Chapter 72 – Aircraft fleet
Translated by Sunyancai
The speed of the advance group became rapid again, and the route was not the one that Shao Xuan knew from before.
They strode at a speed which was almost two to three times faster than the other hunting groups. It was a long process, during which they only had one little break to have something to eat. After that, they kept on marching, and then spent the night in a cave when the night came. It was also the place that Ta and the others had used to rest at during hunting missions.
Shao Xuan indeed was not used to this kind of running during the first day. Even though he was much better than his peers regarding strength, endurance and speed, he was only a junior warrior who awakened this year after all. In the advance group, the weakest warrior was someone only one step away from becoming a intermediate warrior. Shao Xuan could not be comparable with them after all.
So when they finally arrived at the cave to rest on the first night, Shao Xuan was completely exhausted. He laid down there, unable to even lift his feet. All his muscles hurt while twitching, and his brain felt like it was swollen.
The other warriors in the advance group were also tired, but they were already used to it, and the soreness was not the same as Shao Xuan was experiencing now. Looking at Shao Xuan’s behavior, they all guessed that this lad could finally see the gap between him and the others. The advance group was not for everyone to join, and those with low ability could never keep up with the crew, even if he used every effort to become a part of the group. However, Shao Xuan was already impressive enough to keep up during his first day.
So, some of the warriors in the advance group had a better impression of Shao Xuan. In their eyes, Shao Xuan was only a kid, and people in the tribe had a relatively higher tolerance for kids. Ta and the others, ranking top in the advance group already discussed about taking turns to carry Shao Xuan during the next day. After all, it seemed impossible for Shao Xuan to keep running by himself tomorrow.
However, to everyone’s surprise, all the others found that Shao Xuan was as good as new when they woke up the next day, early in the morning. Last night, he was struggling to lift his toe, but now he was alive and kicking, as if nothing had happened! He needed no ride from others, and began to keep up energetically.
The warriors in the advance group shared the same facial expression.
Oh my goodness. Was this really the kid from the orphan cave down there?
What had he been dieting on since birth?! Normal beasts? Ferocious beasts? Or even king beasts?
It’s just impossible! The food distributed to the orphan cave was normal beast meat and plant tubers, which contained no good energy. How could he grow into such a strong warrior?
They were really puzzled no matter how they scratched their heads.
Milling over it, it was still very mysterious.
Unless, he did have the blessings from the ancestors?!
Hence during the second day’s run, people would constantly glance at Shao Xuan while running.
Well, judging from that kid’s energetic look, it seemed that he was not faking it!
……
Unlike the other hunting groups, which would do some hunting before journeying to the next location, the hunting pattern of the advance group was different. Ta led the group to keep running. After spending one night at the cave, they had to continue to march onward.
Sometimes they had to climb over a mountain while the mountaintop was covered in perennial snow. Sometimes they had to take a detour to some other mountains afar, during which, they had to pass through dangerous regions like swamps and tar pits.
Shao Xuan had seen many nameless ferocious beasts, such as huge fierce ugly beasts and colorful poisonous snakes. Any one of them would raise enough eyebrows if they carried them back on the Path of Glory. However, the group of warriors made no stop at all. Even when they killed something, it would be for food and daily supply. The spare parts would just be tossed away in order not to be their burdens.
March, hunt, and then march, and then hunt again!
They were doing similar things every day. Enormous consumption of physical energy meant more need of energy supplement. The meat from high level beasts was the best supplement.
Originally, the other warriors in the advance group worried that Shao Xuan might be sleepy after dieting on the high level prey’s meat, however, it turned out that they were worrying about nothing.
After hunting down a Thorn Black Wind, Shao Xuan had become used to eating high level meat. He had been able to adapt to the food for a long time. In fact, he could absorb the energy from even higher level foods.
Being a newly-awakened warrior that was awakened this year, he ate no less than the others, and had much faster recovery speed. At first, warriors from the advance group were all surprised at Shao Xuan’s behavior. But later on, they became less surprised, and then they became totally numb to it. In the end, no one would ever laugh at Shao Xuan anymore.
As expected, no ordinary person would be recruited by the team leader in the advance group.
After five days of continuous journeying, Shao Xuan followed the others to climb up a mountain and entered a cave to rest. They had reached the destination. But Shao Xuan could not tell the difference, except for a slight odd feeling.
After a night’s rest, Shao Xuan was woken up early in the morning. He collected his equipment and followed Ta outside.
They continued to climb up and then stopped at a steep cliff.
The sun rose as time went by.
Shao Xuan stood at the edge of cliff, facing the rising sun. It was a large scale of endless green in his view. There were some other colors mixed in, but ninety-nine percent was green in different shades.
This was the destination of their journey, a kingdom of plants. In the horizon, at the junction between the sky and the endless plant kingdom, the sun was rising.
The chilly air became warmer.
Shao Xuan could clearly feel that everything living on this land was waking up.
Ka, Ka, Ka!
Among this green kingdom of plants, some building tall circular plants were making ka-ka sounds, like heavy wood planks hitting each other. Sometimes there were creaking sounds, as if a giant wooden boat was swaying in the waves.
Together with these sounds, the ends of the circular plants had their originally wound up leaves unwind. The layers of leaves stretched and opened, like flowers blossoming.
The lowered “heads” of the bean-sprout-like giant plants began to raise, and in the face of the sun, they stretched out their huge leaves, like wings.
The sun was rising, and its light had reached the other side of the mountain. Like an alarm clock, it went from one side of the mountain to the world in the other side, to wake up the sleeping creatures.
Shao Xuan took a deep breath. He stepped forward and looked down.
It was merely a cliff, and whoever jumped down would totally be smashed to pieces.
“How do we go down there?” asked Shao Xuan. If they had to go down eventually, then why did they climb up? The cliff they stood on was basically perpendicular to the ground. It would be very dangerous if they climbed directly down, let alone that no one knew whether they would be attacked by other creatures while climbing down. It was an impossible mission.
“Of course we do not jump!” someone laughed.
“Hey! Look at the lake over there and you’ll know.” Tuo pointed to somewhere in the other direction.
Shao Xuan looked along to where Tuo pointed.
What lake? There was only a lake of darkness.
No!
It was more than that!
Shao Xuan took a closer look, and found that something was moving in the black lake, it was too far for people to notice easily.
Sure enough, the black lake was not as calm as before, and it began to spread out.
Numerous black dots rose up. At first there were only a few of them, but after several breaths, dense black patches began to rise up in the air.
And the lake, which was covered by those black dots, finally revealed itself in Shao Xuan’s sight.
It was an open lake and there seemed to be a lot of plants of different colors inside. Yellow, green, brown, red…many colors mixed in the pool, and together with the shape of the pool, it was like a pair of compound eyes, like those of some insect.
The mountain on the other side was much higher than the one Shao Xuan was standing at, and it poked right into the sky.
Those rising black dots did not fly upwards, but flew in their direction, as if a ball of dancing black cloud.
“Get ready, everyone!!” Ta said to the crew and then to Shao Xuan, “You follow me, Ah-Xuan!”
The black cloud approached and Shao Xuan could basically hear the wings flapping, and he finally saw what those black dots were.
Dragonflies?!
Just before, they were too far away to identify, but now, Shao Xuan’s heart was fluttering like hell, seeing that it was a group of dragonflies.
Shao Xuan had seen dragonflies before, but not in this size and quantity!
It was a huge aircraft fleet!
The small ones had wingspans of at least three meters, while most of them had wingspans of five meters! Some of them were even bigger, while numerous giant dragonflies were flying towards them in large numbers. Obviously Shao Xuan was looking at something he had never seen before.
They were going to take them from one side of the mountain to the other side, where the green kingdom of plants was located.
When the “aircraft fleet” flew above their heads, Shao Xuan could see the reticulate veins in their wings.
They were like gliders!
“Let’s go!”
With the favorable terrain, warriors in the advance group leaped down the cliff and landed on the backs of dragonflies.
Before Shao Xuan had the chance to move, he was lifted by Ta and landed on a big dragonfly’s back.
For the first time in his life, Shao Xuan experienced the giant dragonfly flight.