Chapter 42: Peerless Beauty
Chapter 42: Peerless Beauty
The four days passed quickly. The group’s survival experience in the wild was very fulfilling.
In a way, the tropical rainforest was easier to survive in than true wilderness.
After all, food was never scarce in the rainforest. With such abundant species, a capable hunter would never go hungry.
In contrast, even the most skilled hunter would face life-or-death trials in a snowy wasteland or an endless desert.
Fang Moqi did not explain why he was injured. He led everyone through the rainforest with ease.
Lan Mu blended into the team, thoroughly filming the rainforest’s natural ecosystem.
All sorts of wild animals and plants, along with the unique natural environment and the survival skills humans needed to know in dense forests—he recorded it all. Lan Mu had prepared a large bag of batteries. Over the four days, he filmed for more than two thousand minutes.
On the seventh day after he turned back into a human, which was August 27th.
As nightfall approached, Lan Mu handed the camera to Du Yu and told him to go back first and deliver the equipment to Cheng Ming.
“What? You’re leaving alone? Are you crazy?”
When the team learned that Lan Mu wanted to leave by himself, they all exclaimed in surprise.
Fang Moqi, who had known about this earlier, handed his quiver to Lan Mu.
“I don’t know what you’re planning to do, but take these arrows. Your knowledge is still a bit lacking.”
Fang Moqi was referring to survival skills, the understanding of the environment and animal habits. These were Lan Mu’s weak points, things that shapeshifting couldn’t make up for.
Over the past few days, Lan Mu had made an effort to learn, asking Fang Moqi for a lot of knowledge, but the time was ultimately too short—he was still just a beginner.
However, Fang Moqi wasn’t too worried about his safety. Even though they were still in the rainforest, with Lan Mu’s skills, getting out wouldn’t be difficult.
Lan Mu nodded, took the quiver and the torch Du Yu handed him, and walked off in a different direction from the others.
“Don’t forget, I’ll only wait until the fourth before leaving.”
Lan Mu waved and disappeared into the trees.
He had made an agreement with Fang Moqi to meet him in Kuala Lumpur on September 3rd.
After walking for about thirty minutes, he made sure he was far away from them.
Lan Mu’s body rapidly expanded, transforming into the mighty Predator.
After sensing his surroundings and confirming there were no humans nearby, he ran freely, weaving through the rainforest.
After taking a big detour, he finally arrived at a tall mountain deep in the night. This was the most pristine area of the entire tropical rainforest.
Fang Moqi had told him that the team would definitely pass by this mountain while crossing the rainforest, but they would only go around the base.
In just a few hours, Lan Mu had climbed the mountain. At the summit, he found an ancient large rock, cut down some trees with his claws, and tried to build a campfire.
The wind at the summit was strong. Reluctantly, Lan Mu used stones to build a makeshift stove, barely managing to start a fire. Because the wood was damp, thick smoke billowed from the flames.
“Let’s fill the White-maned Lion’s stomach first. In Metropolis, this body never had a chance to eat its fill.”
Lan Mu stood at the mountaintop, looking down at the layers of tall tree canopies below.
“There are a lot of animals late at night…”
Being in Malay, Lan Mu didn’t care whether they were rare animals or not. He pounced down, charging from the summit with the force of the descent, swift as thunder.
When he returned, he held three rabbits with black fur in his left hand and carried a large, strange-looking animal over his shoulder with his right.
He threw the prey on the ground. Seeing the fire was almost out, he hurriedly and carefully added branches until he blew the flames back to life.
“Let’s roast the rabbits first.”
Lan Mu quickly prepared the rabbits. While roasting them, he eyed the strange animal.
He had found this thing by a small stream after catching the rabbits. It had ears like a horse, hind legs like a rhinoceros, a body like a pig, and a nose like an elephant. It looked weird, big and bulky, with a stout body, yet it was as timid as a mouse. When it saw him, it ran faster than a rabbit, but it still couldn’t escape Lan Mu’s hunt.
Well, it couldn’t be helped—it was so plump. Eating it would save Lan Mu from hunting many other wild animals.
“This must be a tapir, right? I heard it’s Malay’s national treasure… whatever, I’m eating it!”
He quickly finished off the three rabbits. Then, Lan Mu used his claws to dismember the tapir, placing the cut meat pieces around the campfire, arranging them in a circle on the stones to roast.
From time to time, Lan Mu flipped them. After about twenty minutes, they sizzled with oil.
He sniffed—it smelled quite good—and dug into the feast.
When Lan Mu ate as the Predator, it was downright wild.
He tossed large pieces of meat into his mouth like candy, one after another, chewing and swallowing some bones directly.
After finishing off several hundred pounds of tapir, Lan Mu covered the fire with stones and lay down to sleep.
When he woke up, the sun was already high in the sky. Clearly, no creature had disturbed his sleep, which was why he had slept for so long.
“Today is the eighth day… and I still haven’t transformed into a new creature?”
Lan Mu turned back into a human and waited for a while, but nothing happened.
“What’s up with the transformation intervals? Is there no pattern?”
Helpless, Lan Mu transformed back into the Predator and began a new day of hunting.
He was the undisputed ruler of the entire rainforest. As for food, it only depended on what he felt like eating that day!
In the afternoon, he found a river. He first drank several large mouthfuls of water, then spotted a large python in the river.
“Hey, you’re on the menu today!”
The White-maned Lion plunged into the water, lunging at the python.
The python was lazy and didn’t realize danger was approaching.
But Lan Mu hadn’t been underwater for more than a few seconds when he felt his whole body become sticky. Water involuntarily rushed into his nose, making him very uncomfortable.
He hurriedly climbed back to the shore, forcefully blowing the water out of his nose.
“Darn it, can I not swim?”
Lan Mu was embarrassed. He thought it was good he came back in time; otherwise, if he had fought the python underwater, this jungle ruler might have been defeated.
But he wasn’t willing to let the python go, so he climbed a tree and cut off a thick, long branch.
“I have intelligence; surely I can use tools…”
Lan Mu used the branch to poke at the python. The python slowly swam, trying to avoid the branch.
But Lan Mu didn’t give up, chasing it along the shore. The python grew impatient, its thick body coiling around the branch. With a crack, it snapped the branch.
But as it coiled, Lan Mu seized the chance to pull upward. The python barely broke the surface when Lan Mu reached out and grabbed it.
With tremendous strength, he dragged the python and flung it onto the shore. A nine-meter-long python crashed onto the bank.
The python was finally enraged. It coldly slithered forward, trying to coil around Lan Mu.
But Lan Mu’s body was too burly. He grabbed what seemed to be the python’s neck with one hand and pulled with both hands, stretching the python’s body like chewing gum. Its head immediately went limp.
“That should be enough for one meal.”
Coiling up the python, Lan Mu didn’t hunt any other animals. He returned to the mountaintop and started roasting it.
He didn’t know how to prepare a python, so he roasted it whole. Eventually, the snake skin became a pile of black, charred stuff.
But peeling off the skin revealed decent meat inside. The White-maned Lion ate most of it.
The rest, he turned back into a human to finish. Then, he went back to sleep.
For two days straight, he ate and slept, slept and ate, until the early hours of August 29th.
A strange sensation swept through his entire body. Lan Mu once again felt the familiar cellular renewal. He woke immediately.
“Transforming!”
Lan Mu transformed very quickly. In the blink of an eye, it was over. He hurriedly tried to stand up but found himself on all fours, his limbs standing like a dog’s, with his knees bending backward.
His body was covered in soft fur, a pale, almost colorless white, as clear and pure as moonlight.
Suddenly looking back, he saw a large, fluffy tail behind him. It gathered and scattered at will—scattering into nine tails, gathering into a canopy.
Looking at the nine snow-white tails under the moonlight, exquisite and beautiful, they seemed shrouded in a thin, clear aura, playing with the moonlight.
Instinctively, he crouched down, facing the moon. The nine tails slowly rose into the air, spreading and dancing in nine directions. He could clearly feel a kind of energy flowing into the centermost tail, running along his spine throughout his entire body, and finally flowing back into the tails, settling there.
For no apparent reason, he faced the moon for two hours, until the moonlight was obscured by clouds. Only then did he wake up, feeling reluctant to stop.
“What was I doing? But it felt so good…”
At that moment, he was surrounded by dense mist. With a thought, the mist gathered into shape, forming a water mirror.
Through this hazy mirror, Lan Mu finally saw his own full appearance.
A pale white Nine-tailed Fox sat gracefully, its nine tails like wisps of white clouds. The fox’s face was gentle yet enchanting, its eyes a deep blood-red, yet revealing a human-like liveliness.
“Peerless Beauty…”
“A Nine-tailed… Fox?”