Jiang Ziliu carefully skirted the battlefield, doing his best to keep its bloody scent from clinging to him.
The bloody scent left over from the recent hunt would attract carnivorous and scavenging beasts.
Some carnivorous and scavenging beasts might even follow the scent to the Curled-Tail Bone-Armored Wolves' den.
However, the wolves usually made their dens in caves on steep terrain, where their tails could dig holes.
Whether those beasts could force their way inside would depend on their own abilities.
Ninety percent of the beasts in the wilderness were predators themselves, yet they could become someone else's prey the very next moment.
Following his planned route, Jiang Ziliu encountered more forested terrain the farther south he traveled.
This area had originally been entirely forested, but it was too close to Base No. 12, so humans had cleared some of the woods. Fewer trees meant less food, reducing the number of beasts near the base as much as possible.
The reduction in woodland diminished food resources, making the area less attractive to high-level beasts.
Under all these measures, the closer an area was to Base No. 12, the safer it became.
Human ingenuity was not limited to this one base. Most other bases employed similar methods!
The jungle here was dense, and humans had opened a broad road leading south.
Jiang Ziliu did not follow that road, however. For one thing, traveling along it made it easy for others to set their sights on him.
After all, he was just a "weak chicken," an easy target for low-level adult beast tamers with ill intentions to rob outright.
The wilderness was a lawless place. Not only were weaker beast tamers easily robbed, but even small merchant caravans could fall victim.
His other reason for choosing this route was to train himself in the wilderness.
Although the stretch he traveled was thoroughly wild territory, it was still a relatively safe area.
The territory outside the base was classified, in ascending order, into relatively safe areas, more dangerous areas, and dangerous areas.
He could experience the wilderness's various situations step by step, adapting to outdoor adventuring in the wilds from difficult to easy.
If he took the main road, Jiang Ziliu would make the leap in one go, stepping straight out of a safe area into a highly dangerous one!
Having weighed everything, he had already planned this route before venturing into the wilderness, intending to undergo adventures and training that progressed from easy to difficult.
By the time he had watched the battle between the boar and wolf beasts at close range, the sky was already turning dusky yellow.
When he reached the second large hilly area, night soon crept across the horizon.
Along the rest of the way, Jiang Ziliu encountered two more groups of mutated wild boars, Rock-Armored Unicorn Boars, as well as a three-meter-long Lightning Snake.
But thanks to the powerful concealing effect of Life Aura Concealment, none of them noticed Jiang Ziliu observing them at close range.
That night, Jiang Ziliu chose a safe resting place. He climbed into the crown of a thirty-meter-tall mutated toon tree to rest there overnight.
This species, native to this world, had grown enormous in the dark energy environment.
These trees had already been tall, reaching around ten meters, but now they stood thirty meters high.
There was nothing dangerous about this kind of tree. It had simply grown sturdier and taller.
Its crown was high and its trunk relatively smooth, making it difficult for ordinary beasts to climb.
But the crown of this giant toon tree had many thick branches, making it easy to find somewhere for a person to shelter.
Jiang Ziliu therefore chose its crown as his place to rest for the night.
His grip was now very strong, and he used his rope skillfully to haul himself into the crown.
This tree-climbing technique was one of the skills schools were required to teach, because it allowed people to climb tall trees and save their lives at critical moments in the wilderness or instance spaces.
After reaching the crown, he carefully inspected it and found nothing particularly unusual apart from a few bird nests.
His main reason for checking was to determine whether any dangerous venomous insects were present.
After all, large toon trees in his previous life had harbored plenty of insects. Fortunately, the toon trees in this world were different and had considerable resistance to insects.
Next, Jiang Ziliu tied a safety knot with his rope and secured it around himself to keep from accidentally falling after he went to sleep.
Only then did he take out his compressed rations, soak them in the purified water he carried to make a paste, and begin eating.
They did not taste good, but they were rich in nutrients, enough to meet his needs for these two days.
These rations were expensive because they contained powdered fruit from a special high-level plant. This powder was extremely rich in energy and nutrients but difficult to digest, making it a special food where one meal could sustain someone for two days.
They sold well because they were genuinely very useful.
Although they tasted mediocre, Jiang Ziliu finished them, then took out a beast core and some dried meat to feed the Mutated Lightning Snake.
He tossed another beast core down, and the Azurite Rock Man below caught it.
That core would be its food for these two days.
The Azurite Rock Man could also draw on the earth's power to sustain itself, so its nutritional requirements were somewhat lower.
After feeding them, he had the Azurite Rock Man rest beneath the tree and keep watch for the first half of the night. The Mutated Lightning Snake would rest first, then guard the second half.
He himself entered a half-asleep, half-awake state of rest, remaining on guard at all times.
At first, Jiang Ziliu could not sleep.
After all, this was the first night he had spent in the wilderness across both his lives.
Then Jiang Ziliu witnessed the terror lurking in the moonlit wilderness!
Less than an hour after nightfall, a vast, densely packed swarm surged from high in the distant sky like an evil black cloud. Wherever it passed, all living things fell silent as countless beasts suppressed their presence to avoid danger.
This surging black cloud was a colony of mutated bats, Three-Winged Six-Tailed Bats.
They lived in cracks in cliff faces, measured a foot and a half long, and had three pairs of small wings and six tails.
Their three pairs of small wings could beat at different frequencies and amplitudes.
This bodily structure made them exceptionally agile in the air, allowing them to fly at high speed, hover, and even fly backward.
Three-Winged Six-Tailed Bats were dual-attribute beasts of the mental and blood types.
Although their life tier reached only nine-star Gray Rock at the highest, they were extraordinarily numerous, with around one to three thousand in a single colony.
Three of their six tails were stinger tails that could inject paralyzing neurotoxin into prey and also had the effect of corrupting the mind and soul.
Three-Winged Six-Tailed Bats went out in groups and attacked in groups as well.
Ordinary beasts below Bronze level struggled to withstand these three stinger tails, which could easily pierce their skin.
Their other three tails were somewhat shorter, but their tips were structured like blood-drawing needles, allowing them to suck blood from beasts that had collapsed after being wounded and poisoned.
These creatures drank only blood and ate nothing else.
Their mouths could emit special supernatural ultrasonic waves that not only interfered with animals' hearing and disoriented them, but also carried a degree of mental attack.
When Three-Winged Six-Tailed Bats moved out in a group, these mental attacks rapidly amplified as their immense numbers combined, becoming terrifyingly powerful.
They made the beasts in the darkness extremely agitated.
Once those beasts could no longer keep themselves mentally restrained and moved about, the resulting disturbance would be pinpointed by the bats' ultrasonic waves.
What they faced next was a concentrated swarm attack from these little creatures.
Rodents that ran along the ground struggled to form large groups because of limited resources.
But the lightweight Three-Winged Six-Tailed Bats had no such trouble, because they could fly farther and range over a larger area.
Moreover, the blood that beasts provided as food gave them an ample supply of energy.
These conditions allowed Three-Winged Six-Tailed Bats to launch large-scale swarm attacks.
Their strength was very limited, however, and they relied entirely on this one tactic to survive.
But all things had natural enemies. Not long after the bats appeared, a six-meter-long, elongated beast glided over from afar.
It was a kind of multi-winged flying snake.
They were called Unicorn Lightning Feathered Serpents!
The Unicorn Lightning Feathered Serpent charged into the swarm of Three-Winged Six-Tailed Bats, continuously paddling its wings like a centipede's legs. Each time it opened its mouth, it could swallow a bat.
A powerful electrical field surrounded its single horn, filling the air with electrical power and paralyzing the nearby bats so it could easily swallow them motionless.
After all, Three-Winged Six-Tailed Bats were highly agile. Without paralyzing them, it would struggle to catch them directly in its jaws.
These bats were the best food for Unicorn Lightning Feathered Serpents, providing them with abundant life energy and nutrients.
The serpent's skin was incomparably tough, leaving it completely unafraid of the bats' tail-needle attacks, and it also had strong resistance to their poison.
Wherever the Three-Winged Six-Tailed Bats passed, they drained the blood of large numbers of low-level beasts.
Yet now they themselves had become food for the Unicorn Lightning Feathered Serpent.
The serpent relentlessly chased the bats, driving them out of the area and leaving the many beasts there a chance to survive.
Only a small number of unfortunate beasts became cannon fodder beneath the bats' attacks.
The wilderness at night was extremely dangerous. Before long, Jiang Ziliu heard another very faint, unusual sound.
He noticed a mass of something moving not far from the foot of the tree.
Then, by the moonlight, he saw what it was: a ball-shaped mass of vines was actually moving.
Its vines reached into some beast's burrow, and sounds of resistance came from inside, but it soon fell silent.
It was a Gale Earth Rabbit.
The vine-like plant quickly wrapped its vines around it, and before long, the Gale Earth Rabbit had become a dried corpse.
He immediately recalled the accounts of this plant-type beast!
This creature was called a Rolling Ball Blood-Devouring Vine!
It was a special bloodsucking plant that fed on blood and generally moved around at night.
During the day, it concealed itself as an ordinary plant, remaining motionless and refraining from attacking.
However, animal-type beasts that passed by it would unknowingly have plant pheromones left on their bodies.
At night, the Rolling Ball Blood-Devouring Vine would select suitable prey based on their life tier, quietly follow the direction indicated by the pheromones, and roll itself into a ball to travel to their lairs, capture them, and feed on their blood.
For low-level human beast tamers, it was one of the most dangerous plants in the wilderness.
Its camouflage was so effective that people struggled to distinguish it precisely from ordinary vines.
They often silently followed beast tamers and attacked while they slept in the wilderness.
Having witnessed that scene, Jiang Ziliu gained a clear understanding of the wilderness's visible, invisible, and omnipresent dangers.
He also firmly committed this plant's appearance to memory.
Next, he saw a Shadow Cat and other beasts moving about. Had he not possessed Life Aura Concealment, this keenly perceptive Shadow Cat would certainly have detected him.
These Shadow Cats could conceal themselves within shadows to launch surprise attacks.
They were likewise among the beasts that low-level beast tamers feared most in the wilderness.
Part of the reason was that Shadow Cats liked attacking humans. After all, humans lived in safer environments, so they were far less vigilant than wilderness beasts, and their reactions were not as quick.
Shadow Cats had a somewhat higher success rate when hunting humans than when hunting ordinary beasts.
This difference in difficulty made them prefer targeting human beast tamers.
For the first half of the night, Jiang Ziliu did not sleep at all, watching the beasts hunt and be hunted beneath the night sky.
Some special beasts even possessed illusion abilities, allowing them to disguise themselves as prey and bait nocturnal beasts such as Shadow Cats into taking the hook.
Once their targets pounced, believing they were attacking food, they would fall into a trap.
Danger was everywhere, and the wild world opened Jiang Ziliu's eyes.
In the second half of the night, he finally could not hold out any longer and fell asleep.
Fortunately, the night passed without incident, and the Mutated Lightning Snake faithfully kept watch over him, protecting his safety!