rock and placed it on the eastern side, the northern side and the central side,
“Xi Ya, Xi Ya, Xi Ya.”
Finishing, she picked up a tree branch, placing it down on the five positions one at a time.
“Me Li, Me Li, Me Li, Me Li, Me Li.”.
Donford Wu relaxed after seeing this, the most urgent thing right now was to learn the Xia dynasty’s language, but he wasn’t sure the language Walda Ming was using was used in the other four clans, only after making sure of this did he start to learn. Like a foreigner going to China, if they wanted to learn Chinese they must learn Pu Tong Hua, if they painfully learnt different dialect, then discovered that they learnt the dialect of only a few people, then he would be fucked.
After making sure the language was used all around, Donford Wu began learning, Walda Ming tried her best to teach him, every day at noon, she would go back to the village, it was possible that they were giving out food at that time, and in the afternoon she had nothing to do. Donford Wu was extremely skilled in hunting, everyday Walda Ming would take some of it back home. So now, she didn’t have to go out to find more food, and she had more time to teach Donford Wu the language.
Normal people around the world always think that the special troops were tall, mighty and muscular hunks of meat. But truthfully, this kind of thinking was wrong, a special soldier must learn how to shoot, gamble, assassinate, make bombs, take pictures, take pictures, swim, ski, mountain climb, parachute, be on alert, reconnaissance, rescue, etc. battle techniques, and they also need to be able to treat infections and have a vast knowledge of plants and animals. Learning all these things is not a simple matter, that’s why the special troops must first think about is not appearance and build, but rather their IQ, an idiot has no way to be able to learn all these things.
Donford Wu is extremely smart, while learning you can’t just forcefully memorize, but rather try your best to find the similarities and differences between the Xia dynasty language and the modern language. After four thousand years, the change in language surely was huge. But at last, there was a few similarities, after finding the pattern, Donford Wu was able to quickly learn the language. After a month, he could already have simple talks with Walda Ming…..