bookcurios Chapter 37 Don't disturb them while they're having their babies.
Chapter 37 Don't disturb them while they're having their babies.
Time flies by in the blink of an eye, and it's the morning of the eighth day.
Lin Baiyan wiped the sweat from his forehead and looked with satisfaction at the four caves they had carved out.
They worked overtime today and finally finished the layout of the cave. Now all that's left is the two-story living area for the tribespeople.
Each cave has an area of about 30 square meters and a height of about 2 meters.
The young man carefully planned out the four caves: one for storing animal bones and hides, two for storing food in wicker baskets, and the other for storing miscellaneous odds and ends.
After a quick cleaning of the cave, Lin Baiyan led several orcs to sort and put all the supplies accumulated in the tribe inside.
They didn't have many supplies yet, so the caves seemed a bit empty, but Lin Baiyan believed that they would be able to fill them up in the near future!
The ambitious young man thought that this might not be enough, and he also reserved room for further expansion!
"Bai Yan, come out quickly! Hu Qing and the others have prepared the meal!" Lu Xiao shouted loudly from outside.
The young man replied, "Okay, I'll be right there!"
Hu Qing and the others were still making meat soup, since their most important task right now was to store food. The few male orcs who stayed in the cave would go out hunting from time to time, and they were doing alright.
Today's soup is mushroom and meat soup. Lin Baiyan took the bamboo bowl. In the past few days, they have gradually replaced the stone bowls with bamboo bowls, which are lighter, easier to carry, and won't leak.
The young man took a sip of hot soup, squinted, and looked up at the rocky mountain, pondering how to carve a hole.
We can't just build a few simple caves with openings; otherwise, these caves won't be able to keep out the wind when snow and wind come during the snowy season.
Then, just like where they live now, first dig a tunnel two to three meters inward, and then chisel out caves to the left and right. That way, as long as the tunnel entrance is blocked, some temperature can be maintained when entering or exiting.
Tu Lin placed his hand in front of the young man and shook it vigorously, "White Flame, White Flame?"
The young man snapped out of his daze. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing, I just wanted to ask when you started carving out the separate cave?"
The young man smiled. "How about tomorrow? What's wrong, Uncle Rabbit?"
Tu Lin breathed a sigh of relief. "It's not that I'm in a hurry, it's the beastmen in our tribe..."
“The snowy season is a good time to get pregnant, and it’s not a good idea for us to keep living together like this,” Tu Lin rambled on to Lin Baiyan.
Fortunately, the young man had already thought about everyone living separately, otherwise he would have reminded Lin Baiyan as well.
Pregnancy during the snowy season is a common phenomenon in the Orc continent. With heavy snow falling and everyone stuck at home with nothing to do, people naturally start thinking about having babies.
In addition, the way sub-beastmen give birth is different here than on Earth. Perhaps due to the more difficult living conditions, in order to survive better, sub-beastmen can generally give birth to cubs after five months, which is half the gestation period on Earth.
Most sub-orcs conceive at the beginning of the snowy season and give birth to their young in the spring.
After the cubs are born, they are supposed to drink the milk of wild animals. However, wild animal milk is hard to find here, and the cubs can't get milk to drink every day. Most of the cubs drink fresh blood and crushed meat.
Spring is the time when everything comes back to life. At that time, there are more animals and more food, making it easier for cubs to find milk from wild animals, thus increasing their survival rate.
The young man was startled by Tu Lin's words and almost choked on the meat soup in his mouth.
Lin Baiyan hadn't thought of this problem either. He only thought that it would be inconvenient for so many people to squeeze into a large cave, but he didn't expect that Tu Lin would be concerned about the issue of having offspring.
The young man smiled somewhat awkwardly, "Uncle Tulin, our tribe has only been together for three ten-day periods, and we don't know each other well yet. Is it possible that anyone will become partners?"
Tu Lin replied matter-of-factly, "Of course there are, it's just that you don't pay attention to these things."
He also gave Lin Baiyan a few examples.
"While you and Lang Cang were out searching for salt, Hu Qiu was extremely attentive to Yang Ye. He would stay close to him all day while cooking."
"And Ma Yuan, I think he's also a bit interested in Shu Yue..."
Lin Baiyan was utterly dumbfounded. He knew that the feelings of beastmen were relatively simple and direct, but he never expected that they could develop to the point of forming a mate and having offspring in just one month.
Tu Lin looked at the young man's blank face with amusement. "What's wrong? Isn't this a perfectly normal thing?"
"To reproduce for the tribe is something every orc looks forward to."
Lin Baiyan snapped back to reality and shook his head. Sure enough, the simple-minded beastmen had such straightforward thoughts. If they liked each other, they would get together. They were much more direct and gentle than the people in China.
The young man was still a little unaccustomed to it, but after Tu Lin said that, the work of excavating a separate cave would indeed be faster.
We can't just live in a big cave and disturb people's private lives...
Stop disturbing her while she's having her babies!
Lin Baiyan imagined the scene with some embarrassment, then involuntarily shivered. He'd better hurry up and start drawing.
He doesn't want to have offspring, but he can't stop other sub-beastmen from contributing to the tribe.
The young man finished the meat broth in the bamboo bowl in a few gulps, then wiped his mouth and said, "Let's start now!"
Tu Lin looked at Lin Baiyan, who seemed to be on steroids, with some confusion.
Upon hearing the priest say that they would start giving everyone individual caves, the orcs were quite excited, as they all wanted their own private space if possible.
Discussions could be heard intermittently from the crowd.
The young man waited until everyone quieted down before saying, "We will carve many individual caves, but only orcs over the age of fifteen can live in individual caves. The remaining cubs who are not yet adults will still live together in this large cave."
Lin Baiyan was not comfortable letting the half-grown cubs live alone in a cave. If something happened to them, it would be too late to regret it.
The cubs, who are about to reach adulthood, are very excited. In their minds, being able to have their own cave is the first symbol of growing up. Who hasn't imagined living independently?
Wolf Cloud was puzzled by Lin Baiyan's words, "But Priest brother, I don't know if I'm old enough to be fifteen..."
Only then did the tribesmen realize that they didn't know how old fifteen was!
All they knew was that adulthood meant being twenty years old, and that beastmen generally reached adulthood around the age of twenty.
Lin Baiyan felt a little ashamed. It seemed that the literacy campaign needed to be accelerated. He couldn't be so old that he couldn't even tell how old he was.
The young man thought for a moment. Cat White should be around seventeen years old now, so…
"Anyone my age can live alone."
"If you're unsure about a cub, you can let me take a look. If it can live on its own, I'll let you know."
The cubs that weren't as big as the priest looked listless.
Wolf Cloud was also somewhat frustrated. He knew his current age. Uncle Wolf Huai was a priest, and he said that he was born during the heaviest snowfall in ten snow seasons, so he should be ten years old this year.
It didn't reach the area specified by the priest brother...