For a moment, Bai Chuan's curiosity stirred, but his reason warned him that there might be danger, and that he shouldn't rush over and poke his nose into it.
He hesitated, thought it over for a while, and decided he still wanted to take a look.
He valued his life, but that didn't mean he was a coward.
If something went wrong inside someone's own territory and their first reaction was to run away, too afraid even to find out what was happening, then what good was it to be strong?
If you backed down today because you feared danger, tomorrow you'd back down because you feared someone plotting against you. And after that...
Back down once, then again, and one day you might find there was nowhere left to retreat.
After all, how could there possibly be any people in this uninhabited place, where he'd lived for half a year?
Maybe there was some rare treasure hidden in the woods.
His strength wasn't too shabby these days, either. Just his ability to generate electricity could give anyone who took a hit a nasty shock.
With that in mind, Bai Chuan lowered his body and crept quietly toward the sound.
"Crack~"
Just then, the distant snap of a broken branch reached him.
Bai Chuan's snake body stiffened. "Uh-oh. Don't tell me I'm that unlucky?"
He'd just said there couldn't possibly be any people, and now there really were?
The next instant, he burst into motion and silently climbed a tree. At the same time, his body's color shifted rapidly until it matched the surroundings perfectly. His movements fell to near zero.
The whole thing flowed seamlessly, without a single wasted motion or sound.
Only then did a woman's voice drift closer, tinged with confusion. "%*#...?"
"#%&..."
A warm male voice replied.
Before long, a man and a woman appeared, both dressed in fitted clothes as they moved nimbly through the forest, almost like apes in the trees.
A dozen seconds later, they hurried away, speaking in a strange, incomprehensible language.
Throughout it all, Bai Chuan didn't move an inch. He silently watched the two disappear into the distance.
What were they saying?
That was Bai Chuan's first thought.
Oh, no. He hadn't expected his first problem after being reborn in another world to be that he couldn't understand what people were saying.
Bai Chuan was speechless.
Even if he didn't know what they were saying, he was Bai Chuan, after all.
Considering the strange freezing phenomenon on the lake he'd seen before, and now the people who had inexplicably appeared in this remote wilderness, he guessed they were connected somehow. Otherwise, who would come all the way to the depths of the mountains for no reason?
Looks like something big really was happening.
Bai Chuan thought it over, then climbed down from the tree and began moving slowly in the same direction.
At that moment, his entire body sprang to life, like an old machine slowly starting up again, ready to run at full power. He pushed his senses to their limit.
Before long, he stopped once more.
A few more people had appeared behind him. Some carried knives, others gripped clubs, and still others had swords strapped to their backs...
"Looks like quite a few people have come this time," Bai Chuan murmured inwardly, looking in their direction.
The language barrier really was a nuisance. He couldn't even understand what they were here for.
He wondered what sort of abilities these people had.
Could their abilities help him understand what they were saying?
That thought suddenly occurred to Bai Chuan.
But there were too many people around now. He needed to be careful and watch what they did and what they were after.
Over the next few days, Bai Chuan watched what these uninvited guests got up to.
Some were light on their feet and moved like the wind, as nimble as monkeys in the mountains. Others were heavy and powerful, charging with the force of wild boars...
They all had one goal in common: they were searching for something. Yet along the way, they seized all kinds of animals in droves.
Every living thing in the forest suffered.
Some caught herds of deer, forcibly sliced off their tender antlers, and drank their blood raw. Others slaughtered packs of wolves, pulled out their teeth and tore off their claws, then smeared a special liquid all over their bodies. Still others caught all kinds of venomous creatures, extracted their poison, and rubbed it onto their own hands...
And, of course, some muttered to themselves as they searched for various plants, then stuffed them straight into their mouths and chewed.
Their behavior was bizarre, yet each of them possessed enough strength to make even ferocious beasts give way.
Watching scene after scene made Bai Chuan's blood run cold. He couldn't help wondering: Were these really people? Or were they practicing some kind of evil art?
In no time, these uninvited guests had utterly ravaged the forest, once rich with the breath of the primordial wilds.
Bai Chuan couldn't help feeling lucky that he could turn invisible and hide. Otherwise, with so many people surrounding him, he probably wouldn't have escaped.
As a venomous snake, he'd surely have been pinned down and forced to yield his poison. And given how strange his body was, they might even have skinned him and drunk his blood.
"Roar~!"
Just then, a tiger's roar, full of menace, echoed from afar, shaking the leaves and branches in the forest until they rustled.
"Again."
Bai Chuan looked in that direction and murmured to himself. This wasn't the first time he'd heard the tiger's roar, but compared to the furious bellow from before, this one carried a deep, unmistakable exhaustion.
His instincts told him the tiger was going to be worn to death.
That was right. These newcomers might have strange abilities, but aside from a few exceptional individuals, most of them couldn't take on the king of the forest alone.
But they had numbers.
Taking advantage of their sheer numbers, they'd spent the past few days trying to wear the tiger down with encirclement and waves of attacks.
If it went without rest or replenishment for a few days, even a tiger would be dragged to its death.
He just didn't know what they were after.
Bai Chuan's instincts told him the tiger wasn't their target, because the strongest among them were still searching as if nothing else mattered.
Bai Chuan raised his body and left the den buried more than twenty meters underground, slithering toward the surface.
Along the way, he carefully avoided the people who occasionally passed by, until at last he reached a corpse.
It belonged to one of the humans who had died in the past few days, fighting among themselves over a plant.
Bai Chuan shook his head, narrowed his eyes, and an alert instantly appeared before him.
Scanning in progress...87%...
Right. Over the past few days, apart from occasionally going out to observe these humans, he'd also come here to scan the corpse.
Under the circumstances, the fastest way to scan the human's ability model would have been to eat the corpse. And since it had been abandoned in the forest, nobody would suspect anything even if he did.
But he'd been human in his previous life. He couldn't bring himself to eat it.
Perhaps now that he was no longer human, he could kill someone for his own sake without a moment's hesitation.
But making himself eat the corpse was something he simply couldn't do.
That wasn't being precious. It was the worldview his previous life had cultivated over so many years, still influencing him.
A person still needed to have a bottom line.
And this was probably the last one he had.
Before you continue