The wicked female is extremely fierce, but she's pampered by her seven beast husbands.

Chapter 62 Salt Scarcity

Ling Xiao turned to look at Saide: "Really?"

"It's true. I got the answers from three orcs who were responsible for guarding the southern border of the tribe, and they all gave the same answer."

Said said seriously, "There are many dangers in the Luolu Mountains, and there are several small tribes there, but they are all in relatively hidden locations."

"She was injured. If she had encountered a group of orc hunters, she would most likely be dead by now."

"But they could also have been rescued by small tribes in the Luolu Mountains or by wandering orcs."

“I can point out the locations of those small tribes for you. I often hunt in the Luolu Mountains, so I know the area quite well.”

Ling Xiao lowered his eyes and thought for a while: "I will talk to Enen."

"If she wants to go, then let her go. I won't stop her."

"If you don't want to, then wait until Su Weihua recovers and he can go find her himself. It's the same thing."

Saide was somewhat surprised by Ling Xiao's cold attitude towards Su Duo. He had thought that Ling Chengen was inquiring about Su Duo's whereabouts in order to find her as soon as possible and put Su Weihua at ease.

But now it seems... the young clan leader isn't exactly favored in the Stone Forest.

However, it's no wonder.

A useless, crippled orc, whose once handsome appearance has been ruined, what could possibly make a powerful female like Chief Ling fall for him?
It's simply impossible.

The fact that the Shilin tribe didn't throw Chief Su out of the tribe to fend for himself is already considered quite benevolent.

Well, in the end, it's all the fault of the old clan chief who deserves divine retribution.

The Saide couple watched Ling Xiao walk away.

Felicity helped Saide unload his luggage and pointed to the direction where the sound of a stream could be faintly heard on the right: "You've been busy all night. Take the two little ones to wash up. I'll clean this tree hole first."

As Saide led the two cubs toward the stream, a monkey's head suddenly peeked out from the canopy of a neighboring tree. After seeing the figure busy in the tree hole, it turned around and spoke to its family in the treehouse. Soon after, it picked up a makeshift broom made of branches and climbed down the tree trunk.

They had just overheard the chieftain making arrangements for the newly arrived orc family, so they figured they weren't bad people.

Feli was somewhat surprised by the friendliness of her neighbors, but this also helped her settle down smoothly in the Shilin tribe.

……

The next morning, Ling Xiao relayed Sai De's words to Ling Chengen and Su Weihua.

Ling Chengen shook his head without much hesitation and said, "I don't have time to find people recently. Besides potato planting, I also need to go out and search for other plants. After the potato planting is finished, I will go out to find a salt lake."

Su Weihua nodded: "You don't need to worry about Su Duo's matter anymore."

Ling Chengen pointed to the pile of supplies in the corner of the cave: "I packed up all of Su Kang's belongings and brought them back. You can take some of your old things, but if you're willing to give them all to me, I can bravely accept them all."

Su Weihua looked at her smug expression with her hands on her hips, glanced at the things in the corner, and sighed, "Keep all of these. This is not his entire fortune, at most a quarter."

“Su Kang doesn’t keep most of his supplies in his own cave, but with his partner.” Su Weihua hesitated for a few seconds, then looked away from Ling Chengen. “Actually, it’s not just you who has a special ability.”

"Bea seems to have a strange ability as well; she can store many things into a portable space out of thin air."

"However, this space doesn't seem to be able to accommodate living things."

Su Weihua hesitated and said, "Beya and I have never been close. But in the first few years after Beya got married to Su Kang, I don't know why, she was very caring towards us siblings."

"However, since she awakened this strange ability, she has stopped approaching us."

"With Su Kang and Sullivan by my side, I can finally live my life in peace."

Ling Chengen raised an eyebrow: "Spatial ability?"

"Spatial abilities shouldn't be limited to just storing things, right?"

This ability is no less aggressive than other abilities, and it can always kill people invisibly.

"Can her spatial abilities hurt people?" Ling Chengen pressed.

Su Weihua shook her head: "I haven't seen it, so I don't know."

"However, Xiaoduo suspects that she doesn't actually have any special abilities."

People with superpowers have excellent physical abilities, and even if they are injured, they recover faster than ordinary people.

"After gaining superpowers, Bea suffered a very serious injury. She was attacked by a red honey badger that could burrow, and was pierced through the ribs by the long thorns on its back. Her left leg was also severely injured by the ferocious honey badger's bite. After the witch doctor provided basic treatment, generally speaking, for injuries of this severity, a superpowered beastman would need at most ten days to fully recover."

"But Bea rested for two months."

Su Weihua: "From this point of view, her actual physical strength is weaker than most ordinary females. Therefore, Xiaoduo suspects that she has not awakened any special abilities. As for why she has such extraordinary abilities... we don't know the reason for the time being."

Ling Chengen immediately thought of spatial treasures.

But she didn't tell Su Weihua about these speculations.

However, Su Weihua's reminder also made Ling Chengen alert.

If she can be bound to a little yellow spirit, then it's perfectly normal for others to be reborn, possess spatial treasures, or have other cheat abilities...

However, if it's a spatial treasure...

She was really envious.

Later, when dealing with the Snow Wolf Tribe, we can try to get our hands on this thing first, so as to prevent Su Kang, that old man, from making a comeback with his family and the resources of the space.

While eating breakfast, Ling Xiao cleared out a space and began to write and draw on the ground with a twig.

Ling Chengen, holding a rice bowl, stood beside him, peering at the scribbles on the ground with a puzzled look on his face. He immediately asked, "Father, what did you draw?"

Ling Xiao tapped her knee with the branch in his hand and said irritably, "I'm drawing you a map. Didn't you want to find a salt lake? I've been asking around with the orcs from several other tribes around here and found out the location of a saltwater lake."

Ling Chengen held the bowl and slurped the cooked pork rib soup into his mouth. He then moved his left leg, which had been hit, back a small step and said with a disgruntled expression, "But I can't understand what you drew either. You might as well just say so."

Ling Xiao looked at the circle on the ground, the winding line, and the other irregular squares and circles. He scratched the back of his head in a bit of trouble, sat cross-legged in front of the map he had drawn, and sighed deeply.

"Just bear with it, I'll explain as I go." Ling Xiao pointed to a round pebble at his feet, "This place is like our tribe."

Then, he picked up a palm-sized black volcanic rock and placed it in front of the pebble on the right.

"This black stone represents the Misty Swamp."

Ling Xiao pushed his fingertips straight from the cobblestones to the black stone, patiently explaining, "You must have taken the straight-line distance from the Stone Forest to the Misty Swamp to complete a round trip in the shortest time." "Yes, I spent some time crossing the Luolu Mountains in the first half, but afterwards I just followed Bai Qingyu in a straight northeast direction without changing direction, and found the Misty Zone directly."

Ling Xiao nodded and breathed a sigh of relief: "That makes things simple. There's actually a saltwater lake on the shortest straight route from the Stone Forest to the Misty Swamp."

Ling Chenen immediately perked up, his eyes lighting up: "I didn't see any on the way here or there. I came across four or five lakes along the way, none of them were very big. I even took water from two of the smaller lakes; they were both freshwater lakes."

Ling Xiao said slowly, "Let me finish speaking first."

"The lakes along this route are all freshwater lakes, but directly east of the closest freshwater lake to the Misty Zone, there is a very large saltwater lake called Hongying Lake. It's about... about two beast-hours of your full speed in beast form," Ling Xiao said uncertainly.

Ling Chengen clicked his tongue slightly and said, "When I run at full speed for two beasts? That's not a short distance."

Although she hadn't calculated it precisely, the system said that when she was running at full speed, her speed was comparable to that of an express train.

Therefore, she speculated that her peak speed was between 140 and 150 km/h.

However, because high-speed running consumes a lot of energy, she could not maintain a high-speed run for two hours.

This means that the distance between Hongying Salt Lake and that freshwater lake is approximately 300 kilometers.

Is Hongying Lake large?

Ling Chengen is not considering the travel time for the time being; he plans to first find out about the condition of the salt lake and whether there are any unfriendly ethnic groups in the surrounding area.

Ling Xiao nodded: "Hongying Lake is very large, about a quarter of the entire Misty Swamp."

Ling Chengen immediately perked up; if it weren't for the imminent potato planting, she would have rushed to Hongying Lake right away.

Ling Xiao pressed down on her shoulder: "You can't go to Hongying Lake yet. I've already asked Chief Bai to help us hunt in the northeast direction as much as possible during this time. Let's go to Hongying Lake to scout out the situation first."

After all, it wasn't just their tribe that lacked salt; it was the same for all the tribes in the central part of the wasteland.

Nowadays, all the salt stones in the Central Trade Market come from some large tribes further south. The small tribes located between the Central and Southern regions exchange salt stones from the large southern tribes at high prices, and then bring them to the trade market to resell them at even higher prices.

Once the salt lake is identified and the salt powder made by Enen can be extracted, the situation in the entire central region will change instantly.

The plans of the large southern tribes to use salt to curb the development of their central tribes will be completely ineffective.

Salt has always been important, as they could indeed fill their stomachs with prey alone.

But the saltiness of the rock salt can make the body stronger.

So even though the large tribes in the south kept raising the price of salt, they had no choice but to empty their pockets and bring back those salt stones that didn't taste good to their tribes, carefully distributing them to every orc.

The more Ling Chengen listened, the deeper his brows furrowed.

She was unaware that the tribes in the central region were so severely lacking in salt.

From this perspective, the fact that Ling Xiao didn't beat her half to death or even say a harsh word to her after she ruined such a large piece of salt rock shows how extremely indulgent he was towards her.

"Bai Xu will be taking his tribe's hunting team out today, and they probably won't be back for three days. During this time, take a good look at the tribe's supplies and select the warriors to escort them this time."

"If nothing unexpected happens, Bai Xu will return in three days. After confirming the situation of the saltwater lake with him, we can head directly to the trade market. This time, we will halve the amount of salt stones we exchange. If the tribes selling salt stones raise their prices again, we can reduce the quantity further, but we should not directly break off relations."

Ling Xiao gave extremely detailed instructions. Looking at his eldest daughter, who looked completely bewildered, he still decided to let her lead the team to the trade market to exchange goods.

“The small tribes sandwiched between the large southern tribes and our central region also have a hard time. They have to face the bullying of the surrounding large tribes, and their hunting range is shrinking again and again. Therefore, salt is a very important source of income for them.”

"Maintaining relations with them for now will give us a chance to refine our own salt powder. Because once those major tribes in the south realize something is wrong, they might seize Hongying Lake first and prevent us from getting any closer. In the end, things will only get worse."

Ling Chengen lowered his eyelids and did not respond to Ling Xiao's words.

But Ling Xiao immediately saw the resentment in her eyes: "Even if you're angry, you have to hold it in, do you hear me?"

“I’m not kidding you. You grew up in a large tribe in the south, so you know better than anyone what kind of people they are! You’re not allowed to provoke or cause trouble for them until you have enough strength to challenge them.”

Ling Chengen gave a soft "hmm" and said in a steady tone, "No, I know what I'm doing."

Ling Xiao reached up and rubbed his forehead, saying, "I hope you really know what you're doing."

Ling Chengen said aggrievedly, "If you don't think highly of me, then go by yourself."

Ling Xiao raised his hand and tapped her on the head: "Still stubborn! Just go when I tell you to. This is a test for you."

……

After Ling Xiao left, Chong Zhen took the straw hat he had exchanged with Yu Shao Chen, casually put it on his head, and asked in a low voice, "What about the matter of participating in the trade market together that I mentioned before? Have you thought about it? Have you discussed it with the chief of the Hanshan tribe?"

Ling Chengen blinked, a rare look of guilt on his face.

Chongzhen said speechlessly, "When you were hanging from the tree with those beasts yesterday afternoon, didn't you talk about anything useful?"

Ling Chengen said with a dark face, "I'll go right now, okay?"

"No, I don't owe you anything. You're the one who's dragging us down. How dare you criticize me? If you're so capable, go and say it yourself."

Ling Chengen was about to leave, but the more he thought about it, the more uneasy he felt, so he turned around and grabbed him by the back of the neck.

"You come with me."

"Since you are also a young clan leader, you can discuss the Medicine Luo Trade Market yourself."

Before Chongzhen could say anything more, Ling Chengen grabbed her by the neck with one hand and covered her mouth with the other, dragging her towards Wu Zhuo's house.

Ling Xiaoxi gnawed on a meat bone, her round eyes fixed on the departing figures of the two men, and sighed softly, "Useless man, and his domineering partner."

Yu Shaochen paused, holding his chopsticks, looked up at Ling Xiaoxi, and blinked.

Is this an insult directed at him?
What did he do to deserve this?!
Seeing that her second brother-in-law had misunderstood, Ling Xiaoxi said bluntly, "I wasn't cursing you. I was talking about that stupid brother-in-law who was dragged away by my sister."

Yu Shaochen breathed a sigh of relief and continued to sit at the same table with Ling Xiaoxi, eating rice.

After a long while, he suddenly asked Ling Xiaoxi a soul-searching question.

"If my brother-in-law is such a useless and stupid idiot, then what am I?"

Ling Xiaoxi quickly finished the food in her bowl, picked up the bowl which was bigger than her face, jumped down from the wooden stump, and said with a smile, "I think it's better if you don't know."

"I'm finished eating, bye-bye, brother-in-law Cat Cat~"

After she ran far away, Kong Mingming flapped her wings and landed from the treetop, whispering, "That's what she usually calls you too."

(End of this chapter)