21: Chapter 21 Setting up camp

Chen Mo walked down the northern slope for about a kilometer, and the terrain gradually opened up.

A crystal-clear stream flowed down from the mountainside, washing out a flat gravel beach at the bottom of the valley.

The ground on the gravel beach was relatively dry, backed by a vertical rock wall, and the view ahead was wide open; it was a good place to set up camp.

No fresh feces or claw marks from large beasts were found nearby, the water source was close, the rock wall could block the wind, and the terrain was high enough that there was no need to worry about being washed away by flash floods in the middle of the night.

He placed his hiking backpack on the gravel beach and began to set up the tent.

The tent was military green, small in volume and light in weight, but it had good windproof and waterproof properties.

He pulled out the tent poles, connected them section by section, and then skillfully threaded them into the tent's pole sleeves.

In less than ten minutes, the tent was firmly standing on the gravel beach.

After setting it up, he circled the campsite to inspect it, used a machete to cut away a few overly dense bushes at the edge, and piled up a small heap of firewood upwind.

After finishing these tasks, he straightened his back and checked the time.

From the time he set off until now, it had been less than two hours.

In less than two hours, he had traversed over seventy kilometers of primeval forest, climbed over a ridge, crossed countless streams and cliffs, and arrived at the core area of the Shennong Mountain Range, where humans had never set foot.

This speed was unimaginable to an ordinary person.

For the same distance, an ordinary person, even traveling light with a professional guide and equipment, would take at least four or five days.

But he had carried a forty-kilogram load the entire way, and he had walked in a straight line.

His speed while moving through the mountain forests averaged thirty to forty kilometers per hour.

This was not the speed of running on flat ground; it was the speed of climbing over mountains and ridges, traversing dense forests, and crossing valleys.

Steep mountain paths that would be considered high slopes for ordinary people, he could charge up in seconds; cliffs that required slow climbing, he could jump down in a few steps; streams and gullies blocking the road, he could simply leap over.

He didn't need to find a path at all.

His body itself was an all-terrain off-road machine.

No terrain could stop him, and no obstacle needed to be bypassed.

That was why he traveled so fast.

It was because these terrains, which would be called natural barriers for ordinary people, were no different from walking on flat ground to him.

There were quite a few wild beasts encountered along the way.

The first one he saw was a wild boar.

An adult male boar, estimated to weigh over three hundred kilograms, with thick, short tusks, was rooting for tree roots in the bushes.

It raised its head to look when it heard Chen Mo's footsteps, still holding a piece of root in its mouth, then turned around and lumbered away.

Its reaction was not to run away, nor to attack, but an impatient "changing places to eat."

Then there was a bear.

A Black Bear was lying on a large rock halfway up the mountain sunbathing, its posture lazy, like a huge black-furred dog.

When Chen Mo passed through the valley less than fifty meters below it, it just turned its head, sniffed the scent in the air, and then turned back.

It must have discovered him; a Black Bear's sense of smell is seven times that of a hunting dog.

When bears are not hungry, they generally do not actively attack humans unless you startle them.

Then there was a Leopard.

A Leopard was crouching on a branch of a large tree, its body blocked by the canopy, leaving only a silhouette.

Chen Mo's eyesight was sharp enough to see its pale golden eyes, and its tail was motionless behind it.

The common characteristic of these animals was: there were no abnormal changes.

The wild boar was still a wild boar, the Black Bear was still a Black Bear, and the Leopard was still a Leopard.

Their body size, fur color, and behavioral patterns were exactly the same as what he had seen in the data.

Twelve days of nourishment from Spiritual Qi had not left any visible traces on them.

It seemed that they needed more time to absorb Spiritual Qi before obvious changes would appear.

It was still early.

Setting up the tent only took ten minutes, and it was only past eight in the morning.

He could start training in a while.

He planned to spend some time first to scout the area within a few kilometers around the campsite and figure out the terrain.

More importantly, he wanted to pay attention to one thing during the scouting process: people.

On the way into the mountains, he had noticed some traces that were not left by wild beasts.

There were a few places that were not very obvious, looking like things that had been deliberately covered up.

He found a cigarette butt that had been stepped out under a pile of dead branches, and saw footprints of hiking boots in the mud by the stream.

The people who could leave these traces in the core area of the Shennong Mountain Range were basically not outdoor enthusiasts.

Outdoor enthusiasts couldn't make it here; the terrain and vegetation density of the core area were too difficult for ordinary people, and all legal hiking routes were in the outer areas, so they wouldn't venture this deep into such a place.

It also couldn't be a scientific expedition team.

Scientific expedition teams entering the mountains would have official permits and equipment, and would leave behind campsite markers and measuring instruments.

These traces were too casual, too low-profile, as if they were being deliberately hidden.

The only people who could operate here without making any noise were, in all likelihood, one type: poachers.

The kind that specifically enters the mountains to capture rare animals.

The Shennong Mountain Range is home to golden snub-nosed monkeys, forest musk deer, Black Bears, and Leopards, each of which is worth a lot of money on the black market.

A single golden snub-nosed monkey could sell for six figures, and the musk of a forest musk deer is more expensive than gold.

These poachers usually carry tranquilizer guns and animal traps, work in gangs, and are used to staying in the mountains for ten days or so at a time.

Thinking of this, Chen Mo decided to go and investigate this matter.

The poachers themselves posed no threat to him.

But he had to confirm their general range of activities, and more importantly, he could not let his training process be filmed.

The only possibility of finding him in such a large primeval forest was through tracking, or by relying on drones and telephoto cameras.

His current range of perception of the surrounding environment was about sixty or seventy meters; beyond that, he couldn't capture details.

And a common civilian telephoto camera could photograph a person clearly from one or two kilometers away.

If he happened to be filmed by poachers in the distance with equipment while training—a person carrying hundreds of kilograms of rock doing squats, or shattering a rock wall with one punch—then the consequences wouldn't be a matter of a few poachers, but a matter of becoming a hot topic on the entire internet.

He could not let this possibility happen.

Even if there was only a one percent chance, it wouldn't do.

He put on his hiking backpack, walked upstream along the stream, and observed the surrounding environment as he walked.

The vegetation on both sides of the stream was slightly sparser than on the hillside, and the view was relatively open.

He walked along the stream and got a general idea of the terrain around the campsite.

Then he returned to the campsite.

He had a simple supplement meal: a few mouthfuls of peanut oil, a bag of glucose powder mixed with water, and four pieces of compressed biscuits.

After eating, he took out his notebook and recorded the observations of the morning one by one.

Including the confirmation of Spiritual Qi concentration, the evolutionary status of animals, and environmental data.

After writing, he closed the notebook, stood up, and hung the machete on his belt.

It was time to go and see those people.