Into the Mountains

Chapter 46: Into the Mountains

It was past eight in the evening by the time he neared the village.

Xiang Kun had originally planned to check out the tree mentioned by the poster that night and confirm whether the figure he'd seen was the Giant Owl. He would ask the driver who'd brought him to wait, then find a hotel or inn in a nearby town and rest for the night before heading into the mountains to search the next day.

But once it got dark, Xiang Kun changed his mind.

He'd suddenly realized that his night vision had improved dramatically—or, more accurately, had mutated.

In low light, he could consciously switch to a new visual mode, as if a layer of "lenses" had appeared over his retinas. The already dim surroundings instantly became crystal clear, even clearer than the images from the night-vision goggles he'd seen in movies and on television.

But the scenery he saw in this mode was different from normal. There were no colors; the whole world seemed to be made up of black and white—or, more precisely, different degrees of light and dark. Yet this mode let him judge the movement and distance of objects with remarkable clarity.

This wasn't merely an improvement in his vision. He'd gained an entirely new mode of sight.

He knew this wasn't due to his training or to anything affecting the direction of his mutation. There was a ninety-nine percent chance it was because he'd drunk the Giant Owl's blood.

He'd read up on it. Owls had exceptionally strong night vision.

With this ability, Xiang Kun could move through the mountains at night. Many things no longer had to wait until daylight.

So when they arrived, Xiang Kun sent the small car that had brought him back.

Most of the village's young people had gone to the cities to work or study, leaving mostly the elderly behind. There were no streetlights, and unless something was going on, people went to bed early. There wouldn't be many people out on the roads.

Xiang Kun went undisturbed as he quietly found the largest tree at the village entrance, just as the poster had described.

He'd never climbed a tree before, but with his current physical abilities, it was no problem.

He scrambled up in no time, switched back to normal vision, and turned on his flashlight to carefully inspect the area where the poster said the "figure" had appeared.

It wasn't that he couldn't see clearly in night-vision mode, but some traces were easier to distinguish by color, and bright light made it easier to pick out details.

After searching the tree with a rustle for more than twenty minutes, Xiang Kun found claw marks.

He knew that if the figure the poster had seen in the tree a month ago really had been the Giant Owl, then its weight, combined with its enlarged body and sharp claws, would certainly have left deep marks. And they would have been on a sturdy branch.

The owl's scent had faded over the past month, but the claw marks remained.

Finding them lifted Xiang Kun's spirits. His analysis and first instincts had been right; the trip hadn't been for nothing.

After climbing down, Xiang Kun took out his phone and opened the map app to study the area around the village.

In fact, he'd already done his research on the way here. Though the village was in the mountains, it was hardly deep in the wilderness. The nearest town was only a little over forty minutes away by car, and the roads weren't particularly bad. There was plenty of traffic. At most, this had been a stopover for the owl after it left its original habitat.

There was no trace of the owl's scent here now, and even if there had been, Xiang Kun couldn't have started tracking it by scent from this spot.

The map showed that the farther east and south he went from the village, the more plains and cities there were, and the more developed the area became.

To the north stood a mountain, but beyond it were towns with fairly large populations.

Only to the west did the mountains and forests grow more numerous and dense, and the land less developed, stretching deep into the neighboring province.

Xiang Kun guessed that the Giant Owl had lived somewhere in that area.

He didn't linger nearby or find somewhere to rest for the night. Instead, he shouldered his backpack and headed west, stepping into the mountains under cover of darkness.

His backpack held two changes of clothes, several pairs of socks and underwear, a power bank, a flashlight and a row of spare batteries, a Swiss Army knife, and a water bottle.

Any wilderness survival enthusiast who saw what Xiang Kun had brought would probably shake their head. It was far too little; he didn't have many basic essentials.

But for Xiang Kun, it was enough.

In fact, thanks to the night vision he'd just discovered, he didn't even need a flashlight to travel at night.

He didn't always stick to the trails, nor did he simply charge west without thinking. He often stopped to climb a tall tree or reach some other high point with a good view, then looked around.

Xiang Kun compared the surrounding scenery with the images in the owl's memories. This helped him follow its tracks and locate its habitat, searching for any traces it had left behind.

At two in the afternoon on August 16, a bald backpacker sprinted along a winding mountain road.

He didn't just run along the road. When he reached certain bends, he even jumped down from above to take a shortcut.

The drops were at least as high as a two-story building, but after landing, the bald man rolled along the road to absorb the impact, then kept sprinting at full speed.

Anyone who saw him would have been astonished—not only by how fast he ran or how he leaped down from such a height, but also by the fact that he was barefoot.

The bald man was none other than Xiang Kun. Five days after entering the deep mountains alone, he'd decided to end his journey and head home.

All told, Xiang Kun had spent only four and a half days in the mountains, about 110 hours. But unlike ordinary people, he'd barely stopped to rest during those 110 hours. Day and night, he'd kept moving. He didn't need to search for food or cook, didn't need to rest or sleep, and didn't even need to find a place to relieve himself. So he'd probably made better use of those four and a half days than an ordinary person could in fifteen.

He'd walked his shoes to pieces. He'd brought spare clothes in his backpack, but there was no way to replace his shoes. He had no choice but to make do with his own bare feet. At first, they'd become a bloody mess soon after he started walking, scraped and bruised all over. But his recovery was strong, and he hadn't paid it much mind. He'd treated it as targeted training for recovering from injuries.

Over the four and a half days, Xiang Kun had found many traces left by the owl, mostly claw marks in various places. Using the images from its memories, he'd even found the skeleton of a wild animal killed by the owl. The marks on it showed just how terrifyingly destructive the owl's claws were.

He'd also found the nest the owl had made after mutating—a cave in a cliff face.

Xiang Kun had also determined the area where the owl had hunted and lived before mutating. Many landmarks matched the images from the memories he'd acquired.

Unfortunately, he hadn't found any clues about what had caused the Giant Owl to mutate.

Besides that, Xiang Kun had hunted a few wild animals in the mountains. He'd only brought a Swiss Army knife, so taking on a large, thick-skinned animal like a wild boar would have been difficult, but catching a hare or pheasant was easy enough.

He mainly wanted to try the blood of these wild animals and see how it differed from the blood of farm-raised poultry and livestock bought at the market. He'd only licked a little of each, not daring to try more in case he consumed too much blood and fell asleep.

The result was that there was no real difference from the meat bought at the market.

Still, this trip into the mountains hadn't been a complete waste.