Chapter 77: Chief Xie: Those Rotten Toads!
"Nan Wu! If you die, how am I supposed to live? How will our family survive?" Father Nan had Nan Wu’s head on his lap and was sobbing incessantly. His tears didn’t seem to be on the verge of stopping. Even Mother Nan stared at her daughter with a worried look on her face. She and her husband both were Scouts. Because of this, their rank in the tribe was really low. It was quite a surprise that their daughter turned out to be a warrior kind.
It was all because of Nan Wu that their lives in the tribe became a bit better; if not, they would still be suffering under the feet of the warrior kind beastwomen, mers and men. Who would have thought that just when their lives were getting better, Nan Wu would end up like this?
Without Nan Wu, how would their family survive? Does she need to look for another mer to give birth to another warrior-kind daughter? But what were the chances of her having a warrior-kind daughter when she was a scout?
Mother Nan was worried about her future, while Father Nan and Nan Zhi were worried about Nan Wu, who was lying on the ground. Her wound bled profusely as her complexion turned paler and paler.
"What just happened here?" Chief Xie asked frantically. She stared at Nan Wu, who seemed close to dying and then turned to look at the rest of the team members of the salt-hunting team. "How did this happen? Didn’t you all just go around the Fanged Wolf Tribe and collect salt from the Frog Tribe? How come you all ended up getting injured like this?"
The Frog tribe was the only one that could create salt, and thus, every other tribe purchased salt from them. Though the Frog tribe were way far away from their own tribe, they had no other choice but to look for them. As they were the only ones who could make salt.
Nothing had gone wrong till now, so what happened all of a sudden?
"The Frog tribe betrayed us," said one of the wounded warriors. She was clutching her wounded arm and looking up at Chief Xie with a look of sheer rage in her eyes. "They joined hands with the Snake tribe. The leader of the Snake tribe promised them that they would give them larger prey than our tribe, so they betrayed us without any guilt."
"They were waiting for us to arrive at their tribe to attack us. And when we did, they didn’t hold back and took us all down. If not for Sister Wu, we would all have died. Not that many of us didn’t die." Her eyes turned red with grief when she thought about her many sisters who had fallen while trying to give them an opportunity to escape.
Chief Xie’s face turned livid when she heard the warrior’s words. She clenched and unclenched her fingers before smashing her fist on the trunk next to her. "Those bastards! It was our tribe who helped them when the snake tribe was causing trouble for them and they turned around and bit the hand that fed them? How dare they!"
"There is no point in getting angry, mother," said Xie Daiyu as he glanced at his mother, who was losing her temper. "The Frog Tribe never gave us an oath; they can change their promise if they want to. And with the snake tribe confronting them, I don’t think they had the courage to go against them."
All the anger that Chief Xie had at that moment vanished without a trace. She knew that with the tribe’s current strength, there was nothing that they could do to the snake tribe, but nonetheless, it still made her mad that she couldn’t do anything to those jerks who kept causing trouble for their tribe by targeting their tribe.
"Tribe leader, you have to do something," Father Nan said to Chief Xie. He clutched his daughter in his arms and sobbed aggrievedly, "My Ah Wu got injured while trying to secure salt for this tribe; you cannot abandon her like this. You need to do something! Help her."
As he cried, he cradled Nan Wu’s head against his chest. If he had known that this was going to happen, he would have never asked his daughter to go with the salt-hunting team. She even told him that she didn’t feel well and didn’t want to go hunting. But he! He was so foolish. In his greed of wanting to eat meat, he pushed his daughter and asked her to go and join the salt-hunting team. If only he had listened to her, then nothing like this would have ever happened.
His daughter would be alive and well!
"I also want to save her life, but what am I supposed to do?" Chief Xie wanted to ask what was going on with her luck for the past few days. At first, it was Ah Man whose life was almost lost due to the bite of a Mist Spider. And now it was Nan Wu; both of them were strong and capable warriors of their tribe.
If something happened to them, their tribe would weaken considerably.
Who would have thought that just as they managed to save the life of Ah Man, something ended up happening to Nan Wu.
"Ruan Chanchan!" Just as everyone was grieving the loss of a strong warrior, Nan Zhi suddenly spoke up. He turned to look at his father and said to him, "Ruan Chanchan can save sister Wu. She was able to save the life of Ah Man. She might be able to do something similar for Sister Wu. Didn’t everyone say that she is the Holy One? Then she can save my sister’s life."
Nan Zhi hated Ruan Chanchan but at that moment, he knew that she was the only one who could help his sister. He had seen Ah Man getting better after Ruan Chanchan treated her; since she could perform a miracle once, she could do it again.