She paid for the medicine, even covering the cost for the next day, before returning to the basement with the cub. Following the trading center, she arrived in the beast world, where everything remained unchanged from before her departure. She adjusted the time and placed the cub in its mother’s arms. At that moment, the cub happened to wake up.
To the beastmen watching, it appeared that Shen Yunyun had simply held the cub, and it had instantly recovered. The cub’s mother immediately knelt before her, kowtowing repeatedly. The other beastmen followed suit, bowing and chanting, “Great Beast God, Great Beast God.” Their deity had performed a miracle today, saving their cub.
Aside from this cub, which had been severely ill, other beastmen were also coughing and running fevers. Shen Yunyun bestowed medicine upon them all, and everyone expressed their gratitude with heartfelt thanks. She thought to herself, *Thankfully, the common cold here is just a simple cold, not some variant or virus.*
After distributing the medicine, Zhi led Shen Yunyun back to his own cave. He lived alone in one cave, while the Great Elder and the others resided in another. The rest of the beastmen dwelled in an enormous cave—one that could easily accommodate not just a hundred people, but five hundred without issue. Shen Yunyun couldn’t help but remark on how early class divisions and privileges had emerged.
She brought up the matter of beef and mutton with Zhi. His eyes lit up with eagerness. “We’ve stockpiled some food for winter before, but it’s never enough. If we store meat too early, it goes bad and becomes inedible. This year, winter came especially early—before we could gather sufficient supplies, the heavy snow sealed off the mountains.”
Hearing this, Shen Yunyun could somewhat understand their plight. Without refrigerators or storage spaces, even if they hunted enough food in summer, they had no way to preserve it. So they likely hunted just before the weather turned freezing, relying on luck for their haul. This year, snow had fallen before they were ready.
“I have plenty of beef and mutton. Find a few beastmen to bury the food in the snowdrifts outside—that way, it won’t spoil.” This would ensure their food lasted until the snow melted. With ample provisions, the beastmen’s resistance would strengthen.
“Alright.” Zhi hurried off to gather the beastmen. They had no idea how to store food in snow, so Shen Yunyun acted as their engineer, teaching them to shape the snow into a giant icebox and place the beef and mutton inside. She also stored frozen mantou, dumplings, and baozi from her space in an adjacent snow cabinet. She knew that humans grew irritable without carbohydrates, and she wondered if the same applied to beastmen, so she decided to supplement their diet.
“Boil this meat in a big pot before eating. These without filling are called mantou, these with filling are baozi, and these small ones are dumplings. When you cook the meat, you can steam the mantou on top or roast them in the fire to eat,” Shen Yunyun explained to Zhi.
Zhi stared at her with longing eyes. Shen Yunyun rummaged through her space and pulled out some steamers, guessing she’d collected them during a previous supply run. She handed over the steamers, along with a few wooden cabinets and a sharp bone-cleaver. She had no memory of where the cleaver came from, but she didn’t care—as long as it worked.