Back at the settlement, Xue had already prepared lunch for him: a charred, roasted fish. Jiang Wen forced himself to finish it, his biggest grievance about this era being the food. If he could, he'd rather cook himself.
After eating the fish, leaving the bones intact, Jiang Wen ran a hand through his hair. He opened his hand, feeling something was off, and found a clump of black hair lying in his palm. Frowning, Jiang Wen felt his hair loss had gotten worse recently. It used to fall out in small clumps, but now it was coming out in handfuls. If his hair wasn't still thick, he would have suspected he was going bald.
Unable to figure it out, Jiang Wen chalked it up to the negative effects of time-traveling. He didn't really care that much about his body hair anyway.
"I only have the basic techniques for the Life Fire cultivation method. Xue and Xiu Qi are practicing something similar. How should I proceed from here?"
"I should have asked Yan Gongli more about cultivation methods back then, so I wouldn't be so clueless now."
The women didn't get up. The woman in front, with some reddish-brown hair, held the iron sword, staring at him as if she would kneel there forever if he didn't take it.
Could it be that these people want to recognize me as their leader, to replace the current one? Jiang Wen suddenly thought of this possibility. However, the Nanqi people were clearly still a matriarchal society. How could they let a man be their leader? Or perhaps they simply didn't have that concept. Seeing that his medical skills were impressive, they wanted to acknowledge him as their leader?
Although the leader was a very capable woman, as evidenced by her ability to hunt fierce beasts with her bare hands, she always brought back the most prey from each hunt. But after all, he could revive the dead in their eyes, a skill that was even rarer.
Thinking about everything he had done, if these Nanqi people didn't worship gods, he might have been treated like one. Seeing them kneeling for so long, Jiang Wen had Xue fetch the leader.
After the leader communicated with them, Jiang Wen finally understood what was going on.
"Forgive my ignorance, I didn't expect that Your Excellency would be a member of the Ming Royal family," the leader said, looking at Jiang Wen in astonishment, bowing to him. She relayed the words of the others, which meant that Jiang Wen's identity was that of a member of the Nanqi royal family.
"A member of the Ming Royal family?" Jiang Wen was also surprised by this news. Then he remembered that when he had just been resurrected, he hadn't been wearing armor like the other soldiers, but rather a set of relatively exquisite silk clothing.
Jiang Wen hadn't delved deeply into the identity of his body. Now it seemed that it was not so simple.
During his time in Nanqi, he had more or less figured out the royal power structure of the Nanqi people. The Nanqi people had four major noble families, each ruling over one of the four regions of Nanqi. These people were respectfully referred to as the royal family by the Nanqi people.
"Please accept this relic, Your Excellency. These women are all surviving members of the Ming Royal family's retinue," the leader said respectfully.
Seeing this, Jiang Wen had no choice but to take the iron sword.
The retainers all exchanged smiles, stood up, surrounded Jiang Wen, and then excitedly shouted loudly.
"Ming King!"
People outside came to watch, welcoming the arrival of a member of the Nanqi royal family.
In the following days, the heavy snow gradually receded.
A shout rang out outside the house. Jiang Wen looked up from the desk. He knew that the hunters had returned. At this time, as a member of the royal family, he needed to come forward to distribute the prey.
After being recognized as a descendant of the Ming Royal family, Jiang Wen's status in the settlement became the highest. He was informed of all the major and minor affairs of the settlement, which kept him quite busy.
Walking out of the house, he saw the hunters pushing and shoving several strangers with red hair. They were very different from the Nanqi people. They appeared smaller, with short, reddish-brown hair, completely naked, and trembling.
The people of the settlement watched the captured red-haired strangers with great curiosity about these fellow humans. Some of the naughty children even went up to pinch their hair, causing the red-haired people to grimace in anger. Then they were heavily smacked on the head by the Nanqi people behind them, and they obediently lowered their heads.
They hadn't caught any prey today, but they had captured several red-haired people from other tribes. Jiang Wen was very curious as he looked at these few prisoners. Being captured meant they weren't too far away from here.
The red-haired tribesmen were pressed to the ground, looking up at the strangely dressed fellow humans in front of them. They had similar builds, but these people were dressed differently.
The weapons they held were especially powerful. Some tribesmen had tried to ambush them, intending to capture them to breed or to skin and eat them raw.
The fate of captured prisoners was often miserable, but the tribesmen had no concept of treating prisoners well. They were immediately stabbed to death, scaring the red-haired tribesmen into begging for mercy, no longer daring to have any thoughts.
Eating fellow humans seemed cruel, but it was a common occurrence in this era. This was a place where the strong preyed on the weak. If you didn't want to be eaten, you had to be stronger than the other party. The survival and reproduction of one's own tribe was the most important thing, and everything else was just another item on the food menu.
Jiang Wen pinched the other party's chin, carefully examining these red-haired tribesmen. Their noses were slightly higher than the Nanqi people's, and the fangs in their mouths were sharper, indicating that they often hunted and ate coarse meat.
These animals generally lived in the grasslands, and their habit of running made their muscles extremely tight. Their eyes were light red, different from the large black eyes of the Nanqi people. They should be a tribal group from the distant grasslands, but Jiang Wen was puzzled as to why they would appear in the forest.
"King, please forgive our sins."
Apparently knowing that Jiang Wen was the leader, the red-haired man kneeling in front gesticulated wildly, making strange noises. He even crawled to Jiang Wen's feet, licking his shoes, with a fawning smile on his face.
He couldn't eat them, and raising them would be a waste of food. He was a little troubled about what to do with these red-haired people. He didn't have the strange habit of eating fellow humans. These were all people, after all, and eating them would weigh on his conscience. Imagining roasting a thigh or a hand over a fire, Jiang Wen couldn't help but shudder. It was too disgusting.
In the end, he had people send these few to raise livestock. Jiang Wen looked at the scenery of early spring in the distance, feeling that it was time to set off for the royal capital of Nanqi.
