After leaving the waterside, Xu Yang resumed his journey to search for food and resources.
His brief standoff with the giant crocodile had not been entirely without gains. At the very least, he now knew that the crocodile was the overlord of the river running through the forest, and he had also collected its scent. That was the most important thing.
As his strength broke through and his bloodline became more refined, Xu Yang discovered that not only had his sense of smell become increasingly precise, but its range was also continuously expanding. Now, as long as he remembered a scent from the ground, even if the prey had run a hundred kilometers away and the scent along the way had dispersed, he could still vaguely sense its trail!
Scents in water were greatly weakened, but while the giant crocodile could run, it could not escape its home. Crocodiles could come ashore briefly, but they ultimately had to live in the water.
"Heh heh, does this count as a physical version of 'locking onto a soul from a thousand miles away'?" Xu Yang walked far from the river, doing his best not to leave overly deep tracks on the ground.
When he passed a rainforest fruit tree that looked familiar, Xu Yang simply floated up to the canopy over ten meters above the ground and began devouring its fruit with loud crunches. The fruit looked much like durian, but tasted like jackfruit. The Brown Bear had once prepared it for him in the Lightning Strike Mountain Range.
Without the Brown Bear by his side, Xu Yang could not be bothered with refinement. He gnawed through the fruit and leaves alike. In less than five minutes, the tree's canopy looked as though it had suffered a disaster—ragged, uneven, and utterly messy.