Over the next few days, Zhao Ya wandered through the mountains and forests, searching for traces of mutated tigers and wild boars, but he found nothing.
Zhao Ya had expected as much.
After all, even among ordinary beasts, tigers and wild boars were absolute predators, let alone mutated ones.
Powerful mutated beasts like these often had their own territory. The mountains and forests stretching for a dozen or more li around them might all fall within their domain.
Other mutated beasts couldn't enter at will.
This made them all the harder to track.
But Zhao Ya wasn't discouraged. Instead, he ventured deeper and deeper into the forest.
Finally, on this day, he made a discovery.
It was a dense stretch of forest, cut through by a stream that provided the animals with a precious source of water.
Zhao Ya had found a clue beside the stream.
It was an adult elk, powerfully built, with sharp antlers. Ordinary beasts were no match for it.
But now its neck had been bitten clean through, its antlers smashed apart by brute force, and most of the flesh stripped from its body, leaving behind only a scarred skeleton.
Judging by the bite marks, Zhao Ya concluded that an adult tiger had done this.
And it hadn't happened long ago.
In this primeval forest, a carcass might not last even three days before countless predators devoured it.
Some flesh still clung to the elk's remains, so it had been no more than two days.
Zhao Ya was delighted. Now that he had found a trace, the rest would be easy.
He walked back and forth along both banks of the stream several times, soon spotting more clues. Following them, he eventually found the animal trail the tiger often used.
Against a tiger, especially a mutated