After making his move, Wu Dongfang immediately stepped back, knowing what would happen next.
As the woman's artery was cut, blood gushed out. After a brief moment of shock, she covered her neck with both hands and frantically rushed out of the cave.
Wu Dongfang didn't stop her; her artery had been severed, and her fate was sealed. He never tolerated or indulged in teasing or provocation.
At this moment, Mingwan was only a dozen steps away from the cave entrance. When she saw a naked woman covered in blood rushing out of the cave, she was instantly frightened and collapsed to the ground when she saw the woman's face clearly.
The woman, with her throat cut, stumbled out of the cave and tried to flee to the east, but she had lost a lot of blood. She didn't get far before collapsing on the ground, convulsing violently.
Wu Dongfang quickly walked up to Mingwan and reached out to help her. Mingwan looked at Wu Dongfang in fear and instinctively tried to dodge.
"That woman was trying to harm me," Wu Dongfang said as he helped Mingwan up.
"She's not human," Mingwan replied.
Wu Dongfang thought he had misheard and looked at Mingwan in confusion.
Mingwan pointed to the east. "Look."
Turning around, Wu Dongfang was shocked once again. In the blink of an eye, the woman had disappeared, replaced by a gray fox lying in a pool of blood. It was still twitching its hind legs feebly, not completely dead yet.
"You're amazing. You actually killed it," Mingwan said joyfully.
"Have you seen it before?" Wu Dongfang asked in confusion. Mingwan had been very scared at first, but after seeing the woman turn into a fox, she was no longer afraid. This indicated that she was familiar with this fox.
"It often turns into a woman to seduce the men in the village and steal our food," Mingwan said as she picked up the clay pot from the ground and handed it to Wu Dongfang. "You ate very little for lunch. I made rice porridge for you."
Perplexed, Wu Dongfang took the clay pot. Although he had heard stories about foxes turning into humans, he had never believed them. Foxes and humans were completely different species. How could a member of the canine family turn into a primate? However, the living example was right in front of him, and he couldn't help but believe it. What he had seen and touched before was very real, not an illusion. The gray fox had indeed turned into a woman.
"Aren't you afraid?" Wu Dongfang asked as he followed Mingwan towards the fox.
"It's already dead. What could it do to us?" Mingwan kicked the gray fox with her foot.
"It just turned into your appearance," Wu Dongfang emphasized.
"It likes to turn into my appearance the most," Mingwan said casually.
"Can it turn into other people?" Wu Dongfang was increasingly astonished.
"Yes, it can," Mingwan replied, grabbing the fox by its tail and lifting it up. This fox was much larger than a normal one. While a typical fox might weigh around ten or twenty pounds, this one weighed about forty or fifty pounds, equivalent to the weight of two ordinary foxes.
"It's a fox. How can a fox turn into a human?" Wu Dongfang still couldn't understand this bizarre phenomenon.
"It can after living for a long time," Mingwan pointed to a scar the size of a coin on the left hind leg of the fox. "It's this scar."
Wu Dongfang sighed helplessly. What he wanted to know was how the fox turned into a human, but obviously, Mingwan couldn't answer that question.
"How did you know it was fake?" Mingwan asked.
"It didn't look as good as you," Wu Dongfang joked. In reality, he was able to confirm that the woman in the cave was not Mingwan because when the Huozu people tried to assault Mingwan by the riverbank some time ago, he fell down and could still see them outside the door. Naturally, he could also see the door, and before taking action, he glanced at it.
Mingwan was very happy when Wu Dongfang said she was good-looking. She picked up the fox and walked south. "You should eat. I'm going back."
"You can't eat this. Just throw it away," Wu Dongfang frowned.
"I want to take it back and show it to them. You've done a great thing for us," Mingwan said, taking the fox back to the village to claim credit for him.
After experiencing an extremely bizarre event, Wu Dongfang had no appetite for food. He quickly returned to the cave, only to find that the clothes the fox had taken off had turned into a few tufts of gray fox fur.
Pinching the tufts of fox fur, Wu Dongfang was full of question marks. Regardless of how the fox turned fur into clothes, let's talk about weight. The fox weighed only forty or fifty pounds, but the person it turned into weighed one hundred and eighty pounds. According to the law of conservation of mass, the weight of a thing remains the same before and after a change in form. However, after the fox turned into a person, its weight increased, which clearly violated the law of conservation of mass.
The law of conservation of mass is a fundamental law of nature, a very mature and accurate theory. No matter what, whether it's a person or an animal, it follows this law. Why was this fox an exception?
After pondering for more than half an hour, Wu Dongfang suddenly realized something. The premise of the law of conservation of mass is that the thing undergoing change is completely isolated from its surroundings before and after the change. When the fox turned into a person, it was not in a sealed environment. In other words, during its transformation, it absorbed something from the natural world, which increased its weight. After it died, these things returned to the natural world, and it returned to its original weight.
The only thing that the fox could absorb was the invisible and intangible but real "qi" that existed in the natural world. In other words, when the fox transformed, it absorbed the "qi" from the natural world. This "qi" was the fundamental reason for its change in weight and appearance.
He used the phrase "suddenly realized" instead of "suddenly enlightened" because he could only think of this much. As for how the fox absorbed "qi" and how it used "qi" to turn fur into clothes, he couldn't figure it out.
If he couldn't figure it out, Wu Dongfang didn't feel the need to force himself to understand. He originally lived in the 21st century, where scientific knowledge could only explain things up to this point. When science progresses further in the future, perhaps it will be able to fully explain this phenomenon. He firmly believed that when science develops to its peak, all idealism can be explained by materialism. He also disliked trying to explain mystical phenomena in a forced manner when science was not yet very advanced.
Feeling tired from thinking, and also feeling hungry, he began to drink the porridge from the clay pot. He liked to drink porridge because it wouldn't make him feel restless and unable to sleep at night.
As the evening approached, Wu Dongfang, as usual, slung his quiver over his shoulder and took his longbow to go hunting. It was nearing summer, and animals were beginning their breeding season. He generally avoided hunting female animals to prevent accidentally harming pregnant ones.
Tonight, he chose to head south. He had been active near the village, but the prey there had noticeably decreased.
In this area, the sun set around five o'clock and it would be fully dark by around eight o'clock. These three hours were the prime time for hunting. However, his luck wasn't great tonight. Despite walking south for over ten miles, he had only managed to catch one large pheasant. With the sky darkening, he had to turn back.
To try his luck on the way back, he didn't retrace his steps but instead took a western detour. Passing through a grove of camphor trees, he heard heavy breathing coming from within the forest. The breathing was rapid and heavy, clearly from a large animal.
Although he could walk, he couldn't carry too much weight. It would be difficult to carry back a large prey even if he caught one.
Just as he was thinking of avoiding the area, he suddenly heard a "Hmm~ Hmm~" sound coming from the forest. The sound was very tender, somewhat similar to the nasal sound made by human children. It should be the cry of some kind of animal cub.
Curious, Wu Dongfang climbed up a nearby tall tree to overlook the camphor forest in the distance. He saw a large animal sitting diagonally under one of the camphor trees, with a white belly, black claws, a white head, and black eye circles.
"How could this thing be here?" Although the light was dim by now, he judged by these external features that the animal sitting under the camphor tree was likely a panda. He said "likely" because this panda was much larger than the pandas he was familiar with.
This panda was doing strange movements. Its two front paws were slowly digging the soil on both sides of its body. Not far from it, there was a small creature about the size of a basin making "hmm hmm" sounds, trying to approach it. However, strangely, every time the little creature crawled close to it, the panda would push it away.
Based on the panda's strange behavior, Wu Dongfang judged that the panda was very weak at the moment. However, due to the distance, he couldn't determine if it was injured or sick.
Wu Dongfang slid down from the tree and quickly walked into the camphor forest. He walked all the way to a place about ten meters away from the panda, and the panda did not stand up to attack him.
There were some bloodstains on the panda's belly, but the blood was only on its fur, and there was no wound on its abdomen.
"Could the wound be on its back?" Wu Dongfang circled around and headed north. After taking a few steps, he suddenly felt a slippery sensation under his foot.
When walking in the jungle, the most dreaded feeling is this kind of sensation, as stepping on something slippery is most likely stepping on a snake.
Feeling the slipperiness, Wu Dongfang instinctively dodged aside. At the same time, he turned his head back and saw that he had indeed stepped on a snake. It was a venomous snake, all red, with a horn about five centimeters long on its head. However, this snake was already dead, and its lower body was missing.
Having discovered the dead snake, Wu Dongfang did not go around to the back of the panda, as it was evident that the panda had been bitten by the snake.
By this time, the panda under the tree had stopped digging the ground, and its heavy breathing gradually disappeared.
The little creature crawled to its side, and this time, the panda did not push it away.
Wu Dongfang sighed, swatting away the mosquitoes buzzing around his head as he walked out of the forest. It was getting dark, and he needed to hurry back.
For some reason, he couldn't shake the image of the panda pushing away the cub from his mind. It was almost dying, so why would it drive away its own child?
After walking several dozen meters, he suddenly understood. The cub might not have been fully weaned yet, and the panda was probably afraid that the cub would be poisoned if it drank its milk.
Realizing this, Wu Dongfang quickly turned around and ran back, picking up the cub from the dead mother panda.
The cub, however, was not grateful. It struggled and cried out, even trying to bite Wu Dongfang.
Wu Dongfang took off his shirt and wrapped the cub in it, leaving its head out for air, and carried it out of the camphor forest.
The cub continued to cry loudly all the way. Wu Dongfang, annoyed by the noise, gave it a slap on the butt. "Stop crying! You're much stronger than me. At least you know what your mom looks like..."