Chapter 1034: Don't Damage the Beast Hide

In the two years the Great Evolution began, Blue Star suffered frequent natural disasters. To band together and survive, the human survivors established gathering zones of various sizes.

Later, the larger survivor gathering zones were expanded into base safe zones, and the vast majority of survivors from the small gathering zones were transferred by the military to live in the base safe zones, though a small number remained in their original gathering zones.

After the gathering zones were completely destroyed by the calamities, some still gave up on entering the safe zones and became homeless human wanderers.

By the eleventh year of the calamities, the wanderers who had survived possessed survival abilities in the Evolution Forest that were naturally stronger than those of humans living in the safe zones.

But no matter how strong they were, they were still human.

The wanderer in the cave, who had taken off his protective mask during the Calamity Rain period—when the concentration of atmospheric Calamity Elements was extremely high and the evolved creatures in the Evolution Forest were most active—and was leaning against the stone wall whittling a wooden stick, clearly had not gone berserk. Therefore, he must have some means of defending against Calamity Elements and evolved creatures.

Was it the Yi Stone shielding him from the excess Calamity Elements, or some active ingredient extracted from a certain creature's body?

Could that blue skin of his also help him resist harmful microorganisms?

Xia Qing only glanced at the sidearm of Hui Squadron 16 hanging at his waist and the sharpened wooden stick in his hand, and recalled that they had used such sticks planted point-down at the bottom of traps to kill the members of Hui Squadron 16, then seized their weapons and supplies.

Is he whittling that stick now to deal with the wolf pack?

Xia Qing shifted her gaze and began observing the two giant lizards lying in Shi Dong.

Based on the two thin wires inserted into the giant lizards' skin from the collars around their necks, Xia Qing confirmed the name of this kind of collar—the insert-type weak-electricity controller.

By inserting electrified contacts into an animal's body, humans can use electric shocks to make animals of a certain intelligence obey human commands—this is one of the ways humans tame animals.

The evolved bats the Chonglian Group used to bomb the Northern Zone One territory, and the evolved water shrews the Blaze Squad sent into Territory Three to steal water samples, were both controlled by this kind of controller, made to obey human orders.

This overly cruel method of taming beasts has already been restricted by the state.

Xia Qing raised a hand to wipe away a few evolved red threadworms that had crawled onto her protective visor, pressed the low-light night-vision lens, and through the night-vision goggles saw that not far behind the wanderer opposite, there was a beast-hide bag over a meter long with a thick waist. The contents of the beast-hide bag kept wriggling; based on experience, Xia Qing judged that small reptiles were packed inside.

Giant lizards don't have strong combat ability, but they run very fast—they should be this batch of wanderers' means of transport.

The wanderer in the cave wasn't playing dead, which means this is no longer the core territory of the western wolf pack, and aside from out-of-control animals, no animals go out during Calamity Rain, which is why he was so relaxed.

There's only one person and two giant lizards here—where are the others?

"Rumble rumble—"

Not long after the muffled thunder sounded, the Calamity Rain that had paused for a moment began to patter down again.

A few minutes later, the yellowish Calamity Grass outside the crevice in front of Xia Qing grew at a speed visible to the naked eye; one cricket after another burrowed out of the cave, several frogs leaped off Xia Qing's motionless body, cried hoarsely a few times, and rushed into the Calamity Rain to stick out their tongues and prey on the crickets that were fighting. Wolf spiders that liked to hunt at night also crawled past Xia Qing, charging at those colorful frogs that were hardly smaller than themselves.

Without taking out a Calamity Element detector, Xia Qing knew the rain falling outside was red-grade Calamity Rain, because the small animals with weak resistance in the Evolution Forest had begun to lose control and fight each other.

After another ten minutes, the sound of an owl—two long calls and one short—pierced the curtain of rain and clearly reached Xia Qing's ears; her keen hearing let her immediately judge that the call was imitated by a human.

The second wanderer was actually fucking five meters directly below her!

Fortunately she had been alert and never made a sound, otherwise she would have been exposed already!

The wanderer in the cave opposite, who had been whittling a wooden stick with a dagger, stood up upon hearing the signal, put on his protective mask, picked up the wriggling bag beside him and mounted a giant lizard, ordering the giant lizard to run downhill while scattering the contents of the bag outward.

Only now did Xia Qing see clearly that his bag was filled with finger-long purplish-black flesh worms.

A few minutes after the flesh worms were scattered, the wolf spiders, poisonous frogs, and the snake pinned under her leg that had been fighting in front of Xia Qing all scrambled toward the valley. This showed that the flesh worms the wanderer scattered had an enormous attraction for animals that had lost control due to the Calamity Rain—they must be emitting some unique scent.

Soon, in the valley where the wanderer had scattered the flesh worms, small and medium-sized animals visibly appeared in great numbers, fighting and scrambling for food within the valley; among them, some of the medium-sized animals were clearly normal animals that had not lost control!

The Calamity Rain has only just begun—if they keep fighting like this, more and more animals will lose control, and it could very likely trigger a beast tide!

Why are these wanderers doing this? Xia Qing frowned.

"Coo coo, coo coo—"

The third wanderer's voice came from high up on the slope to the left, about 1,800 meters from Xia Qing. From Xia Qing's position she couldn't see that person, nor could she snipe him.

Above, opposite, to the left—people on three sides. This meant this wanderer squad had formed an encirclement here. They had scattered bait and were waiting for prey to fall into the trap.

Can the wolf pack resist the lure of these flesh worms? Where have the two wolf kings gone, and when will they act?

Although Xia Qing grew tense, she did not blindly shift her sniping position, because the lead wolf who was skilled at squad combat must have had a reason for placing her here.

The wanderer below Xia Qing spoke again, "Yang Jin and Luo Pei of the Azure Dragon Squad have already engaged Liuzi and his men—we can move freely now."

Another wanderer riding a giant lizard ran out of the cave opposite and joined the worm-scattering team—the fourth wanderer!

Twenty minutes later, the red-grade Calamity Rain stopped, and countless animals large and small in the valley were roaring and tearing at each other.

Upon hearing the order, the wanderer scattering worms in the valley actually slashed the giant lizard he was riding clean in two with one cut, and sprinkled a packet of medicinal powder on the giant lizard's corpse. The giant lizard was not just their mount—it was also bait to lure prey.

Soon, a raptor with a wingspan exceeding four meters folded its wings and landed on the giant lizard's corpse, and, as if it couldn't see the human wanderer standing right beside it, began pecking at the lizard's flesh.

Three minutes later, a series of rapid coo-coo calls drew near from afar; along with the fifth wanderer's voice appeared a beast even larger than an evolved wolf!

"Aoooo—"

This sound that made the mountains and forests tremble failed to startle the already frenzied animals in the valley, but it made Xia Qing's heart jolt.

The wanderers had actually lured an evolved tiger over—fuck, this place was actually the border between the wolf pack's territory and the evolved tiger's territory. What the fuck were they trying to do?

Just then, the wanderer below Xia Qing spoke, "The wolf pack is chasing the wild boar herd this way—stay hidden, we'll move together in a bit. Don't damage the tiger hide or that silver-gray giant wolf's hide. Use the No. 3 aerial anesthetic—take them alive."

Capture the top predators of this Evolution Forest? Is this how you plunder resources? If you take the wolf pack and the evolved tiger, what happens to this Evolution Forest?

Hand it over to the evolved monkey troop?!

Watching the wanderer quickly ride back to the cave opposite, Xia Qing steadied her breathing and heartbeat, flexed the fingers resting on the trigger twice, and prepared for battle.

When that mottled fierce tiger appeared on Shanfeng opposite, Xia Qing's breath involuntarily stopped.

"Aowu—"

The instant the tiger was about to leap down, the wolf pack began to howl. Amid a sound of the earth shaking, a herd of wild boars, led by a collared giant lizard, charged into the valley—the Western Wolf King, leading five evolved wolves, came running after the wild boar herd!