In the crackling of exploding sparks, he slowly drifted into dreamland.
He didn’t know how long he had slept when Lin Yang was awakened by the cold. He glanced at the fire pit, which was now nothing but remains. Needless to say, he had overslept and forgotten to add firewood.
As he crawled out of the sleeping bag to add firewood, suddenly, a dark shadow swooshed away not far from him.
In the pitch-black surroundings, a person’s senses become extremely sharp, and the sound made him instinctively shine his emergency light in that direction.
He saw only a silvery shadow that quickly vanished into the bushes.
This scared him quite a bit, and he immediately put on his coat, grabbed a shovel in his hand, and step by step, he approached the area where the noise had come from.
When he got there, Lin Yang shone his flashlight and discovered the issue.
Certainly, some animal had dug up the bones he had buried in the ground. Only a bit of fish tail remained, and the rabbit bones were reduced to scattered fragments, the rest being carried off or eaten.
To have crushed and eaten a rabbit’s thigh bone, it must have been a predatory animal, which sent a chill down Lin Yang’s spine.
Just now, that creature had been less than twenty meters from him. If it had been a bit bolder and come over to his sleeping bag...
Merely thinking about it made Lin Yang break out in a cold sweat.
He checked the time: three o’clock in the morning. After waking up, intermittent, unidentified animal roars echoed in the night, causing his already tense nerves to tighten once again.
With no desire left to sleep, Lin Yang rekindled the fire briskly, crawled into his sleeping bag, and lay there with open eyes until the sky slowly began to brighten.
In this season, the days were very long, and the nights much shorter.
He checked the time again: it was half-past five in the morning, and day had already broken.
He had had a fairly stable sleep earlier in the night, so Lin Yang got out of his sleeping bag, folded it neatly, stuffed it into his backpack, and began roasting the wild rabbit and fish soup left over from the day before on the fire.
After filling his stomach, he also started his live stream early.
"Morning, did the host have breakfast?"
"How does it feel to camp in the wild?"
"What are you doing today? Still fishing and building a house?"
"Shouldn’t you check the traps?"
"Host, you look a bit off, did you sleep well?"
Lin Yang rubbed his eyes, which were slightly bloodshot, and said, "Good morning, everyone. There was a little situation last night, I was woken up at three and didn’t dare to sleep afterwards. I’m slightly affected, but it’s manageable."
"What happened?"
"Yeah, what happened? What went down?"
When Lin Yang said this, everyone became anxious.
Lin Yang took the drone to where he had buried the bones the day before and said, "I forgot to add firewood in the middle of the night, which woke me up because of the cold. Then, while adding wood, it seemed like some animal had been active where the bones were buried. I shone the emergency light and didn’t see clearly what it was, but it looked quite big.
Also, the rabbit’s leg bone was bitten and eaten, which means it was a predator. Look, these are the traces left from last night on the ground."
The camera zoomed in on the broken bones, and as Lin Yang stood by, suddenly a footprint appeared on the live stream.
This was a child-sized footprint, quite distinct in the turned soil, where it lay solitary.
"Holy shit, is that a footprint?"
"It’s not a wolf, is it? It looks pretty big."
"Don’t talk nonsense. Wolf paws are similar to those of a dog, with non-retractable claws, so there should be obvious claw marks at the tip of each toe, but this one seems different, with a broader paw and less distinct claw tips."
After looking closely, Lin Yang said with a somber face, " It’s not a wolf’s paw. Judging from the outline, I think it might be an animal like the Wolf Weasel. Look, here where the shallow pit is dug, there are similar marks, just not as clear."
"Wolf Weasel? Is that thing dangerous?"
"Oh my god? Aren’t those also in the Northeast, and protected?"
Lin Yang spread his hands, "Around here, if it’s a Wolf Weasel, they aren’t protected. Among the common wild animals here, I think only foxes are protected.
Now that we know what it is, it’s good news. They usually act alone, are not very large, and pose less danger to me. When I deal with the food scraps later, I’ll clean up properly. For now, I’m going to check the traps to see if there’s any catch."
After greeting his viewers, Lin Yang, armed with his combat knife for protection, started heading toward the area where he had set traps.
After half an afternoon and a night, the traps he had set yielded remarkable results.
Two rabbits had been caught and hung dead by the traps, and one squirrel was caught by its hind legs but still alive.
But what shocked everyone the most was a leg-snare trap Lin Yang had set at the edge of the forest, which had seemingly caught something. The double-stranded number four PE line had been snapped, leaving behind copious amounts of blood. The surrounding grass was flattened in disarray.
He bent down to inspect the area closely, picking up a clump of silvery hair to show everyone.
"This leg-snare trap must have caught some sort of medium-sized animal, but it bit through the rope. This is its fur, silvery-grey, with some down feathers. I’m not certain what animal it is, but it’s been wounded by the trap. I reckon it won’t dare to move around here for a while.
Alright, I’ll reset the trap to its original state and get back to work at the camp. With food available, I need to get the shelter built as quickly as possible."