Chapter 13: A Smart And Beautiful Piglet
Yun Ce was that ferocious person, but now he has truly calmed down.
The calm Yun Ce is not his true self; this great fire still burning in the distance is the real him. Now, the fire on this side has been cut off by the small river, and the flames filling Yun Ce’s heart have also slowly extinguished a bit.
Thanks to this great fire, there are no creatures on the grassland. The small river, however, has plenty of round balls about the size of coconuts. Some have floated away with the current, while others remain in Eddy Bay, bobbing up and down like human heads.
Yun Ce does not easily cross the river. After following the river around a bend, his body pauses for a moment, then he hugs his arms with interest, eyeing the creature in his line of sight.
It is a black-skinned, white-furred piglet.
This pig has clearly grown up under the wind and sun: white fur over black skin. Yun Ce does not understand why a black pig would grow white fur, but what truly brings him joy is that pair of crystal-clear eyes, so obedient, so lively and cute, like a spirit of the world, untainted by all cruel things.
At this moment, it is using its pink snout to push coconut-like round balls from the riverbank up the hillside. Coconuts are naturally round, but this piglet has remarkable skill. No matter how unwilling the coconut-like ball is to go uphill, under the drive of its snout, that thing about the size of a coconut eventually makes it up the slope.
Just as Yun Ce is about to cheer for the piglet finally getting the coconut-like thing up the slope, the piglet suddenly pulls its snout away, letting that coconut-like thing roll back down from the slope.
There are many stones by the small river. The coconut-like thing bounces down the slope and finally crashes into a stone, splitting open upon impact.
The piglet charges down the hillside like the wind, arrives before that coconut-like thing, and with its nimble mouth, peels off the broken shell in just a few bites, revealing the white fruit flesh inside.
1 The piglet eats greedily, juice splashing everywhere with every chomp.
1 Watching this, Yun Ce fishes a coconut-like thing out of the water, crushes it, grabs a handful of the white paste-like substance, and pops it into his mouth.
1 This thing is surprisingly delicious, somewhat sweet, but mostly carrying the aroma of nuts, somewhat like walnuts.
1 In general, what pigs can eat, humans can eat too. Yun Ce has gone two days and two nights without food, and moreover, these two days and nights here have been exceptionally long…
1 He thought that after eating the dragon eggshell, he could subsist on energy, but after testing, whether meditating in seated posture or facing the sun and moon to breathe in and out, no energy entered his body.
1 On top of that, his stomach contains half a pound of nanobots and a dragon pearl the size of a walnut, always heavily asserting their presence, so he feels no hunger.
1 Although he feels no hunger, Yun Ce vaguely thinks this is not a good way to go. The lack of hunger is likely because it is consuming his body itself.
1 After eating seven or eight coconut-like nuts in a row, Yun Ce shows no sign of stopping. This thing makes him hungrier the more he eats. Just as he cracks open the ninth nut, that white-furred piglet nudges his leg with its pink nose.
1 This time, the little wild boar nudges over a round ball wrapped in water grass. Yun Ce squeezes it casually and finds the texture off, so he unwraps the water grass coiled around it. Then, a pale human skull appears before him.
1 This is a very complete skull. Though lacking flesh and blood, it is still fairly fresh, with the jawbone intact—not just the jawbone, but even the two rows of teeth in the gums.
2 The teeth are poorly formed and not very white, but the wear is not heavy. He yanks hard, and one tooth falls into his palm. After close inspection, Yun Ce is certain this is a young person’s skull.
2 The skull is covered in bite marks. Yun Ce picks up the skull, pries open the little wild boar’s mouth, and compares the bite marks. After comparing, Yun Ce is certain the marks are from the little wild boar.
2 There is a hole at the top of the skull; the brain matter was probably drained or sucked clean by the wild boar through that hole.
2 The skull’s crown bone is very thin, and the inner cavity should be about the same capacity as an Earthling’s brain. Thinking of this, Yun Ce lets out a long breath and casually buries the skull.
2 The little wild boar is very displeased. Yun Ce fetches a large nut, cracks it open, and places it by the shore. The white-furred piglet then devours it heartily.
2 Later on, Yun Ce simply sits by the small river, waiting for the piglet to nudge over nuts, then cracks them open to eat together.
2 Sometimes the little wild boar nudges over nuts, sometimes skulls. When it’s nuts, Yun Ce cracks them open to share with the little wild boar. When it’s skulls, he studies them carefully, then buries them.
2 But when Yun Ce looks at the little wild boar again, the warmth in his eyes has vanished.
2 This little female pig seems very accustomed to Yun Ce’s presence. How to put it—when with Yun Ce, this little female pig acts more like the master. Its behavior of driving Yun Ce to work feels so natural.
2 He loses track of how many nuts he ate or how many skulls he buried, until there are no more nuts in Eddy Bay. Then the white-furred piglet climbs ashore, flicks its tail, and heads toward the depths of the green hills.
3 Yun Ce naturally follows. Along the way, the piglet roots up soil and eats exposed root stems; Yun Ce eats them too. The root stems taste slightly bitter, full of the fresh scent of vegetation, with good starch content.
3 The piglet arrives before a bush covered in small red fruit the size of ping-pong balls.
3 The piglet eats greedily, stripping the fruit from the branches with its mouth and chomping leaves and fruit together.
3 Yun Ce eats some red berries too. The berries taste sour and sweet, nothing special. But seeing the piglet eat so boldly and immersed shows that the sugar in these berries is similarly rare on this planet.
3 The piglet eats all along the way, Yun Ce follows and eats all along the way, neither showing any sign of stopping. In short, at this moment, Yun Ce does not see himself as human at all. He just wants to quickly learn more about this planet’s conditions to live on long-term.
3 He thought the piglet was a lone one, but after walking a stretch, other little wild boars join. The other little wild boars show no great surprise at Yun Ce, suggesting this group has been well protected by elders and has not suffered hardship.
3 Of course, this also relates to Yun Ce’s perceptiveness. Whenever that white-furred little wild boar nudges its snout, he immediately reaches food the little wild boar cannot for it. Sometimes, he even uses his dexterous hands to gather seemingly edible fruit for the little wild boars.
3 In caring for other species, humans are truly the top.
3 Yun Ce knows how to build a rain shelter for pigs in the wilderness, how to make a comfortable nest for wild boars with dry wild grass. He can even use a long wooden pole with fire to drive insects out of caves, giving the little wild boars undisturbed sleep.
3 The first night is slightly cold. Huddling with the little wild boars to sleep is very warm, but one piglet sleeping at the cave mouth is dragged off by something unknown and vanishes without a trace.
4 The second night, a crescent moon hangs in the sky, and the night is bitterly cold. Yun Ce has no choice but to have more intimate contact with the piglets to rely on their high body temperature to survive the cold night. Of course, surviving such a cold night comes at a cost: another little wild boar gets lost and wanders off in the cold wind.
4 After seven or eight days, Yun Ce has established his status in the pig group and become their leader. During this time, only their group has grown slowly in number.
4 Becoming the leader of a pig group is not easy, especially in a wild boar group, which is even harder. Even among a group of little wild boars, a few are ambitious.
4 The process of vying for power is brutal. Fortunately, Yun Ce’s body is now quite strong, the wild boars are too small, and plus the few most threatening little wild boars vanished during the long nights, making Yun Ce’s power struggle much easier.
4 So, on the tenth day, Yun Ce regards himself as a pig herder.
4 Eighteen little wild boars root along in the verdant grassland, while Yun Ce grips a long wooden spear and follows closely behind, occasionally taking edible root stems from the ground they have rooted up.
4 Yun Ce has no issue with a vegetarian diet. In the past three days, he has tasted many edible plants, including but not limited to leaves, root stems, seeds, fruit…
4 Foraging for food with the piglets has the best advantage of no poisoning worry. In these three days, Yun Ce has gained a whole new cognition of the wild boars in this world—from taste alone, the wild boars here are no different from those on Earth.
4 This gives Yun Ce great confidence in finding intelligent civilization in this world. Perhaps at the next crossroads, he will encounter someone he can communicate with normally.
4 On the fifteenth day, pig herder Yun Ce leads as many as thirty-seven little wild boars. It is not that he likes mixing with so many piglets; it is because with a smaller group, it is inconvenient to casually grab a pig.
5 He originally thought these wild boars were aimlessly foraging on the grassland. But as the number of little wild boars under Yun Ce surges, he discovers they are not wandering but moving with purpose.
5 After walking a full eighty kilometers through hilly terrain, they finally see a great mountain after cresting a high hill.
5 This tall mountain is very high and very slender, like a stone pillar jutting abruptly from the flat ground, with snow blanketing its bald mountain peak.
5 Approaching Isolated Peak, Yun Ce discovers even more wild boars.
5 Strangely, adult wild boars mix with adult wild boars, piglets with piglets, and even adult wild boars separate into male and female groups, all the groups steadily advancing toward Isolated Peak in an orderly manner.
5 Watching for a long time, Yun Ce realizes the wild boars’ mode of advance seems somewhat similar to human military organization.
