Chapter 41 – Black wind (2/2)

After a while, Shao Xuan heard some scratching noises. It was some creature walking and rubbing the leaves and branches.

A seven-meter-high creature slowly came into their sights. It had brown fur, thick limbs, and an extremely strong tail. It looked ferocious, but judging from its slowness and heavy body, it seemed a little lazy and foolish.

After sniffing with his nose, it went beside some trees and stood up on its hind legs, while its strong tail pushed against the ground, and formed a triangle with the legs. As it stood up, it’s forelegs showed the sharp claws with giant hook-like sickles. Its claws quickly hooked over the branches ahead, and cut the branches with leaves, like he was harvesting wheat.

That was a leaf-eating animal, but judging from Mai’s reaction, Shao Xuan knew that it was not easy to be dealt with. Recalling the hunting stories that he had heard before, Shao Xuan figured that the big animal ahead should be the giant-claw beast. Although this giant-claw beast appeared to be big enough in Shao Xuan’s eyes, in fact, this was merely a juvenile one, for adult giant-claw beasts should be bigger in size.

Also, it only looked lazy and heavy on the outside. When faced with danger or threat, they could be really quick to react, and its giant claws could easily uproot a tree.

In fact, giant-claw beasts were also in the hunting list of the hunting group, however, Mai did not command the warriors to attack it.

Those trees were not tall enough, and as soon as it finished eating all those fresh leaves, and as the remaining ones didn’t arouse his interest, it left walking on his four limbs, still behaving like a lazy animal.

When it had left, Mai led the others to continue to climb up the mountain.

As they were marching to the top, Lang Ga examined a few traps underway that he set up in the past. Inside them there were some pitiful animals. Since they did not fall in the traps long time ago, they were still alive, and were executed by warriors in the hunting group in the blink of an eye.

These were no large traps, so the animals they caught were relatively small in size.

Lang Ga shared his experience with Shao Xuan while he was adjusting those traps.

Pointing at the warriors dealing with the preys, Lang Ga explained, “After you catch something, you have to examine it first to see if it’s ill. For example, that animal we caught earlier had uncolored eyes and bald spots in his fur. If you cut it open, you would smell a funny smell from its meat. Even if the prey lived, it wouldn’t be alive for long. Any warrior would share its fate if he ate its meat.”

On the other side, the warriors in charge of handling the preys had already promptly skinned those animals, and ripped out all their guts. The animals were sliced into meat straps and were put in bags, on which some grass essence was smeared to cover the smell.

Mai guided the group and he focused on leading them to climb over the mountain. So along the way, they did not hunt for large-sized animals.

The climate on the mountaintop was not as mild as the climate down below. Snow glistened in the sun, while one could clearly see the large basin on the other side of the mountain.

Finally, before sunset, the hunting team arrived at the other side of the mountain and they reached a cave in the mountain side, which was in fact a stronghold of the hunting team. Their hunting group would spend the night inside.

It was naturally easier since they had a shelter for the night.

After a day’s intense journey, warriors relaxed their nerves, since they could finally get some rest.

“A bear used to live in this cave. Our hunting team put it to rest forever and took the place for our own use.” Lang Ga explained the cave’s origin to Shao Xuan.

“Oh, by the way, Lang Ga, how did Ah-Fei make a mistake during the last hunting mission?”

A minute ago, Lang Ga was proudly bragging about his hunting deeds, now he sighed with his smile gone and disappeared. He approached Shao Xuan and complained in a low voice, “Hey, you’d better be the judge. Ah-Fei could have messed with everything in the forest, but finally he chose to mess around with the Thorn Black Wind!”

Black Wind did not refer to some kind of a beast, but a general term that the tribe’s people used to call those prey who preferred to hunt at night. So normally they would call them “something Black Wind”, while Thorn Black Wind was just one kind of them.

After sunset, the temperature began to drop, and warriors used a giant stone to block the entrance of the cave. However, chilly wind still poured in from the edges. Inside the cave there was a bonfire, and with so many people huddled together, it was not so cold. If he looked at the sky outside, Shao Xuan knew he could see two crescent moons in the sky.

Lang Ga and the others said that tomorrow’s weather would be fine.

While outside the cave, in the silent forest during the night hours, nocturnal animals began to wake up in that basin, which seemed to be peaceful when seen from the outside.

In a middle-sized lake located in the mountain foot area, there were waves on the surface of the water. A giant body quietly emerged from the water and crawled towards the bank. Those nocturnal animals who were drinking water silently fled away for safety.