Ding Shi's mind turned over countless possibilities. If the players stubbornly held out in the cave, what kind of trick would the system pull? Surely it wouldn't be shameless enough to trigger an earthquake? That would just be going too far.
Ding Shi said, "The wolves. That pack has their eyes fixed on the camp. Their purpose is to drive us away from it as much as possible. If the system wants to stir up trouble, we might face a wolf attack during the day tomorrow."
Herbalist Girl disagreed with Ding Shi's whimsical speculation and countered, "Wolves are typical nocturnal animals."
Ding Shi replied, "There can be bayberries and persimmons in the forest, but why was that saber-toothed tiger not an ordinary tiger? And why were the heads of the wolves that attacked us bigger than any wolves we know? It shows they're prehistoric creatures. And as prehistoric creatures, they can roam by day if they want and hunt by night if they want. It's not like we have any proof to dispute it."
Herbalist Girl remained unconvinced. "A wolf pack won't hunt during a torrential storm, especially when they ate their fill last night. The chances of them hunting on a rainy day are next to nothing."
Ding Shi pondered for a moment, then conceded, "You're right. Those wolves definitely have a connection to the moon." He recalled the sight of the alpha wolf howling at the moon.
Yu Yuan looked at Herbalist Girl. "Has it been twenty-four hours?"
Herbalist Girl nodded. She produced five copper coins, held them in her palm, muttered a chant under her breath, and tossed them onto the ground. Staring at the coins, her internal CPU whirred for a long while before she said, "Ominous. The Dui hexagram brings great misfortune, primarily signifying coughs and external injuries."
Yu Yuan asked, "We might lose people to coughing and trauma?"
No sooner had the words left his mouth than Aunt Zhang, still burning with fever, began to cough. Yu Yuan glanced at her and lowered his voice even further: "An infectious disease?"
Herbalist Girl shook her head. "I don't know." She reached out, took the tiger pelt from Aunt Zhang's forehead, wrung out another piece soaking in the pool of water, and placed it back on Aunt Zhang's forehead.
Herbalist Girl said, "If Aunt Zhang's temperature keeps climbing, our only option will be to put her into the water to cool her down."
By the early morning hours, Aunt Zhang had slipped into shock. Herbalist Girl attempted emergency care, then directed the others to lower Aunt Zhang into a water pit for physical cooling. Aunt Zhang regained a brief moment of lucidity; upon understanding her situation, she told everyone not to bother anymore, apologizing that her corpse would cause them trouble.
At dawn, due to persistent high fever, multiple organs in Aunt Zhang's body suffered severe damage, and she was ultimately pronounced dead after resuscitation efforts failed.
Day broke, yet the torrential rain poured on relentlessly. Looking out from the cave, one could see trees in the distance that had been snapped in half by lightning.
After a breakfast of tiger meat, everyone except Ding Shi went outside to work. Two people went to bury Aunt Zhang's body, Su Su stood guard, and the rest figured out a way to drag the lightning-struck tree back into the cave. The trunk measured zero point four meters in diameter and ten meters in length, weighing over a ton in total. With their current primitive tools, handling such a beast was no easy task, but if they could manage it, their fuel needs for the next few days would be secured.
Processing the tree required more stones. Making stone axes wasn't overly complicated: find a stone, select a branch, and treat the wood by peeling the bark and roasting it dry. Then, with the aid of fire, bore a hole through the branch, grind the stone until one edge was sharp, and wedge its narrow end into the hole. With that, a stone axe was complete.
Once the tree was dragged into the cave, Herbalist Girl and two others headed out to search for medicinal herbs, while the remaining six set to work on the trunk.
After drying themselves by the fire, each person grabbed a stone axe, sat on the ground, and chopped the trunk into seven sections. This took a good while, but was straightforward enough. The truly challenging part was splitting the firewood; cleaving logs zero point four meters across into pieces suitable for burning was a massive undertaking.
While working, Captain Wu began to shiver with chills. They helped him over to the fire, wrapped him in tiger hide like a blanket, and brewed a bowl of herbal meat broth. Captain Wu felt nothing but freezing cold. Yu Yuan built a second fire, and only when sandwiched between the two did Captain Wu find some relief. The flames warmed the surrounding stone floor, allowing him to lie down and rest for a bit.
By afternoon, three of the nine remaining survivors had come down with fevers. Their condition was better than Aunt Zhang's had been—they had simply caught a bad chill. Ding Shi, tough as nails, was entirely unaffected. Not only did he not feel cold, but he felt brimming with energy. Despite officially being an invalid, he became the primary workforce in processing the timber.
All of this was thanks to the Bloodthirsty Eagle. As for why this had happened, perhaps the eagle had just eaten a hundred-million-year-old ginseng root, or perhaps its blood carried divine power. Whatever the cause, looking at the outcome, the energy in the Bloodthirsty Eagle's blood had been completely absorbed by Ding Shi's body, boosting not only his Origin Force but his physical constitution as well.
Ding Shi had already guessed that it had to do with the Bloodthirsty Eagle. He was now pondering a question: could one enhance their constitution and Origin Force by drinking blood? The frequent glances he cast toward Wang Meng's neck were soon noticed by Wang Meng, who felt distinctly uneasy, as if a venomous serpent were sizing him up. Wang Meng turned to look, catching a fleeting glimmer of greed in Ding Shi's eyes. Wang Meng's heart shuddered: *What does he want to do?*
The greed had flashed and vanished because Ding Shi had realized that the Bloodthirsty Eagle was merely a fluke, and the odds of growing stronger through drinking blood were close to zero. Otherwise, humans who wielded Origin Force would begin slaughtering one another to absorb more blood-borne Origin Force, tearing even the most fundamental social framework to shreds. When your life is another person's greatest benefit, no basic trust can exist among humans, nor any cooperation; even the pleasure of husband and wife copulating could not rival the craving to elevate one's own power.
As the saying went, if you wanted to wipe out an entire martial world, all you had to do was photocopy the Bixie Sword Manual and distribute it far and wide.
To test his hypothesis, Ding Shi approached Herbalist Girl, who had an injury on her arm. After hearing Ding Shi's theory, Herbalist Girl reopened her wound without hesitation and let Ding Shi drink a couple of mouthfuls of blood. In the end, his conclusion was proven correct: drinking the blood of humans who commanded Origin Force could not increase one's own.
Because of this stunt, they became the day's Crouching Dragon and Young Phoenix—watching Ding Shi suck blood had made Xiao Long and Xiao Feng vomit. Herbalist Girl, as the other party involved, expressed both disappointment and understanding at the outcome, bandaged herself up again, and went back to pounding herbs with a wooden stick.
Ding Shi couldn't resist asking, "How come your poultice can be pounded with a wooden stick, while ours had to be chewed by mouth?"
Herbalist Girl replied, "I can't be bothered to explain."
Ding Shi was baffled.
Herbalist Girl answered helplessly, "If I told you that a stick could be used to grind the herbs, you'd only come up with more questions."
Ding Shi asked, "You don't like talking?"
Herbalist Girl said, "Yes."
Su Su sidled up and asked, "Why?" Sensing gossip with pinpoint accuracy, she grabbed a wooden stick from the side to help pound the herbs. She was sharp and proactive, far better than Ding Shi.
Herbalist Girl said, "No reason."
Su Su asked, "Heartbreak? Or childhood trauma from your family?"
Herbalist Girl looked into Su Su's inquisitive eyes and answered, "Private."
Su Su said, "Oh, sorry."
Herbalist Girl replied, "It's fine."
Su Su asked, "We've been calling you Herbalist Girl this whole time. What's your real name?"
Herbalist Girl said, "I don't want to say."
Su Su asked, "Why?"
Herbalist Girl said, "Private."
Su Su asked, "Why do you have so many private things?"
Just as Herbalist Girl's patience was wearing thin, Xiao Feng's voice came from the cave entrance: "The rain has stopped! The sun is out!"
Chapter 81