Transmigrating to the BeastWorld,I Picked Up an Adorable BeastHusband!-Chapter 64: Where is Ningning?

Ningning stood by the creek, her breath coming in rapid, white puffs that vanished into the sharpening wind.

The second pot was full, the grey-black mud settled inside like a heavy, cold heart.

She looked at the third, empty pot sitting on the bank.

The trip down the slope had been easy enough, but the wind was starting to whistle through the bare branches of the trees, a low, moaning sound that suggested the weather was shifting faster than the morning sun.

"Doudou, what’s the wind speed?" she asked, wiping a smudge of grit from her cheek.

[Gusting at twenty-five kilometers per hour, Ningning. The barometric pressure is continuing its slow slide. If you do this in two separate trips, you’ll be fighting a headwind for an extra twenty minutes. Your caloric reserves are already at thirty percent.]

"Thirty percent." she muttered, looking at the empty pot. "If I go back up and come down again, I’m going to be too tired to even stir the salt in. I have to finish the haul now."

She didn’t just want to be done; she needed to be done. She grabbed the third pot and began to shovel the heavy silt into it with the bone tool.

The mud was thicker here, packed with more clay, making it even heavier than the first batch. By the time the third pot was topped off, her forearms were burning.

She stood between the two pots, gauging the weight. This was the "risky one." Carrying one pot, roughly twenty-five kilograms was a chore.

Carrying two at once, totaling fifty kilograms of dead, shifting weight while climbing a slippery, wind-blown slope, was borderline reckless.

"I can do this." she told herself. "Balance is the key. Center of gravity, right Doudou?"

[Technically, yes. If you keep the pots close to your midline, you’ll minimize the torque on your spine. However, the ground is unstable. One slip and you’re looking at a sprained ankle or worse, losing the pots.]

"I won’t slip." she said, though her voice lacked conviction.

She squatted low, gripping the handles of both pots. She took a deep breath, braced her core, and drove upward through her heels.

Her leg muscles screamed as the weight left the ground.

For a second, she felt like her arms were being pulled out of their sockets, but she adjusted her grip, locking her elbows slightly.

The first ten steps were the hardest.

The mud in the pots wasn’t solid; it shifted with every movement, threatening to pull her off balance.

She had to take short, chopping steps, digging her toes into the soft soil to find a grip.

"Keep going." she hissed through gritted teeth.

The wind caught her as she cleared the shelter of the creek bed and started up the exposed slope. It pushed against her left side, trying to tip her over. She leaned into it, her muscles trembling under the strain.

Halfway up, she hit a patch of loose shale.

Her right foot slid, sending a cascade of small stones rattling down the hill.

[Warning: Heart rate exceeding 160 BPM. Stabilize your footing, Ningning!]

She froze, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird.

She was tilted dangerously to the right. If she dropped the pot, it would shatter. If she tried to save it, she’d go down with it.

She shifted her weight slowly, agonizingly, until her foot found a solid root embedded in the soil. She let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding.

Shifting her weight to compensate, but the shifting mud in the pots made it impossible. She tilted dangerously to the right.

The loose shale gave way entirely under her foot.

She went down.

One pot flew to the left, spilling its grey contents across the damp slope. The other jarred against her right leg as she landed hard on her side.

A sharp, sickening snap echoed in her ankle, followed immediately by a rush of white-hot pain that made her gasp.

"Agh!" she screamed, the sound instantly swallowed by the wind.

She tried to push herself up, but the pain in her ankle was overwhelming, sending black spots dancing across her vision.

Before she could even analyze the extent of the damage, the sky opened up. It wasn’t just rain; it was a freezing, torrential downpour, turning the hillside into a slick, treacherous slide of mud.

The rain began to wash the spilled silt from the first pot down the slope, burying her legs.

[Doudou, check... check status] she managed to whisper, but the cold and pain were too much.

Her head lolled back against the wet ground, and the black spots converged into total darkness.

She lost consciousness, lying exposed in the freezing mud and rain.

The cold rain wasn’t just falling; it was an abrasive curtain, washing away the warmth of the day. Inside the cave, the fire had dwindled to a heap of grey ash.

The silence, usually a comfort, now felt heavy and wrong.

Weijie stirred. His body felt like lead, his brain foggy from the deep, metabolic rest he’d been in.

He reached out an arm, expecting to feel the familiar warmth of Ningning or the rough texture of the bedding, but he found only cold stone.

"Ningning?" he croaked, his voice thick.

No answer.

Only the rhythmic drip, drip, drip of water from the cave ceiling.

He stood up, his legs shaking.

The cave felt cavernous and empty.

Panic, sharp and cold, cut through his exhaustion. He stumbled toward the entrance, the grey light of dusk making everything look like a ghost world.

He went to the caves of the females.

Asking for her whereabouts, his voice rising in desperation. They all shook their heads.

No one had seen her since the morning.

"She wouldn’t just leave." he muttered, turning back toward their cave. "Not with the winter coming. Not without me."

Back at the entrance, he knelt down. The ground was a mess of smeared soil.

He saw the faint, overlapping tracks of her feet leading toward the creek, but they were being rapidly erased by the downpour.

He leaned down, his nose catching a specific scent, not just wet dirt, but the sharp, mineral tang of the salt she had been obsessed with.

"The mud." he whispered. "She went for the mud."

He took off, his massive frame barreling through the undergrowth.

The hillside was a nightmare of sliding earth and slick shale. The rain was turning the landscape into a soup of brown and grey.

Then he saw it.

Down near the creek bed, the slope had partially collapsed.

A river of sludge was moving slowly, inching over the rocks. And there, sticking out from a mound of thick, heavy silt, was a pale, mud-streaked arm.

"No." Weijie roared, the sound tearing from his throat. "NINGNING!"

He scrambled down the slope, his boots sliding, his hands clawing at the earth for leverage.

He reached the mound, the freezing rain stinging his eyes. The arm was limp, the fingers curled slightly as if trying to grab the air.

"Ningning! Talk to me! Please!"

He began to dig with his bare hands, throwing clumps of heavy clay aside.

Every second felt like an hour. The mud was cold, too cold.

As he cleared the silt from her face, he saw how pale she was, her skin a ghostly white against the dark earth.

"Wake up, Ningning! Wake up!"

He pulled her upper body free, cradling her against his chest. She was ice-cold and completely unresponsive.

Her right ankle was twisted at an unnatural angle, swollen and dark even through the mud.

He scooped her up, her head falling back against his shoulder, and began the grueling climb back up the sliding hill.

The rain was getting heavier, and the mud was making every step a gamble.

"Hang on, Ningning." he grunted, his lungs burning. "Just keep breathing."

He reached the cave entrance, his breath ragged. Inside, it was dark and cold. He laid her down on the bedding.

Weijie knelt beside Ningning, his heart hammering against his ribs. She was dead weight, her skin shockingly cold to the touch.

"Ningning!" he shouted, shaking her gently. "Wake up!"

Nothing.

No response, not even a flinch.

Panic threatened to freeze him, but he forced it down. She was too cold. He needed to get her warm, fast.

He started tearing at the wet, muddy leather of her hide breast band and skirt, his thick fingers clumsy with urgency.

He stripped her down to her skin and wrapped her tightly in the driest, thickest furs they owned, tucking them around her neck and feet to seal in any trace of body heat.

He sat on the stone floor, pulling her into his lap, pressing his chest against her back to share his own body warmth.

He could feel her shivering, a violent, deep-body shudder that meant her system was fighting a losing battle against the cold.

Weijie looked at Ningning’s face, which was as pale as river clay. The fear in his gut was sharper than any flint knife. He couldn’t do this alone.

He wasn’t a healer; he was a builder, a hunter, a man of strength, but his strength couldn’t pull the cold out of her bones.

"Numa." he grunted.

His father would know what to do.