Qin Luming removed the handle from the entrenching shovel and checked the saw blade assembly hidden inside. He gripped the handle and swung it a few times, but still felt it handled better when assembled as a whole.
His entrenching shovel measured over eighty centimeters when fully assembled and had more than twenty functions... perhaps even more. The key was how he used it. Additional components could be fitted as well, but the ones currently attached were the most practical. There was no need to install every rarely used function.
For wilderness survival, if he could only choose between an entrenching shovel and a Swiss Army knife, Qin Luming would definitely choose the entrenching shovel.
Every man ought to own three entrenching shovels: one in the car, one at home, and one as a spare... Qin Luming had seen an advertisement where a man caught his wife cheating. He brought an entrenching shovel, used it to block the lover's handgun bullets, then took out the enemy with one blow. He could even conveniently dig the lover a grave afterward.
An entrenching shovel was naturally useless against an otherworldly Demon King like Zhou Nan, but against that two-thousand-pound Big Black Pig, it might provide Qin Luming with considerable help.
Qin Luming had devised an inspirational storyline for the Big Black Pig yesterday, but he could still clearly recognize the danger posed by a two-thousand-pound pig. One casual stomp from that thing could crush a person's bones and muscles to pieces.
What was more, judging by yesterday's chase, the Big Black Pig's strength and speed were both terrifying. When it charged at full speed, Qin Luming felt that without using Zuozuo's power, he had absolutely no chance of withstanding its impact.
Qin Luming walked diagonally down the slope. The faint traces of a path remained here, and judging from the litter left along it, Yang Xiaoyan's group had taken this direction as well.
Qin Luming had already been near here last night. The sight in daylight was entirely different from that at night. The dam now stood before him, no longer like a dangerous, mysterious behemoth lying in wait. Its grand and imposing presence was more likely to move people. The advancement of human civilization came with harmony with nature, as well as the transformation of nature. All manner of civilizational miracles had sprung forth in the natural world, some blending into it and becoming part of its mountains and landscapes. It was truly awe-inspiring.
Qin Luming stopped again before the warning sign he had seen last night: "No Unauthorized Entry." Behind it was a road overgrown with vines and concealed by the branches and leaves of sprawling shrubs.
At the end of the road was a passageway. Unfamiliar with the dam's layout and structure, Qin Luming had no way of judging where it led.
Qin Luming searched for traces left by Yang Xiaoyan's group. He did not actually care whether they lived or died; he was only searching out of humanitarian concern.
They were all adults. If they chose to explore places that were not open to the public, or even prohibited from entry, they should have considered the dangers before setting out and taken responsibility for themselves. Others had no obligation or responsibility to risk their lives to rescue them.
Qin Luming hoped they were all right, but if they really had gone missing, he would remain here to warn any search-and-rescue team that came to help them to proceed carefully. He would also offer whatever help he could.
Using the entrenching shovel to cut through the thorny brush ahead, Qin Luming avoided the road leading onto the dam and circled around from the side again.
He had considered the possibility of encountering that Big Black Pig again... It had watched Qin Luming from the shadows last night and seemed rather intelligent. Qin Luming had not sensed any hostility from it for now, but it was best to stay cautious.
There were still no traces along the way like huge piles of pig droppings. Only faint rustling came from the nearby grass and brush, probably caused by snakes, rats, rabbits, insects, and the like.
Qin Luming suddenly wondered whether, aside from the Big Black Pig, the other animals here might also have grown unusually large.
Just as he was thinking that, a gaping bloody maw suddenly lunged at him. A foul stench assaulted his face. Qin Luming saw only the sharp teeth in its upper jaw, a twitching forked tongue, and the nauseating structure of its mouth and throat right before him. Its stretched flesh seemed to indicate that the bones within had expanded, ready to swallow Qin Luming whole in a single bite.
Only a giant python liked to kill prey by simply and brutally swallowing it whole.
Qin Luming's left foot remained still while his right foot pivoted. He spun sharply, then leaped up. Before he even had time to feel fear, he was already gripping the entrenching shovel and bringing it down toward the python's neck.
Blood and flesh sprayed everywhere. The upper half of the snake's body thrashed in the air, while the rear half twisted violently into a knot before abruptly flinging itself loose. Its tail swept through the surrounding bushes. The snake's head was still connected to its body by a small section of flesh as the python writhed past Qin Luming and burrowed into a small patch of forest near the dam.
Qin Luming's heart pounded violently. He had lived comfortably since childhood. Although he had participated in many outdoor excursions, he had always gone with older relatives and family friends, with others responsible for transportation, safety, and food. He had basically never encountered danger on the level of a giant snake devouring a person.
Much of the wilderness survival and first-aid knowledge he had learned could be applied without extensive practical experience, but a situation like being attacked by a wild beast was not something one could handle simply by studying it in class!
Fortunately, his physical condition was now extraordinary and his reactions were fast enough. What had just happened was entirely instinctive, allowing him to escape danger. If it had been anyone else, an ordinary person with wilderness survival knowledge in their head but no practical experience, they would already have become the python's food.
Qin Luming patted his chest and steadied his breathing. Then he looked at the blood and flesh remaining on the striking edge of the entrenching shovel and wiped it clean on the grass. Only then did he begin to reflect on it. That python had been far too large!
Generally speaking, in the environment around City A, normal pythons were at most three to five meters long. Qin Luming roughly estimated that the snake just now had been over ten meters long.
Moreover, pythons preferred to hunt at night. The current temperature could barely reach twenty degrees Celsius, while the temperature at which pythons hunted and were active was generally above thirty degrees.
The only snake over ten meters long that Qin Luming had ever seen was an Amazon anaconda. That creature was a viviparous scaled reptile, vastly different from a python... Qin Luming had noticed that the snake's teeth curved backward, just like an anaconda's. As for whether ordinary giant pythons had teeth like that as well, Qin Luming did not know.
When the giant snake fled, Qin Luming had also noticed its abdomen. It was not particularly bloated, so it did not look as though it had swallowed Yang Xiaoyan's group.
But that did not mean they were safe and sound. Aside from this snake, other large beasts could easily be roaming around as well. It was even possible that companions of this snake had swallowed Yang Xiaoyan and the others, while this snake, provoked by something, had lain in ambush by the roadside, waiting for more people to come deliver themselves.
Qin Luming looked at the entrenching shovel, then at his own hands. After hesitating for a moment, he decided to search the surrounding area a little longer while it was still early. Once it was close to dark, regardless of whether he found any clues about Yang Xiaoyan's group, Qin Luming would quickly withdraw.
He took out his phone and checked it, trying to send a message and connect to the internet. Sure enough, this place had already been cut off from the outside world in terms of communication networks.
As for whether the isolation was merely caused by geography or by some other factor, there was no way to know. The two-thousand-pound Big Black Pig from last night and the giant snake he had seen over the past few days both indicated that this place was extremely strange.
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