Starting Off Survival With A Small Treehouse

Chapter 70: Chapter 70: Looking for Clues

Xu Xin rode the Silver King to the edge of the altar at top speed.

The altar hadn’t changed much compared to when he left yesterday; the only difference was that the blood-stained column without a statue no longer emitted heat.

Xu Xin looked at the altar’s ground. There was no anomaly, just the usual uneven surface weathered by wind and sun. Yet Xu Xin was certain that the Blood Pattern Giant emerged from here.

There were no traces of its arrival around; if it didn’t come from the altar, could it have fallen from the sky?

To prevent any further accidents, Xu Xin approached the ritual table, opened the small drawer for the altar knife, and put the knife back in.

The small drawer suddenly retracted on its own, and the entire ritual table started emitting a cold aura.

After about ten seconds, the cold aura faded. Xu Xin opened it again, finding a brand-new, shiny altar knife in the drawer.

Xu Xin took out the knife and found no traces of previous use.

”Is this why it has to be put back every time?” Xu Xin murmured to himself.

Checking the map, Xu Xin noticed that the tigers that roamed around the altar yesterday had vanished, leaving weaker beasts around it.

Perhaps they were scared away by the earlier Blood Pattern Giant, while other smaller beasts might have been too scared to move, like the Silver King, hence they didn’t flee.

”Just perfect, trying to avoid those tigers yesterday took quite some effort.”

Taking advantage of the tigers’ absence, Xu Xin planned to first check where the giant vanished, then go hunt wild cats.

He looked at the path of destruction carved out by the Blood Pattern Giant. All over the path were broken poplar trees, some snapped by the giant’s feet, and others smashed away by its club.

He was really curious about where this Blood Pattern Giant had gone and why it hadn’t returned to the altar.

On the map, the red dots around this newly opened path appeared denser; besides the native beasts, others might have come out of curiosity.

Xu Xin held his rabbit-eared crossbow, riding his wolf at a rapid pace along the path.

As expected, along the path smashed by the Blood Pattern Giant, there were many small beast carcasses and gravely injured ones, mostly crushed by the fallen trees, as well as many birds.

In just a few minutes, Xu Xin had collected plenty of materials. It was a pity there were no points, but free materials were already nice enough.

Reaching the hill where the Blood Pattern Giant disappeared, Xu Xin was baffled by the unremarkable forest ahead.

He had reached the outskirts of the Hilly Resource Zone, and the path shaped by fallen trees ended here, leaving just an ordinary forest ahead with no trace of a cave nearby.

”What’s going on? Did the Blood Pattern Giant just vanish here?”

”Yip!” Keke jumped off the wolf’s back and ran forward.

It seemed Keke had discovered something.

”Silver King, follow Keke.”

Keke ran half a circle around the hill, finally stopping on an open area outside, standing up and looking around in bewilderment.

”Is it here, Keke?”

”Yip?” Keke tilted its little head, confused.

Xu Xin examined the surroundings. The hill’s cliff-like sides shot straight up, forming a massive wall that separated the Hilly Resource Zone from the outside world.

”Huh?” Xu Xin noticed a pattern formed by natural wind and sun marks on the cliff that seemed familiar.

Tilting his head from side to side, Xu Xin viewed it from different angles, and for a moment, the pattern aligned with an impression in his mind.

”This... this pattern is the Blood Pattern Giant’s chest marking!”

Xu Xin took a sudden step back.

Why was the marking on the hill where the Blood Pattern Giant disappeared?

Had the giant merged into the hill itself? Or was the hill actually the Blood Pattern Giant?

Could these surrounding hills all be made up of such creatures?

Xu Xin had always wondered why a ring of hills suddenly appeared in this rather flat land.

Thinking about how he’d climbed the hills more than once gave him goosebumps.

”No, it can’t be. Perhaps the Blood Pattern Giant tribe left a mark here. Maybe it’s a teleportation device that transported the giant away.”

This explanation seemed more convincing, gradually calming Xu Xin down, but the previous thoughts planted a seed in his mind, altering his view of these hills.

Better stay away.

Xu Xin picked up Keke, mounted the Silver King, and moved away from the cliff with the strange totem.

Let’s first gather the offerings. This Blood Pattern Giant is still too distant for me.

With a more potent and faster crossbow in hand, Xu Xin soon gathered more than ten cat claw offerings, more than enough to dye the feline statue’s column completely red.

The carp he ate in the morning also worked wonders. Even after hunting many small beasts yesterday, not a single blue-grade material was found, yet today, just a few wild cats yielded a blue-grade wild cat skin.

”Time to hunt a mutated wild cat.”

Xu Xin took a long look at the patterned hill in the distance, then turned and ran towards the altar with the Silver King.

His strategy against the wild cat was simple. Based on the experience from the previous day’s sacrifice, once the sacrifice process completed, the mutated beasts would need time to come back to life, plenty for Xu Xin to run away.

With a more advanced crossbow than yesterday, Xu Xin was confident it could deal significant damage to a mutated beast if he hit it. Thus, he just needed to kite it from afar, using the crossbow with poisonous arrows to impede the mutated wild cat’s movements and finish it off when it was exhausted.

It’s easy to plan, but hard to execute.

Xu Xin preemptively ate an orange (blue) to elevate his focus to peak condition.

Returning to the ritual table, he glanced at the wild cat statue, those claws deeply embedded in the stone column seemed intimidating.

Taking a deep breath, Xu Xin placed the wild cat offerings on the ritual table, quickly exited the altar range, and rode the Silver King to the furthest distance his crossbow could reach. He loaded a toxic bolt and silently awaited the sacrifice completion.

Shortly, red patterns covered the cat statue, beams of red light shooting through the gaps, making the altar glow like a dazzling sun.

The stone sculpture shattered, revealing a wild cat with blood-red patterns and outrageously large claws, in yellow and white hues, that appeared atop the column, looking skyward and letting out a cat cry. Alas, feline cries lack the majesty of a tiger’s or a lion’s roar, making it high-pitched, hoarse, and unpleasant.

”Now’s the moment!”

Xu Xin raised his hand to pull the trigger, and the toxic bolt flew towards the Blood Patterned Cat on the column at breakneck speed!

The Blood Patterned Cat’s cry abruptly stopped as its claws took a swipe that, to the naked eye, caught the bolt right in front of its nose!

But Xu Xin’s reinforced bolt wasn’t something it could easily stop; the bolt veered slightly, then hit the Blood Patterned Cat in the shoulder.

”Meow—!!” A sharp cry rang out, and the Blood Patterned Cat’s blood-red eyes locked onto Xu Xin, holding the crossbow in the distance.

”Mission accomplished. Injure it to draw its hostility, and it’ll pursue relentlessly! Silver King, run! Keke, hold tight!”

”Howl!” ”Yip!”

The Silver King dashed away from the altar at top speed.

Xu Xin straddled the Wolf King backward, holding the crossbow, aiming at the rapidly closing Blood Patterned Cat.

”This time, I’m taking you down, mutated beast, without a scratch!”