Chapter 15: Iron from the Stars
Just as everyone lifted their eyes to look into the distance, several more plumes of blue smoke rose, proving they were not alone.
After a quick count, there were five in total. No one knew what those people were doing.
"Their people have died."
Wolfpi observed for a moment before offering his conclusion.
Cremation was a custom among the nearby tribes. Before the invention of digging tools like bone shovels, it was difficult to create proper burial pits. A body left in the wild would be eaten by animals and gnawed on by insects and ants. This, combined with the special reverence people of this era had for fire, gave rise to this primitive funeral rite.
The others shared Wolfpi's opinion; they all assumed someone in that tribe had died. Chen Jian, however, felt something was strange.
Five plumes of smoke meant that five people had died at the same time. Could they have encountered some kind of beast?
A desolate howl carried from the direction of the smoke, like a lone wolf in the night—a mournful, desolate cry saying a final farewell to their kinsmen.
"Let's go and see."
"Ah."
The clansmen didn't object. When encountering other people in the wilderness, their custom was to approach them first.
Chen Jian recalled from his past life how the Native Americans had met the Mayflower pilgrims, sending them corn and turkeys to help them survive the harsh winter. The reputation for being bloodthirsty, tyrannical, cannibalistic, and aggressive came much later.
In the primitive era, any ethnic group capable of developing a civilization would not immediately resort to fighting upon meeting another.
At this stage, tribes could barely feed themselves, let alone take slaves. What would they even do with captives? Before the advent of primitive agriculture, a tribe's population was capped at around one hundred people; any more and they would have to split up and move away. Besides, everyone was armed with sticks and stones, making them more or less evenly matched. If a fight resulted in deaths and the decline of the tribe, what was the point?
Warfare that developed after the rise of primitive agriculture and animal husbandry was another matter entirely.
His clansmen knew from past experience that there was likely no danger, and Chen Jian's rational analysis agreed. The development of civilization required communication. Perhaps he could ask this tribe living on the plain what kinds of seeds they collected.
Wolfpi stood on a rock and shouted into the distance. He cupped a hand to his mouth, patting it continuously to create an intermittent, ululating sound—a gesture of goodwill.
Soon, the same cry echoed back from afar. The rhythm was nearly identical, and the rapid woo-la-la-la sound reverberated across the wilderness, startling many wild animals.
A burly wild boar leading a group of piglets snorted a few times as if in protest before slowly moving on.
The group pushed aside the waist-deep grass and headed toward the rising smoke.
Soon, the two tribes met.
The other tribe numbered only forty to fifty people, and every one of them was emaciated. Several had deep, bleeding wounds on their bodies, their faces pale and on the verge of collapse.
They were startled to see Chen Jian's party. Noticing their topknots and the women's braids, they seemed at a loss, clutching the wooden sticks and stones in their hands more tightly.
Two or three grimy children hid behind the adults. A man standing opposite them asked, "Where are you from?"
The language was mostly the same, with only a slight difference in intonation. After all, the old grandmother and the others had also migrated here from far away.
"We come from the direction where the sun sets."
Looking at the weak faces of the family opposite him, Chen Jian answered and then quickly took out the sheep tallow and dried fish from a clay pot.
The people from the other tribe had never seen a clay pot before. They stared at the reddish-brown object in amazement, hesitant to touch it.
But in the end, hunger overcame fear. After a word of thanks, the man in the lead grabbed the dried fish and sheep tallow, distributing it to the children first, then to the injured. Finally, the remaining adults each took a mouthful and began to eat ravenously.
Seeing that the food was clearly not enough, Wolfpi lit a fire, took the birds he had shot on the way from his back, and used Chen Jian's method of digging a pit to roast them.
The man opposite finished his meager portion and stared at the birds on Wolfpi's back in shock.
Someone couldn't help but ask, "How did you catch those flying birds?"
Wolfpi proudly produced the bow from his back and declared, "Bow! Arrow! This is the guidance of the ancestors."
The man opposite touched the bow with a mixture of three parts surprise and seven parts fear, filled with an inexplicable awe.
The bows and arrows, the clay pots, the rendered sheep tallow, and their neatly tied hair—all of it was a profound shock to these people.
Chen Jian asked, "Where are you from?"
"We came from the direction of the rising sun. We just encountered a wild beast, and our people were bitten to death."
Chen Jian found this a little strange. If they were migrating, why were there so few of them? And how could this small group survive on the open plains before they could build shelters or treehouses?
This group was also in a miserable state. There were only about twenty men, women, and children in total, and they didn't even have a few decent stone-tipped spears. Most of their weapons were merely sharpened wooden sticks, which would easily slip on an animal's hide during a hunt.
"Were you here to hunt?"
As soon as he asked this, the women on the other side burst into tears.
The man at the head had a look of resentment and fear on his face. "Our cave is far from here. It took a long time to walk."
The man held up seven fingers, indicating they had been traveling for seven days.
"There is a tribe that is very powerful. We have to send them one animal every time the moon is full. We couldn't fight them, and many of our people died, so we had to leave."
Chen Jian was taken aback. This didn't seem right. Based on his earlier analysis, this kind of situation shouldn't be possible.
The man continued, "Their ancestors are the fallen stars, and they were given hard weapons. We can't beat them... Many tribes have to send them prey."
Hearing this, Chen Jian was completely dumbfounded.
Fallen stars? What does that mean?
"What are they like?"
"They look the same as us, with hair like ours. But their weapons are fine, and our stone spears snap when they hit theirs."
As he spoke, he held out one of his wooden spears for Chen Jian to see. There were several deep gashes in the wood, clearly made by a sharp weapon.
Chen Jian mentally slapped himself to clear his head. His mind was in turmoil, and the other man's words were jumbled. He had to figure out what was really going on.
Was the other tribe in the Bronze Age? Or did they truly possess some kind of alien heritage? Had they found a flying saucer?
The more he thought, the stranger it became. He asked, "Do they have bows and arrows?"
The man shook his head.
"Do they also wear animal skins?"
The man nodded.
This was truly bizarre. Chen Jian looked closely at the marks on the wooden spear again; they definitely weren't made by stone tools.
"Have they always been there? Or did they migrate from far away?"
"They have always been there. A long time ago, when I was young, many stars fell from the sky near their people. When I grew up, they had a black weapon that could easily cut us. Now they demand that all the nearby tribes send them one animal every time the moon is full. We refused to send one, and many of our people died, so we had to migrate here."
"The stars fell?"
The other man nodded, his face full of terror. Chen Jian pondered this for a long time until a sudden realization dawned on him, and the anxiety that had gripped him finally subsided.
It seemed this wasn't a case of one civilization crushing another, but simply an accident.
He guessed that a meteor shower had occurred, and the fallen meteorites were discovered by that tribe. Believing the objects that fell from the sky were sacred, they must have worshiped them until someone stumbled upon the fact that the material could be sharpened into deadly weapons.
Later, they learned to use this advantage to bully other tribes. Demanding one animal per month wasn't an excessively harsh tribute and would guarantee the survival of most of the subservient tribes.
As for their ancestors coming from the stars, that was likely a myth they created or a form of primitive worship. After asking a few more detailed questions, Chen Jian confirmed that the tribe was still in the primitive era; they just possessed exceptionally hard and unstoppable weapons. In addition, because other tribes provided them with food, their population was larger and they were more skilled in fighting.
When wood met iron, the result was obvious. In his previous life, the Han Dynasty's armies could take on Xiongnu forces at a five-to-one disadvantage, a testament to the power of superior weaponry.
However, the leader of this tribe was clever. He had bypassed the system of direct enslavement and jumped straight to a form of collecting tribute from others.
This was an enemy to be wary of. With a steady supply of food and drink, this group focused all their technological efforts on military matters. There was no guarantee what they might develop next.
Such a deformed civilization, born from a low-probability event, was not without precedent. In his previous life, he knew that iron daggers made from meteorites had been found in Stone Age ruins dating back 5000 years.
Their path of civilization had veered off the typical course, but it wouldn't necessarily lead to a dead end in the short term. It might even result in a different kind of breakthrough.
He recalled certain aboriginal groups on Pacific islands during World War II. After the U.S. military airdropped supplies, they came to believe that airplanes were gods. They focused all their technological efforts in that direction, developing a deformed civilization and culture. Their woodworking skills improved rapidly, used to build wooden airplane replicas for worship; their road-building abilities also advanced as they paved simple runways to await the gods' return. They even used coconut shells to mimic navigator's headphones and painted "USA" on their bodies with ocher tattoos.
The tribe that used meteorite iron was similar. Obsessed with the stars, they might one day make breakthroughs in mathematics and astronomy. They might even be like some tribes in sub-Saharan Africa from his previous life, leaping directly from the Stone Age to an iron civilization, bypassing bronze entirely.
With a civilization built from the ground up, anything was possible. Inevitability was always mixed with chance—this was the normal state of human society and the source of its bright and varied civilizations.
Chen Jian felt an increasing sense of urgency. Thousands of tribes were vying for dominance on this ancient land, and by the time civilization was finally achieved, only one would remain supreme. In this era, whichever tribe emerged from the wilderness first, even by half a step, would be king for the next hundred years.
After carefully asking for more details, he estimated that the enemy tribe had a population of 300 to 400 people. Their leader was a man named Luoxing, and their territory was about a five-day journey from here. The man knew little else; further questions only yielded vague answers.
The leader of this refugee tribe was named Song. After their old chief died, the tribe had elected him as the new leader. It was he who had led their escape from their original homeland to this plain.
But as soon as they arrived, they were attacked by wild beasts during the night. Five people died, and several more were injured.
At the funeral, Song had been in despair, and the entire tribe was terrified for their future.
The appearance of Chen Jian and his companions was seen by Song as a form of guidance and protection from the ancestors. This belief was reinforced after seeing their unique hairstyles, strange clay pots, and powerful bows and arrows.
What was the future of his tribe? This grave problem now rested squarely on the shoulders of its new leader.