Chapter 507 - 162: Snowfield Pursuit
Chapter 162 [Snow Tracking] (6500 words)
A violent sense of falling swept over, then faded away.
Chen Yan opened his eyes and exhaled softly. He felt the cold air in his nostrils, and the stimulation made his nasal membranes slightly sting.
What greeted his eyes was a mountain forest that seemed like an eternal night. Amidst the darkness, thick fog prevailed, yet he could still see the mountain ridge covered with white snow...
Chen Yan exhaled, gently placed his backpack on the ground, and pressed a button on his watch.
Countdown: 168 hours.
The next second, it changed to 167:59:59...
The teleportation brought him back to the same location as last time; in front of him was the familiar rock, with a natural sheltered spot beneath it.
Above him was the towering mountain ridge, behind him was the Forest Monster.
Chen Yan noticed the absence of the fire pit he left before departing, even the ashes were gone, probably covered by the wind and snow of the past few days.
Big White was nowhere to be seen.
The snow bundle containing the frozen meat had been dug open. Chen Yan walked over to inspect it and found that all the meat inside was gone.
"Eaten up?" Chen Yan frowned but quickly dismissed this assumption.
It’s only been ten days since he last came back—the meat he left behind was around 800 pounds. Given Big White’s daily intake of seven to eight pounds, it was impossible for it all to have been consumed.
So...
If Big White didn’t finish the meat, then something else must have taken it?
Did Big White leave because it encountered danger and fled, or...
Chen Yan’s heart skipped a beat. After carefully searching the surroundings, his expression grew more grim.
He found an arrow wedged in a crevice of the mountain ridge’s rocks.
The shaft was made from branches of strange trees, and the arrowhead wasn’t metal but carved from some beast’s tooth.
Of course, Chen Yan had seen such arrows before—the warriors of the Fierce Beast Race used them. The village leader monster he killed also used similar arrows, though the village leader’s arrows were slightly more refined in craftsmanship.
The Fierce Beast monsters had been here and a skirmish took place? An archer fired an arrow, and this arrow became lodged in the rock crevice, not retrieved by the Fierce Beast monsters.
The buried frozen meat might have been taken by the Fierce Beast monsters as well?
Chen Yan calmly analyzed.
The arrow indicated that the Fierce Beast monsters had been here.
And since they shot arrows, the target was likely Big White.
The frozen meat being taken away suggested that the Fierce Beast monsters won!
Because if the Fierce Beast monsters had lost and were chased and driven away by Big White, they wouldn’t have had the leisure to take away hundreds of pounds of frozen meat.
So, Big White lost, and then...
Either it ran away or escaped into the mountains.
During the days he was gone, continuous snowfalls had covered the tracks, making it impossible to find meaningful traces and evidence.
Chen Yan first entered the range of the forest. The forest floor wasn’t covered with snow or ice, so any footprints might have left behind some trail.
However, after searching, Chen Yan found nothing.
Unless...
These Fierce Beast monsters didn’t come through the forest?
Chen Yan’s mind stirred, and he looked up at the mountain ridge.
The mining area in the mountains?
·
His greatest gain last time was Big White. Naturally, Chen Yan was reluctant to easily lose this beast he had gradually tamed.
He sighed, "Hope my luck isn’t bad!"
He picked up a stick and tossed it into the air. When it fell, the pointed end faced north towards the ridge, and Chen Yan fixed his gaze upon it, shouldered his backpack, and headed northwards!
He walked along the base of the mountain ridge outside of the Forest Monster. The ground was covered in snow, his solitary footprints trailing behind.
Chen Yan could’ve chosen to first infiltrate the forest, circling along its edge towards the ridge’s base, avoiding leaving footprints in the snow.
But he harbored a faint hope—what if Big White hadn’t been captured but was instead hiding in the ridge? If that Spirit Communication beast saw his footprints and could follow them, it might just find him.
Walking in the snow was laborious. Even though Chen Yan’s physical condition was robust, and he affixed a Light Body Talisman, he was cautious in conserving his strength.
Every two hours, he rested for ten minutes to recover energy.
After trudging through the snow for over five hours, Chen Yan’s expression suddenly changed!
In front of him, in the snow, lay several outlines. Chen Yan quickly ran over, squatted, and swept away the loose snow with his hands, his eyes shifting instantly!
It was a corpse!
The corpse in front of him wasn’t human. Its appearance and shape resembled Fierce Beast monsters, though smaller than those in the village, lacking their tall, lean stature, appearing shorter and more stocky and muscular—as if the tall, burly Fierce Beast residents Chen Yan had seen were compressed into a Q-version physique.
But the gray-brown skin and facial contours indicated that this corpse had an extremely strong genetic relationship with the Fierce Beast Race.
"Another type of Fierce Beast monster?" Chen Yan squinted his eyes.