Next it was Gao Yue's turn to eat, with Moya feeding her.
Gao Yue ate quite a few kinds of vegetables.
There were chestnuts, yams, all sorts of leafy greens, and several vegetables and fruits Gao Yue had never seen before. She was also delighted to discover they had sweet potatoes and mushrooms here.
There were several kinds of mushrooms, some resembling button mushrooms, others resembling black truffles or porcini. Gao Yue was thrilled to see them.
Moya didn't tell her that sweet potatoes and mushrooms were foods Snowball Pig loved, and that there was already a good amount stored in the tree hollow by their door.
For every food Gao Yue liked, Moya bought a good amount from Auntie Zhihua.
In the end, it all added up to more than a single Beast Skin Bag could hold.
Gao Yue said, "Buying this much? What if we can't finish it and it goes bad?" Vegetables didn't keep well, after all.
Moya said, "If we can't finish it, I'll eat it."
Wulan, a female, spread her hands helplessly toward her mother and father and her younger brothers.
See, she'd said it wouldn't work, but they'd insisted she come anyway.
If she could have succeeded, she would have succeeded long ago. She was doing quite well with her First Beast Husband now, and she didn't want to wrong him.
Compared to Moya, what she was paying more attention to now was Gao Yue.
She'd never seen such a plump little female cub before—so cute. If only she could give birth to such a chubby female cub someday. For now, she'd only laid a clutch of eggs.
But why did this female cub have so many injuries on her body?
She must have suffered a lot while wandering in the forest before.
Seeing that Gao Yue liked eating mushrooms so much, Wulan speared a skewer with her fork, sprinkled some salt on it, and handed it to Gao Yue. "Here, have more if you like it."
Gao Yue felt the kindness and smiled at her. "Thank you, it's delicious."
After the meal, Gao Yue wanted to stay a bit longer, especially to talk more with Wulan—she wanted to ask what she thought about makeup.
Unfortunately, she hadn't thought of this before coming and hadn't brought any makeup tools with her. Otherwise, helping with makeup directly would have worked best.
But Moya didn't seem willing to stay any longer.
A bunch of wicked youngsters from his family kept staring at her without letting up, and Gao Yue felt a little embarrassed, so she reluctantly headed back.
On the way back, they stopped by Hefeng Lü's home.
They brought along the zebra, now lively and full of energy. Moya carried Gao Yue and glided low in front, while the zebra, carrying the beast skin bag stuffed with food in its mouth, followed behind looking somewhat terrified.
Along the way, they occasionally ran into a python.
The zebra was very scared.
Held in Moya's arms, with the warm midday breeze blowing, Gao Yue narrowed her eyes.
Overall, she was quite satisfied with this meal.
She'd seen a spring-loaded face-pouncing rabbit, thought of a way to make money, and eaten so many familiar vegetables and fruits. She felt like life here was something she could actually manage.
And then there was Moya...
She glanced at his profile.
She thought to herself that this man was quite the hot commodity—so many females wanted him.
Thinking about it, it made sense. He was so good-looking. She'd met quite a few people here already, and although every one of them had their features in the right place, none of them could compare to Moya's stunning beauty.
And then there was his strength on top of that.
Moya was a Tier 5 Beastman—capable of hunting and fending off enemies outside, and capable of helping his female digest Tier 5 Beast Crystals inside. Incredibly practical.
Looks were probably a lesser consideration; the females wanting him were likely basing it more on his strength.
It felt like he was a top-tier fierce warrior that every female wanted to recruit under her banner, to add to her own side's strength.
That Lin Xi didn't seem uninterested in Moya either—it seemed like she'd already claimed him as her own. Even after she eventually became Mates with that Shoupan fellow, she'd probably still want to take Moya too... after all, this wasn't a place where you could only have one husband.
Thinking of this, Gao Yue suddenly felt that staying by Moya's side wasn't such a good idea either.
It would draw the attention of every female in the whole tribe.
This wasn't Earth, where everyone got along nicely. This was the Giant Python Tribe—the females here were both people and pythons, and the danger shouldn't be underestimated.
The two of them spent a leisurely afternoon.
In the afternoon, Moya made Gao Yue a smaller wooden cup, with the thorns ground down smooth, making it much lighter to hold.
By evening, dinner was that mushroom resembling porcini, cooked into a small hot pot—unbelievably delicious.
Gao Yue simply couldn't stop eating.
It was far more delicious than any porcini she could buy on Earth.
If only there was rice right now, that would have been even better—she wanted porcini fried rice. After describing roughly what rice looked like to Moya, he said someone in the trading district sold rice, and they could go tomorrow morning.
Gao Yue was thrilled.
That night, she went to sleep full of anticipation.
She went to bed early, since she had no phone to play with and didn't want to waste the Tablet's battery. So not long after dark, she fell asleep—the Tablet showed the time as a little past seven.
She considered herself someone who could sleep a lot, but no matter how much she could sleep, she'd wake up naturally after nine hours at most—nowhere near what the Python Tribe people could manage, for whom thirteen hours was a normal night's sleep.
Before dawn, she woke up full of energy.
With nothing to do, she sat in front of the cave, holding Snowball Pig, pulling up grass, and passing the time watching Moya's stunningly beautiful sleeping face.
For beastmen with strong power, others' gazes were something they were very sensitive to.
Moya drowsily opened his eyes, his emerald green eyes misty as he looked at her.
Gao Yue rested her chin on her hands, her round face leaning in close, her eyes sparkling with anticipation as she asked, "When are we leaving?"
She was as excited as a schoolkid about to go on a field trip.
Moya said, "...It's not even dawn yet. There's no one at the trading district."
"Oh."
Gao Yue shrank back.
She was troubled too.
How could the python beastmen sleep so much? Here she was, someone who could sleep a great deal, and yet she seemed practically industrious by comparison. Right now the zebra was asleep, and Snowball Pig was asleep too.
It was so boring. She wanted to find something to do, but there was truly nothing to be found.
In the end, Gao Yue just stared blankly at Moya.
Unable to bear her staring, Moya went back into the cave to sleep.
Gao Yue didn't want to stay in the dimly lit cave, preferring to stay outside where the moonlight was. She wandered around in a daze for a while, and finally found something she could do—make a chessboard.
She carried over the stone slab used for barbecuing, used a small stone to scratch out a grid of squares on it, then bustled about searching everywhere for small stones, dyeing some of them with grass juice to serve as the black pieces.
She decided that from now on, whenever she was bored, she'd play gomoku with people.
By the time the sky was fully bright, her gomoku set was completely finished.
Gao Yue admired her work with a great sense of accomplishment for a while, then noticed a steady stream of people arriving outside—mostly men, that is, Male Beastmen, with a few Female Beastmen mixed in among them.
They all stood far off, about two hundred meters from the cave.
This boundary marked the edge of Moya's territory. They didn't dare come closer, but they were all watching her.
Gao Yue couldn't hear clearly what they were saying, so she walked a bit closer, though she didn't dare get too near them.
"She's coming over! Such a chubby little female! So there really are cubs this plump."
"Yeah, this is the plumpest female cub I've ever seen."
"Whose tribe raised her? How did they get her so fat? Her tribe must really value her, huh?"
"Look at that thing hanging on her face, transparent—doesn't it feel uncomfortable looking through those two pieces?"
"Her arm really is broken."
"She's got so many injuries on her body. They say she already had them before coming from outside the forest, but someone saw this little female the day before yesterday, and she clearly didn't have them then."
"Could it really be that Moya's been abusing her?"
"Little female, come here, we won't hurt you."
A Male Beastman said to her.
Gao Yue didn't dare go over, and even stepped back further.
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