Distant Mountain Battle Song

Chapter 23 In-depth Social Practice Activities
"Gibberish, gibberish."

"Don't disturb Changji's good time, 91%"

When Eji said this, she showed a strong sense of envy.

“I started playing the drums this year, and I haven’t attracted a single man yet, 99%,” Eji said, while secretly rubbing her fleshy buttocks against Yun Ce’s waist and hips.

Yun Ce rolled his eyes and took out his knife again to cut the bark.

Once Eji said that, she naturally understood. In some remote areas where the population was small and the kinship between men and women was too close, people allowed some women to set up white tents by the roadside in order to reproduce healthy offspring. The women would stay inside, and if a man from outside came, they would invite him to stay overnight in the white tent.

I never expected the women here to go to such lengths, using drumming to attract men—it's far more sophisticated than waiting around like a rabbit on Earth.

Just as Yun Ce was engrossed in harvesting tree bark, the drumbeats sounded again. This time, the drumbeats were chaotic and disordered. Yun Ce looked at E Ji and found that she was also puzzled.

A series of unpleasant images flashed through my mind. I chuckled and continued cutting the bark with the knife. To be honest, listening to the bustling activity of others made the work half as easy.

He thought Eji shared the same understanding, but by the time he peeled off a piece of bark, Eji had already run more than a hundred meters away.

Yun Ce had no interest in watching other people's erotic scenes. While he was cutting another tree with his knife, he suddenly heard E Ji's shrill scream.

This cry didn't carry any hint of lust; it sounded more like someone had been bitten by a dog.

Yun Ce leaped to a spot ten meters away. After several leaps, he saw a blood-stained female corpse lying on the surface of a huge drum. A naked man was vigorously striking the drum, the resounding drumbeats staining the blood on the drum surface into a beautiful flower shape—or rather, a trumpet shape.

Eji somehow climbed up a tree. When she saw Yun Ce coming, she barked loudly. According to Gouzi's translation, it meant that he should run away quickly.
Yun Ce didn't run away; he felt he was still capable.

After walking a few steps toward the naked man playing the drum, I noticed a huge bite mark on his thigh; half of the flesh was gone, and the bone was exposed.

Despite his injuries, he was still bravely beating the drum to send out warning signals. Yun Ce admired him greatly.

The problem was that as Yun Ce watched, he felt that this guy didn't seem like a living person. Every move he made was extremely stiff, which inexplicably reminded Yun Ce of those self-immolating toucans.

When Eji saw that Yun Ce refused to leave, she actually climbed down from the tree with trepidation. If she hadn't been hiding tightly behind Yun Ce and holding onto his shoulders with both hands, ready to push him out to shield him from disaster at any moment, this behavior would have been quite endearing.

The naked man continued to beat the drum, showing no intention of causing trouble for Yun Ce and E Ji. The female corpse kept jumping on the drum surface, splattering blood everywhere, creating a strangely beautiful scene.

Yun Ce and E Ji weren't the only ones who noticed something amiss with the drumbeats; other women who were cutting bark nearby also came over. With so many people around, E Ji stopped hiding behind Yun Ce and started chatting away with one of the older women for quite a while.

The older woman called out to Yun Ce, "Quack, quack!"

This time, without needing Gouzi to translate, Yun Ce knew what the old woman was talking about. He picked up the spear that Zhao Jin had lent him, which only had a little bit of iron in it, and threw it with a flick of his wrist.

The spear swept across nearly twenty meters of space, piercing the naked man's head without any resistance. Only after the naked man collapsed to the ground did the group of women rush over to see the dead naked man.

Yun Ce didn't. After finding his spear, he cautiously looked around. The women were so oblivious to the large hole in the woman's chest on the drum and the horrific wound on the naked man's leg. He didn't see those things.

The hole in the naked woman's chest was probably made by claws, while the wound on the naked man's leg was made by biting.

As the group of women were removing the naked woman from the drum, Yun Ce noticed a trail of blood on the edge of the drum, pointing towards the grove of trees on his left.

The sky was overcast, the rain had stopped, and the mulberry grove over there was so dark that even if some ferocious beast was hiding there, it was impossible to see clearly.

Wild beasts are afraid of fire, so Yun Ce found some relatively dry branches in the forest and lit a fire next to the drum.

As soon as the fire was lit, the male corpse began to writhe unnaturally. Under Yun Ce's gaze, a large clump of pale yellow worms slid out from the anus.

Yun Ce threw a burning branch over, and a bright yellow flame rose from the male corpse, instantly engulfing the insects and the corpse.

Upon seeing this, the elderly woman was horrified and threw the female corpse into the fire as well, shouting to the other women, "Chaka, chechaka!"

"Live worms, dead worms, 83%"

Yun Ce knew that the Living Dead Worms were very resistant to burning. He used to think that these highly energetic worms only infected animals, but now it seemed they didn't even spare humans. According to the old woman, the man attracted by Chang Ji's drumbeats was infected with the Living Dead Worms and had been driven out of his settlement by his tribe to wander the streets. The old woman also scolded Chang Ji for acting out of turn, saying that she didn't check the man before having sex, which was very wrong.

If we're going to find someone, we need to find a strong and capable man like Yun Ce. In this respect, E Ji did a great job, getting good stuff in her first year of drumming.

Although everyone was saddened by Changji's death, and Eji's eyes were red from crying, the upturned corners of her mouth could not hide her inner smugness.

Yun Ce's mind wasn't on that; he was focused on the wild beasts in the Cloth Forest and the two corpses being burned by the flames set off by the undead insects.

It had been burning for fifteen minutes, and the undead worms were still providing fierce flames, burning even more resiliently than those produced by the toucan. This was perhaps because the toucan's body was much smaller than a human's, and its belly contained far more undead worms than the toucan's.

The Living Dead Insect is an excellent source of fire. Yun Ce had been thinking that if this thing were dried, ground into powder, and stored, it would make a very good weapon.

The women were illiterate, so there was no way to warn them about the wild animals that were there. Therefore, Yun Ce stubbornly drove the women away. Although he couldn't speak clearly, Yun Ce still made the women aware of the danger through his body language.

The other women all ran away, but Eji didn't. She squatted down next to Yun Ce and looked at the two burning corpses. The flames were very hot, and by now the oil in the corpses had also joined in the burning. The flames had naturally split into an outer flame, an inner flame, and a flame core. At this moment, the outer flame was gradually turning white.

Yun Ce was extremely interested in this new type of fuel. Since the old woman in the village could talk about the living dead worm, it meant that this thing was very common in this area.

The only problem is how to collect these things. After all, they won't crawl out of the anus unless the host dies. Yun Ce decided to think about it carefully when he got back. He had to thoroughly study these energy worms, which have military research value, and it would be best to breed them artificially.

Half an hour later, the two corpses on the ground were burned to ashes, and even the ashes were scattered everywhere by the wind.

Eji brought water and washed the drumhead of the big drum several times. It seemed that this drum was very important to the young women in the village.

Eji was very disappointed that she didn't get to eat roast suckling pig today.

It wasn't that Yun Ce had forgotten; he just always felt that the Yishulin Forest was no longer safe.

A woman died in the village, but no one seemed to care much. They continued doing what they were doing. The legless veterans huddled in a circle, discussing the bad news Yun Ce had brought that day.

They discussed for only five minutes before devising a strategy to deal with it. Zhao Jin believed that since it was a man-eating beast, it should be killed immediately and not allowed to continue harming the people in the village.

They dig traps and place sharp wooden spikes at the bottom, so that once the prey falls into the trap, it is doomed.

Yun Ce also thought this strategy was good. The only problem was that since a trap had been dug, there should be bait. Ordinary wild animals would not be interested in a wild animal that was addicted to eating people. In addition, human flesh contains more salt, which is very attractive to wild animals that do not get salt replenishment all year round. Therefore, the bait should be a human.

Just as Yun Ce was marveling at the noble sentiments of these legless guys who were willing to sacrifice themselves for the group, he noticed that when these legless veterans were discussing the bait, they all turned their gazes toward him.

The group couldn't understand Yun Ce's objections, but Zhao Jin thought the words he wrote on the wooden tablet were good, and even told others that Yun Ce was a good young man who was willing to act as bait to attract wild beasts.

Eji, who had come over to eavesdrop, had only said one sentence in support of Yun Ce when she was scolded back by Zhao Jin, who had a bushy beard and hair.

Yun Celong had seen wild boars and bears that had become spirits before. Although he didn't know what the wild beasts in the Yilin Forest were like, they couldn't possibly be more powerful than that wild boar that had become a spirit.

Furthermore, his social investigation here had only just begun, and he couldn't leave now, so he tacitly approved of the group's decision to let him act as bait.

"You're going to be the scout leader of the seventh squad in the future, so there are some things that you should do."

This is a sentence that Zhao Jin wrote on a wooden tablet, and it was even carved into the tablet with a knife, so it seems that it was a decision that had already been made.

Yun Ce had experienced many of these blunt, authoritarian orders from rural people before, and he felt that this was just a big, round pie in the sky that Zhao Jin and his group had drawn for him.

At the same time, it was also a test to see if Yun Ce, this outsider, had any intention of fully integrating into Hekou Village.

In the evening, Eji was called over by Zhao Jin for a long talk. Seeing that Eji didn't dare to look him in the eye when she returned, Yun Ce knew that this girl would definitely climb into his bed tonight.

Sure enough, when the full moon rose in the sky, a warm, girlish body, carrying the rich scent of sap from the yew tree, embraced him from behind.

(End of this chapter)