Building a Civilization and Raising Cubs in the Beast World – CH1

Chapter 1

Beast God Continent – Snow Rabbit Tribe

At dusk, the setting sun cast a golden glow over the open space at the foot of the mountain where the Snow Rabbit Tribe resided. A group of two- to three-year-old children ran around bare-bottomed, their laughter ringing through the air. Nearby, an elderly man held a fishbone and poked holes in a dark gray animal hide. A few older children, around ten years old, busied themselves carrying bundles of branches, preparing for the hunting party’s return and the evening meal.

Further away, a gathering team, led by its captain, was searching for edible wild fruits, while the hunting team ventured even deeper into the wilderness.

Every member of the tribe had a role to play—everyone except Bai Tu.

Bai Tu stepped out of the mountain cave where he’d been cooped up all day and stopped at the entrance. Wrapping the animal hide tighter around his body, he felt an odd sense of exposure. Without modern undergarments, even with the hide draped around him, he still felt as though he were streaking.

Having grown up accustomed to the conveniences of modern life, Bai Tu couldn’t bring himself to head out as casually dressed as the others. But wrapping himself up tightly came with a downside—it made him uncomfortably hot. As a result, he only dared to venture outside during the cooler hours of morning or evening to get some fresh air.

It had been three days since he’d unexpectedly arrived into this strange new world. By now, Bai Tu had pieced together the basics of his situation. This was a place known as the Beast God Continent, and the Snow Rabbit Tribe, where he currently found himself, was a small tribe of about eighty people.

The body he now inhabited bore a striking resemblance to his original one from his past life—about ninety percent similar—but his hair had turned completely white, and he looked just barely past adulthood.

Based on what he’d learned from others, Bai Tu had been picked up by the tribe leader about a month ago. At the time, he had been labeled as a “fool” who was slower than everyone else at everything and could only remember his own name. He was assigned to the gathering team. Five days ago, he got into an argument with a beastman from a neighboring tribe, which escalated into a scuffle. During the commotion, he fell and hit his head on a rock, knocking himself unconscious for two days.

When he woke up, the wound on his head was still bleeding, and there were no skilled healers in the tribe. Drawing on his memory, Bai Tu managed to identify a few medicinal herbs and used them to treat himself. He had always been fascinated by plants and knew a fair bit about herbal medicine, so dealing with minor injuries wasn’t an issue.

Initially, he had thought it would be a stroke of luck if he could find one or two herbs to stop the bleeding. To his surprise, he now seemed far more knowledgeable about plants than before. Every time he encountered a plant, its uses would come to mind, as if he had just recently studied it. Even plants he had never seen before seemed oddly familiar, and he could intuit their properties.

Although his wound hadn’t fully healed, Bai Tu refrained from venturing too far. He had only managed to gather a handful of herbs, but the plants here were incredibly potent. Combined with his body’s strong regenerative abilities, the wound had already begun to scab over in just two or three days. However, he still occasionally felt dizzy, which led him to suspect he had a mild concussion. To avoid aggravating his condition, he limited his movements as much as possible. After all, there were no tools or facilities for proper medical examinations in this primitive society.

Actually, forget medical examinations—just having enough food to eat here was a luxury. Most of the tribe members were painfully thin, and the elderly were little more than skin and bones. Even now, during the summer when resources were relatively abundant, the tribe’s hunting parties still struggled to bring back much game.

What surprised Bai Tu the most about this world was that its inhabitants had two forms—human and beast. That included himself. Most of the Snow Rabbit Tribe members had rabbit beast forms. He still vividly remembered the moment he first saw a two- or three-year-old child trip and, mid-fall, transform into a tiny rabbit. The shock nearly floored him.

Juvenile rabbits in their beast form were only about the size of a palm, their snow-white fur soft and fluffy. Unfortunately, the adults responsible for looking after the young strictly prohibited anyone from touching the cubs.

There were many other tribes in the surrounding area, with beast forms ranging from fearsome hunters like tigers, lions, and wolves to gentler animals like antelope, cattle, and horses. There were even flying creatures like eagles and vultures, as well as reptiles like pythons.

The Snow Rabbit Tribe was at a distinct disadvantage in terms of physical size and lacked sharp claws or fangs, making it difficult for them to bring down prey. As a result, they were considered one of the weaker tribes.

Bai Tu gazed at the cubs playing on the open ground, rubbing his temples in frustration. He couldn’t shake the feeling that this world felt strangely familiar, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t pinpoint where he’d heard of it before. An accident, a coma, waking up in an unfamiliar land—it all sounded like a classic transmigration story, but something about it felt off.

As he mulled it over, a group of children who had been gathering branches nearby noticed that he had finally come out of the cave. Dropping their bundles, they ran toward him.

The leader of the group asked curiously, “Tu, is your head better now?”

Another child chimed in, “Can you talk yet?”

Without waiting for a response, the last child sighed dramatically, “Oh no, he’s still a mute.”

The first child frowned with concern. “He was already slow to begin with, and now he’s mute too. Do you think his mate will dislike him in the future?”

Behind them, an eight-year-old child lifted his head and declared confidently, “Tu is so good-looking. Someone will definitely want to take care of him!”

Bai Tu: “…” There were so many things wrong with this conversation that he didn’t even know where to begin.

It wasn’t that he couldn’t speak—he’d just been cautious about it. When he woke up, he’d noticed that the tribe members spoke with a slight accent. Worried about revealing himself, he had only spoken a few words to the tribe leader and stayed silent the rest of the time.

Since no one had seen him speak to the tribe leader and he hadn’t interacted much with others, rumors quickly spread that he’d gone from being a “fool” to being mute.

Determined to put an end to the gossip—and now confident he’d mastered the local accent—Bai Tu opened his mouth to clarify: “The wound has stopped bleeding. It’ll heal in a few days. I’m not mute. I can speak. I just wasn’t feeling well before, so I didn’t say anything.”

“Ah! Tu isn’t mute anymore!” The children cheered, crowding around him and bombarding him with questions.

“Are you really better now?”

“Tu, do you still remember me?”

Patiently, Bai Tu answered each of their questions, explaining that he was recovering but couldn’t remember much because of his head injury.

Over the past few days, Bai Tu had noticed that, despite its small size, the tribe members shared a close bond. Perhaps it was because their small beast forms required them to work together to hunt, making them more united as a group.

Hearing that Bai Tu didn’t remember them, the children eagerly reintroduced themselves.

The leader was called Bai Dong, while the other two were named Tu Shi and Tu You. The tribe members were split between the surnames “Bai” and “Tu,” which Bai Tu learned was because the tribe had been formed by merging two smaller ones. The tribe leader’s willingness to take him in was partly due to the fact that he shared their surname, “Bai,” and was a rabbit, which suggested some kind of connection.

After introducing themselves, Bai Dong adopted a serious, adult-like tone and advised, “Tu, don’t fight with people from the Wild Lion Tribe anymore.”

Tu Shi nodded earnestly and added, “Yeah, Shi Hong from the Wild Lion Tribe is way too strong. He’ll beat you up.”

Bai Tu, who had been listening patiently, suddenly froze. “Who?”

Bai Dong replied earnestly, “Shi Hong, you know, Hu Bu’s mate. They said if you argue with Hu Bu again, Shi Hong will come beat you up.”

Tu Shi nodded in agreement. “You can’t beat him.”

Tu You sighed. “I can’t beat him either.” Afraid they’d think less of him for being weak, he quickly added, “Shi Hong is just too fierce. Only Lang Qi from the Blood Wolf Tribe has ever beaten him. None of us could.”

The last comment hit the group like a ton of bricks. Realizing how weak they were, the half-grown children’s young hearts were deeply wounded. Their spirits deflated as they quietly returned to gathering branches, pretending the conversation had never happened.

Bai Tu was too preoccupied to care about the children’s feelings. The Wild Lion Tribe, Rabbit Tribe, Lion Tribe, Fox Tribe, Shi Hong, Hu Bu… He finally realized why all of this felt so familiar!

That novel!

Months ago, during a class reunion, two of his classmates had been discussing a recently-read infrastructure-building web novel. Bai Tu, sitting nearby, had overheard snippets of their conversation.

The novel featured a supporting antagonist—a character who was stunningly beautiful but utterly useless. After his tribe fell into decline, this character joined the Wild Lion Tribe and resorted to every underhanded tactic imaginable to cozy up to the tribe leader, who happened to be the story’s male lead (the gong).

First, this villain spread rumors that the male lead’s lover (the shou) had cheated, trying to sow discord between the two. Then he slipped a mind-controlling drug, obtained from a large tribe, into the male lead’s food. Afterward, he falsely accused the male lead of impregnating him.

The outcome was predictable: the shou gathered witnesses from the tribe to prove that no such incident had occurred between the male lead and the antagonist. The fake pregnancy was exposed, and the male lead, finally seeing the antagonist’s true colors, executed him with a horrific punishment—death by fire.

In the aftermath, the ordeal only strengthened the bond between the male lead and his lover, and their relationship deepened. Together, they moved on to deal with the next antagonist.

At the time, Bai Tu had found it amusing. Coincidentally, the antagonist shared the exact same name as him—Bai Tu. His classmates had joked about how he should memorize the entire story, teasing that the male lead and his lover were like the Grim Reaper. They pointed out that, apart from the protagonist team, everyone else in the story met a terrible end—whether freezing to death, starving, or being killed by wild beasts. Even the story’s strongest villain mysteriously disappeared later on. Predictably, the novel ended with the Wild Lion Tribe becoming the most powerful tribe on the Beast God Continent.

Bai Tu had laughed it off at the time. A novel was just a novel, after all. There were plenty of people with the same name in the world, each living their own life. He hadn’t given it a second thought.

But now? Bai Tu wished he could travel back to that reunion and memorize every single word of that book. The thought of being burned alive, as described in the story, sent a shiver down his spine. On this sweltering summer day, he broke out into a cold sweat.

As Bai Tu was lost in thought, a sudden cheer broke through the air.

“The hunting team is back!”

In an instant, everyone—whether chatting or crawling around on the ground—rushed toward the source of the voice. A few of the smaller children, frustrated by how slow they were on two legs, transformed into tiny rabbits, showcasing how four legs are indeed faster than two. Unfortunately, their efforts were short-lived; after only a couple of hops, they were scooped up by beastmen tasked with watching over the cubs and stuffed into animal hide pouches for safekeeping.

Bai Tu: “…” No matter how many times he witnessed this scene, he couldn’t help but marvel at it. Along with the amazement, he also felt an overwhelming urge to pet those tiny, fluffy rabbits. They were so small and adorable, and he imagined they must feel amazing to touch.

He had even been curious about what he himself would look like in rabbit form. However, he didn’t dare try. His head injury hadn’t fully healed, and a rabbit’s brain was much smaller than a human’s. What if the transformation compressed his brain and left him even more muddled? If nothing else, Bai Tu valued his life and wasn’t about to take that risk.

Deciding not to join the crowd, Bai Tu waited where he was. About a minute later, the hunting team came into view.

The return of the hunting team was always the most exciting event for the tribe, especially when they brought back prey. It meant no one would go hungry that night—and if they were lucky, there might even be leftovers for the next day.

Today, the team had caught a wild boar, three wild chickens, and a dozen or so eggs. It was more than enough for everyone to enjoy a hearty meal. The children were so thrilled they acted as though it was a holiday. Over the past few days, food had been scarce, and the tribe had survived solely on fruit.

However, Bai Tu quickly noticed something was off. The hunting team usually returned at dusk because they traveled far to find prey, but now they had returned much earlier—even before the closer-gathering team had come back.

The hunting team’s mood was also unusually grim. There was no trace of the joy that should come with a successful hunt. It wasn’t until Bai Tu caught sight of the rabbit cradled in someone’s arms that he realized the reason: someone was injured.

The Rabbit Tribe’s diet did include rabbits, but beastmen could easily distinguish between their fellow tribesmen in beast form and ordinary animals. While their names might be the same, there were distinct differences in fur color, texture, and other characteristics. Bai Tu’s view of the injured rabbit was blocked, but judging by the team’s somber attitudes and the care with which the young man held the rabbit, it was clear the injured rabbit was one of their own.

The animal hide wrapped around the rabbit was already soaked a deep black with blood. Bai Tu’s heart sank. That much blood loss meant the injury must be severe.

“Chen is hurt,” the tribe leader, Bai An, said gravely.

The others quickly snapped out of their daze. While the tribe had nearly a hundred members, only the strongest were eligible to join the hunting team. Each hunter was crucial, so news of an injury hit the entire tribe hard.

Bai Chen was Bai An’s eldest son and one of the tribe’s strongest warriors. He was widely expected to succeed Bai An as the next tribe leader and lead the tribe to further growth and prosperity.

Entrusted with such high hopes, Bai Chen always played a critical—and dangerous—role in the hunts. His injury meant that the hunting team would be significantly weakened for the foreseeable future, reducing their chances of catching large prey and potentially leaving the tribe with insufficient food.

What worried them even more was the severity of Bai Chen’s injury. One of his hind legs had been slashed deeply by a wild boar’s tusk, the wound cutting all the way to the bone. Such a serious injury was almost a death sentence, especially in summer, when wounds were notoriously difficult to heal.

Years of living in these harsh conditions had taught the tribe that beastmen who sustained injuries in the summer often struggled to recover.

The joy brought by the successful hunt vanished completely. All the older tribe members and more sensible children were consumed with worry for their wounded tribesman and the future of the tribe. The younger children, too young to fully understand what was happening, clung anxiously to their parents, sensing the heavy atmosphere.

Amidst the somber mood, no one noticed the young man who quietly returned to the cave entrance, now carrying a handful of plants.

It wasn’t until Bai Tu’s calm and clear voice broke the silence that they realized he was there.

“Tribe leader, shouldn’t we stop Chen’s bleeding first?”

The strange, almost ritualistic heaviness in the air was suddenly shattered. Bai An was the first to react, shaking his head bitterly. “We’ve already tied it off, but it’s no use. The wound is too deep—it won’t stop bleeding.”

Bai An, one of the oldest members of the tribe, had led hunts for over a decade. His wealth of experience told him that an injury like this, with unrelenting blood loss, was certain to be fatal.

On the entire Beast God Continent, only the witch doctors worshipped by large tribes had the knowledge to treat such injuries. In a small tribe like theirs, survival depended entirely on luck—small wounds or minimal bleeding might allow someone to pull through, but severe injuries like Bai Chen’s left no hope.

Bai Tu quickly connected the dots: the tribe didn’t know how to use medicine.

He strode forward with determination and looked Bai An in the eye. “I can save him, but I’ll need help—someone to start a fire and boil medicine for me.”

All at once, every member of the tribe turned to stare at Bai Tu.

Bai An was utterly shocked. “You’re a witch doctor?!”