The exotic beasts surrounding the Sword-Spiked Golden-Furred Wild Boars were a pack of wolves, each only half the size of a boar.
These wolves were hairless, their bodies covered in metallic scales. They had four legs, and their claw tips also gleamed like metal.
They were lean, with protruding bones, yet each had a long, slender bony tail covered in thin skin!
Their bony tails were extremely tough and reached five meters in length, with a metal bone blade flashing sharply at the tip!
On another animal, such a long, slender tail would have affected its balance when moving.
But these long tails did not hinder them at all, because they could curl their bony tails up and retract them.
Normally, their long tails remained curled up, not affecting their agility in the slightest.
Thus, these wolves, whose life tier reached no higher than three-star Black Iron, were also called Curled-Tail Bone-Armored Wolves!
They were metal-attribute exotic beasts, as well as variants of wolves native to this world.
Individually, these wolves were not powerful, but they often moved in packs of over thirty, daring to hunt high-tier Black Iron and even Bronze-tier exotic beasts.
Any exotic beast their tail blades could cut open was potential prey.
They had extremely powerful perception, capable of using dark energy to sense other exotic beasts' life fields. It was formidable.
Had Jiang Ziliu not been confident in his SSS-rank Life Aura Concealment skill, he would never have dared watch a Curled-Tail Bone-Armored Wolf hunt from so close.
They carefully crept into position around the Sword-Spiked Golden-Furred Wild Boars and slowly drew closer.
This herd numbered around twenty-seven, but as many as thirteen were young.
Four Curled-Tail Bone-Armored Wolves crept close to the Sword-Spiked Golden-Furred Wild Boar leader.
The others targeted the herd's young and some of its weaker adults.
They gradually crept within ten meters of the herd.
Curled-Tail Bone-Armored Wolves lived in matriarchal groups, and their female wolf king attacked first.
Once in position, she swiftly leaped forward, landing four meters from a Sword-Spiked Golden-Furred Wild Boar's flank. Her bony tail snapped forward and slashed, then snapped forward and slashed again.
Then she swiftly turned and fled backward with practiced ease.
In that consecutive double strike, the first slash of her long bony tail sliced open the Sword-Spiked Golden-Furred Wild Boar's belly.
The second slashed the belly of the young boar it was protecting.
Sword-Spiked Golden-Furred Wild Boars had powerful defenses, but those defenses were concentrated mainly on their backs and other areas. Although their soft bellies had fat, they were tender-a relatively obvious weakness.
Ordinary predators simply found it difficult to attack their bellies.
But Curled-Tail Bone-Armored Wolves were an exception. They were metal-attribute exotic beasts, and humans speculated that their supernatural ability was Bone Metal Reinforcement.
Their bones contained an extremely high proportion of metal and had an exceptionally tough structure.
Combined with their agile movements, this allowed their tail blades to slice open Sword-Spiked Golden-Furred Wild Boars' bellies with ease.
Their strength was generally rather low, however. When attacked, their bones were tough, but their internal organs were easily injured.
Thus, their usual hunting method was to retreat after a single strike, successful or not.
This experienced female Curled-Tail Bone-Armored Wolf leader had struck down two targets in one blow.
Although she had not killed the adult and young boar, she had inflicted enormous wounds on them, and even their intestines spilled out.
The Sword-Spiked Golden-Furred Wild Boars would continue bleeding from these injuries because the wolves' bone blades carried metallic toxins that prevented wounds from healing.
This would keep their prey's wounds bleeding until they died!
The other Curled-Tail Bone-Armored Wolves attacked as soon as their leader moved, with less than a second between them!
They used the same method, lunging within three to four meters of the boars before stabbing or slashing with their bony tails, then swiftly fleeing after wounding them.
However, these Sword-Spiked Golden-Furred Wild Boars were no easy opponents either.
Experienced as they were, they quickly dropped flat when encountering Curled-Tail Bone-Armored Wolves. After all, they were "old acquaintances"-they simply enjoyed "loving and killing each other"!
This protective movement caused some of the wolves' attacks to miss their mark, merely nicking a little skin on the boars' backs and leaving tiny wounds, if any.
After all, Sword-Spiked Golden-Furred Wild Boars had very strong defenses.
One slightly smaller Curled-Tail Bone-Armored Wolf lacked experience and slashed directly against the bone blades on a boar's back.
This time, its own tail blade was chipped.
These boars' bone spikes were both defensive weapons and their toughest parts, even tougher than the wolves' bone blades.
Moreover, Sword-Spiked Golden-Haired Pigs also had ranged attacks. Their mature golden hairs were like sharp needles and could be fired out!
Some of their hairs matured over time, and within a period afterward, they would shed them naturally even if they did not use them to attack.
Once too many of these mature golden hairs accumulated, they hindered the boars' movements and could even injure the boars themselves when they crashed into rocks or sturdy trees.
Naturally, these needlelike hairs were most effective when used for defense and attack.
Two Curled-Tail Bone-Armored Wolves failed to escape in time after attacking and were struck by the boars' deadly counterattack, their bodies riddled with spikes.
They whimpered as they fled into the distance.
Without companions to bite out these golden hairs, they would gradually die in agony.
After this wave of attacks, ten Sword-Spiked Golden-Haired Pigs had suffered severe injuries, their bellies sliced open.
Seven were young, and three were adults.
The boar leader had also been attacked, but it reacted faster and lay down in time.
However, the wolves had attacked it to enrage it.
Sure enough, the furious boar leader chased those few wolves westward along the valley floor, completely forgetting that its herd needed protection.
Boar-type exotic beasts were powerful, but their irritable, explosive temperaments made some predators wary while also making them easy for others to exploit.
Next, the Curled-Tail Bone-Armored Wolves trotted around the herd, constantly harassing the Sword-Spiked Golden-Furred Wild Boars and looking for chances to attack again.
They wanted to get the herd moving and make the wounded boars even more frightened.
As the herd ran, the wounded ones would lose blood faster, hastening their deaths.
Those too badly injured to run were finished off by Sword-Tail Bone-Armored Wolves from a distance, until they were utterly dead.
Before long, the Sword-Spiked Golden-Furred Wild Boar leader came to its senses and guarded the wounded members.
But soon, it discovered they were beyond saving. Helplessly, it could only abandon them and follow the scent to catch up with the surviving herd.
At that moment, Jiang Ziliu, who had been watching from hiding, suddenly sensed something and looked up.
Two enormous Wind-Piercing Blue-Feathered Eagles with three-meter wingspans were circling in the sky. They were Black Iron-tier wind-attribute exotic beasts.
Their favorite activity was following Curled-Tail Bone-Armored Wolves and stealing their prey.
The wolves also spotted them and immediately dragged the seven dying young boars toward nearby trees or beneath rocks.
The three adult boars were extremely heavy, and the eagles could not carry them off at all, so the wolves were not worried about them.
But although the wolves reacted quickly, the Wind-Piercing Blue-Feathered Eagles were even faster!
They had already swooped down at tremendous speed, dodging the bone blades the furious wolves thrust at them and carrying off one young Sword-Spiked Golden-Furred Wild Boar each.
The Wind-Piercing Blue-Feathered Eagles had successfully stolen two spoils from the Curled-Tail Bone-Armored Wolves!
Their original haul would have provided food for the coming week, with some left over.
But after the eagles' theft, their remaining food would barely last even a week.
After all, the wolves also had young to feed, and two young boars amounted to a considerable quantity of meat.
Moreover, the flesh and beast cores of metal-attribute exotic beasts like Sword-Spiked Golden-Furred Wild Boars were ideally suited to their young's growth.
Yet metal-attribute prey was not so common in the wilderness.
With their prey stolen, the wolves could no longer wait for the wounded boars to bleed to death on their own. They swarmed forward and swiftly killed the surviving adult boars.
Then their tail blades swung rapidly, cutting the prey into large chunks just small enough to carry in their mouths.
They ate the portions they could not carry away themselves.
After the wolves left, the scattered scraps of flesh and blood quickly attracted large numbers of scavenging insects and small rodents.
They would soon clean away every scrap, making it seem as though no bloody hunt between exotic beasts had ever taken place here.
Having watched this battle between exotic beasts, Jiang Ziliu understood much of what his books had said before and gained deeper insights.
It gave him much to think about and more experience in how to respond when facing exotic beasts.
At the same time, this struggle between exotic beasts also allowed him to identify details that required attention when raising exotic beasts of the same types.
Namely, beast tamers needed to protect their tamed beasts' weaknesses or supplement their defenses.
Although wild exotic beasts did not possess full human intelligence, their intelligence in hunting and combat could not be underestimated in the slightest!