CH 32

Sa Lei and the others quietly approached the herd of bleating beasts. With Qin Fei in command, Sa Lei and Xumijja do the work of subduing the baa beasts, while Tanbel and Suwulu would be in charge of tying it up. 

The leather ropes used to bind the baa beasts were coated by Qin Fei with a strange smelling grass juice. From the observations he made along the way, the smell of this grass juice was the natural nemesis for almost all herbivores. There was not even a single herbivore that did not make a detour or bypass around this smelly grass. Herbivores would not even nibble the surrounding plants around this smelly grass. At first, Qin Fei thought the grass was poisonous, but after he observed more, he immediately smelt a disgusting smell, therefore Qin Fei concluded that it was the smell that made many herbivores couldn’t endure this plant. Animals had a more sensitive sense of smell than humans, so it was harder for them to tolerate such a smell in their mouths. Although several people suffered from this disgusting smell, they all endured it while they ensured that their leather ropes were not chewed by the bleating beasts.

Qin Fei pointed to Sa Lei and Xumijja who were not far away, where there were two bleating beasts with milk sacks hanging. The two of them nodded their heads in understanding. Qin Fei gave another signal to strike. The two men quickly struck out, grabbed the bleating beasts’s two horns firmly and held them down to the ground. 

The bleating beast normally rarely clashed with people, so it had little defence. Sa Lei and Xumijja moved quickly and intensely, as the two baa beasts were pinned to the ground firmly. With their pointed horns pinched and their heads pressed against the ground, they could not lift their front legs at all. The beasts could only keep kicking and punching the ground with their hind legs. This movement looked comical and posed no threat at all to the two men.

As soon as Tanbel and Suwulu saw that they did it smoothly, they rushed over and tied the four hooves of the beast with the leather rope they had prepared. The beast was taken by surprise and a little panicked. Sa Lei and Xumijja were about to take advantage of this situation to strike again when they heard a long bleat. It sounded like a scream but also like a command. The panic was quickly stopped and three of the taller and stronger bleating beasts made baa sound and pawed at them.

Qin Fei was dumbfounded, were these still ‘damn it’ a sheep? Why do they like mad bulls? The moment Qin Fei was lost in thought, the three baa beasts had already rushed in front of them. Sa Lei, Xumijja and Tanbel all took action one after another to suppress the baa beasts. Suwulu had only recently come of age, ao the males of the clan had always taken care of him during the hunt, not allowing him to come into close contact with the fierce and wild beasts, so he had never seen anything like this. He stood frozen in place, unsure of what to do.

Ktfgf kjr j gjaailcu lc atf ugjrr jcv j ofk wbgf bo atf yifjalcu yfjrar rtbkfv atfwrfinfr. Ycf bo atfw ibbxfv yluufg atjc atf atgff atja tjv yffc bnfgktfiwfv jcv klat lar tfjv tfiv tlut jcv cbraglir qeoolcu, la uijgfv jcuglis ja Vekeie ktb kjr ogbhfc lc qijmf. 

“Hlc Mfl, Vekeie, gec delmxis! Eec…,” Vj Ofl sfiifv lc tjraf jr tf reqqgfrrfv atf xffq rageuuilcu yifjalcu yfjra lc tlr tjcv.

Suwulu could not hear Sa Lei’s loud shout, he was already completely and terribly dumbfounded by the huge angry bleating beast. As he watched the big bleating beast charge forward, unexpectedly Qin Fei, who came out cater-cornered, hit it on the head. 

The big bleating beast stumbled and shook its head dizzily. It didn’t even understand how it had suddenly hit a tree without a reason. The three men were also stunned by Qin Fei’s action. They saw Qin Fei aggressively and overbearingly squeezed the hard outer shell of the spearhead and swung the spear with all his might. The beast was beaten viciously with a dazzling blow.

In fact, Qin Fei himself didn’t know what moves he used, some of the Tai Chi sword moves that his grandfather had taught him in his early years and also some of the things he learned later in his martial arts classes. In short, it was a mess. The big bleating beasts fled in a panic as it was hit, but it was surrounded by the shadow of a stick and lost its bearing because of the blow. It had already lost its previous momentum. He was stopped by Qin Fei several times when he tried to escape, but when he saw that he could not escape, he simply fell to the ground and bleated pitifully to gain Qin Fei’s sympathy. The other baa beasts heard his wail and responded with a baa wail too. Qin Fei, whose hands were also tired from the fight, dropped his spear and grabbed the animal by its horns and rode on top of it. 

Seeing that the beast was still making sound, Qin Fei gave him two more punches, “Still making sound? If you shout again, I’ll kill you and eat your meat. You thought that this master had never seen a bull before? Yo sheep, how dare you pretend to be a bull?!”

The baa beast that was ridden under him did not even dare to wail, only tremble uncontrollably. 

Thanks to its thick skin and flesh, this beast didn’t spat out blood although it was beaten by Qin Fei. But with this blow from Qin Fei, it was almost half dead. The beast was quite frightened as Master Qin didn’t directly end its life and used a stick to abuse it.

It was obvious that the beast being pressed down and beaten by Qin Fei was the one who took the lead of the herd. Those beasts were even more defeated when it saw the leading sheep being beaten and kept begging for mercy. 

Xumijja looked on in disbelief, speechless with fear and Sa Lei had a cold breeze running down his spine. The two of them exchanged glances: ‘Don’t make Qin Fei angry in the future!’ Only Tanbel looked on with admiration at Qin Fei’s dazzling stick swing display as Qin Fei tiredly grabbed the animal skin rope to tie up the beast underneath him. Suwulu had long since recovered from his shock, since the shock Qin Fei gave him far exceeded that of the bleating beast. He hurriedly found leather ropes and helped the other three tie up the pinned beast.

Sa Lei looked at the badly beaten beast, smiled and wiped the sweat from Qin Fei’s face, picked up a bottle gourd of water from the ground and handed it over to him, “Take a drink and rest ba!” 

Qin Fei was tired after venting his anger, so he took the water bottle from Sa Lei and drank some of it. Sa Lei pulled him to rest under a relatively flat tree as the other three also came over.

Tanbel hurried over to ask for advice, begging Qin Fei to teach him the kind of method he had just used to fight the bleating beast. Qin Fei was stunned; he himself had no idea what he had just used, but looking at Tanbel’s expectant eyes, he couldn’t say no, so he could only nod helplessly. 

While he was worried about how to deal with Tanbel (Tanbeite), Qin Fei’s hand unexpectedly pressed on a small and dried up object. Puzzled, he brought the object to his eyes and was instantly filled with surprise —— dried chillies.

He got up quickly and plucked away the wild grass around him. There were indeed a lot of chilli seedlings among the grass, some already withered and dangling red chillies, while others were new chilli seedlings with small flowers. When Qin Fei lived with his grandfather in the mountains, the seedlings were eaten by rabbits who were said to like the green seedlings and the unripe yet chillies. He never thought that the foraging ground occupied by the baa beasts would be a chilli garden so he guessed the baa beasts liked it too. 

Qin Fei dug up some wild chilli seedlings cheerfully. He also had the four of them pick up and collect a lot of dried red chillies. With Qin Fei leading the search, they not only found chillies but also bunches of small fruits and pumpkins, as well as roots of several plants similar to sweet potatoes in the uncultivated land it had occupied. These plant roots showed signs of having been eaten by the bleating beasts, so they should be mostly non-poisonous. Qin Fei tried to find some of it, washed it with water from the bottle gourd, broke it open and tasted it. It was surprisingly tastier than sweet potatoes. Several people were so excited that they immediately buried their heads and dug hard.

Translator’s Note:

Tanbel (Tanbeier) and Tanbeite is the same person’s name. The author keep changing his name in this chapter, so basically it mean the same.