Chapter 545 - 55: The Fall of the Tribe (Part 2)
...
Lying on the soft animal skin, the air was filled with the stench of the dry season baking the earth, the rot of food, and the sweet fragrance from the wine bottles inside the house.
Lisoben’s mind was groggy.
After a bout of drunkenness, he could no longer feel that ethereal happiness; his head was both heavy and had a slight sting, making him somewhat dizzy.
The various past experiences flashed through his mind, the prosperity and decline of the tribe, all within just two short years.
He couldn’t understand why everything went downhill after the old Priest disappeared.
He remembered asking the old Priest if there really were gods in the world, and the old Priest’s answer was negative —
Perhaps there really were gods, but they never responded to him.
If there were no gods, why did the tribe appear to be abandoned by them after the person who communicated with them died?
Or perhaps those outsiders were the gods, and once his relationship with them was no longer close, he could no longer be invincible...
Thinking about these questions made Lisoben’s headache worse, so he forced himself to get out of bed and fumble for the wine bottle by the bed.
However, when he grabbed it, one bottle was empty, two bottles were also empty, and in those beautiful bottles, there wasn’t a single drop of that marvelous nectar, only air.
Swearing in the tribe’s slang, Lisoben fell to the floor, then awkwardly climbed back up to rummage through the wooden crate.
The Spaniards hadn’t sent him gifts in a long time, and the wooden boxes once full of liquor were now all empty. Not even the large barrel in the corner of the room had a single drop left.
Muttering obscenities under his breath.
Due to the lack of alcohol, Lisoben now lost his reverence for those outsiders, and instead began to curse them.
The more he cursed, the more intense he became, soon including the missing old Priest in his profanity, and then his anger extended to his deceased father, and even those who competed with him for the position of Leader.
Having cursed the dead, Lisoben became increasingly uncontrollable, grabbed a charred fish from beside the bed at random, tore off a piece of fish meat, and quickly walked out of the house, intent on finding a tribe member to vent his frustration.
However, just as he was about to stick his head out into the sunlight, he suddenly heard a crisp thunderous sound from the distant hillside.
The sound was familiar to him, reminiscent of the strange noise during the conflict that the outsiders helped him win.
The irritation in his heart suddenly halted at this sound, and Lisoben had a vague sense of foreboding.
His steps were still a bit unsteady from the alcohol, but prompted by this feeling, Lisoben turned back into the house to rummage for the weapons given by the outsiders.
...
Shortly after his swaying figure disappeared into the small house, a series of "thunderous" sounds erupted from the distant highlands, followed by the shouts and screams of Indigenous Warriors on the attack, and the sight of terrified ones in retreat.
In this crisis, the representatives of various small factions with superficial allegiance finally remembered that they still had a Leader.
One by one, the informants among the Indigenous forced themselves to muster up the energy and set off directly for Lisoben’s residence.
Even though the tribespeople were exhausted and powerless from hunger, they had to find their weapons and obey the orders of the Priest or the Leader to support at the "thunderous" place.
The entire tribe was like an ant colony encountering a flood, turning from lifeless to chaotic.
The frightened voices of the tribespeople, hurried footsteps, anxious inquiries, and the cries of children merged into one —
In times like this, no one wanted to face a brutal conflict; no one wanted to die, everyone wanted to survive, which is the instinct of living beings.
...
The center of the tribe was in chaos; neither the Indigenous who fled back from the gunfire nor those wielding Wooden Spears and carrying Bow and Arrows ready to head to the highlands could imagine what kind of terrifying enemy awaited their comrades on the high ground, nor the one-sided massacre that would greet them.
Under Sunday’s command, all the sailors had formed a phalanx.
The Chen Family rifles had already fired a round, and the Indigenous Warriors who launched the first attack had all fallen in the pools of blood.
The Indigenous, who had seen the might of the enemy with their own eyes, had long abandoned their weapons and fled into the dense forest.
Sunday knew very well that he didn’t have the advantage of numbers, so he did not order a pursuit but relied on the terrain on the hillside, continuing to form a formation, waiting for the Indigenous to launch an attack.
Having participated in tribal conflicts more than once, he understood very well what the Indigenous tactics were like —
Small-scale skirmishes couldn’t crush a tribe, and the only decisive factor was the one wave where both sides threw in all their combat power.
Once the majority of the tribe’s Warriors saw their comrades fall like wild grass cut down by a Wooden Saber, the conflict would be decided.
Now, he had announced his presence to the tribe’s Leader through gunfire, just waiting for the guy, said to be the "Celestial God’s chosen Warrior," to lead his brave Warriors to the challenge.
...
A giant Vine Shield that covered most of the body stood in front of them, like a low wall, situated at the high point of the slope.
Not far from the bottom of the Vine Shield, the Indigenous shot by rifles lay on the hard ground, and most of them were dead, with only a few still alive who had lost the ability to move, barely clinging to life.
The weapons they once prided themselves on, sharpened Long Spears and finely honed Wooden Sabers, lay discarded beside them.
But this time, the blood staining the weapons was not the enemy’s, but their own.
The breeze blew through the dense forest, passed the gaps in the vine-woven Shields, and carried the smell of the enemy’s blood to the sailors’ faces.
In that scent, they found themselves recalling the memories of that primitive life once lived in the tribe.
Death, hunger, and conflict turned people into beasts; only by abandoning kindness could one claim the right to survive.
Perhaps they had learned too much since arriving on the island; now, looking back at that period, the sailors found it a bit blurry, a bit strange, as if it had happened in a past life.
"Don’t lose focus!"
Noticing that the sailors were somewhat distracted by the tedious waiting and the scorching sunlight, Sunday quickly reminded them —
This was not a training ground drill, nor a casual chat or chess game at sea, but a small-scale war.
Even though their weapons and combat personnel quality could crush the other side, "even a lion uses its full strength to capture a rabbit."
In this operation, he not only aimed for a victory but also a glorious one.
With these carefully selected Warriors, even if one were accidentally injured or killed, he couldn’t explain it to the Leader as the head.
After all, the Leader had told him that a well-trained group of twenty equipped with rifles, with sufficient ammunition and occupying advantageous terrain, could defeat thousands of Primitive People holding Long Spears and Wooden Sabers without any problem.
The enemies he faced now were far fewer than this number, and if something went wrong, he wouldn’t know how to face his friends on the island.
Especially those three brats Chen Fu, Chen Lu, and Chen Shou, who had been eyeing the Steel Bone for a long time.
Once given a chance, they would surely volunteer to take over the sea duties.
...
After pulling the sailors back from the brink of distraction, Sunday peeked out from behind the Vine Shield, lifted the telescope, and continued to observe the situation in the forest.
Sure enough, as he expected, in the face of enemy attacks, that supposedly very brave Fighting Leader, in order to maintain his prestige, quickly gathered all his trusted Warriors.
This band of naked Indigenous Warriors, with bare chests, either wielded metal Long Sabers bestowed by the Spaniards or held the tribe’s traditional Wooden Long Spears, messily gathered and made their way towards the high ground.
With trees blocking the view, it was impossible to see every Indigenous person clearly, so Sunday could only roughly estimate the number of Indigenous Warriors.
As the largest tribe in the Archipelago, even in decline, the number of Warriors the tribe could gather was more than Sunday had imagined, roughly counting, there were actually more than a hundred.
Even though these people had no decent equipment and were naked, when they assembled into a group and charged collectively, they still appeared quite intimidating.