Hunting Alone

"How could that possibly work?"

The village chief's brows twisted into a knot, his voice carrying a rare urgency. "The Great Wilderness is fraught with danger. If you go out alone and something happens, you could die without even a place to bury your bones!"

Lin Yi stood before him and waited until he had finished before speaking slowly. His tone was neither hurried nor agitated, as though he had turned these words over in his mind countless times already.

"Village Chief, I've thought it through. With my current strength, there won't be any problem hunting around the outskirts of the tribe."

He pointed outside. "Brother Biao is badly injured now and won't be able to fight for at least a month. The other Hunting Team members may all be in the Tidal Surge Realm, but honestly, at that level, they can barely protect themselves in the Great Wilderness.

"If I take them hunting with me, it'll be easier for them to become prey instead."

The village chief opened his mouth, but Lin Yi did not stop. He continued, "Ferocious Beasts are like people—they choose their targets too. My blood-qi is far stronger than the others in the Hunting Team. Standing among them, I'd be the most conspicuous target.

"If we truly run into something powerful, I'll be the first one it pounces on. The others would only get dragged in because of me."

He paused, softening his tone slightly. "If I go alone, I won't be a burden. If I can beat it, I'll fight. If I can't, I'll run. With my current speed, nothing around the edge of the Great Wilderness can catch me."

The village chief fell silent for a long while. He lowered his head and looked at the wrinkles and brown spots on the back of his hand, his fingers twisting back and forth inside his sleeves, until it finally became a heavy sigh.

"...I understand your reasoning. But what if?"

"There won't be a what if." Lin Yi's answer was resolute. "I'll only stay around the edges of the area where we usually operate. I won't go deep inside. And it's more convenient alone—I can run or fight without having to divide my attention to look after anyone else."

As he spoke, he took out a roll of beast hide from his clothes.

Lin Yi held the beast hide out before the village chief.

"Village Chief, this is for you."

The village chief accepted the beast hide and slowly unfurled it.

His gaze swept over it at first. Then it moved down line by line, and the more he read, the heavier his breathing became.

"...'Flowing Light, Fleeting Shadow,' and 'Savage Bull Art.'" His voice was somewhat hoarse.

The village chief stared blankly at him and said nothing for a long while.

He clenched the roll of beast hide in his hand, his fingertips tightening until his knuckles turned white. Together with the previous Savage Bull Diagram, this young man had personally created three cultivation arts and martial skills since arriving at the tribe.

Any one of them would be enough to turn a small tribe's fortunes around.

"You brat..." The village chief's voice was low and heavy. "You really are a monster."

He lowered his head for another look at the beast-hide scroll in his hand, then raised it again and let out a long breath. "Fine. Perhaps I shouldn't stop you. Do as you see fit."

He carefully tucked the beast hide into his clothes and patted his chest, then added another sentence.

"With your current strength, you've already surpassed those ordinary Dragonlike Realm Ferocious Beasts by far. Just be careful."

"Don't worry, Village Chief. I'll be twice as careful." Lin Yi's tone gained a hint of ease. "Please keep a close eye on the Hunting Team's cultivation. Once they've mastered Water Walking, these arts can be passed down."

The village chief nodded, then asked one more question. "When do you plan to leave?"

"Now." Lin Yi answered casually, then turned and headed outside.

"You must come back alive." The village chief's voice chased after him from behind, much heavier than usual.

Lin Yi did not turn back. He merely raised a hand and waved behind him without stopping.

He walked out of the village chief's courtyard and crossed the center of the tribe along the dirt road he knew like the back of his hand.

Lin Yi passed the last stone house and stopped between the two thick totem pillars at the village entrance. He turned around and gave the tribe behind him one final look.

He walked out through the village gates and onto the dirt road leading to the hunting grounds.

After walking for a while, he began to accelerate. Blood-gold patterns surfaced over his legs, and with Flowing Light, his figure flitted lightly between the trees, his feet making almost no sound.

Before long, he arrived at the familiar place—the entrance to the hunting grounds the Hunting Team often visited.

That old crooked-necked tree still stood there, several old claw marks left in its bark.

Lin Yi stopped, took a deep breath, and curved his lips into a smile. Then he activated Spirit Eyes.

In that instant, his vision underwent an earth-shaking transformation.

What had looked like nothing more than rough bark to the naked eye became distinctly layered structures in his sight: the outermost dry, cracked old bark, the phloem beneath it, then the moist woody layer below. Every layer was crystal clear.

He turned to look at a nearby clump of shrubs. At the broken ends of branches snapped by some animal, the direction in which the fibers had torn, traces of sap seeping out, even a tuft of grayish-brown fur stuck to the cross-section—all of it flooded into his vision in minute detail.

"Hiss—" Lin Yi could not help drawing in a sharp breath, the smile on his face impossible to suppress. "It's Great Clarity clear."

He crouched down and swept his gaze across the traces around him.

The penetrating power of Spirit Eyes allowed him to effortlessly see old footprints beneath the thin layer of soil and dead leaves, even distinguishing how compacted the mud at the bottom of each print was.

The details that had once required Mang and Biao's experience to judge were now all laid bare before his eyes.

"If I still get ambushed by a Ferocious Beast after this, I might as well quit." He stood up, brushed the dirt from his hands, and could not hide the smugness in his voice.

He turned in place, using Spirit Eyes to scan every direction nearby.

Footprints, crushed vegetation—every sort of information streamed into his mind, where his Super Brain rapidly processed and assembled it, quickly reaching a conclusion.

There was nothing worth noting in this area for now. Even the few low-level Ferocious Beasts had no intention of coming near.

"Let's go a little deeper." Lin Yi made his decision.

He followed an obvious beast trail trampled out by Ferocious Beasts and continued exploring deeper within.

Every so often, he used Spirit Eyes to scan the traces around him, making sure he did not miss anything.

Along the way, he encountered several groups of Savage Bulls, a few Earth Gnawers, and several strange-looking Ferocious Beasts whose names he did not know. Their gray, dusty fur was wrinkled into clumps, their limbs were short and small, and from their auras alone, he could tell they could barely even reach the First Cry Realm.

Lin Yi could not be bothered to act and simply went around them.

He did not realize that he had already passed beyond the range where the Hunting Team usually operated.

The terrain beneath his feet changed without him noticing. The kinds of trees were different, and the ground shifted from gravel and sandy soil to thicker humus, soft and soundless beneath his feet.

The silence around him also deepened. Even birdsong had become sparse.

Lin Yi walked a little farther when Spirit Eyes suddenly caught something.

About sixty zhang ahead, on a dirt slope half-hidden by vines and shrubs, was a dark, shadowy cave entrance.

The opening was about the height of a person. The soil around its edges had been rubbed smooth and shiny by repeated passage, and several thick, short tufts of dark-brown fur clung to its surface.

Lin Yi stopped and crouched behind a patch of short grass, his Spirit Eyes piercing through the surface soil and stones of the slope.

A massive bear lay inside the cave.

That bear was larger than any Ferocious Beast the tribe had ever seen. Its shoulders and back were as solid as a hill, its limbs as thick as stone pillars.

Its fur was dark brown, gleaming with an oily dark sheen in the dim cave light.

It lay on its side in the depths of the cave, seemingly asleep.

Even from dozens of zhang away, with a thick layer of earth and stone between them, Lin Yi's Spirit Eyes could still clearly see the thickness of the bear's muscles and the sturdiness of its bones beneath its fur.

Its aura was heavy and deep, long and unbroken, carrying a pressure utterly unlike that of ordinary Ferocious Beasts. It felt much like the Inkshadow Leopard from before.

Dragonlike Blood-Qi.

"Oh ho." Lin Yi licked his lips, his eyes lighting up. "I was just lacking something to test my skills on, and here comes a big one."

He crouched behind the grass, his gaze fixed through the soil on the giant bear still sleeping in the cave, already calculating in his mind.

With the penetrating power of Spirit Eyes fully activated, the bear's flesh, bones, and meridians became transparent layer by layer in his vision, every detail precisely etched into his mind.

A trace of a wicked smile quietly rose at the corner of his lips.