76 Chains (1/2)

They had all been relieved when they found a cave to settle in for the night. However, no one thought something unexpected would soon happen.

”Should we hide elsewhere?” Someone whispered, ”What if something dashes out of the forest?”

”There's no need to go elsewhere.” Ren Xiaosu shook his head. ”The animals obviously wanted to hide in here but we already occupied the spot. Just this point alone proves that the cave we're in should be safe enough.”

”Just what could they be avoiding?” Liu Bu wondered.

Xu Xianchu looked at the forest outside the cave. ”They might be trying to avoid the forest. Or more specifically, the forest at night.”

Ren Xiaosu nodded. ”I think so too. Animals are far more alert to danger than humans because of their instincts. Do y'all remember? When we passed through the canyon, we saw some human skeletons lying there. But since we entered the forest, we did not see any skeletons of animals. That's unusual.”

”As long as it's a living creature, it will live and die. How is it possible that we didn't even see the skeletal remains of an animal?” Ren Xiaosu continued, ”I had dumped some fish scraps and bones in the forest south of the canyon. But when I went to check on it the next morning, I found that they'd already disappeared. There were no traces of it being moved away in the surrounding area. It just disappeared in the same way as Xu Xia's corpse had. There's one thing in common about these missing skeletal remains and the corpse, which is that they were in the forest at the time.”

”Yes.” Xu Xianchu nodded. ”Besides, these creatures show that they're really afraid of the forest, so it's clear that it's fishy.”

A forest that eats living creatures…

The others gazed into the forest and started wondering if the botanical life had also started evolving after the animals had evolved.

Xu Xianchu comforted, ”But actually, this is a good thing. Now that we've identified a pattern, we can take precautions.”

When an unknown fear becomes known, and when you can even understand the logic behind it, that fearful feeling will lessen.

That's right, as long as no one entered the forest at night, everything should be fine.

Thinking of this, their fear from earlier dispersed a little. Wang Lei smiled and said, ”Then we must find a place far away from the forest to set up camp before nightfall.”

Ren Xiaosu shook his head. ”We need to be careful not only at night but also during the day. We don't know whether these animals and plants have evolved to the stage where they might even eat people during the day.”

”Then we'll just walk along the sparser areas of the mountain ridges!” Xu Xianchu made the final decision.

Everyone went back to chewing on the pine roots before someone asked, ”Ren Xiaosu, how did you discover that pine roots are edible?”

”I didn't discover it myself. Someone in town mentioned it before,” Ren Xiaosu said as he calmly added more firewood to the campfire.

Liu Bu was looking to ease his relationship with Ren Xiaosu, so he quickly praised, ”You townspeople know so much about the wilderness. This is truly humanity's wisdom!”

Liu Bu did not know how he should praise him, so he came up with something random for the sake of praise.

However, Ren Xiaosu did not quite agree with his statement. He looked at him and said, ”That's not wisdom. Who would be willing to eat pine roots if they had proper food to eat? The townspeople have long said pine roots are edible. When I first heard it, I imagined just how many people died of hunger in the past.”

In an era where refugees might not even be able to survive until the next day, everything they did would be related to their survival.

Liu Bu had only wanted to pepper him with some good words, but he ended up falling into an even more embarrassing situation.