For an entire week, Xiang Beifei had been cultivating his spiritual power while Xiaohei and the others simply roamed around Skeleton Village, following the skeletons everywhere.
Life for the skeletons in Skeleton Village was quite leisurely—it felt like another Shangri-La, where each skeleton lived very comfortably.
Their true forms were actually flames, living within skeletal bodies, and their lifestyle followed human customs.
Erha had always been curious about how these flame skeletons managed to have baby skeletons. According to the White Flame Skeleton, reproduction for their species was quite difficult—with pregnancies lasting about a decade, and the whole tribe having fewer than ten baby skeletons born each year.
But each skeleton's lifespan was very long; as long as the flame did not extinguish, they would hardly ever die. Currently, the population in this Skeleton Village had already surpassed two thousand.
These past few days coincided with a pair of skeletons in the village having offspring, so the three little fellows, unable to contain their curiosity, had been peeking into the couple's house every day, and eventually, they witnessed the birth of a little fire sprout.
The process of giving birth to the next generation was also very simple. Currently, a Red Flame Skeleton and a Green Flame Skeleton were becoming parents. Both skeletons' flames emerged and then fused together; the flames crackled as they burned, and once the two clusters of flames separated, with a 'pop', a small, red-and-green fire sprout was born.
"Awoo?" Erha asked if this process was a bit too hasty?
"Youyu?" Little Youmeng asked Xiaohei, since the skeletons all learned human ways, if humans also had children this way?
Being well-versed from watching numerous online videos, Xiaohei explained to Little Youmeng in detail that when humans prepare to have babies, the positions are numerous and it's more intense, almost like fighting.
"Youyu?" Little Youmeng asked why having a baby required fighting? Couldn't it be like planting a seed in the ground and sprouting on its own?
This question stumped Xiaohei too. Erha chimed in, saying that there's a human saying: "No fight, no acquaintance." Without fighting, they wouldn't recognize their own child.
Little Youmeng had an epiphany! So that was why!
The three little fellows enjoyed discussing these strange and odd matters, earnestly analyzing them.
After the village welcomed the new fire sprout, the White Flame Skeleton, as the leader of the village, had to find a skeleton to host the little fire sprout. He chose a palm-sized bird skeleton as a temporary host, and once it grew bigger, it would be transferred to a larger skeleton.
The skeletons also needed to find food, relying on the system established in the Si Hou caves. Since skeletons were not native to the system world, they could not be self-sufficient; thus, they needed to venture to the mountain ranges outside the magma for food.
The skeletons' diet was different from humans'. For these flame skeletons, anything that could burn constituted their food.
Dry branches and leaves were their most common food, but finding coal, oil, or natural gas was like getting an extra meal.
The way these skeletons ate was also bizarre. Because they favored human customs, they imitated humans during meals, grabbing a handful of leaves and stuffing them into their mouths. Then, the flames in their eye sockets would ignite the leaves, letting the food burn inside their mouths.
After burning, the flames would slowly turn back to their eye sockets, making the flames there slightly more vigorous.
To more closely resemble humans, they even mimicked the human action of chewing by moving their jaws and sometimes even emitted puffs of smoke from their nostrils during meals.
If the freshly born baby skeletons, unaware of manners, directly stuffed food into their eye sockets to burn, the older skeletons would correct them, reminding them to maintain proper eating decorum. Dropping food directly into their eye sockets wasn't proper; they should put it in their mouths to burn before it flowed toward their eye sockets.
This method also left Erha utterly baffled.
The Wooden Kirin asked if these skeletons were being overly redundant?
Xiaohei was quite composed as he responded: "You don't understand, Erha! Humans even observe dining etiquette. Life needs a sense of ceremony!"
The Wooden Kirin rolled its eyes, indicating that as long as it had spiritual power crystals, it wouldn't mind eating them through its nostrils.
Little Youmeng was quite displeased, probably because these skeletons habitually ate dry branches and leaves, which made Little Youmeng uncomfortable since it was essentially half a tree that would wither whenever it was away from Si Hou or Xiang Beifei. It always worried about accidentally being used as food.
However, the skeletons didn't think much of it and were quite friendly to the three little ones. Seeing that they did nothing all day and didn't eat, they even offered them dried cow dung, asking if they wanted to try some freshly dried with magma, which they claimed tasted very good when burnt.
Xiaohei and Erha widened their eyes, looked at each other, and then vigorously shook their heads.
When Xiang Beifei was away, the three little ones actually got along well with the skeletons of Skeleton Village, frequently following them outside to look for food and collect bone parts.
The demand for bones was high within the entire village, as they were consumables. The members of the Si Fire Tribe had specific requirements for bones because the fire flames' control over the bones varied with their ages.
Smaller fire sprouts needed smaller skeletons, but as the fire sprouts grew, they needed more powerful skeletons to contain the force of their flames.