Chapter 058: The Midnight Escape
After their insightful visit, the Black Rat Tribe's leaders departed, carrying not only a wealth of knowledge about the Han Tribe's prowess but also crucial information about the lunar calendar. Luo Chong, having gained four baskets of peanut seeds and new insights into the lunar cycles, found himself increasingly curious about the accuracy of this celestial calendar, leading him to observe the moon nightly.
According to Shaman Wu, this year was a leap year, promising an extended winter of fourteen additional days. Despite the season only being three months in, the weather turned bitterly colder. The night before the third full moon of winter, a relentless snowfall blanketed the landscape, piling up to thirty centimeters in untouched areas and drastically reducing visibility with gusts of wind-driven snowflakes.
As the end of the third lunar month approached, Luo Chong and his people were busy clearing snow off the animal sheds to prevent collapse. The rabbit enclosure was bustling too, with sixteen does giving birth to a total of ninety-eight kits, significantly boosting the tribe's rabbit population to one hundred fifty-six.
The tribe celebrated the abundance, and Luo Chong, eager to ensure the kits' survival through the freezing conditions, repurposed the hide of two slaughtered blue musk deer as additional insulation for the newborns. His concern was somewhat unwarranted, as these were naturally resilient wild rabbits accustomed to the harsh wilderness.
That evening, as the relentless winds continued, the sky cleared, revealing two luminous full moons in the east and north, their paths intersecting in the heavens. The bright moonlight reflected off the vast expanses of snow, casting a daylight-like glow over the landscape. Luo Chong, enjoying chestnuts in the animal shed with his companions Meat-Meat and Gray Mountain, fed them the sweet husks. Meat-Meat, mischievously stealing chestnuts, tried to charm Luo Chong into forgiveness when caught.
Suddenly, Gray Mountain perked up, its large ears tuning into distant sounds. Initially dismissing the disturbance as mere wind, Luo Chong soon felt a tremor through the ground, followed by a rumbling noise from the western woods. Rushing to the western wall for a better view, he witnessed an astonishing sight.
From the treeline emerged a veritable avalanche of snow, stirred up by a mass migration of panicked herbivores and their relentless predators. The tumultuous symphony of roars, grunts, and bleats filled the air as a coalition of carnivores chased a desperate herd of bison, megaceres, and the comically inept alpacas, which were notable for their ill-suited defensive capabilities.
The carnivores, led by a pack of more than two hundred wolves, demonstrated the ruthlessness and efficiency that placed them atop the food chain. The wolves' tactical acumen in corralling and isolating their prey highlighted their dominance in this wintry battlefield.
The fleeing bison, driven by primal fear, stumbled upon Luo Chong's artificially created terrain alterations. The leading bison's confusion turned to terror as it approached a deep, unmarked trench Luo Chong had excavated earlier for irrigation—a new addition unbeknownst to the local wildlife.
As the leader of the bison pack reached the brink of the trench, it skidded helplessly, the ground beneath its hooves giving way to the concealed chasm. What followed was chaotic yet silent to Luo Chong's distant observation point—a desperate, silent plea etched in the bison's wide eyes as it and its followers cascaded into the abyss.
Back at the Han Tribe's stronghold, Luo Chong watched the natural order brutally unfold, a stark reminder of the thin line between survival and extinction in the wild. The night's events, under the dual glow of the full moons, were a chilling ballet of life and death, played out across the snow-blanketed landscape of their secluded mountain plain.