blogombal Chapter 37 is labeled
Chapter 37 is labeled
The way Big Head stood up was wrong.
When it lay on its side last night, the wound on its left shoulder was right next to the ground. Overnight, the scab, dirt, and grass clippings stuck together.
In the morning, it suddenly propped itself up, and with a burst of strength from its left front leg, it pulled itself up.
It froze on the spot.
With all four legs propped up, the body suspended in mid-air, the head slowly lowered, the gaze drifted towards the left shoulder, sniffed, and the expression was very complicated.
As they landed, the gazes of the other lionesses drifted over one after another.
Big Head immediately raised his head again, his expression serious, his ears straight, and his four legs slowly continued to support him, straightening his body completely. The whole process was at a steady pace, slow to the point of being deliberately composed.
It was as if nothing had happened.
Three grass stems were stuck to the scab on its left shoulder, and it swayed slightly with its movement.
Chen Fei didn't look at it.
He's already doing the first thing of the day.
Unleash your sense of smell, spreading it across the entire territory, and mentally reorganize the olfactory map you can perceive.
The scent of the dark brown mane, which was still outside the territory's borders last night, has faded considerably now. It's shifting northeastward at a pace befitting a wounded male lion's normal retreat.
Given the severity of the bite wound inflicted by the leopard on its neck, it's highly unlikely the leopard will turn back in the near future.
The direction of lightness is somewhat blurred; further to the west, the concentration is extremely low, essentially at the edge of perception.
It does not pose a threat at this time.
Chen Fei stood up and walked towards the east side of the territory.
The things I need to do today were decided last night.
The lion king is dead, the wandering individuals have submitted, and the pride of lionesses has surrendered, but he has not yet truly traversed this territory.
From this day forward, this territory belongs to him.
He was to leave scent markers along the border to drive away intruders, taking over the lion king's duties.
His current basic combat ability is at the upper level of a sub-adult male lion.
The heat flow covering its limbs translates to a fighting ability that allows it to defeat most adult male lions, but not to the point of overwhelming them all.
Human intelligence and the information gap remain his greatest weapons.
So we'll go through it all today.
The eastern side of the territory is open grassland with good visibility and high prey density in the morning.
When Chen Fei reached the edge of the grassland, he smelled the scent of wildebeest.
He stopped and tilted his head slightly in the direction of the wind.
There were several layers to the scent: the scent of an adult wildebeest, the milky smell of a calf, and a familiar scent of glandular secretions that only appeared during certain seasons.
That's what wildebeests secrete in large quantities from their interhoof and infraorbital glands before embarking on their long migration.
Signs of an impending migration.
In his previous life, he had read a paper about the triggering mechanism of the Great Migration of wildebeest in East Africa, which concluded that the start of the wildebeest migration does not depend solely on rainfall signals.
Instead, it relies on the hormonal changes of "information-transmitting individuals" in the group—usually older females who have experienced more than three migrations—which spread throughout the group, forming a collective state of physiological readiness.
After this preparatory state is established, there is usually still some time before the migration actually begins.
This is the best time to eat!
The group is still there, but the individuals have begun to switch to "migratory mode" of alertness. Their attention is scattered, they raise their heads less frequently, and their reaction speed to danger signals is almost a beat slower than usual.
Chen Fei squatted down at the edge of the grassland and simultaneously used his sense of smell and hearing to guide the wildebeest herd.
Approximately two hundred meters.
Around forty heads, including their young.
Three of the smaller cubs couldn't keep up with the group's pace and wandered off to the edge.
can.
He didn't rush in immediately.
He circled around to the side for a distance, chose a spot with dense enough grass, lowered his body, and then emitted a low-frequency vibration in the direction of his landing.
"Come on, keep your distance, and don't jump the gun."
Big Head's footsteps came from the direction of their landing spot, followed by the presence of two lionesses. Mei Mei didn't move; she stayed at the landing spot to guard the stingy guy.
Four.
enough.
Chen Fei moved nearly eighty meters horizontally through the grass and found a foothold diagonally in front of the wildebeest herd downwind.
This angle has two advantages.
The wind carried their scent away, preventing them from alarming the flock beforehand;
His position diagonally forward allowed him to cut off the wildebeest herd's route when they tried to flee southeast.
He focused his attention on the cub that was furthest from the group.
The cubs were wandering around, their heads down, nibbling on a clump of short grass, completely unaware of what was happening.
The heat in Chen Fei's limbs slowly converged towards the front of his body, like pressing a spring into place but not letting go yet.
The cub lowered its head, lower it even further.
Chen Fei let go.
The moment he went out, Big Head's footsteps sounded simultaneously from the flank—this time it didn't try to steal the spot; the rhythm was right.
The wildebeest herd scattered the moment Chen Fei burst out of the grass, all running southeast, just as predicted.
By the time the cub raised its head, Chen Fei had already arrived.
The process of eating is not complicated.
Chen Fei and the two lionesses went first, while Da Tou chased away the vultures on the outer circle, and Liu Lang Jia and Yi guarded the two sides.
Sel walked over and sat down next to Chen Fei. She waited for him to finish eating before she started.
Chen Fei didn't try to drive her away; instead, he moved half a body length to the side.
After chasing away the vultures on the outer edge, Big Head lowered his head to sniff the air, used the tip of his nose to locate his portion, strode over, squatted down to the side, and began to eat.
The homeless man approached at this moment, trying to find a spot next to Big Head.
Big Head raised its head, glared in its direction, and took a half step to the left, blocking the gap.
The wanderer paused, tilted his head to the right, and circled around to find another angle to enter.
Big Head's head turned, and his eyes followed.
The two creatures stared at each other for nearly five seconds before the Wandering A decided to concede. It moved two steps to the side, squatted down in a clearly secondary spot, and began to gnaw.
Big Head lowered his head again and continued eating, his expression extremely calm.
[Host: Chen Fei]
[Identity: Sub-adult male lion]
[Energy Points: 745↑]
The calories from food are slowly released into the body.
After finishing his meal, Chen Fei lay down for a while before continuing to walk along the western and southern borders of the territory.
The western boundary is a transitional zone between shrublands and low hills, with more complex terrain and more layers of scent than the eastern side.
When Chen Fei went in, he sensed three things.
A herd of zebras on the back of the hills.
At about 150 meters, after sensing his presence, they all raised their heads, remained still for about ten seconds, and then moved as a group to the northwest. There was no explosion; they simply changed direction smoothly.
The zebra assessed his scent as "needing to take a detour".
This means that his aura has been given a new label in the collective experience of the animals on this grassland.
An elderly warthog, wandering alone, was digging at the roots of grass at the edge of a bush when it caught a whiff of Chen Fei's scent. The moment it did, its entire body froze in a comical way, all four legs rooted to the spot, and its head slowly turned toward the source of the scent.
After confirming for about two seconds, it darted into the bushes in the silly, tail-raised gait typical of warthogs.
Chen Fei glanced in that direction.
The sound of a tree branch breaking came from the bushes, growing fainter and fainter.
The third thing is the big head.
It followed Chen Fei for about five meters, and when Chen Fei sensed the zebra herd retreating, it was also sniffing the scent with its nose.
After sniffing, it raised its head slightly and for some reason took wider strides, its overall posture exuding a very subtle, self-satisfied composure.
It's trying to ride on Chen Fei's reputation.
Chen Fei continued south.
The southern boundary lies in a mixed area of low grassland and rocks, the most complex region in terms of scent, and historically a meeting point for various forces.
Chen Fei walked slower here than in other places.
He peeled back each layer of scent individually, sniffing deeper and deeper with his nose, layer by layer.
The scent of the weaker lion pride upstream, outside the boundary, is of low concentration and short duration, indicating a brief reconnaissance-like contact without any obvious provocation.
The dry season has already begun to show its first signs in the grassland climate.
There was a very subtle, dry, earthy scent in the wind.
Compared to last month, the transpiration rate of vegetation is decreasing, while the surface temperature is rising.
He hasn't yet figured out the exact location of the water sources in this territory.
This is one of the things to do next.
Chen flew to the deepest part of the southern boundary, to the junction of the rocky area and the low grassland, where he stopped.
The smells here are more complex than before.
He carefully sniffed the surface of the rock, eliminating known sources of the smell one by one.
Wildebeest, zebra, warthog, vulture, black-backed jackal...
After the odor was sorted, one odor was left unassigned.
Chen Fei sniffed it a second time.
It's not a stray lion.
He was familiar with the scent of the stray lion; he had smelled its dark brown mane and its faint, lingering aroma, but the characteristics didn't match.
It's not a hyena.
The marking scent of a hyena pack has a very distinctive, fishy, and pungent texture, quite different from this.
The concentration of this aura is extremely low.
This indicates that the source came into contact with the rock in a very short time, and most likely it did so intentionally.
It wasn't just passing by; it came specifically to sniff out the boundaries of this territory, leaving a trace before leaving.
Chen Fei squatted down next to the rock, pressed his nostrils to a distance of two centimeters from the rock surface, and went through all the information he could decipher in that aura again.
It is extremely large.
He was much older than he is now.
Male, adult, high body fat percentage, indicating recent adequate food intake.
From where it came, further south.
The dwell time is very short, on the order of a few seconds.
It was like... I just happened to pass by and glanced at it.
A very large adult male came from the south, stopped here for a few seconds, sniffed the boundary of this territory, and then turned and left.
It comes to confirm one thing—
Who owns this territory now?
[Host: Chen Fei]
[Identity: Sub-adult male lion]
[Energy Points: 762↑]
Big Head followed from behind, bringing his nose close to the rock, sniffing it twice, pricking up his ears, and then turning his head toward Chen Fei with a very direct look of confusion in his eyes.