First, survive. Talk later.
Of course, he also knew that he couldn't escape.
Back in the hollow, Yu Ziqing slightly hunched his body, wrapped himself in the makeshift large cloak, and lay beside the campfire.
Soon, half-asleep and half-awake, he vaguely saw some figures moving.
Yu Ziqing remained motionless, breathing evenly, only slightly opening his eyes a crack, quietly watching.
A man with a patch of black mole hair on the left side of his face circled the edge of the camp, shouldered a skinny, skin-and-bones lamb, and crawled towards the outside along the edge.
With the dim light of the campfire, Yu Ziqing could also see that the lamb drooped its head, not knowing whether it was already dead or not.
Just as the man left the temporary camp, Yu Ziqing saw several other figures quietly following him, gesturing silently as they departed.
Meanwhile, in the camp, even the last night-watchman with the snake-shaped tattoo face had fallen into a deep sleep.
Yu Ziqing sighed inwardly, his expression somewhat complicated, unsure whether to admire these people's courage or lament their upcoming fate.
Sure enough, as they walked no more than a dozen yards, Yu Ziqing saw a black rope on the ground, slithering like a black snake, making a fine sibilant sound as it followed them.
The man carrying the lamb seemed to trip, stumbled and fell, and as he propped himself off the ground, attempting to stand, the scrawny lamb on his back noiselessly transformed into a sheepskin, draping over his body.
The silently approaching black rope, at this moment, wrapped around his neck.
A seven-foot-tall man was dragged into the shadows without any suspense by the black rope.
Amidst the terrifying bleating that exploded through the night, the campfire flared up fiercely, and under the glow of the light, the snake-shaped tattooed strongman, unbeknownst to when, was already standing in the shadows.
In his hand, he held the black rope, at the other end of which was a white mountain goat.
On the left side of the mountain goat's face, there was a round patch of black hair.
It was shaped like the black mole hair on the left face of the man seen earlier.
Seeing the snake-shaped tattooed strongman coldly smiling as he emerged from the shadows, the remaining people, with looks of terror on their faces, swung around little knives they didn't know where they had come from, stabbing at the body of the snake-shaped tattooed strongman.
The sound of metal clashing rang out, but where the little knives were supposed to penetrate, the skin was still shining with an oily glow, not even scratched.
The blazing flames of the campfire died down again, concealing everything back into the shadows.
After a brief moment, Yu Ziqing saw the snake-shaped tattooed strongman return, leading with the black rope, which was now tied to seven or eight skinny, skin-and-bones mountain goats.
Dead silence prevailed, as if everything had returned to normal.
As the second half of the night approached, it seemed even colder than the night before.
Yu Ziqing was abruptly woken by the biting cold, forced to draw closer to the campfire, and also closer to those few human-shaped furnaces, finally feeling a bit less cold.
But now, he no longer felt sleepy.
Taking advantage of the firelight, Yu Ziqing took out a yellowed book and a charred piece of charcoal to use as a pencil, jotting and sketching in the book.
The night-watchman with the snake-shaped tattoo sat by the fire, glanced once, saw the characters for "cookbook" on the cover of the book, then, seeing nothing unusual, turned away and took out a black scorpion to pop into his mouth.
Yu Ziqing flipped open the cookbook, inside of which were mostly complicated characters, and in the gaps between these rows of text, he had written tiny Chinese characters he was familiar with.
Codename: Snake-shaped Tattoo Face.
True Name: Huoergeda (transliteration), original text **** (blacked out).
Identity: Member of Bantu Tribe (extinct), Human Traffickers, Cannibal Evil Cultivator, informant for the Seventh Floor (unknown power).
Main experience: Tribe extinction, wandering in the wilderness, accidentally obtained a fragment of Dharma Method named "Five Poison Constant Smell," starting the path of Human Trafficker's evil cultivation.
Frequently consumes toxic substances (many poisonous insects, snakes, and ants in the materials, necessary for cultivation).
Practices evil skills, creates beasts.
Controls ropes, the black rope is actually made from hair mixed with wool of an unknown type of sheep, an essential Magic Artifact for Beast Creation Evil Skill.
After this, Yu Ziqing continued to add:
Impenetrable, not through Body Horizontal Training, nor through Qi to resist; must consume poisonous substances to supplement cultivation, poisonous substances can also be used as blue medicine.
This line was just observed, consuming poisonous substances for cultivation had been witnessed many times, but using poison as blue medicine to rapidly replenish what was spent immediately after taking action was his speculation.
Having written this page, the entire page of the cookbook's margins was filled with fly-sized characters detailing information about the snake-shaped tattooed strongman, dense and exceedingly thorough.
After all this was done, Yu Ziqing put the cookbook into his chest and casually glanced at a rusty sword he had tucked away, its blade and scabbard were rusted solid, completely unusable.
But at this moment, the gap between the locked blade and scabbard of the rusty short sword faintly showed some rust transforming into dust, quietly flaking off.
Yu Ziqing's heart suddenly loosened, his tightly clenched, curled-up body finally dared to relax a little bit at this moment.
Gathering information bit by bit, understanding those strong individuals, was certainly very necessary under normal circumstances, let alone now when it involved his own life-saving trump card.
Although he was just an ordinary person, no, now even less than a well-fed ordinary person, a hungry and cold half-dead weakling.
Yet, as long as he knew some essential information about his opponents, to them, as soon as he makes a move, he would be virtually invincible.
After months of probing, today, he finally achieved the trigger condition for the snake-shaped man.
It's a pity that the current categorization is still rather crude.
For now, it can only be temporarily categorized into true name, identity, background, main Dharma Method, strengths, or trump cards.