303: Chapter 301: The Last Akuri Warrior 303: Chapter 301: The Last Akuri Warrior When moving swiftly, quickly distinguishing subtle traces and then relentlessly continuing the pursuit was Akuri tribe’s specialty — naturally, it was also Gao Yang’s specialty.
The latest track was also left three days prior, making it much harder to find traces.
Gao Yang had to slow down slightly, but he was essentially still able to maintain a jog.
Gao Yang deduced that the attackers were likely poachers, and poachers usually wouldn’t stay in one place for too long.
To seek his revenge, he had to move as fast as possible.
Gao Yang hadn’t stopped since he started running, and luckily, he had not lost the trail, though sometimes he needed to slow down, but soon he would find more visible traces again.
To the average person, the savannah showed no signs of passage, yet to Gao Yang, it was filled with markers — broken twigs, trampled grass, faint footprints; all these signs guided him along the path the attackers had taken.
As the last of the Akuri tribe, or rather, as the last warrior of the Akuri tribe who mastered tracking skills, Gao Yang absolutely couldn’t let those attackers get away.
To make good time, Gao Yang had to cover more ground before nightfall.
Come night, he would be forced to halt his pursuit.
To continue his chase, he had to hasten his steps.
The clouds above grew denser, the once white clouds slowly turning into large masses of black thunderclouds.
The sound of thunder had also started to rumble in the distance, and although the rain had not started immediately, a thunderstorm was not far off.
There was nothing he could do about the weather not cooperating.
Gao Yang could only try to advance further before the downpour.
In truth, the hope of tracking poachers who had left three days ago was faint, but without trying, Gao Yang would never find peace.
When the downpour started, accompanied by the rumbling thunder, Gao Yang couldn’t stay out in the open, nor could he choose just any large tree to take shelter under.
He sought several large trees close to one another and chose the shortest one for shelter, to minimize the threat of lightning as much as possible.
After ensuring there were no snakes below and no leopards lurking above, Gao Yang sat down by the tree, embracing his hunting rifle, quietly waiting for the moment the rain would stop.
The heavy rain began at half-past five and gradually ceased after ten o’clock at night.
Although the downpour had ended, despite having a powerful flashlight and a headlamp, the high energy consumption of the flashlight meant the batteries wouldn’t last long, and Gao Yang didn’t carry spare batteries.
As for the headlamp, although it provided prolonged illumination, neither the flashlight nor the headlamp’s light was sufficient for Gao Yang to discern traces as clearly as during the day, making night tracking practically impossible.
Willing or not, Gao Yang had to rest well for the night.
After the rain stopped, the most significant disadvantage was that mosquitoes started to become rampant.
However, the mud Gao Yang had applied on his skin prevented mosquito bites, and even after drying on the skin, the stickiness wouldn’t wash away easily, rain or not.
In fact, even if he wanted to clean off the mud, it would require some effort.
The buzzing of the mosquitoes started to revolve around Gao Yang’s ears, and the unique nocturnal symphony of the African wilderness began to play.
There were short, sharp cries of hyenas, the rumbling calls of warthogs sounding like African drums, and lions giving out deep and hoarse roars.
Still, the most irritating and spine-chilling were the calls of the hyenas, crying like wailing women, unceasingly incessant.
Gao Yang was accustomed to sleeping out on the savannah at night and used to the calls of these animals, but for some reason, after remembering the familiar faces of the Akuri tribe, the familiar and pleasant roars that he was hearing now started to agitate him.
As if possessed, Gao Yang pulled out the revolver from his waistband and fired a shot into the sky.
The loud “bang” silenced all the calls immediately; apart from the buzzing of mosquitoes, at least for a short while, there would be no more annoying roars.
As for the possibility of the poachers hearing the gunshot, Gao Yang actually hoped that they would.
He wished they would come to him, but unfortunately, this likelihood was very slim.
Gao Yang opened the cylinder of the revolver, spilled the spent shell and unused bullets, then took out a speedloader from his waist bag and swiftly reloaded seven bullets.
He then began to spin the cylinder and with a quick flick at the peak of its rotation, locked the cylinder back in place to the firing position.
After holstering the revolver, he reloaded the bullets onto the speedloader one by one and took another unfired bullet from his belt to refill the speedloader before pulling out the revolver again.
With utmost speed, he emptied the bullets from the cylinder and then reloaded them from the speedloader.
Gao Yang had never used a revolver before, nor had he practiced quick reloading with one.
So, during the time he had, Gao Yang began to practice how to load bullets using a speed-loader.
More importantly, he needed to find something to do, so he wouldn’t have idle time to entertain wild thoughts that would cause his heart to ache like being stabbed by a knife.
With no home to return to, Gao Yang had made his way to the second most significant home in his life.
But now, even his second home was destroyed, gone forever.
Keeping his composure to avoid going insane was already a remarkable feat for Gao Yang.
After a long practice session with speed loading, Gao Yang, feeling a bit sleepy, put away his gun.
He ate a couple of pieces of the compressed biscuits he brought along, drank the last of his water, refilled his water bottle from a pool formed by rainwater, and, after dropping a water purification tablet into it, leaned against a big tree and fell into a deep sleep.
At dawn, when animals are most active, various animal calls awakened Gao Yang.
He stretched his somewhat stiff body, ate a few pieces of the dry food, drank a few sips of the foul-tasting rainwater, and quietly waited for the moment daylight broke.
When the sun was almost fully risen and the brightness was sufficient, Gao Yang located the markers he had left the previous night, then continued to track.
Maintaining a jog, after another heavy rain, the footprints had nearly vanished.
Gao Yang could only rely on less than reliable tracks to move forward.
Although he would occasionally make a slight error and veer off course, he always managed to find his way back quickly, and from time to time, he would come across a relatively clear track that would allow him to continue the pursuit.
From sunrise, Gao Yang kept running, and even when the sun reached its zenith, he was still running.
He had already grown accustomed to this kind of life, and now, driven by hatred, he felt no fatigue whatsoever.
Maintaining a steady pace, Gao Yang ran on without stopping except to replenish his water at puddles he encountered along the way.
By two in the afternoon, the hottest part of the day, Gao Yang finally halted, not because he was tired or because it was too hot, but because he had found what he was most eager to see: tire tracks.
The tire tracks came from another direction but had stopped and turned at one point.
And the traces Gao Yang had been following disappeared, the only possibility being that the person he was pursuing had gotten into a vehicle.
From the width of the tires and the distance between the wheels, Gao Yang figured that the vehicle that left the tire tracks was a medium-sized truck.
After a brief analysis to confirm the direction the truck had taken, he continued onward.
The tire tracks weren’t very fresh, but they were still quite evident.
Tracking a vehicle by its tire tracks is much easier than tracking a person by footprints; now all Gao Yang needed to do was to follow the tracks.
Pushing himself to his fastest sustainable pace and aside from stopping to drink water and snacking a bit on dry food, Gao Yang scarcely rested at all.
Having run since the previous day to this point, Gao Yang estimated that he had covered sixty to seventy kilometers, which is akin to one and a half marathons.
Of course, he was much slower than marathon runners and it took much longer, but he could still keep running.
Gao Yang had now surpassed the most grueling part of his endurance limit, and he didn’t feel any signs of heatstroke, so he planned to continue relentlessly.
However, when he noticed the tire tracks turning again and new clues appeared in his sight, he finally stopped once more.
Looking along the direction of the tire tracks, Gao Yang could see an unbroken wall of thorns in the distance.
Seeing the thorn wall meant he had found the poachers’ area of operation.
Such “thorn walls” are made by cutting down acacia, brambles, or various kinds of spiky branches, then lining them up along a lengthy stretch.
Some gaps are left in these prickly barricades where traps are placed to capture wild animals.
The length of a thorn wall could extend up to several kilometers, usually installed where wildlife roam or migrate.
When these animals encounter the spiky branches, they tend not to leap over or turn back but follow the wall to find a gap.
As they discover an opening and pass through it, they get caught by the finely-set steel snares around their necks and die a painful death.
Using thorn walls for poaching can cause devastating slaughter over a large area of animals.
However, thorn walls are now rarely seen in Africa, as most countries have begun protecting wildlife.
Constructing a thorn wall requires the cooperation of many people, which has become nearly impossible under international crackdowns, but not in South Sudan.
Amid the constant conflict, no one has the capacity to take care of the wildlife.
Finding the thorn wall also meant locating the poachers.
Moreover, encountering the thorn wall implied that there would be many enemies.
At this moment, Gao Yang harbored no fears, only the excitement of having found his attackers.
(To be continued.
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