Chapter 211: Spicy Belly Dance
A-Mang froze for a split second, then understood immediately. He burst out laughing, pulled Nan Xun back to his side, and while everyone else ran off to cheer, he sneakily groped her a couple of times and then kissed her hard several times.
“A Xi, I told you—I only like you. No matter how good other women are, they can’t compare to you!” A-Mang stared at her with burning eyes, looking as if he wanted to swallow her whole on the spot.
This finally satisfied Nan Xun. Extremely bold, she sat right down on A-Mang’s lap, grabbed his head, and bit him hard a couple of times.
Her fiery behavior made several men nearby whistle loudly.
After rewarding her man with a kiss, Nan Xun still stood up and walked into the crowd of dancing men and women. Then, all of a sudden, she spread her arms, twisted her waist, swung her hips, and began an intensely provocative, blood-boiling belly dance.
Twist the waist—twist, twist, twist.
Swing the hips—swing, swing, swing.
Single-side swings, small-arc swings, big-arc swings, half-circle left and right.
The beast-skin apron wrapped tightly around the woman’s beautifully curved hips. Her slender waist and shapely rear were accentuated by the fiery dance, magnifying the beauty of her body. The wild, seductive movements plunged the surroundings into silence, broken only by the repeated sounds of people swallowing.
Nan Xun was completely absorbed in the dance when a powerful arm suddenly appeared from behind, clamped around her waist, and hoisted her straight up!
A-Mang shot a furious glare at the men whose eyes had been glued to Nan Xun, then carried his little wild leopard back into the cave just like that.
Watching their chieftain angrily carry A Xi away, the men all burst out laughing.
“A Xi’s waist really moves beautifully—so flexible, so slim, tsk…”
They joked crudely, but only with words. No one dared covet A-Mang’s woman. Only A Bao kept staring intently at the woman slung over A-Mang’s shoulder, his gaze filled with aggression, until she disappeared into the stone cave—only then did he withdraw his eyes.
A Bao yanked his own woman, A Xiang, over and immediately started groping her.
A Xiang let out a moan, but her eyes were full of jealousy.
Inside the stone cave, Nan Xun was having a rough time. The furious A-Mang roughly tore off her clothes and directly “lit the fire to roast meat.”
He bit fiercely at the little wild leopard beneath him, and while “roasting the meat,” he domineeringly demanded, “A Xi, from now on you’re not allowed to dance in front of other men. Do you hear me?!”
Nan Xun hooked her leg around his waist. Maybe she had eaten too many of those intoxicating red fruits—her eyes were moist and alluring as she shot him a sidelong glance. “I was only dancing for you in the first place.”
Outside the cave, the bonfire burned fiercely; inside the cave, the flames were just as intense, scorching hot.
By the time the two of them tidied themselves up and came back out, the once-lively bonfire party was already over. The tribespeople had finished eating their roasted meat and returned to their caves to rest. Only a few people remained chatting by the fire.
Seeing A-Mang and A Xi emerge, one woman laughed loudly. “A-Mang’s stamina is really good—took you this long to come out.”
Nan Xun’s face instantly turned bright red.
Even though she was already used to the bluntness of people from the primitive era, she still felt embarrassed.
“A-Mang, we saved your and A Xi’s roasted meat. Hurry up and eat,” someone said, pointing to a beast’s thigh placed beside the bonfire—the best cut of meat, reserved for the chieftain and his woman.
A-Mang pulled Nan Xun down to sit by the fire, reheated the meat a bit, then tore off the most tender, fatty piece and held it up to Nan Xun’s mouth.
Nan Xun happened to not want to dirty her hands, so she accepted his care and opened her mouth to eat.
Two women nearby peeked over, whispering to each other and smiling so hard their faces practically bloomed.
After eating, the cleanliness-loving A-Mang took Nan Xun to the river to wash up. The water was even colder now, so he didn’t let her go in—only had her wipe herself down with a piece of beast hide.
When they returned, most of the tribe had already gone to rest. Nan Xun took out the homemade toothbrush she had brought back from her old tribe. Using bamboo tubes as cups, the two of them each held one filled with clean water, squatting outside the cave to brush their teeth.
The toothpaste was also homemade. Nan Xun had discovered that the grass A-Mang used to clean his teeth could be squeezed to release green juice, which would naturally congeal into a paste after three or four seconds.
Nan Xun had pulled a large bundle of the grass, crushed it all, squeezed out the juice, and stored it in a bamboo tube. When brushing, the two of them would scoop out a bit of “toothpaste” with their fingers, dab it on their front teeth, then brush using toothbrushes made from soft grasses.
A-Mang really liked the toothpaste and toothbrush Nan Xun made. Every day after eating, he would drag Nan Xun to squat at the cave entrance and clean their teeth together.
*
A monotonous daily life might feel boring to others, but Nan Xun didn’t think so.
She loved watching the tribe’s children laugh and play. She loved seeing the men return carrying their prey, with the tribespeople dancing joyfully around the food. And she especially loved watching the women sit together sewing and mending, while the elders sat nearby weaving bamboo backpacks.
Nan Xun finally finished making the tiger-skin coat and pants. The tiger-skin boots didn’t turn out quite as nicely, though. First, she wove the soles from grass rope, then wrapped a layer of durable snakeskin around them. The leftover tiger skin was used to make the boot shafts.
She slid her feet in to try them on. They were surprisingly comfortable and didn’t affect jumping at all—just a bit clunky to wear.
After thinking it over, Nan Xun made another pair of short tiger-skin boots. For the shorter ones, she added straps to tie around the calves, so they wouldn’t fall off when running fast.
Nan Xun had originally worried that A-Mang might not like the tiger-skin coat, pants, and boots. To her surprise, when he put them on that evening, he was clearly delighted—especially with the short tiger-skin boots. He paced back and forth around the cave several times, then couldn’t help himself and ran straight outside, jumping and running around.
“A Xi, I love these tiger-skin shoes so much!” A-Mang exclaimed happily, pinning Nan Xun down on the beast hide and showering her with kisses.
With tiger-skin boots, A-Mang no longer had to fear the thorny plants in the jungle. The soles weren’t too thick either, so they didn’t dull the sensation between his feet and the ground.
Seeing how much he liked them made Nan Xun especially happy. She decided to make him several more pairs—two for each season—so he could rotate them.
Autumn passed even faster than Nan Xun had imagined. As the weather grew cooler and most of the leaves turned yellow, the men began spending longer and longer periods out hunting.
The women weren’t idle either. Under Nan Xun’s lead, they stockpiled large amounts of sweet potatoes, dried wild vegetables in the sun, and pickled them into dried greens to cook together with jerky during winter.
Although the tribe now had pottery for storage and water, pottery couldn’t withstand high temperatures. So Nan Xun found a kind of huge nut with an extremely hard shell—so hard that it took a long time to split even with a stone knife. The nut meat wasn’t very tasty, but the shell could endure fire, so Nan Xun used it as a pot for boiling water and cooking food.
With a proper cooking vessel, Nan Xun no longer had to skewer wild vegetables and sweet potatoes on sticks to roast over the fire like before. She could boil many different things and even make delicious soups.
After Little Eight came out of seclusion for a bit, it popped up and said, “Darling, you’ve been looking really good lately. Been well ‘nourished’ by that savage man, huh?”
Nan Xun: …
