The next day, the rain was still falling, and the water level had risen considerably.
Bai Chuan even saw several mangled human corpses, swollen from soaking in the water, drifting past with the current. He studied them carefully and noticed that their clothes seemed to be made of hemp.
This proved his guess from the day before had been right: he really wasn't very far from human settlements.
But from the scene before him, this seemed like more than just a rainy season. If his guess was right,
this was a flood.
He didn't know what year it was, or whether this was even the same world he knew. He had no idea how many more people would die in this flood.
After a few words of lament, Bai Chuan decided that as soon as this was over, he would move away immediately.
He was indeed strong by the standards of the natural world now, but if he had to face humans, he was still far too weak.
Tigers were strong, right? Brown bears were strong too, right? Either one could kill him.
But even mighty beasts like those, if they ever had to face humans, were doomed as soon as they were targeted. It didn't matter if they could kill a dozen or even twenty people.
If such powerful beasts couldn't escape death, how was a venomous snake with such an obvious weakness supposed to fight back?
All it would take was a few generations of snake hunters, and he'd be in for a world of hurt.
Having once been human, he knew all too well: "Those who are not of our kind must have different hearts."
People could barely keep from beating each other to a pulp. How could they possibly tolerate a creature like him?
Until he was strong enough, he'd be better off keeping as far away from them as possible.
"Squeak~"
Just then, a faint sound came from behind him.
Clearly, the little mouse had woken up too.
Bai Chuan glanced back and then ignored it, a flicker of disappointment in his eyes.
The day before, to test his theory, he had pinned the mouse to the ground, keeping it from resisting, to see if the Panel would count it as having lost the ability to fight back and scan its information.
To his surprise, it had actually worked. The only shame was that its abilities were average, no different from those of an ordinary mouse—at most, it had slightly stronger abilities.
That shattered his wild hopes.
By that, he meant the idea that the mouse might be like some special rodent from the novels of his previous life, carrying a rare bloodline that had yet to awaken.
Sadly, the cruel truth had told him: Come on, stop dreaming. It's just a slightly stronger mouse.
The one thing he'd learned was that the abilities recorded by the Panel weren't the species' base stats, but belonged only to the individual prey he had hunted.
Or, more precisely, an individual might have a chance encounter that greatly enhanced one particular ability beyond the norm for its species.
In other words, maybe one day he could record a special ability unique to a particular creature.
Five days later.
The rainstorm, which had lasted seven days and seven nights, finally stopped. By then, the water had risen above the tree hollow where Bai Chuan had been living.
In fact, he had left the hollow on the third day and climbed higher into the branches. One curious thing was that, for some reason, the mouse hadn't run away even though Bai Chuan had kindly let it go.
Instead, it had followed him, climbing higher and higher into the tree.
Bai Chuan let it be. He'd already given it the chance to escape. If it chose not to, it could hardly blame him if he ate it when hunger struck.
But now that the rain had stopped, it was time for him to find a moment to leave.
To be honest, he'd seen too much chaos over the past few days, and he'd also been through several brutal battles. Faced with the vast calamities of nature, countless creatures had struggled desperately to survive. The scenes had been truly harrowing.
There had been herds of deer fighting their way through the water in a desperate attempt to escape, with countless man-eating fish and crocodiles close behind, tearing into them until a wide stretch of water ran red with blood.
There had also been a former overlord, driven mad with hunger, that had picked the wrong prey and bitten into an electric eel. That was when Bai Chuan witnessed the true power of the electric current. Countless small fish floated to the surface, while the mighty creature thrashed and convulsed wildly in the water, sending up enormous waves.
Just watching that scene had chilled him to the bone. If he had been in its place, he couldn't guarantee he'd survive in water filled with electric current. Even if he could withstand the shock, he'd probably be stunned, sink, and suffocate.
That sight also made him give up on hunting an electric eel for now. He really coveted its ability to generate electricity, but he'd decided he wouldn't dare touch one until he was sure he could take it down with ease.
One bite and you're dead—who could handle that?
He'd also seen one of his own kind, a King Cobra, drift a long way through the water before a python beneath the surface attacked, coiled around it, and squeezed it to death underwater. A bolt of lightning had struck from the heavens, bringing a tree crashing down and affecting a whole swath of creatures...
After seeing so many brutal scenes, Bai Chuan suddenly felt fortunate that he'd eaten his fill before the disaster truly struck. Besides, snakes had remarkable feeding cycles.
Fortunately, it was all over now. He gave the mouse one last look, then climbed toward the treetop.
After seeing so many examples of ambushes from beneath the water—and having experienced one himself not long ago, when he'd fallen in while fighting a powerful enemy in the tree and been ambushed by a crocodile—Bai Chuan suddenly realized he'd grown wary of the murky water.
If he hadn't gained Danger Perception before, he probably wouldn't even have sensed the crocodile's attack. And even if he had sensed it, without the inexplicable Agility Lv1 ability that had appeared, he might not have dodged that bite.
If either of those two things had been missing, he definitely wouldn't have escaped without serious injuries that time. He might even have died.
After that, he decided to avoid the water as much as possible until he gained the ability to breathe underwater.
Fortunately, he was in a dense forest, with countless branches crisscrossing between the trees. With his abilities, he could still make his way out.
Three days later, Bai Chuan finally left the area and set foot on solid ground once more. He couldn't help sighing. That had been rough!
Afterward, he headed deeper into the mountains.
As mentioned earlier, Bai Chuan lived in a vast, unbroken mountain range, while the forest he'd just left lay near the foothills on the range's outskirts.
From what Bai Chuan knew, that area was probably very close to a human settlement. That explained why human corpses had washed in. Judging by the clothes on those bodies, the world he was in now seemed to resemble the ancient world of his previous life.
Of course, he couldn't guarantee that he was completely right. He could only make out that the clothes were made of something like hemp and were very plain in style. As for their patterns, colors, and the like, he couldn't tell with his snake eyes.
He still had far too little information to work out anything concrete, and yet he didn't dare ask around.
He simply lacked the foundation.
He decided to burrow deeper into the mountains this time. He wouldn't go anywhere near humans until he was invincible.
All along the way, lush greenery spread in every direction, and birdsong mingled with the chirping of insects in the air.
For the first time, Bai Chuan decided that it was all so beautiful.
By comparison, the place he'd left behind seemed like hell.
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