96: Chapter 95 Wilderness Pursuit 1 96: Chapter 95 Wilderness Pursuit 1 “Is there a more obvious original habitat for this creature?” Hou Niao observed his senior brothers’ methods attentively and asked.
Xiang Zhiwen shook his head, “There’s no strict regional restriction as long as it’s not an extremely cold climate.
Yinyangbees can survive anywhere.
They especially favor warm and humid environments.
Therefore, their appearance in the relatively dry Yinling suggests that it’s not the yinyangbee’s preference, but rather that of the tracking honeycomb.”
This involved a rather complicated issue.
Why would a demon that didn’t like such a climate come here?
Was it an active decision, or was it lured by someone?
Evidence was required, not wild guesses or baseless assertions; the migration of demons was still an unknown realm to humanity.
No one could definitively say that the tracking honeycomb shouldn’t be here; after all, just like humans have the right to migrate freely, so do demons.
They didn’t leave many clues behind; after all, seven days had passed, and most traces had been destroyed by passing wildlife.
The so-called scent left by demons could hardly linger for seven days without dispersing.
Dou Gong crouched on the ground and just shook his head.
“Ordinary bee nests can’t hide their scent because they are fixed in one place; but tracking honeycomb is different, being a mobile bee nest.
Since the bee cells are constructed inside the honeycomb, there’s basically no chance of honey dripping out.
I think these footprints are suspicious.
Judging by the toes, they should belong to a bipedal creature with substantial weight, certainly of considerable size.
A giant ape is the most likely candidate; this is consistent with the yinyangbees’ nesting requirements, as too small a body wouldn’t accommodate many bees inside.”
Having footprints did not solve the problem.
In the wilderness, there were too many complicated terrains—small rivers, rocky beaches, hillocks, densely grassy farms—that could perfectly conceal such footprints.
You wouldn’t be able to follow the trail for long before losing the clues, which wasn’t very meaningful.
After making a few rounds at the scene, Xiang Zhiwen issued a task to Hou Niao that seemed somewhat baffling,
“Dig up some dung beetles; I’ll cook you guys a spicy dung beetle snack to go with your drinks tonight!”
This was truly a task that challenged Hou Niao’s limits.
He couldn’t even figure out whether Xiang Xunyou was joking or serious.
But seeing Dou Gong acting without hesitation, he had no choice but to start this somewhat disgusting excavation.
The sift dung beetle was the most widely distributed burrowing creature in the Yinling Wilderness and, in fact, on the entire continent as well.
They are nature’s janitors, playing an indispensable role in the ecosystem by decomposing animal dung.
Every deep autumn season, they diligently prepare food for winter.
To survive the cold and rear their young, they lay eggs on these provisions.
Then, when spring arrives and the flowers bloom, a new swarm of dung beetles emerges.
Their food comes from various sources, primarily dung, but they don’t spurn other enticements, such as, dead insects?
The caves of the sift dung beetles are easy to find.
Just by observing the coin-sized loose soil on the ground, you can determine where they are.
The holes aren’t deep—just about a foot at most—as these creatures don’t have the strength of a pangolin beast.
These simple-minded creatures couldn’t understand why humans would destroy their homes and stuff them into a bag.
But when Hou Niao dug up a few shallow holes and found the corpse of a praying mantis in one, he finally understood Xiang Zhiwen’s purpose.
In the battle, yinyangbees must have died; even if the Town Government brothers were worthless, they couldn’t possibly fail to kill a single yinyangbee!
Although the yinyangbees had impressive offensive power, their defense was not that great, only slightly sturdier than regular hornets—how could they withstand the retaliatory strikes of human cultivators?
There wasn’t a single yinyangbee corpse at the site.
Some may have indeed been eaten by passing animals searching for food, but some might have been taken back to their caves by diligent dung beetles to serve as warm nests for their young.
This was their tool for tracking the honeycomb.
Having fully understood the situation, Hou Niao shook his head with a bitter smile, dumping the dung beetles out of the bag.
He was still too green; he hadn’t caught the gist in the Patrol Envoy’s words.
But as soon as he emptied the bag, Xiang Zhiwen’s dissatisfied voice rang in his ears,
In Yinling, wasting food is shameful!
Finding the bodies of slim-waisted bees is important, but so is the spicy dung beetle at night!”
The area wasn’t large, and within a quarter of an hour, every dung beetle in the region had met its doom.
The trio’s haul included twelve bodies of slim-waisted bees, some intact and some not, as well as three bags full of dung beetles.
Xiang Zhiwen gathered the bodies of the slim-waisted bees together, put them into a Jade Bottle, added a few Cultivation Materials, melted and dissolved them, and soon even Hou Niao could vaguely smell a strong sweet fragrance through the bottle.
He then took out a Spiritual Beast Bag and released a tiny puppy from it, letting it smell the scent.
The creature was utterly intoxicated by it; when Xiang Zhiguang placed the bottle into the Treasure Gourd, the little dog, quite dissatisfied, ran around in circles, then bolted in a particular direction.
The three didn’t dare to delay and followed closely behind.
This was a tracking dog, a very special kind of creature, a canine breed, gentle, and extremely sensitive to scents; all its skills were in that nose, making it the hunter’s best assistant.
The tracking dog paused frequently as it ran partly because its memory for scents was not as outstanding as its sensitivity, and sometimes certain terrains would halt its tracking altogether.
When the tracking dog’s memory of the scent became vague, Xiang Zhiwen would take out the bottle for it to sniff again; but if the scent trail was lost, the three had to rely on their own experience to determine the direction, trying different ways until the dog picked up on the scent again.
No matter how much a human trained their sense of smell, they couldn’t match a dog’s, especially when at a lower Realm; humans have their limitations, dogs have their keen senses…
Such tracking was time-consuming, they barely covered twenty miles that afternoon.
Hou Niao was somewhat dissatisfied, but for the two experienced old-timers, this was quite a decent achievement.
Although the tracking dog was effective, the likelihood of ending up fruitless was still more than half in practical applications; in this wilderness full of variables, nothing was certain.
As the sky grew overcast, Xiang Zhiwen decided to set up camp.
Searching in the dark introduced too many variables.
Humans were somewhat better off, being Quanzhen cultivators with their methods, but it was different for the tracking dog; the creature was timid, and would refuse to work at the sight of a demon…
Hou Niao felt uneasy, for the two seniors had started preparing the evening’s side dishes to accompany their drinks.
Xiang Zhiwen started the fire, while Dou Gong began processing the ingredients.
Of course, they couldn’t just throw them into the pot; the dung beetle’s peculiar smell required several steps to neutralize,
Soaking in oil forced the creatures to release gases from their bodies, aged vinegar was used for cleaning, strong alcohol to remove the gamey taste, and balloon flower water to add fragrance…
Every move was methodical, showing they had done this often.
Hou Niao dryly interjected, “Senior brothers, I have some ready-to-eat food here; we don’t need to go through all this trouble…”
Xiang Zhiwen glanced at him, “Even with simple fare, can ready-to-eat food compare to the fragrance of fresh?”
For satisfaction lies in modest portions, only then does the heart ease and the body relaxes.
When the gut is filled with delicious food, wherever one sits is home.