Chapter 04 – A Strange Omen

As the last rays of the evening sun were beginning to wane, a group of five hunters trudged across the sparse forest. The spears on their backs tilted this way and that as they moved in the direction of their village. All of them had a mutually upset look on their faces.

“Why is our luck so bad today…” One of them, a tall man mumbled dejectedly.

“Can’t help it. Sometimes, it just happens.” The only woman of the group said in reply.

“I understand that… but really. Not even one beast seen in the entire day? Isn’t there something wrong with that?” Another man, a slightly shorter one asked in frustration.

“It’s ridiculous… but I’m not really surprised.” Said yet another man, this one dangerously thin.

“Oh? Why’s that?” The previous one asked in surprise.

“Shen Jian. He’s been hunting a lot lately.”

“Ooh.” Everyone else in the group immediately understood.

“Wait what? What do you mean? What does that mean?” Except one who was a bit slow, a slightly fat man.

The woman of the group shook her head as she summed up the reason in one word. “Overhunting.”

The slow one tilted his head, still not understanding. How could one kid kill so many animals that such a large forest’s animal population went down?

The woman looked around at the others. She sighed at everyone keeping their mouths shut and resigned herself to explain. “We all know Shen Jian likes to fight the beasts alone as a way to train himself to cultivate in the future. You do know that, right?” She stared at the thick man.

“Of course I know that. I’m not that stupid.” He looked offended.

In fact, Shen Jian had tried to hide his ambition to become a cultivator when he grew up. His parents however weren’t quite aware of his desire to hide his dream and had more or less spread his dream to everyone in the village through gossip.

Somehow, Shen Jian remained ignorant of that fact for a long time.

The woman peered at the man sceptically but shook her head and continued. “In some ways, he’s not wrong with his method. Not many regular people can face these giant beasts alone. Even in our village, old Shen is the only one. Or well, was the only one.”

Old Shen, of course, referred to Shen Jian’s father, Shen Boqin.

“And considering Shen Jian’s age, it’s definitely an accomplishment but…” She sighed once before continuing. “The beasts he hunts aren’t just training dummies. They’re real living animals that populate the forest. It’s only by the fact that we hunted them slower than the speed they reproduced that’s kept their population alive for so many years and helped to feed us all this time.”

“But now that Shen Jian hunts so frequently…” She trailed off.

“… The overall population is going down. I get that. But how? Just by him alone?” The thick man she was talking to asked hesitantly.

After all, even though Shen Jian hunted nearly every day, much of the time, he would simply leave the animal alive after a good fight and leave by himself. He didn’t kill every single beast he fought.

“It’s because the animals here are so big.” The woman answered. “As a rule, the bigger the animal, the smaller the number of them in one place. If it were those small animals from the plains, we wouldn’t be having this problem since they’d be so numerous that it would be impossible to hunt them all.”

“But in a place like this forest filled only with giant animals… well, overhunting is a real problem.” She finished.

There was a moment of silence before the man shook his head. “But all the animals Shen Jian hunts are brought back and the meat is split up and distributed to everyone anyway. It’s not like his family is hogging it all. So how is it still a problem?”

“Argh” The tall man from before made a strange noise and looked at him like he was an idiot. “Even if we get all that meat, how are we going store it? Salting it will only take it so far. The meat from these giant beasts go bad faster than the meat from the tiny plains animals.”

“It affects us too.” The thin man suddenly interjected. “The only reason our group is still active is because we haven’t yet reached the tipping point yet. But we will soon. And then all of us hunters will have to stop our activities and let Shen Jian do the whole village’s hunting himself… If he doesn’t slow down his usual speed, that is.”

The other man finally had a look of realization. Then he lowered his head sheepishly for being so slow to understand.

Unbeknownst to them, overhunting wasn’t actually the only problem either. The oversized beasts in the forest had sharper senses than regular sized animals of their species. Being so, some of them were able to sense the presence of a prominent predator in the area (i.e. Shen Jian) and had started to migrate from the forest, further reducing the population.

The woman sighed. “We’re gonna be stuck with just fish in the near future.”

Everyone grimaced. While it was true that the river nearby had fish that they could catch, the fish in their specific area – despite not being poisonous or anything – still tasted horrible for some reason. No chef in the village had yet found a proper method to remove the terrible taste.

Of course, there were still other sources of food such as foraging, farming and cattle raising but they were all secondary sources. Their village was too big to supply food to with just foraging, there was very little empty land where farming could be done and cattle raising was a very unsustainable source of food for anything other than milk.

The fact that regular humans in this world ate much more than others also worsened their situation. In contrast, it was rumoured that cultivators needed to eat less than the average human as well.

It was a strange world they lived in.

The group let out a mutual sigh before silently continuing on their way.

However, just as the sun fully set and the twilight sky began to glow, they came across a peculiar scene.

In between numerous trees laid a giant beast that they’d never seen before. As they got closer, the group realized that the dead beast – evidenced by the blood around it – was a giant bird about a meter wide even without the wings. At first glance, it looked like an osprey, just bigger than normal.

On closer observation, the bird had a large gash on its body that seemed to have been a fatal wound for the bird. When the group looked up, they found that the bird had fallen through the leafy canopy above and crashed into the ground, as evidenced by the broken branches surrounding the bird and the hole in the canopy.

“This is new…” The thin man murmured tentatively.

“Yes…” The tall one replied uncertainly.

They didn’t normally come across beasts other than typical forest mammals. It was everyone’s first time seeing an oversized bird instead of a regular oversized animal.

The group observed the scene for a bit longer. Although the large gash on the body was a bit alarming, the group was actually quite calm even though they’d never seen a giant bird before.

“It must be from the thick forest.” One of them mumbled.

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The rest of them nodded. There was a reason that most of the hunters in the village avoided the thick forest on the other side of the village. Other than the mindless beasts that populated the sparse forest, it was said that more cunning beasts also lived in there.

There were even stories of spirit beasts living in the thick forest. Although not anywhere near the village, spirit beasts were a true threat that non-cultivators simply could not face.

Considering that, the group of hunters assumed that the dead bird before them must have suffered the wound from such a beast in the thick forest and flown erratically until it crash-landed and died here in the sparse forest.

“Can we… harvest this?” The thick man asked, scratching his head.

They looked at each other and communicated silently. Then, they unanimously agreed to harvest the dead bird. With its size, it seemed to have a decent amount of meat that could be harvested.

It had to be said that the people in their local area were significantly less picky and entirely too adventurous with their choice of food.

After discussing with each other, they took out the tools from the bags they carried and started to process the dead beast. Having never had such a different meat before, they were eager to process it and bring it back to the village to see how it would taste.

The regular human hunters continued their work of processing the beast. But if there had been a cultivator nearby, he would have sensed the faint dark smoke-like aura rising from the beast.

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Shen Jian stood in the shallows of the river, the water reaching up to almost his hips while the morning sun reflected off the waves. He stood poised in an odd stance, his hands pulled up to his waist and staring down intently at the water below.

Fish swam all around his form.

His objective was to catch them with his bare hands.

He waited patiently, eyeing each fish that swam near him within arm’s reach. His fingers twitched. He tensed.

A moment passed.

His hands suddenly snapped forward, piercing the water with a small splash. In a fraction of a second, his fingers wrapped a thick fish and he started pulling it out of the water immediately.

But with a casual flex of its body, the slimy fish escaped his grip before even leaving the water and continued on its way calmly and unhurriedly.

Shen Jian stared blankly at his empty hands.

“I want a fucking harpoon.” He gritted his teeth and glared at the damn fish.

That was the twentieth fish he’d failed to catch. Consecutively.

He sighed in resignation and washed his hands in the water, deciding to give up for the day and leave.

Shen Jian had become aware of the recent worries of the people about his actions.

Overhunting.

Admittedly, he felt a bit bad. In his mind, he had accidentally treated the forest beasts as mob creatures in a game that respawn after set intervals. The concept of a real-life sustainable ecosystem had slipped his head a little.

As such, he was taking a break from his hunting and looking for other ways to improve himself.

Fish catching was what he’d settled on after a while but his abysmal progress in the activity was starting to make a vein throb in his head.

Either way, with his activity for the day cancelled due to severe demotivation, Shen Jian stalked around the village in a sulky mood.

As usual, there was not much to do in a remote village like the one he lived in. There were no bustling merchants yelling anything, there were no echoing sounds of a blacksmith hitting a piece of metal, and unlike video games, there was no quaint background music playing to give a relaxing feel.

Truly, for someone who grew up in a city on Earth in the 21st century, a pre-medieval village life like this was torture.

But Shen Jian was used to it by now.

Different from usual however, there was a small disturbance happening in a part of the village. Curious about the reason for people to gather together like that in broad daylight, Shen Jian wandered over to the group to see what was going on.

“Hey, old Gao! Give me some too!”

“Me too, me too!”

“Buzz off, you freeloaders. You’re not even paying!”

“Oy, is that how you treat your elders?!”

“No, that’s how I treat freeloaders.”

“You brat-”

Still having no idea what was going on, Shen Jian hesitantly pulled the sleeve of one of the men who was just watching amusedly from the side. “Uncle, what’s going on here?”

“Oh, Shen Jian! Good to see you.” The man said warmly. “Well, a group who went out to hunt yesterday brought back a special catch.”

“Special catch?” Shen Jian repeated sceptically.

“Mm! They stumbled onto a giant dead bird. They’re usually only found in the thick forest so it’s rare to find one in the sparse forest.”

“Ho…” Shen Jian was a little interested.

“And of course,” The man said, shaking his head. “The ones who found it are being unscrupulous and selling the meat for a higher price. What the hell, do they think this is a crowded city market or something…”

Ignoring the man who devolved into grumbling, Shen Jian looked towards the meat seller for a long moment. He silently put his hand in his pocket to check how much pocket money he had.

He gave in to temptation.

And half an hour later, Shen Jian entered his house, calling his mother and presenting her the rare meat that was being distributed around the village. His mother shook her head fondly while his father patted his back proudly for a job well done.

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Sounds of wind were heard on one of the paths in the sparse forest. The path between the trees was filled with heavy logs oscillating in a pendulum motion.

Shen Jian stood at the start of the path with a blindfold around his eyes.

After taking a few days to get used to catching fish with his bare hands, his new and latest training idea was to train his senses and intuition.

With that in mind, after painstakingly setting up some pendulum log traps and acquiring a blindfold, he was now ready to begin.

Shen Jian took a few steps forward before he stopped and held his breath. He could hear the whooshing sound of a log swinging side to side in front of him. After almost a minute of just standing still and focusing on his senses, he suddenly leapt a few steps forward.

Just in time, the log passed right behind him.

Breathing a sigh of relief, Shen Jian focused on getting past the next log.

Timing his steps once again, he stepped forward once more.

And he was suddenly slammed in the side and sent rolling on the ground.

He had mistakenly timed his steps to the whooshing sounds of a different log instead of the one he was trying to cross.

Laying spread-eagle on the ground with a blindfold on his face, Shen Jian let out a sigh. “This is going to be so annoying. And painful.”

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Later that day when the sun was setting, Shen Jian stumbled into the village. Dragging himself towards his house, he gingerly held the bruises on his torso and tried not to groan.

As he neared, he slowly pulled out a cloth from his pocket and tied it around his mouth and nose.

An old man who was sitting near the edge of the village with a smoking pipe in his hands coughed a few times before looking at him and chuckling. “Shen Jian! You don’t look so well today.”

Shen Jian rolled his eyes and eyed the man as he started coughing again. “You’re one to talk, gramps. You look like you’re about to cough your lungs out. You really shouldn’t smoke so much.”

The old man waved his hand dismissively. “Bah. Everyone’s like this now because of the cold winds coming in. Me not smoking isn’t going to change much.” Right after saying that, he broke out into another fit of coughs.

But he wasn’t wrong. Recently, many people in the village had started to have a case of chronic coughing. No one could pinpoint the reason for it in particular either.

Some said it was because of the cold winds that started a few days ago. Others said it was because of a disease that spread from a merchant caravan that visited the village recently. Some even said that it was because the special meat that was distributed recently was poisonous in some way.

But none of them could be verified. Because while the village did have a doctor, he was only a doctor in name, called such because he had inherited some decent knowledge of herbalism from his late father. He was not a professional healer who could accurately diagnose any bodily disorders.

That being the case, the only thing he could do was distribute some throat soothing medicine in the hope of easing the pain from the coughs and just hope that the problem would sort itself out.

Shen Jian sighed. As one of the lucky few in the village who wasn’t affected by the strange coughs, he didn’t know what to do either. He’d tried to help out the doctor by looking for any herb that the man needed but he could only do so much. In only a matter of a couple days, Shen Jian’s help was already unneeded because of the sheer number of herbs he’s collected.

Sighing again, Shen Jian gave the old man a resigned wave of his hand and continued on towards his house. Entering his house, the first thing he heard was the thunderous sound of his father coughing from his room upstairs.

“Jian, are you back?” His mother’s voice called from the kitchen.

Dragging himself over and peeking inside, Shen Jian saw his mother with a cloth covering her nose and mouth and making a porridge. He smiled wearily and replied “Yes, mother.”

“Great! Here, help me bring this porridge to your father.” The woman said as she poured some of the porridge into a bowl. Dipping a wooden spoon into it, she passed the bowl to her son who accepted it with a nod and faithfully carried it upstairs to his parents’ room where his father was resting in the bed with occasional coughs wracking his form.

“Ah Jian! Welcome back.” Father Shen said with a rough voice and a smile.

Shen Jian smiled in reply and passed the bowl of porridge to his father. The man didn’t say anything and sat up and started to eat. Once done, he settled back in the bed.

The young boy gave him a worried look but took the empty bowl back to the kitchen. Passing the bowl to his mother, he commented in a concerned voice. “Father’s illness doesn’t seem to be getting any better, mother.”

“Don’t say that, Jian. It will get better. It will.” Shen Qi reprimanded him half-heartedly. Even she could see how much worse the coughing was getting. Along with many others in the village, it seemed her husband was falling sick at a fast pace.

She was at least thankful that her son was safe from the illness. He hadn’t coughed much at all since the beginning and once the illness started spreading, he’d taken the initiative to always have a cloth covering his nose and mouth. He also advised her and her husband to do the same but by then, father Shen had already started coughing and there was no use.

In a glum mood, Shen Qi patted her son’s head and prepared for dinner later. Watching him go out of the kitchen, she sighed and shook her head. She only hoped that things would settle down quickly before the winter fully came in.

Turning around to make dinner for her and her son, Shen Qi suddenly grabbed the counter as she let out a harsh wheezing cough. Feeling like her throat was sore, she got herself a glass of water.

Even as she got to work making dinner, her body shook with a cough every once in a while.