The Rise of a Primitive Civilization

Luo Chong needed tools to store food, but looking around, the tribe was impoverished, possessing nothing. Adult tribe members, prioritized for tools and animal skins due to their need to gather food, left Luo Chong, a ten-year-old boy, still naked.

At night, all the children could do was huddle together in a large pile of grass for warmth, burying their bodies in it, yet careful not to get too close to the fire pit, lest they never wake up.

In this tribe, priority access to resources generally came around the ages of twelve or thirteen, once a child reached about 1.6 meters in height, measured against the elder's worn wooden staff.

Being a minor without any resources, Luo Chong pondered how he might secure food most simply and efficiently to avoid subsisting on roots like the others.

As Luo Chong contemplated, at the edge of the forest in the distance, the bearded leader adorned with a green feathered crown, along with two large men wrapped in animal skins, approached the cave carrying a dead wildcat, its head bloodied from a blunt strike. It resembled a cat or perhaps an early form of leopard, Luo Chong thought, weighing about ten kilograms.

These simple men were easily satisfied, delighted by their catch, unaware that their slow food gathering might lead to several deaths from starvation this winter.

Upon reaching the cave, the leader handed the dead cat to a woman left to guard the cave, instructing her to skin and slice the meat for drying. Then, turning his attention to Luo Chong, he noticed the young boy's ankle.

The wound, previously cauterized, was now dry but slightly swollen, indicating inflammation.

Smiling, seeing Luo Chong looking untroubled, the leader handed him a dandelion, instructing him to chew it and apply it to the wound.

Luo Chong was startled, not by the gesture, but by the realization that the leader knew of the anti-inflammatory properties of dandelions—a simple treatment method Luo Chong had learned during his military survival training. Most people knew to eat dandelions as a wild vegetable, but few understood their medicinal uses.

Treating the dandelion as a precious gift, Luo Chong quickly chewed it and applied it to his wound. Regardless of its actual medicinal efficacy, having a remedy was better than none, and Luo Chong was not ready to give up on treating himself.

The leader was pleased to see Luo Chong follow his instructions, which surprised him; he had thought the boy might not survive the previous day, yet here he was proving him wrong again.

What the leader did not know was that within this familiar body now resided a strange new soul.

After arranging tasks for everyone, the leader turned and left, as they still needed to gather more food, and time waited for no one.

Luo Chong also felt the urgency. He needed to store food for the winter, and the easiest meat to obtain would be fish, though the tribe did not eat fish.

Near the cave, less than a kilometer away, ran a small river about eight or nine meters wide, the tribe's main water source. However, they feared the water, as none could swim; a few had even drowned before, so they had never considered harvesting food from the water.

Moreover, they lacked fishing tools. Their hunting tools were simple: wooden sticks, bone clubs, stones, and stone knives—sharpened stone flakes. They didn't even have spears, let alone fish spears, so their unfamiliarity with fish was understandable.

Luo Chong was now set on fishing but lacked the tools. All he had was the stone knife used for cutting his wound and a three to four-meter-long snake skin from the snake that had bitten the body's previous owner and caused his death.

The snake had been eaten the previous night, leaving only its skin, which was too thin to make clothing from, so the leader had generously given it to Luo Chong as a form of compensation for the snake bite.

"Truly impoverished, no starting gear but scraps," Luo Chong cursed under his breath, wrapping the snake skin around his waist as a makeshift loincloth, securing it at the hips, and set off to gather equipment.

His plan to catch fish involved weaving a basket, assuming the river's size and the pristine environmental conditions meant plenty of fish.

He could use bamboo or vines for materials. There were no bamboos here, but vines were common, found in bushes or climbing trees.

It being autumn, the vines were partially dried and ideal for weaving—too moist in summer, too brittle in winter, requiring heating to bend. Now was the perfect time.

Luo Chong pulled a large bundle of vines near the cave and began his basket-weaving endeavor. Several curious children gathered around him, watching intently but unable to speak clearly, only making unintelligible sounds. Pregnant women nearby cautioned the children not to wander far, occasionally glancing at Luo Chong and his weaving.

Some older children were pulling up grass to dry on the ground near the cave entrance, preparing their bedding for winter.

The tribe had a language, though it was limited and lacked vocabulary, making it difficult to express many concepts; most communication involved gestures accompanied by guesses, which was not very convenient.

Luo Chong did not bother explaining as they would not understand anyway. The vines in his hands continuously transformed as he crossed several as warp and wove others through as weft, leaving significant gaps as it was meant for fishing—too tight a weave would serve no purpose as long as the fish could not escape.

Suddenly, loud cries and the sound of running came from a distance, causing several women to think a wild animal was approaching. They quickly called the children back to the cave.

All the children scrambled into the cave, and the women also pulled Luo Chong inside, everyone curious, stretching their necks to look outside.

Looking in the direction of the shouts, they saw at the edge of the western forest, the bearded leader and two adult men each clutching a huge bird egg, the size of a basketball, running while crying out loudly.

With several sharp shrieks, a massive terror bird, over three meters tall, burst from the woods, chasing after the leader at full speed.

"Damn, you're really asking to die, stealing eggs from a terror bird? Do you want the egg more than your life? Drop it now!" Luo Chong exclaimed in shock, but no one understood him.

The leader did not relinquish the bird egg, and the terror bird did not give up on the leader. While they had managed to maintain some distance in the forest, once they reached the open grassland, how could a human outrun a terror bird? With a mighty peck of its half-meter-long beak, the leader's head burst open like a smashed watermelon.

The headless body, propelled by momentum, rushed forward a few meters before collapsing. The bird egg also shattered, its contents mixing with blood and brain matter, spreading red, white, and yellow across the ground.

The leader was dead.