Setting Out

Chapter 45: Setting Out

Xiang Kun reviewed the two life-or-death struggles he had with the giant owl.

The first encounter by the lake was a chance meeting. Although the owl held the initiative, it could not be entirely considered a sneak attack; after all, Xiang Kun had already locked onto it using his sense of smell and had time to react.

In terms of his response, he did nothing wrong. After dodging the initial pounce, he chose not to continue fleeing or expose his back to the giant owl, but instead opted for close-quarters combat, relying on raw strength to force a stalemate. Thus, despite losing the initiative and responding in haste, he still managed to drive the owl away by trading injury for injury.

The second encounter in the mountain forest saw Xiang Kun take the initiative to seek battle. He even drew his own blood to lure the giant owl into attacking. Then, utilizing the split second of the owl's downward pounce, he seized the timing and the opening, leaping up to pass between its talons, grabbing hold of the owl, and driving the screwdriver into its eye.

It might have looked like he was taking a reckless risk, but in reality, Xiang Kun relied on his powerful dynamic vision to judge the owl's movements with great precision. Coupled with the calculation that the owl's injured eye had not yet recovered—impacting its vision and causing deviations and delays in its judgment of space and distance—his chances of success were much higher.

Summing it up, Xiang Kun concluded:

1. His dynamic vision ability needs further strengthening; it plays a critical role during head-on combat or when encountering danger.

2. His strength still needs improvement, but at the same time, his flexibility, speed, and jumping ability must not be compromised. This requires balancing the training volume between the two. He must continue extensive training in flexibility, agility, and running speed while performing strength training to avoid excessive growth in weight and bulk.

3. His previous judgment regarding combat techniques was indeed correct. For him now, most systematic combat techniques are of little help because those techniques are designed for the bodies of normal humans. He does not need to compete in matches or rings. In a life-or-death struggle like last night, once contact is made, life and death are decided in an instant. It is simply about being faster, stronger, fiercer, and more accurate. No amount of technique is as useful as a screwdriver or a piece of iron. However, it is not that he needs no techniques at all; he still needs to summarize and learn for himself, finding methods that suit him and better utilize his physical functions.

4. When encountering mutated raptors or beasts like the giant owl, one must not act recklessly, nor show cowardice. One must target their weaknesses, and once identified, go all out. One must be fiercer and more vicious than they are.

Reflecting on the two battles with the giant owl, Xiang Kun discovered that apart from the initial shock of seeing the creature's appearance, he felt no fear or terror at any other time—whether trading injuries by the lake or leaping to assassinate it in the mountains. He felt tension and excitement, but no fear.

The wounds inflicted by the owl were painful, but that pain made him feel incredibly stimulated, even sensing that he could unleash power greater than his usual limits. The more it hurt, the sharper his thinking became. After the pain subsided and the wounds healed, there was even a sense of pleasure similar to what he felt after long-distance running or working out in the past.

He felt that he seemed to enjoy the thrill of life-or-death combat.

This must be a change brought about by his physical mutation, because the old him had always been cautious and careful—to put it bluntly, being a bit cowardly was not an incorrect assessment.

This also served as a silent warning to himself: he needed to monitor his emotions.

When encountering danger, he must be fierce, vicious, and willing to risk his life, but in ordinary times, he needed to exercise restraint to avoid being influenced by these bloodthirsty and violent impulses.

Next, Xiang Kun spent several hours roughly organizing the fragments of memory he had obtained from the giant owl.

The various memory fragments of the owl after its mutation spanned at least four seasons, so the time since the owl's mutation should be at least a year.

In the memories, the owl had hunted and consumed the blood of two hundred and thirteen prey of various sizes after its mutation.

If Xiang Kun were the benchmark, it should have undergone at least two hundred and thirteen mutations—though there were likely many more hunting and blood-drinking memories that Xiang Kun did not receive.

As for the human cities it passed through, besides the areas in this city familiar to Xiang Kun, there was another relatively backward county or town it passed through when it first left the deep mountains.

Although there were no landmark buildings or shop names in the memories for Xiang Kun to determine the location, he saw the Chinese characters and letters on the license plates of several cars on the road, knowing it was a neighboring city.

Xiang Kun remembered the Tieba post he found when searching on his computer after being attacked by the giant owl at the lake last night; it was indeed a post from a county-level Tieba in a neighboring city.

Thus, Xiang Kun found the post and sent a private message to the user, claiming to be a reporter from a news website who wanted to interview him.

He then looked up the user's previous posts and used his username, location, age, and other information to perform a full-network search, finding his Weibo account and confirming that his home was in a village in a county of the neighboring city.

After receiving the new phone from JD.com in the afternoon, Xiang Kun went straight out, took a bus to the station, and bought a ticket to the neighboring city.

Upon arriving at the station in the neighboring city, Xiang Kun transferred to a vehicle heading to the county where the poster lived.

On the bus, Xiang Kun finally received a private message reply from the poster, though the other party clearly did not believe Xiang Kun was a reporter and thought he was a scammer.

Xiang Kun did not waste words; he told him to send a phone number and topped it up with 100 yuan as an "interview red envelope," promising further compensation after the interview.

The man sent a number with skepticism, only to immediately receive a text message from his carrier confirming the 100-yuan top-up.

Xiang Kun immediately called him, asking about the situation at the time and the specific location in the village where he saw the "freak" in the tree, as well as which tree it was.

The poster repeated the details from his post in more depth, while Xiang Kun interjected with questions from time to time.

"Did that freak standing in the tree move? What was its method of movement?"

"What was the shape of the freak? For example, was its head large? Could you see its limbs?"

"Did you go near the tree later to observe? Were there any traces left behind, such as footprints, claw marks, or excrement?"

"Before it disappeared, did you see the direction of its movement—upward or downward?"

The poster answered them one by one, and at the end, asked curiously, "Which website are you a reporter for? Why are you interested in my post? That post didn't have many replies, and it didn't have much traffic or popularity."

Xiang Kun casually bluffed, "I'm a reporter for UC News. We are currently doing a feature on rural strange tales, so we are collecting similar stories everywhere. It needs to have a realistic basis and be from someone with firsthand experience, so I found your post online and thought it was worth digging into... Is this story of yours real?"

"Of course, it's definitely real! By the way, what was the other compensation you mentioned earlier...?" The poster did not suspect anything and began to look forward to the promised reward.

"Don't worry. Once I report the story to our editor-in-chief for review, if it passes, I will formally apply for a face-to-face interview with you, and there will be a substantial interview fee then."

After hanging up, Xiang Kun was already at the county station. He found a car outside the station and headed to the village the poster had mentioned.

After finishing the call and hearing the description, Xiang Kun felt that the "human figure" in the tree seen by the other party a month ago was very likely the giant owl. When the car drove onto the mountain road leading to the village, Xiang Kun became even more certain—because he had seen this road in the giant owl's memory fragments, though in the memories, it was viewed from the air.

Xiang Kun followed the clues immediately because he wanted to find the place where the giant owl originally lived, to see if he could find clues as to how it mutated, or if there were any others of its kind.