After Crossing the Grasslands, I Became the Leopardess’s Cherished Mate - Chapter 1

The searing pain in her leg jolted Zhou Mingwu back to consciousness.

She clutched her leg, her brow furrowing as a low hiss escaped her lips.

As she rolled over, she felt the rough surface of the “bed” beneath her. The smell of blood and dry earth filled her nostrils, and her cheek stung from brushing against a coarse, unfamiliar material.

Once the piercing pain subsided slightly, she heard a raspy voice nearby.

“Look, she’s not dead.”

“It’s a human.”

“How long has it been since a human appeared in this place?”

“The scent of a human is indeed delicious.”

Zhou Mingwu’s vision blurred. She braced herself against the “bed” and shook her head vigorously, trying to clear the dizziness.

She was parched—both dry and thirsty.

Her body’s reactions triggered a rush of memories.

She and her colleagues had traveled to a village to excavate an ancient tomb, tasked with carefully uncovering the historical artifacts buried in the earth.

But the weather had turned without warning. A violent storm struck as they were traveling through the mountains, and a mudslide had crushed their vehicle.

Zhou Mingwu remembered the world turning upside down, then everything went black, and she lost consciousness.

Now?

Had she been rescued?

Once her bodily functions recovered, Zhou Mingwu slowly opened her eyes again. What she saw was a vast grassland interspersed with withered grass.

Her heart hammered uncontrollably.

Instinctively, she looked up. She was lying on a grassland, the wind blowing past her carrying a searing heat.

She nervously licked her lips and began searching for any sign of her companions. When her gaze landed on the dozen or so vultures standing behind her, she couldn’t help but scream.

The vultures, clearly startled by her voice, flapped their wings and flew a short distance away.

Zhou Mingwu’s breathing quickened. She didn’t understand—how could there be vultures in the mountains?

“Feng Xue,” she tried to call out to her friend, but her voice was hoarse, each word feeling like a knife cutting her throat.

On the vast grassland, apart from the scattered, wildly growing trees, there wasn’t another living soul in sight.

Zhou Mingwu sat there, engulfed by boundless panic.

Soon, a bleeding wound drew her attention.

It was on her lower leg a jagged gash that looked as if something sharp had torn through her flesh. The wound was bleeding profusely, creating a blurred, gruesome mess.

Zhou Mingwu closed her eyes and instinctively scanned her surroundings, spotting her backpack nearby.

It was the greatest relief she could have asked for.

Pushing herself off the ground, she stumbled to her feet and retrieved the backpack. It was a large hiking pack filled with clothes, daily necessities, some food, a knife, and a stun gun. Her Senior Sister had insisted she bring the stun gun, warning her that one should never be too cautious, especially when heading into remote mountains.

At the time, Zhou Mingwu hadn’t thought much of it. But now, seeing the stun gun, she felt a slight sense of relief.

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the vultures still watching her. She knew enough to know that vultures scavenged on corpses and rotting flesh. They were only following her, waiting for her to die so they could feast on her body.

Not today.

Zhou Mingwu rummaged through her pack and, to her relief, found bandages and antiseptic supplies.

Her movements and defensive posture kept the vultures at bay.

The vulture that had pecked at her calf stared at her smooth skin. “That was the most delicious meat I’ve ever tasted.”

The hot wind of the prairie carried its words to Zhou Mingwu’s ears.

Zhou Mingwu froze, her back stiffening. She slowly zipped up her backpack, her voice trembling despite her best efforts to suppress it. A hint of terror leaked through. “Who’s speaking? Is that you, Feng Xue?”

No one answered.

Clutching her backpack, Zhou Mingwu warily scanned the vultures surrounding her, the only living creatures left besides herself.

A dozen pairs of black, beady eyes were all fixed on her.

A chill ran down Zhou Mingwu’s spine.

She recalled a legend her Senior Sister had told her when she first joined the archaeological team.

There was a Mysterious Continent inhabited by a group of semi-sentient carnivores. As the top predators of the food chain, they lived on raw flesh and blood, shifting freely between human and beast forms.

In the last century, a team from the Archaeological Research Center had accidentally crossed over into this Mysterious Continent. After struggling to survive, they eventually established a peace treaty with the continent’s carnivores. They taught the animals the human language, how to walk upright after transforming into human form, and how to use fire and tools.

Tragically, the archaeological team perished on the Mysterious Continent due to the conflict between the Five Great Lion Groups.

Years later, at the site of the accident, a piece of chamois leather was discovered. It bore the daily journals of the archaeological team, with the final entry scrawled hastily: The Five Great Lion Groups are fighting. The brief peace is ending. The predatory nature of carnivores cannot be suppressed.

When her Senior Sister had told her this, Zhou Mingwu hadn’t believed a word of it.

She was a woman of science. Such baseless claims of time travel were laughable to her. She had dismissed it as a story her Senior Sister had concocted out of boredom.

But now, Zhou Mingwu thought with despair, Perhaps Senior Sister was telling the truth.

An orphan, Zhou Mingwu had fought her way into the Department of Archaeology at Peking University and secured a position at the National Archaeological Research Center through sheer perseverance and unyielding grit.

Waking up on an unfamiliar prairie with vultures circling, waiting to scavenge her remains, and her companions nowhere to be found, Zhou Mingwu quickly steadied her mind. I must survive.

The wound on her right calf remained untreated. She unscrewed her water bottle and carefully rinsed the injury.

Daring not to waste a drop, she stopped as soon as the surface dirt and blood were washed away.

After applying povidone-iodine and wrapping the wound in a bandage, Zhou Mingwu finally breathed a sigh of relief.

Zhou Mingwu had also packed Amoxicillin in her backpack, and she swallowed a pill with a gulp of water.

Her parched throat finally felt a little better after being moistened.

There were only three bottles of water in her bag, and she had already used up more than half of one. Zhou Mingwu put the remaining water away and ate a packet of compressed biscuits to replenish her strength.

She didn’t throw away the outer packaging of the compressed biscuits; it was made of composite material and might be useful.

She dared not discard anything. If she had truly arrived at the Mysterious Continent her Senior Sister had spoken of, then survival would be the greatest problem she faced.

The temperature on the grassland rose steadily, scorching Zhou Mingwu’s face. She had to find a water source first. If she stayed in the same spot, her body’s water would deplete. She only had two and a half bottles of water left, which wouldn’t last long.

Zhou Mingwu stood up and slung her backpack over her shoulders.

Seeing her stand, the vultures all let out disappointed sounds. “She actually got up.”

“Aren’t humans very fragile?”

“The food we had in our grasp has vanished into thin air.”

“Keep it down, she can hear us speaking.”

“We should have eaten her while she was still sleeping on the ground.”

Zhou Mingwu nearly stumbled to the ground. She stared fixedly at those ugly vultures, her face pale.

This time, she heard it clearly.

The vultures could actually speak.

Zhou Mingwu clenched her fists, forcing herself to look away. The wound on her calf was likely the work of one of them.

After just two steps, she set down her backpack and pulled out her stun gun. If those vultures dared to come any closer, she would electrocute them to death.

The savanna was vast, and with her injured leg, the dozen or so vultures trailed her from several hundred meters behind. Under the scorching sun and crushing psychological pressure, Zhou Mingwu collapsed onto the grass before she had traveled far.

Wandering aimlessly was no solution.

She calmed her breathing, shaded her eyes with her hand, and scanned the distance for animals.

Zebras stood out sharply against the grassland. A herd was moving due east.

Zhou Mingwu deduced that water might be in that direction.

After resting for a while, she began walking east.

Along the way, she occasionally encountered hyraxes and meerkats. Seeing a human, a hyrax perched on a rock, its front paws resting on the stone as it stared unblinkingly at her.

A meerkat family rose in unison from their burrow, watching her back as she walked away.

Zhou Mingwu wasn’t afraid of the herbivores; it was the fierce carnivores of the savanna that terrified her.

She walked with trepidation, and by the time she finally spotted a water source, evening was already drawing near.

The temperature on the savanna was slowly dropping, but Zhou Mingwu still felt hot.

She stopped to rest under a tree.

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the vultures were still following her.

The waterhole was crowded with animals. Zhou Mingwu scanned the area, and aside from the crocodiles with only their snouts visible above the water, she saw no other large carnivores.

This allowed her to relax slightly.

Little did she know, her presence had sent a shockwave through the entire savanna.

Almost every animal at the waterhole was staring at her.

Zhou Mingwu leaned against the tree and closed her eyes for a brief rest.

The rustle of leaves above her made her snap her eyes open. A vervet monkey was clinging to a branch with one claw, the other reaching toward her. Seeing her eyes open, it let out a shriek and quickly retreated back into the dense foliage.

Zhou Mingwu couldn’t stay there any longer.

After recovering some of her strength, she shuffled toward the waterhole. The murky water made her frown.

Faintly, she could see a crocodile’s half-submerged head watching her.

She should be grateful there were no hippos bathing in the watering hole.

But she wasn’t an animal. If she drank the filthy water, she would surely fall ill. With a severe wound on her leg, she refused to die on this savanna, becoming vulture feed.

The water in her pack could sustain her through the night, but she needed to find a clean source as soon as possible.

She crouched down and washed the blood from her hands.

The crocodile thrashed its thick tail and began to swim. Zhou Mingwu quickly backed away, increasing her distance from the watering hole.

Crocodiles could walk on land; even moving away from the water didn’t guarantee safety.

Zhou Mingwu needed to find shelter before the sun set.

The vast savanna was teeming with herds of animals.

She was relieved that, aside from the vultures trailing her, she hadn’t encountered any other large carnivores.

But the vultures’ patience was wearing thin. As the sun dipped, leaving only a sliver of afterglow, they grew restless. Flapping their wings, they circled closer and closer.

Zhou Mingwu drew her stun gun from her pack for defense.

Just as a vulture tried to swoop down and knock her over, Zhou Mingwu covered her head with her hands and pressed the button on the stun gun.

The vulture shrieked. Its massive wings, large enough to cover Zhou Mingwu completely, flapped a few times before it fluttered away.

Zhou Mingwu curled up, clutching her backpack tightly.

The sudden attack had left her face pale. Tears of fright welled in her beautiful eyes, but she quickly wiped them away.

She gripped the stun gun, her eyes wide as she watched the other vultures—eager to attack, yet still afraid of her.

If they all charged at once, she stood no chance.

But the cowardly, ugly scavengers wouldn’t take any risks, especially with night falling and the scent of a predator lingering in the air.

They finally left.

Zhou Mingwu let her tense nerves slacken and dragged her backpack forward.

She needed to find a cave to shelter in.

Fortunately, her wish was soon granted. Beside a large tree, she spotted a tall pile of stacked rocks.

They loomed faintly in the darkness.

A flicker of hope sparked in Zhou Mingwu’s heart. She approached slowly and shone her flashlight around the rocks.

No other animals were nesting here.

The stones were stacked upon each other, forming a natural barrier.

She roughly measured the size of the cave entrance; she could squeeze inside if she curled up.

The flashlight’s beam danced erratically within the cave as she moved. Once she found a comfortable spot to lie down and relax, she noticed a tuft of gray-brown fur beside her arm.

It looked like animal fur.

Zhou Mingwu picked it up and examined it. She wasn’t a zoologist, so she naturally couldn’t identify the animal from just a few hairs.

She shifted slightly in the narrow cave, but exhaustion finally claimed her body. She hoped she hadn’t taken over another animal’s den.

Before sleeping, she gripped the stun gun in her hand for protection.

Outside the cave, moonlight cast a silver glow. In the temporary silence, she fell into a deep sleep.

The wind rustled the grass, masking the ghostly footsteps.

A pair of golden eyes lingered at the cave entrance for a moment. A tail flicked a few times before the creature finally leaped down from the rocks and departed.

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