Chapter 537
There were many broken branches around, and as the birds broke through the trees from above, more leaves and branches fell . Up above, a patch of blue sky was revealed, and the sun shone directly onto the ground .
Under the hot weather and scorching sun, the smell of carrion dispersed, attracting many scavenging animals . However, they weren’t sure whether a huge beast got mad at that location a few moments before they arrived . Besides the grey feathers, the scavenger birds, and some flying insects, no larger creatures were able to be seen .
After they searched the area for more tracks, the team set off once again
Now that they found the traces of the slaves of Rock Hill City, as long as they followed those tracks, they would easily complete their search . After all, they were a huge group .
Rumours told that Rock Hill City had dispatched about five hundred people, and when compared to the whole tribe or the whole Rock Hill City, this was not a lot . But the fact that they suddenly dispatched five hundred people from the desert and sent them to this forest meant that this was a huge investment . Shao Xuan’s group only had around fifty to sixty people .
When they found the slaves’ traces, the others no longer doubted the Flaming Horns . In fact, they felt very fortunate that they chose to follow them . If they were to look for the group of five hundred slaves by themselves, it would take them more than a hundred days and still, they probably wouldn’t be able to find them . There were many traces, but they were already starting to fade . The forest was recovering way faster than expected, and the corpses that they saw before that were nothing other than bones would probably disappear the next day . Not even a single bone would be left .
Because their team entered the forest much later than the group of slaves, the traces left by the slaves have been mostly covered by the self-recovery of the forest . So they couldn’t determine right away which direction the slaves were heading .
Now that they thought about it, the other tribes felt that the “sincerity” they paid to the Flaming Horns were actually quite worth it .
As they advanced beyond the familiar range of the Flaming Horns, it was much harder for them to find a place to rest . There were way more hidden and unpredictable dangers that were hard for them to guard against .
After they followed the tracks left behind by the group of slaves for four days, they had already lost five members from their initial total of sixty-three . They died on the way due to various reasons .
This morning, a member of the Longboat tribe died from snake venom . The rescue team came too late, and the person was bitten on his neck, so before the others could even check his injury, his neck had already turned black in an instant, as if tainted by ink . His skin rotted away and soon, he stopped breathing . He was already an intermediate totem warrior with strong resistance to toxicity . Yet he didn’t last long from the bite, and couldn’t even say his last words before he passed .
The snake that bit him hid in a tree and stayed there silently as if it was a lifeless object attached to the tree . It became one with the tree and only ambushed when people passed by .
People in the Longboat tribe used to think that large snakes were generally not venomous unless it was a fearsome beast . But that was not the case here . There were many kinds of large venomous snakes that were deadly . Just like the one that bit their comrade before, it was wider in diameter than a human and extremely venomous . After its head was cut off it still had the ability to bite another person . If it wasn't for the Flaming Horns who moved fast enough, Longboat would have lost two people at once .
"Don't think that these things die right after you sever their heads . They can still attack, so be careful, or else you wouldn’t even have the chance to weep,” Shao Xuan said to those people .
Since the Flaming Horns had been to similar forests that were full of hidden dangers before they returned to their homeland, most of the territory walked by the hunting team was similar to this . Especially for the leading team in front . They had to face more difficulties . Therefore, even though it was Mai and Tuo’s first time at this part of the forest, they could still adapt quickly .
It was their first time here, so they weren’t familiar with the grounds and couldn’t quickly find a cave to rest in . So many times they had to spend the night in the open air or camp out . For the past two days, they spent their nights camping on top of a mountain in the open air . Without a cave, they could only rest in a leeward place near the mountainside .
The traces left here probably belonged to the slave team that passed by before they arrived . They probably took a rest here as well .
There were some carved pictures on the wall of the mountain .
Based on Shao Xuan’s understanding of rocks, some of these carvings on the mountain walls had been made a long time ago . This was enough to prove that there had been other slave teams dispatched to the same area before .
The slaves’ traces once again confirmed Shao Xuan’s guesses . Rock Hill City had definitely caught a green-faced fanged beast before .
From time to time, they would encounter a slave’s corpse . Some had been bitten to the point that their faces couldn’t be recognized . Some had incomplete body parts . At such a place in the forest, humans were the prey .
At noon, two people from the Eight Limbs tribe went to the river to get some water . They knew enough not to get too close to the river . A few days ago, a member of their tribe was dragged into the river because he went too close to it . No one saw what dragged him in .
The weather was getting hotter, and it was getting more physically challenging for them to travel fast . They were all sweating . Even though the branches and leaves covered them from the scorching sun above, they could still feel the ever-rising temperature . Their need for water grew as they walked farther .
A thin string was tied to a coconut-like hard shell . There was a hole the size of a fist dug into the round shell . A stone was tied onto the shell, and together, it was thrown into the river twenty meters away .
With a blurp sound, the stone sank and travelled downwards . The water from the river seeped into the hole made in the shell . When the two warriors from the Eight Limbs tribe felt it was almost full, they pulled on the string that was attached to the shell and tried to retrieve their full water bottle .
As the round shell full of water surfaced and was pulled up into the air, a figure that was almost two meters tall flew upwards from behind and bit onto the shell, and brought it back into the river . Water splashed upwards as the figure disappeared into the water .
The two warriors who went to fetch the water could hear the cracking sound of the shell as the creature swallowed it .
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