Chapter 203: The Truth, You Big Slacker
“A-Xi, where did you go? I’ve been looking everywhere for you!” As soon as Chuxue saw Nan Xun, she hurried over.
Thinking of what had just happened by the river, Nan Xun felt too embarrassed to say she’d been fooling around with a wild man, so she claimed she’d gone to bathe in the river and accidentally fallen asleep.
Chuxue scolded her softly, “You can’t indulge in the cold like that. What if you catch a cold? There isn’t even a doctor here. If you get sick, you’re done for.”
Nan Xun wrapped an arm around her and walked toward her stone cave, laughing. “Got it, Chuxue girl. I’ll listen to you from now on.”
Chuxue shot her a look. “I already told you, I’m older than you. You should call me big sister.”
Nan Xun burst out laughing. “But in my eyes, you’re just a little sister who needs to be pampered.”
Once they entered the stone cave and Nan Xun lowered the animal-hide curtain, she gave Chuxue a half-smile. “Alright, tell me—did you argue with A-Yu again? That guy is really clueless. He can’t even tell when a woman’s angry. He probably really thought you wanted to sleep with me.”
Chuxue said stiffly, “It’s not just about being angry. Sometimes I realize we can’t communicate at all. A-Xi, if only A-Yu were as smart as you. I want to teach him my Mandarin, but he’s dumb as hell—he only knows a few phrases.”
Having been praised again, Nan Xun shamelessly accepted it and smiled brightly. “Listen to your big sister for once. Men really can’t be spoiled too much, but you can’t keep icing them out either. Chuxue, you’ve already been sleeping here for several days in a row. If this keeps up, A-Yu will get upset. If communication isn’t working, then keep communicating. It’ll get better eventually.”
Chuxue fell silent. After a long while, she nodded. “A-Xi, thank you. I understand now.”
The two of them laughed and joked for a bit, then Chuxue suddenly noticed the snakeskin apron and exclaimed, “Huh? A-Xi, this snakeskin looks really familiar—like that poisonous snake we ran into last time.”
Since everyone had been focused on saving A-Xi back then, no one had paid attention to where the poisonous snake went.
Chuxue frowned slightly. “I don’t remember you bringing that dead snake back.”
Nan Xun gave a dry laugh. “Actually, before the tribe came to save me, I met my sweetheart. He sucked out the venom for me and took the snake away. Tonight he came specially to see me and gave me this snakeskin apron.”
Chuxue, being experienced, quickly grasped the deeper meaning and smiled knowingly. “No wonder you took such a long bath tonight.”
Nan Xun felt utterly mortified.
“Don’t worry, A-Xi,” Chuxue assured her. “This will be our little secret. Before that warrior officially comes to visit, I won’t reveal anything about him.”
Chuxue left, but her words stirred Nan Xun’s worries again.
Her A-Da would never marry her off to another tribe. Women were scarce in their own tribe—how could he possibly hand her over to outsiders for nothing?
Before leaving, A-Mang had said he would definitely find a way to get A-Da to agree to let him take her, and he’d told her she must go to Ala Mountain. She had a feeling she understood his plan.
On this otherworldly ancient continent, people already had a sense of bartering. It was said that every season when the leaves began to yellow—late summer to early autumn—nearby tribes would send representatives to the Ala Mountain tribe to exchange things their own tribes lacked.
The most common trade was food or animal hides for women. Next came finely polished stone axes and knives, and after that, necklaces strung with animal teeth—luxury items by ancient standards.
So Nan Xun suspected that A-Mang planned to trade goods with A-Da in exchange for her.
She was A-Da’s only daughter. If A-Mang really wanted to trade for her, he’d probably have to bleed himself dry.
With that thought in mind, Nan Xun didn’t see A-Mang again for the entire long summer.
She was a bit unhappy. That bastard had borrowed the animal hide she used to wipe herself and still hadn’t returned it?
In truth, she just missed him a little.
The men in the tribe were either not serious enough—like A-Yu, who joked casually with women—or too much so. A-Mang was the exception. His seriousness and his roguishness were both just right.
Nan Xun remembered every word of his love talk—so blunt they made her cheeks flush, burning hot as if she were sick.
Every night, like a little pervert, Nan Xun lay on the snakeskin apron she’d first stolen from A-Mang, breathing in its faint grassy scent as she fell asleep.
She didn’t dare wash it. She was afraid that once she did, that faint grassy smell would be gone.
Without her noticing, summer came to its end, and the atmosphere in the tribe grew tense.
Compared to the long summer and winter, spring and autumn here were very short—only two or three months. During the brief autumn, the men had to hunt enough prey to feed the entire tribe through winter, and also gather large amounts of animal hides to withstand the bitter cold.
With Chuxue, the lucky one, around, Nan Xun wasn’t worried about the tribe starving. Chuxue had cured a lot of salted meat that could be stored long-term and had gathered all the women to start stockpiling sweet potatoes and other foods.
Chuxue even had people dig a cellar. The cellar stayed cool, so by late summer, the men could store surplus prey there without worrying about spoilage.
Nan Xun silently gave a thumbs-up in her heart. “As expected of the lucky one—even a cellar crossed her mind.”
Little Eight immediately stabbed at her heart. “I think I might have met a fake modern person. You say you’re from the same era as her—so how is it that you can’t think of this stuff?”
Nan Xun retorted, “I’ve thought of plenty of things too.”
Little Eight said nothing, all ears.
Nan Xun said, “Like building a luxurious treehouse in a tree, lining it with thick, fluffy animal hides. When winter comes, I can roll around up there. And remember those warm stones I found at the bottom of the river? I think they could be made into hand warmers. They’d be perfect for winter.”
Little Eight: …
“Darling, I think what you should really be worrying about is food. For ancient people, food is the most important thing. In the food-scarce winter, many don’t make it through.”
Nan Xun yawned. “Isn’t that what Chuxue and her man are for? They’re the male and female leads of this world. Stick with them and you definitely won’t starve.”
So she just focused on living as comfortably as possible.
Little Eight had no strength left to argue. It felt like it had finally seen through Nan Xun.
To put it nicely, Nan Xun was someone who really knew how to enjoy life. To put it bluntly, she was a huge slacker.
How lazy? Anything she didn’t need to worry about—or simply didn’t care about—she absolutely wouldn’t waste brainpower thinking over.
Damn it. That whole “sometimes smart, sometimes stupid” thing finally made sense.
When she used her brain to get things done, she was smart. When she couldn’t even be bothered to think, how smart could the result be?
The more Little Eight thought about it, the angrier it got. How the hell did it end up with such a lazy woman who couldn’t even be bothered to think?
