Chapter 806 - 17: The Light of the Anglerfish

Chapter 806: Chapter 17: The Light of the Anglerfish

After night fell, the wind started blowing again.

Though the grassland had become much warmer than usual after the red moon rose, once the wind drove the snow grains into the air, it turned bitterly cold.

The Mammoth moved its pillar-like long legs, slowly advancing over the snow. Its thick fur braced against the wind and snow, trunk drooping low, calm and steady.

The massive creature’s shoulders carried several thick animal hides, and a few pitcher-plant-shaped hide bags hanging on either side of its spine were filled with pitch-black Stone, dangling from its back.

Everything ahead was pitch-dark.

Beside the Mammoth, a human wrapped in hides walked forward while gazing into the distance.

Once the wind rose, even the outline of the red moon grew indistinct, its edges blurred.

"Mud."

The man stretched out a hair-covered hand, calling to the companion behind him.

Not far away, another similarly dressed man was trudging along with his head down. Another Mammoth followed him as well, though this one was somewhat smaller.

Hearing the call, he didn’t answer, only quickened his pace slightly.

The man up front knew Mud’s temperament well, knew he didn’t like to talk, so he kept asking.

"Hungry?"

"No."

Mud was stingy with words, giving just a single syllable in reply.

Their brief exchange ended there; those simple sounds were soon drowned by the wind.

...

The Mammoths kept a steady pace, slowly moving forward.

When the wind eased a little, the two men lit thick torches.

Both were over two meters tall, and the hides draped over them further bulked out their frames, so that as they walked they looked like two moving walls.

The flames were stretched backward by the breeze, and the smell of burning fat spread across the grassland.

Far away, some nocturnal predators spotted them. The deep winter had left them starving; compared to the lush seasons of summer and autumn, they were now far more willing to risk everything.

But the towering Mammoths quenched their murderous intent. Even those beasts that had wandered all day without finding a single morsel wouldn’t rashly attack a Mammoth; even though these two Mammoths had not yet reached adulthood, they were deadly enough to the predators.

Of course, where there are cowards, there are always the bold.

A few Giant Hyenas circled the Mammoths from a distance of over twenty meters, pacing around them, clearly itching to launch an attack on the two men—

Giant Hyenas are social animals with massive bodies, astonishing bite force, strong and yet agile; their endurance and defense are both impressive. As apex predators near the top of the grassland food chain, as long as the Hyena Queen dares to gamble, her pack will charge forward without hesitation.

The bright firelight and the Mammoths were both deterrents to the Giant Hyenas, and the two humans who should have been prey looked, by virtue of walking upright, no smaller in size than the hyenas.

Most importantly, these two humans felt no fear of the Giant Hyenas; they didn’t even spare them a glance.

The Giant Hyena Queen hesitated for a while, then chose caution in the end, leading the pack away from this place.

Stone, who was walking ahead of Mud, was completely swaddled in hides. His ugly, wide nostrils twitched, and his primitive, almost ape-like face showed a hint of regret—

"I thought food had arrived."

Stone said this.

Then he held his burning torch a bit farther from himself and glanced again toward the red moon.

"Mud, are we close?"

"No."

...

Only when darkness completely ruled the land, when you listened to the wind over the grasslands and the occasional howls of beasts, did you truly grasp what kind of wasteland this was, as if the icy air itself carried a raw, primordial reek of blood.

Chen Zhou had just finished laying the last trap. He hauled his cart away from the center of the supply drop zone, spread a bearskin over the cart, and hid himself in the darkness, quietly chewing on cold jerky.

He did not plan to sleep tonight.

Even before the beacon appeared, he had already reached a conclusion—

If this challenge offered two rounds of supplies, then the second drop would definitely be placed in the southern part of the entire challenge area.

Because as the weather grew colder, the Northern Territory would become increasingly unsuitable for human survival. Anyone with half a brain who wanted to win would inevitably migrate south.

The current beacon position proved his judgment correct; Chen Zhou had just not expected the beacon to be so close to Mount Baihar.

Chen Zhou didn’t think the Space-Time Administration Bureau would go out of its way to favor him; that meant the remaining survivors in this challenge were probably mostly within a 100-kilometer radius of the beacon.

For humans, a hundred kilometers is not an especially long distance.

From what he knew, in northern Italy’s Aosta Valley there had once been a trail race called the Tor des Géants.

The entire course ran through the mountains, 332 kilometers long, with over 24,000 meters of cumulative elevation gain, an average altitude of 2,000 meters and a maximum of more than 3,300 meters.

Yet even under such harsh and demanding conditions, roughly fifty percent of the participants finished the race every year; the top competitors might rest only a dozen minutes in total, completing the course in just over 70 hours.

By comparison, trekking a hundred kilometers over winter snowfields was actually simpler, not to mention that these past few days didn’t really count as truly cold.

And the challengers’ physical fitness was not necessarily inferior to the Tor des Géants runners; some of them might even be "freaks" like him, injected with genetic modification Medicine.

Not to mention that some challengers were closer to the beacon, perhaps less than fifty kilometers away.

Before he reached the drop point, Chen Zhou had firmly believed someone would arrive ahead of him.

He had never imagined that he would be the first to reach the beacon, that he would be ahead of the other challengers by half a day, and thus obtain ample time to lay traps and make preparations in advance.