Chapter 1: Is there more? I’m hungry.
Long hair fluttered in the wind, a piece of animal skin wrapped around the waist, a wooden stick in the left hand, and a stone knife in the right. Luo Chong saw an old cat ahead, threw the wooden stick, then the stone knife, causing the old cat to bleed profusely.
A bleak autumn wind blew past, and Luo Chong, sitting at the mouth of the cave, watched this scene of ancient people hunting with a sense of sorrow. No need to ask why he was sad; if you were also bare-bottomed in the autumn, you’d feel the same way—it was cold, and the wind was strong.
“Damn, so poor! After all the effort to be reborn like a novel protagonist, it turns out to be the primitive era where I don’t even have clothes. Could this be the legendary extreme luck turning into bad luck, meaning my good fortune from the previous life has run out?”
Luo Chong roared inwardly but could do nothing to change the reality. Looking at his calloused feet and nails filled with dirt, he could only accept his fate. He had indeed come to an unfamiliar primitive age and had become a small primitive person who had ‘already been poisoned.’
Sitting on a piece of basalt at the cave entrance without any clothing, Luo Chong held a stone knife about the size of half a palm. Well, it was actually just a broken piece of stone he had just smashed. He was studying how to deal with the cause of his transmigration—two bloody puncture wounds on his ankle, left by a venomous snake bite.
Several pregnant women wrapped in animal skins stared at him curiously, then they saw this unfortunate child start self-harming, using the stone shard to cut open the wound caused by the snakebite. Black poisonous blood slowly flowed out, but Luo Chong felt no pain.
“Shit, I can’t feel any pain, this is going to cripple me. I couldn’t have died right after crossing over, could I?” Luo Chong quickly grabbed that leg and vigorously massaged it, feeling that he couldn’t squeeze out much more poison, then started sucking it with his mouth. A few similarly unclothed companions watched in astonishment; this must be madness before death.
Luo Chong ignored them since they couldn’t understand his Mandarin nor help him.
He limped back to the cave, pulled out a red-hot branch from the fire pit, and thrust the burning charcoal fiercely onto the wound.
“Sss—ahhhhhh.”
After a heart-wrenching scream, Luo Chong lay exhausted on the ground, muttering prayers for recovery under his breath, “Drillmaster, this is my first time being bitten by a venomous snake. You said high temperatures can destroy snake venom proteins, it must work, otherwise, my life will end here.”
Naked Luo Chong lay there, reminiscing about his days as a soldier with a dazed look in his eyes.
In his previous life, Luo Chong, coming from a martial arts family, learned martial arts when he was young and attended military school. In the army, he was considered an elite.
Survival in the wild, assassination, demolition, and proficiency with light and heavy weapons—he excelled in everything, and his mission success rate was excellent. But from the task last week, Luo Chong’s luck seemed to turn sour.
The mission took place in the desert of northern Africa, where he chased a spy. The mission was almost complete, but on his way back, he encountered a sandstorm and accidentally fell into a quicksand pit, never to emerge again.
Underneath the quicksand pit was a natural cavern, deep but without an exit. With hope, Luo Chong walked towards the depth of the cavern, hoping to see the sun again.
Without signals, light, food, or water in the cavern, Luo Chong survived for five days on his own yellow liquid. As the cavern grew hotter, his hope dwindled. When Luo Chong thought he couldn’t hold on any longer, a bright beam of light in the cavern gave him new motivation.
But upon reaching the source of the light, Luo Chong was utterly dumbfounded. The hope that had just risen turned into despair instantly—the light wasn’t an exit but a pool of boiling magma.
He had unknowingly ventured so deep underground.
With a face full of despair, Luo Chong no longer thought about returning to the surface. Even if he knew where the exit was, he didn’t have the strength to walk out. Given his current physical condition, even retracing his steps wouldn’t allow him to escape.
Laughing bitterly at his surroundings, Luo Chong mocked himself—this was fate, heaven had prepared a tomb for him.
But it wasn’t too bad either. Even if he died, he would still have a place to rest. He wouldn’t be someone who dies without a burial spot.
Thus, Luo Chong consoled himself, leaned against the rock wall, sat down, and closed his eyes.
His stomach acid churned endlessly, digesting itself, while his starving intestines cursed incessantly. Gradually falling into semi-consciousness, Luo Chong was still harassed by hunger, unable to sleep even though he wanted to.
Annoyed, Luo Chong cursed in his heart: Africa was truly not a good place. It brought misfortune, and this time, his luck had completely run out.
Thinking it was all over, Luo Chong unexpectedly woke up in this strange place.
In a place surrounded by wild grass and shrubs, a group of primitives, naked except for animal skins around their waists, carried him back to the cave. Two blood holes on his ankle were still oozing black blood, and a large snake with its head crushed was wrapped around his leg.
The clan members thought this snake-bitten child would surely die, but unexpectedly, after a series of bloodletting and burning the wound—treatments akin to self-mutilation—he stood up again the next day.
On the morning of the second day, after a night of life-and-death struggle, Luo Chong, like a cockroach, crawled up again. He took a piece of unknown meat the size of a goose egg, dry and charred, from a woman’s hand and devoured it ravenously.
Luo Chong didn’t care what it was now. He only knew how unbearable it was to starve to death in his previous life. The fear of hunger deeply affected his mind. Since joining the army, he had imagined countless ways to die, but starvation was never one of them. Now, as long as it wasn’t lethal, he dared to put anything in his mouth.
That woman, seeing Luo Chong could eat again, smiled and called other women with animal skins to go outside.
However, this made someone restless. Luo Chong, who had hastily stuffed the roasted meat into his mouth, hurriedly stopped the woman, anxiously gesturing and saying, “Food, is there more? I’m hungry.”
Joking aside, although his new body was only that of a ten-year-old child, it was still growing. Moreover, Luo Chong had just experienced the tragedy of starving to death. He wanted his stomach to always be on the verge of bursting.
People often compare those who eat both urgently and excessively to reincarnated hungry ghosts. What true reincarnated hungry ghosts are like can be seen in Luo Chong.
Such a small amount of meat could not satisfy his stomach or his desire to eat until he was full.
But naturally, the woman could not provide more.
In this small tribe of only fifty-plus people, the daily food supply was limited. Besides, it was the season to store food for winter. It was already quite generous that they hadn’t reduced his share.
Even this piece of roasted meat the size of a goose egg was given because he was injured. Other children didn’t receive such treatment.
Half-satisfied, Luo Chong helplessly sat at the cave entrance, passively accepting the memories of another person in his mind, pondering his miserable situation.
Returning to the previous world was impossible now. Although Luo Chong wanted to go back, if it meant returning to the magma cave, he might as well stay as a primitive person here, living in another way.
However, surviving here was also not easy.
In the memories of the original owner of this body, winters here were very long. Humans hibernated in caves during the winter, sparingly consuming stored food. During the hardest times, they ate only once every two days.
This eating pattern could not make people full; it could only keep them alive. According to tribal customs, food was prioritized for adult males, followed by adult females, then children like himself, and finally the elderly and disabled.
But in such a harsh survival environment, where were the elderly and disabled? Those who fell ill or got injured generally died immediately. So, if there really was a shortage of food in winter, he would be among the first to be abandoned. Therefore, it was common for several people in the tribe to freeze or starve to death each year.
Realizing this, Luo Chong couldn’t sit idly anymore. Autumn had arrived, and the weather was getting colder day by day. Adult primitives were busy gathering fruits, hunting animals, and storing food for winter. Naturally, Luo Chong, the newcomer, couldn’t afford to be idle.
Therefore, the situation of being hungry would not exist. He would not willingly enter the list of the first to be abandoned.
