Chapter 930: Showing Off Muscle

Yang Jin laughed. "Our vehicle is parked in the Southern Territory, a straight-line distance of sixty li. We can get there within four hours. Since we're already here, how about we take a look around and see if there's anything good before we leave?"

A person who can be a squad leader really is different — he grasped the key point right away!

Xia Qing coiled up her rope and pointed northeast. "I spotted a fig tree bearing fruit under that stone pillar over there. Shall we go check it out? But there are hyenas in this stone forest, so we need to be careful."

Ma Jun immediately cast an approving vote. "Hyenas? So what? Big Sister Qing can even shoot down a giant eagle from the sky. Boss, shall we go?"

Xia Qing...

Wang Liang immediately reported the numbers. "Our base hasn't discovered a green-light fig tree yet. On the bounty mission board, a green-light fig is worth 5,000 points."

Xia Qing: Right!

Yang Jin mounted his tri-edged military spike on his submachine gun and asked Xia Qing, "How's your condition right now? How many jin of supplies can you carry?"

This was deep in the perilous Evolution Forest, where Yang Jin's three-person team needed to stay highly mobile. So Xia Qing was assigned as the squad's logistics, carrying supplies in the middle of the formation as they crossed the sixty-li mountain path.

Level six and a half strength Evolver Xia Qing assured him, "Packing all the fruit from the whole tree and bringing it back is no problem."

It was just the distance from Mountain 60 to Territory 3. Last autumn, when she was swept up by the wolf pack, she'd covered the full route in two and a half hours. Now her speed and strength had both increased — carrying a hundred or two hundred jin of fruit and getting back within four hours was a piece of cake!

"Good. I'll take point, Ma Jun on the left, Xia Qing on the right, Wang Liang bringing up the rear. Move out." The four-person squad set off toward the fig tree.

After the four-person gathering squad entered the dense forest, the giant eagle circling several thousand meters overhead changed direction and flew toward the Evolution Forest to the northwest.

Only after the golden eagle atop Shi Zhu No. 1 confirmed that both the humans and the giant eagle had left did it cautiously leap down from the Thorn Evolution Tree, spread its golden wings, and curse as it circled its nest again and again.

The distance that looked close from atop the stone pillar was not so easy to traverse through the dense forest. The four-person squad spent over half an hour, avoiding three aggressive Thorn Evolution plants and countless poisonous insects, before they spotted the five-meter-tall fig tree Xia Qing had mentioned.

Directly above this tree was blocked by a protruding rock, so even if a helicopter flew low over the stone forest searching, it would be hard to spot it. Fortunately, the stone pillar where Xia Qing had hidden was in just the right spot, and her eyesight was sharp enough to discover this hidden pearl in the Evolution Forest.

But this pearl had a hard shell — it wouldn't be easy to pluck.

"Grr-rr! Grr-rr!"

Thirteen half-point Evolution hyenas stood in front of the fig tree, on both sides, and on the protruding rock above it, letting out low roars at the four-person squad.

The meaning of that growl was crystal clear: not one step closer.

"Halt."

Squad leader Yang Jin stopped, because Evolution hyenas were one of the large predators in the Evolution Forest that humans were not allowed to provoke. If they advanced any further, a clash with the hyena pack would count as a provocation on their part.

Xia Qing discussed with Yang Jin, "Captain Yang, let's back off to show our attitude. Once we've retreated to a suitable distance, the three of us will draw the hyena pack's attention while you dash back and snap off a fruit-bearing branch over a meter long. As long as I have the branch and ripe fruit, I can propagate new saplings."

Given Yang Jin's speed, snapping off a branch in front of the one or two hyenas left behind was a piece of cake.

Yang Jin nodded. "Don't point your muzzle at the hyenas. Slowly pull back."

"Hold on a moment. I need to take a soil sample first." Under the protection of the other three, Xia Qing quickly used a packaging bag to collect a soil sample from the area.

Xia Qing was no longer a novice at farming. Once she brought this soil sample back for testing, she could mix a soil suited to fig tree growth and improve the survival rate of cuttings and seed propagation.

Just as the four-person squad was preparing to retreat, hearing-Evolver Ma Jun issued a warning. "Boss, there's movement behind us too. We're surrounded by hyenas."

What does that mean? The hyenas weren't planning to let them leave? That was... fantastic!

The four-person squad immediately shifted formation, standing back-to-back facing the hyena pack that had surrounded them, not nervous in the slightest. Because now the hyenas were the ones provoking, and however they fought back was fair game.

Wang Liang, gripping his twin blades, complained, "These things are the ugliest canids out there, right?"

Hyenas were indeed ugly, but Wang Liang's statement wasn't accurate. Xia Qing corrected him, "Hyenas belong to the family Hyaenidae under the suborder Feliformia, not Canidae."

So these weren't close relatives of the Waist-Snapping Wolf — they were distant ones.

Ma Jun was impressed. "Big Sister Qing, you even know this? That's amazing."

"Just happened to hear it somewhere."

The studious Waist-Snapping Wolf had been very interested in these distant relatives and had repeatedly watched videos on spotted hyenas over a dozen times. When it didn't understand something, it would pause and ask Xia Qing to explain — she couldn't forget it even if she wanted to.

Within the encirclement formed by over thirty spotted hyenas, Yang Jin began laying out the battle plan. "Xia Qing, that thick-trunked tree three meters in front of you — can you kick it down?"

Thick-trunked? Hah. "I can kick down that waist-thick one on my front right."

Yang Jin assigned tasks. "Good. Xia Qing kicks the waist-thick one on the front right, Wang Liang kicks the thick-trunked one on your rear left, I'll go chop the fig branch, Ma Jun is responsible for protecting Xia Qing and Wang Liang. I'll count to three, and you two move at the same time."

Xia Qing quickly added, "Captain Yang, if we add in roars, the intimidation effect will be even better."

Although she had no experience dealing with hyena packs, as an eyewitness to the great battle between the Northern Wolf Pack and the Northern Bear Pack, Xia Qing had every right to speak on the matter.

The hyena lord of this stone forest hadn't charged straight in to fight, but had instead surrounded them — which meant they were now in the first stage of animal combat: showing off muscle.

Humans are different from advanced animals, and from ordinary animals?

The era when humans ruled Blue Star had already become the past. The vast majority of humans who survived the Catastrophe were now huddled inside small safe zones with tall walls. The few Evolver humans who went out, unless they had taken on missions to cross the Evolution Forest to reach other bases or to search for precious rare herbs, mostly stayed within the Evolution Forest around the safe zones to hunt and gather.

According to the post-Catastrophe regional classification standards, the total area of human territory — the area where humans were currently active — was still less than 1% of Huaguo's land area.

The Evolution predators occupying 99% of the land had mostly been born after Blue Star's Great Evolution. They had never experienced the era when humans ruled Blue Star, and because humans didn't actively provoke large predators in the Evolution Forest, they had no idea just how clever and terrifying humans were.

Take this pack of Evolution spotted hyenas before them, for example. They occupied this stone forest that humans rarely entered. Even though they had just heard humans hunting a flock of birds in the air over a dozen li away, and had seen humans kill a giant eagle atop the stone forest, when four humans approached their core territory, they still dared to gather over thirty companions to surround the humans and defend their territory.

If they won, the intruders became food; if they lost, they either gave up their territory and fled, or became food for the intruders.

Of course, with the combat power of Xia Qing's four-person team, they could easily wipe out this pack of hyenas, pluck the figs, and even dig up the whole tree.

But the consequence of doing so would be that this stone forest would lose its apex predator. God only knew what chain reactions that would trigger.

At the current stage, the biggest problems constraining human survival were food shortages and constantly evolving microorganisms — not the animals in the Evolution Forest that wouldn't take the initiative to invade human territory.

Yang Jin had rich combat experience in the Evolution Forest, but when it came to communicating with animals, he wasn't as good as Xia Qing. So he accepted her suggestion. "Alright. We'll low-growl first, then kick the trees, then let out a big roar."