The wicked female is extremely fierce, but she's pampered by her seven beast husbands.

Chapter 198 Blood Ripple Butterfly

Before nightfall, the group finally found a cave.

The traces of the wild beasts in the cave had completely disappeared, and even the dung piled up not far from the cave entrance had dried into a lump, all indicating that the wild beasts that occupied this cave had not returned for a long time.

Most likely dead.

Or perhaps they lost out in a battle for territory with other wild animals and had to leave the area.

Su Weihua arranged for two people to clean the cave, while the rest of the people divided the work: some built earthen stoves, some slaughtered rabbits, and others skinned them...

After Ling Chengen and Bai Qingyu walked around the area and confirmed that the surrounding environment was fine, they brought back all the wild onions, ginger, wild garlic, and some aloe vera plants they had dug up to the cave.

Because they caught too many rabbits and will be on the road for a long time, the rabbit meat needs to be processed first and made into jerky or salted meat that can be preserved for a long time. Otherwise, it will spoil quickly at the current temperature.

Bai Qingyu reached out to help Ling Chengen put down the bamboo basket on her back, and then took off her own basket and placed it next to the newly built stove.

Su Weihua squatted down beside the bamboo basket, took out an aloe vera plant with its roots still attached, and asked doubtfully, "Can this be eaten?"

Bai Qingyu shook her head, uncertainly saying, "I'm not quite sure. It seems like Enen is planning to use this plant to make medicine. Why don't you ask her?"

Ling Chengen walked over from the other side, wiped the water off his hands, and looked up to say, "The thing you're holding is called aloe vera. There are many varieties of aloe vera, but only a few are edible. We were lucky today; the ones we dug up from the highlands are edible. If you're curious, you can get some to try later."

"But I didn't find much aloe vera, so I need to keep some for making medicine."

Su Weihua held an aloe vera plant and examined it for a moment, then looked up at her and asked, "What kind of medicine can this be used for?"

"It has quite a few uses." Ling Chengen pointed to the insect bite marks on his calves and arms. "Anti-inflammatory and analgesic effects are one of them. You can apply some to wounds from insect bites. Besides promoting wound healing, it can also treat irritable bowel syndrome, improve psoriasis, and treat acne on the face..."

Su Weihua listened attentively to her explanation, lowered her eyes slightly, and suddenly said, "There shouldn't be many of these in the Lolu Mountains, but... there are many in the Snow Wolf Tribe's territory. I used to see them often when I was patrolling."

Ling Chengen squatted down beside him, picked out the aloe vera from the basket, and then pulled out some round, dusty things from underneath.

Bai Qingyu picked up the basket of aloe vera and asked, "These need to be washed clean, right?"

Ling Chengen nodded and said with a smile, "Thank you for your hard work."

Bai Qingyu reached out and patted her head, then picked up the basket and went to a place a little further away to wash the aloe vera.

Su Weihua helped Ling Chengen remove those round, potato-like things and asked, "Are there potatoes in the mountains too?"

“This isn’t a potato,” Ling Chengen said excitedly. “It’s a yam, and it’s good stuff too.”

"Should we keep this and store it, or eat it tonight?" Su Weihua asked.

Ling Chengen laughed and said, "Let's eat them tonight. Ayu and I just found a lot of yams on that sunny hillside and took some. There are still many more in that area."

"But the most important thing is the yam underground."

Su Weihua said, "Then I'll take some people over first thing tomorrow morning and bring those things back?"

Ling Chengen shook his head: "Let's not do it for now. Yam beans and yams are very fragile. If they get damaged, they won't keep well. Putting them in the soil will preserve them until next spring. I'm thinking that this place isn't too far from home. We'll bring people to dig yams after we come back from the autumn hunt."

Although there are many yam beans, the yams buried underground are more valuable.

She examined the plot of land carefully and found that the area covered by yams was quite large.

The orcs in the mountains and surrounding tribes didn't know that the underground parts of this plant were edible, so they didn't know how long those yams had been growing there...

After so many years of continuous growth, the number of yams underground must be astonishing.

Upon hearing this, Su Weihua's face lit up with delight: "Okay, you can show me the place tomorrow. If you're not available then, I can bring people over to dig."

Ling Chengen nodded: "Pick these up too, and help Ayu wash them. I'll take Zhilu and Wuzhuo to make dinner."

They had a very fruitful first day, so Ling Chengen was generous and cooked three pots of rabbit meat and yam stew for the two of them.

This one dish alone was definitely not enough, so we also added some steamed buns that we had prepared before setting off, and roasted a lot of rabbit meat. Finally, we finished making dinner.

While skinning the rabbit, Lin Ying used a dagger to cut off a piece of raw meat and threw it directly into her mouth.

As Diya tanned the rabbit skin, she watched him wolf down his food and said with a smile, "You'd better eat less raw meat, or you won't be able to eat it later."

Lin Ying asked, puzzled, "We caught a lot today, enough for you to eat. We've also helped a lot, so you can't just leave the game uneaten, can you?"

“That’s not what I meant.” Dia took a dagger, scraped away the bits of flesh from the inside of the hide, then stretched the hide with a stick, and smiled mysteriously. “Our tribe doesn’t eat raw meat much anymore. The young chief taught us a method to make the prey taste better and be better for our health.”

"The cubs rarely get sick after eating cooked meat."

Is it really that miraculous?

Although Lin Ying didn't quite understand why eating raw meat would be related to the cub's illness.

But he has eyes and can observe.

He sat quietly to one side, his face still showing suspicion, but after scanning his surroundings, he noticed that the people of Shilin didn't seem to have much interest in the freshly skinned rabbit meat.

He had a gut feeling that what Dia said might be true, so he really didn't touch rabbit meat again.

After tasting the freshly cooked rabbit meat and yam bean stew, Lin Ying and her seven underlings fell silent, their expressions blank as they held the bamboo bowls they had just prepared, momentarily questioning their existence.

Diya poked a yam bean with her chopsticks and popped it into her mouth. She sat down next to the black panther beastman Xuan Yan and watched him stare at the food in his bowl. She then used her dagger to cut him half a roasted rabbit.

"There's not much rabbit meat to roast tonight, let's share one between the two of us, and we'll just have steamed buns to fill our stomachs for the rest."

Xuan Yan turned to look at him, slowly taking the slightly hot roasted meat. Even though his fingertips stung from the heat, he couldn't bear to part with the glistening, fragrant half-rabbit. He placed the rabbit meat on the freshly prepared wooden platter and asked in a somewhat subtle tone, "Is this what you usually eat?"

Diya nodded: "Pretty much, but the taste of what we make ourselves is definitely not as good as what the young chieftain makes with the help of others. Don't underestimate our young chieftain just because she is young and an underage female. She knows a lot and is very willing to try new things, so she has discovered a lot of good things."

"Take this rabbit for example. If you just roast it over a fire, you can still eat it, but the taste will definitely be different from what you get now."

"The secret to making this rabbit meat even tastier is the herbal spices that the young clan leader has mastered... and the salt powder that is finer, whiter, and has no bitterness at all."

Xuan Yan keenly picked up on a more important piece of information: "Salt powder?"

"That white, fine salt that appeared at the eastern trade market a while ago? Was that also produced by your tribe?"

Diya immediately shut her mouth and stopped talking about the topic, trying to evade Xuanyan's attention.

He realized that these people had not yet been fully accepted by the young clan leader, so strictly speaking, they were not yet considered one of their own.

There are some things that cannot be revealed if they are not one of our own.

Xuan Yan realized that Di Ya was unwilling to discuss the topic in detail, so he didn't press him for more information. Instead, he tore off a piece of roasted rabbit meat and put it in his mouth.

In an instant, his tongue encountered an unprecedented explosion of taste, a stimulating flavor he had never experienced in all those years. His tongue seemed to be reborn, witnessing a completely different world.

Some people finished their dinner feeling completely satisfied and doubled in happiness; others, however, ate with mixed feelings, wondering if all the meat they had eaten over the years had been for nothing.

A fire was lit in the open space at the cave entrance. Ling Chengen sat on a rock, making medicine with a mortar and pestle. Lin Ying told her about why the number of Rattlesnakes had dwindled to only eight beastmen.

The eastern part of the Lolu Mountains is known as the Lolu District. Because the eastern mountains are densely forested and have a richer and more diverse range of prey resources, the wandering beastmen organizations are also concentrated in this area.

Including the Rattlesnake Wanderer Gang, there are a total of 23 wanderer orc organizations of varying sizes in the eastern Los Angeles region.

Wandering orc gangs are generally small in number. The largest wandering orc gang in Luoshan District is the Wind Vulture, which has more than fifty members and is led by the Fire Feather Griffin Orc Jingshan.

"Firefeathered Griffin?"

Ling Chengen heard half of it but couldn't understand it. He asked Bai Qingyu in a low voice, but didn't get an answer.

Seeing the two looking at each other, Su Weihua explained, "The Firefeather Griffin is a beastman race from the Southern Beast Plains, somewhat similar to your Thin Mountain Giant Tiger clan. As long as they grow up, even without awakening superpowers, their combat ability is extremely strong."

"It is said that the Firefeather Griffin Beastmen are the upper-class nobles of the Southern Beast Plains, and so far only three have been exiled to our Northern Wilderness. Jingshan is one of these three. It seems that he was sentenced to hanging for the massacre of a member of the declining royal bloodline, but later he was exiled without anyone knowing."

"At first, he was accepted by the Daxing tribe, just like other exiled nobles, but because of his strong personality and refusal to submit to the leadership of the Daxing tribe leader, he eventually rebelled against the Daxing tribe."

"Then, he led a few of his men to wander to the Lolu Mountains, where they have stayed for more than a year and show no signs of leaving."

Su Weihua asked Lin Ying, "You mentioned Jingshan and the Fengjiu he founded... Did you two offend him?"

Lin Ying shook her head and said, "How could that be? I'm not stupid. I know how ruthless Jing Shan is. Besides, I'm no match for him at all. How could I possibly provoke Feng Jiu?"

"Six months ago, we Rattletail recruited a tenth-tier fire-type Bloodripple Butterfly Beastman. This beastman also came from the south. Because butterfly beastmen are rare in the Northern Wilderness, we didn't have much trouble finding out that he was also an exile."

"He was exiled from the Shangqing Forest Valley. He said that he poisoned his female partner and other male partners in a fit of jealousy. He was sentenced to hanging, but because of the immortality of the Bloodripple Butterfly race, the hanging failed and he was instead exiled to the Northern Wilderness."

"Because this person is very intelligent and capable, after a period of observation, he quickly gained our trust."

"Then……"

“You have been betrayed,” Ling Chengen said calmly.

Lin Ying opened her mouth, looked at her with a frustrated expression, and confirmed her words: "Yes, that son of a bitch, I don't know what methods he used, to make my twenty-odd men start listening to him and then defect."

"Before he led his men away from Rattlesnake, he tricked us."

"Seven days ago, he suddenly led his twenty-odd men to Fengjiu's territory and launched a sneak attack. I don't know what underhanded tricks he used, but he not only injured Jingshan, but also killed seven or eight Fengjiu orcs."

"Then, coincidentally, the Wind Vulture orcs recognized the attackers as our Rattletail. When they came to their senses, they couldn't find that son of a bitch, Blood Ripple Butterfly, but instead found me, and then..."

"We fought, and we lost."

Lin Ying looked gloomy and gritted her teeth as she said, "Because there were only eight of us, after the Wind Vultures fought with us, they realized they might have made a mistake, so in the end they didn't kill us. They just drove us out of our original territory and didn't allow us to continue operating in the eastern Luoshan area."

"So I led my men westward. Du Qi went out for a stroll a few days ago and happened to hear that your Stone Forest was going to have an autumn hunt. This morning I observed that you were heading towards Luolu Mountain, so I thought, instead of preparing supplies for the winter with these seven or eight people, why not join your Stone Forest..."

Shilin and Hanshan have the best reputation among the surrounding tribes.

The orc race of the Cold Mountain tribe is relatively homogeneous and xenophobic. Most of them are flying orcs, while those who cannot fly are mostly weak and basically dependent on Cold Mountain, so they do not have much autonomy or status.

The situation in Shilin is quite different. It was originally a tribe established by wandering orcs. The chieftain, Lingxiao, is quite well-known in the Northern Wilderness and has a very upright character. Moreover, the tribe is quite powerful, and Shilin is currently showing a tendency to develop from a medium-sized tribe into a large tribe.

In addition, they made a lot of inexplicable noise recently.

Lin Ying felt that Ling Xiao would not do these things for no reason. After making inquiries from various sources and thinking it over carefully, she decided to lead her subordinates to join this potential future overlord.

Su Weihua asked curiously, "You were tricked by that Bloodripple Butterfly Beastman once, don't you plan to get revenge?"

Mentioning this person made Lin Ying's chest ache with anger. She clenched her right fist tightly and gritted her teeth, saying, "Of course I want revenge, but the problem is... not now."

"This kid took the few survivors and joined Huanya's gang."

“I suspect he was originally a member of Phantom Fang, or that he knew those people a long time ago.”

“Phantom Fang?” Bai Qingyu asked. “I think I’ve heard that name before.”

Su Weihua said with a stern face, "This group has a terrible reputation; they cannibalize people."