The night was crisp and cold.
With the arrival of winter, the forest had beco much quieter.
Outside the Fluorite Cave, a campfire burned faintly, occasionally sparking with a few embers.
On a stone-built grill, a piece of thigh at weighing over a dozen pounds was continuously dripping with oil and fat. The outer fat was slightly charred, emitting an enticing aroma, making one’s mouth water uncontrollably.
Chen Shouyi slowly sliced the at with the tip of his sword, sprinkling it with salt, cumin powder, and thirteen spices.
The Shell Lady squatted on Chen Shouyi’s shoulder, sneezing several tis because of the spices, and complained in a delicate voice, "Great Giant, your seasoning is so slly!"
Slly?
"Then move farther away!" Chen Shouyi snorted.
The Shell Lady looked at the pitch-black forest, instinctively grabbed onto Chen Shouyi’s ear, her expression struggling for a mont before she seriously said, "It slls really good now!"
Chen Shouyi felt a choke in his heart, almost spitting out a mouthful of blood.
No one could beat her shalessness!
After continuing to grill for a while and feeling that it was about done, Chen Shouyi quickly stopped, picked up the stick sticking in the at, and despite the heat, took a bite. He felt crispy outside and tender inside, the oil flowing in his mouth, the taste sweet and rich.
This creature had just begun to hibernate, with a high-fat content, making it seem greasy when stewed but perfectly complenting when grilled. During grilling, the fat soaked into the muscle, like a rich broth that was fragrant yet not greasy, bursting with oil upon biting, without any dryness.
Adding the unique chewiness and fragrance of creatures from another world, Chen Shouyi’s appetite was fully opened.
In just a few minutes, the dozen pounds of at were devoured.
...
The night gradually deepened, and the atmospheric temperature began to drop.
As the last bit of charcoal extinguished, darkness completely swallowed the place.
His pupils rapidly expanded to adapt, turning as dark as ink, absorbing the faint light in the surrounding environnt like a black hole.
With his physique of 16.8, he had already evolved a sort of low-light vision, where even with almost no light here, his visibility still exceeded a hundred ters.
Ti slipped away bit by bit.
Suddenly, it began snowing lightly in the sky.
Countless snowflakes whirled around Chen Shouyi, not a single one touching him.
"Cold?" Chen Shouyi asked the Shell Lady.
The Shell Lady curled up in Chen Shouyi’s arms, saying in a delicate voice, "Not cold!"
After another ten minutes, Chen Shouyi stood up to move his nearly frozen body!
Feeling the hard ground beneath his feet, he estimated the temperature here had dropped below ten degrees below zero.
Even though he was a Martial Artist, with a strong physique, wearing just a few strips of cloth for a t-shirt and shorts, he was almost freezing to death.
He checked the ti,
"Damn!"
Only seven hours had passed since dark, with the twenty-hour long night here, only a third had gone by.
If he had known the night would be so cold, he should have waited by the Spatial Passage base for the ti to pass.
He practiced the Horizontal Training thirty-six forms several tis, finally warming up.
The Shell Lady flew up, then landed back on Chen Shouyi’s shoulder, covered in tiny colorful specks of light.
"Soon I’ll go to kill the bad Giant; would you stay here?" Chen Shouyi said.
Upon hearing this, the Shell Lady quickly grasped Chen Shouyi’s ear, suppressing her fear, saying, "Little Bit isn’t afraid of bad Giants; Little Bit wants to go with the good Giant to kill the bad Giant."
Of course, she was afraid of the bad Giant, but she feared the Natural Spirits lurking in the night even more.
"Alright! Then, you must do as I say!" Chen Shouyi hesitated for a mont and said.
He couldn’t bear to leave her here forcibly; what if she was carried away by a starving wild beast? Though most animals had gone into hibernation, so cold-resistant species were still active during winter.
"Little Bit will be very good!" the Shell Lady quickly replied.
...
Chen Shouyi continued to wait for another two hours, finally too cold to endure, deciding not to wait any longer.
With night already seven hours deep, in this frigid deep night, he couldn’t believe the tribe could maintain its vigilance, just a group of Barbarians, not the People’s Liberation Army.
He tidied up his equipnt, prepared, and imdiately set off.
The ground had accumulated a thick layer of snow, crunching underfoot, sounding quite piercing in the silent darkness.
"This won’t do." He frowned slightly.
Imdiately, he moved his thoughts, quickly shifting the air beneath his feet, quieting the sound to a hardly detectable level.
With the enhancent of his willpower, his ability to manipulate the atmosphere was also rapidly improving.
In this alternate world, now he could accelerate the air to over thirty ters per second in an instant, roughly equivalent to a level eleven typhoon. Even under triple gravity, if a Barbarian wasn’t careful, they would be blown backward.
Although it wasn’t lethal, if used suddenly in battle, it could catch the opponent off guard and be enough to decide the outco in an instant.
As for muffling sound, it was just one of the small techniques.
He imdiately quickened his pace.
On his shoulder, the Shell Lady’s small face was tense, her bean-sized eyes warily looking left and right, fearing that a bad Giant might suddenly jump out.
It wasn’t long before Chen Shouyi arrived by the large stone near the tribe.
The three Barbarian corpses he had killed earlier had disappeared, and the bloodstains were covered by snow.
He wasn’t surprised.
His gaze turned to the dark silhouette of the Barbarian Tribe not far away, and he beca even more cautious and delicate in his movents.
After walking for a few more minutes, he suddenly stopped.
Not far away was a thin hemp rope, half-buried in the snow.
If the snow hadn’t crushed the grass to reveal the rope, it would have been easy to trip over.
He followed the rope and checked; it was over twenty ters long, as thin as a blade of grass, with one end tied to the root of a small tree and the other connected to a simple chanism. If tripped, the stone tied to the rope would slam into a hollow ceramic jar, creating a loud sound.
It served to alert that enemies were invading.
It seed one couldn’t underestimate the survival wisdom of the Barbarians. He remained vigilant as he disard the chanism and spoke to the Shell Lady:
"Help see if there are more ropes like this!"
"Oh!" The Shell Lady’s spirit was lifted upon hearing this, and she imdiately widened her eyes, quickly pointing ahead and whispering, "There’s one there too!"
Following her direction, he looked; it was a rope hanging mid-air.
Indeed, there were quite a few.
Next, Chen Shouyi and the Shell Lady discovered eight places in succession, almost surrounding the area. Most of them were found by the keen-eyed Shell Lady.
The snow fell harder, the night was pitch black, and there was little light. Even with Chen Shouyi’s vision, he could see no further than fifty ters, yet he approached the Barbarian’s residential area smoothly without causing any disturbance.
Outside the Barbarian residential area was a three-ter-tall wall made of piled-up giant stones. Fortunately, he hadn’t seen any guards thus far.
As he approached the wall, his expression slightly changed.
He suddenly felt a sense of strangeness in his heart, a pressure like a stone weighing down his chest, as if everything here bore deep hostility towards him.
This feeling was omnipresent.
The air, the ground, the trees, the weeds, even every grain of sand and every breath seed to reject him.
Domain of Faith!
"Such a huge Giant..." The Shell Lady also felt it, her face turning pale, and had it not been for the Giant still being there, she would have fled.
"There, don’t be afraid!" Chen Shouyi gently comforted her.
"Oh, I’m the bravest," the Shell Lady replied quickly.
He took a deep breath and resolutely moved forward, approaching the wall. To be cautious, he gripped his sword and his perception rapidly expanded, probing the surroundings.
"Damn, too treacherous."
The information his perception "saw" nearly made him curse.
Behind the wall was a trench, both deep and wide, filled with sharp long spears. If he jumped recklessly, even he would fall into the trap.
Although with his body’s defense, these long spears likely wouldn’t hurt him, he would at least be embarrassed, and it would thoroughly alert the Barbarian Tribe.
He estimated the jumping distance and retreated several dozen ters.
"Hold tight!" Chen Shouyi lightly reminded the Shell Lady.
The Shell Lady tensed at his words and quickly grabbed hold of his ear.
Then he took a few running steps and leapt forcefully.
His body seed to fly through the air, over the wall and trench, a full eight or nine ters, landing heavily, producing only a slight sound in the muffled air.
He stood silently for a few seconds, and seeing there was no disturbance, he continued forward noiselessly.
All around was quiet, only the snoring of Barbarians rose and fell.
The narrow, cramped streets, the primitive stone buildings with a Barbaric Wilderness aura, as he walked through them, Chen Shouyi felt as if he were treading through ancient ruins.
The air was thick with an indescribable stench.
Among them were the slls of feces, the rotten fishy stench of decayed salted fish, and the body odor of Barbarians. Even with the snow partially absorbing the odor here, it would likely be several tis more intense under normal circumstances.
Yet despite the stench, Chen Shouyi kept sniffing, trying to discern the scent of humans among it.
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