Wilderness: I Tame Beasts to Survive-Chapter 39 - 38: Infrared Vision, New Discovery
SWISH!
Suddenly, a jet-black shadow thicker than a person’s waist shot out from the shadows of the woods. Moving with the speed of lightning, it wrapped around a student’s body and began to drag them inside.
Seeing this, Han Ning roared, "Yin Yi! Stop it!"
"POP!"
Yin Yi had also spotted the black shadow. The leaves beneath it trembled slightly as it unleashed a burst of Power, catapulting its body forward in an instant.
A brightly gleaming Silver Thorn materialized as it charged, shooting in sync toward the rapidly retracting black shadow.
BANG!
The moment the Silver Thorn met the shadow in mid-air, a muffled explosion rang out. The shadow, so menacing just a moment ago, was instantly blasted into two sections by the Silver Thorn.
Yin Yi’s form flickered. It scooped up the captured student and, with a few short-range teleports, returned behind the protective formation of Silver Lotus Wood.
Only when the black shadow hit the ground did everyone see it clearly in the light of their flashlights. It was a section of a thick, dark vine, slightly different from the Vine Whips created by the Silver Lotus Wood.
"A vine?" Han Ning’s expression shifted as he looked at the massive vine on the ground.
’Could there be a plant-type Soul Beast in the woods?’
"Whew... Han Ning, Yin Yi... Thank you for saving my life."
The rescued student patted their chest in lingering fear, hastily thanking Han Ning and Yin Yi.
Han Ning smiled. "Don’t worry about it. Let’s just focus on finishing off the rest of the snake swarm."
But with the vine’s failed sneak attack, the few remaining Iron-toothed Snakes ceased their assault and retreated back into the woods.
"A vine? There’s a Soul Beast in the woods stronger than the Iron-toothed Snakes. Should we still go in?" a few students asked Teacher Lü Xiuning, their eyes fixed on the vine on the ground.
"Han Ning, what’s your assessment of this vine’s power? Do you think we can handle it?" Lü Xiuning turned to ask Han Ning.
Han Ning frowned and answered cautiously, "This one vine wasn’t too powerful. It just caught us by surprise. Yin Yi could handle two or three of them, but any more than that... and things could get difficult."
Lü Xiuning nodded. "In that case, we have no choice but to use the drone. We’ll scout the situation inside first, then decide what to do."
"Everyone, fall back twenty meters. Don’t worry about the snake corpses on the ground for now. It won’t be too late to collect them after this is over."
With that, he raised a hand, signaling for everyone to retreat.
Following his command, the group retreated with their Silver Lotus Wood to a relatively safe spot and stopped.
Lü Xiuning took off his backpack, pulled out a drone, and set it on the ground.
He took out a special lens and mounted it underneath the drone.
"Teacher Xiuning, what kind of lens is that?" Han Ning asked curiously.
"An industrial-grade infrared thermal imaging plus night vision camera. Perfect for nighttime exploration."
As he explained, Lü Xiuning also strapped a small, lightweight flashlight to the drone.
The drone itself was equipped with a high-penetration light source. Combined with the flashlight’s beam, it could clearly mark its general position even in the inky-black, fog-shrouded night sky.
With his background in mechanical engineering, Teacher Lü installed the various pieces of equipment quickly and steadily. In less than three minutes, a specially modified drone was ready before them.
Lü Xiuning held the control unit, guiding the drone to hover slowly in mid-air.
The flashlight and the drone’s built-in searchlight illuminated a five-meter-radius area below.
The infrared camera’s indicator light blinked on and off.
BZZZZ—
With a low hum, the drone pierced through the white fog, flying five meters above the small woods and beginning its gradual exploration of the area outside the East Gate.
Lü Xiuning watched the drone’s light with a grave expression, carefully manipulating the controls to prevent it from hitting a branch and crashing.
Gradually, the drone flew farther and farther away. Just as it entered an area about fifty meters from the group, another muffled roar echoed from within the woods.
The instant he heard the sound, Lü Xiuning’s hands trembled, and he quickly maneuvered the drone to a higher altitude.
The next second, a black shadow, invisible to the onlookers, streaked past beneath the drone.
The slight breeze from the shadow’s passage made the drone shudder, and even the distant onlookers could faintly see the blurry light source waver.
"Teacher Xiuning, fly it a bit farther. Do a rough sweep of the area outside the school," Han Ning suggested.
"But... I’m about to lose sight of the light source," Lü Xiuning said, preparing to pilot the drone back.
"I can still see it. I’ll guide you," Han Ning said, his eyes narrowed as he watched the still-clear point of light.
"Forward. Don’t change direction. Straight ahead."
"Okay, keep going. Climb five to ten meters."
"Lower the altitude. Try to make a full circle and scan the thirty-meter area below." After following Han Ning’s instructions, Lü Xiuning said in a heavy tone, "I’ve completely lost sight of the drone now."
"It’s at our one o’clock, about thirty meters off the ground."
Han Ning’s pupils were rapidly dilating and contracting at a rate no one else could see. In his vision, a faint white light flickered in and out of existence.
"Alright, now change course and bring the drone back."
Like a blind man, Lü Xiuning followed Han Ning’s commands, piloting the drone by proxy.
Before long, that faint glimmer of white light reappeared in everyone’s line of sight.
The moment they saw the drone, everyone let out a long sigh of relief.
Lü Xiuning then piloted the drone back quickly, bringing it in for a smooth landing.
Once the drone landed, he removed the memory card from the infrared camera, inserted it into a portable card reader, and then plugged the reader into a tablet.
The video from the memory card was imported onto the tablet, and Lü Xiuning opened it with a specialized software program.
The video footage switched to infrared mode.
A swath of intermingled red and green blotches filled the center of the screen.
Among these mixed blotches were snake-like shapes in red, as well as large patches of cooler green.
For each colored area, the software calculated and displayed a simulated temperature reading.
The video was fast-moving and very shaky.
While Yin Yi and the other Silver Lotus Wood stood guard on the perimeter, the group crowded behind Teacher Xiuning, their eyes glued to the screen, unwilling to miss a single detail.
"Lots of moving red blotches... probably Iron-toothed Snakes. There aren’t that many..."
"These long, deep-blue strips... that must be the barbed-wire fence on the perimeter wall, right?"
Lü Xiuning slowed the video playback to its lowest speed, analyzing the footage frame by frame.
"Wait, Teacher Xiuning, rewind the video five seconds."
The video playback seemed to slow even further in Han Ning’s eyes. He watched the screen intently and suddenly noticed a fleeting blue shadow in the corner of the frame.
Lü Xiuning did as Han Ning said and rewound it five seconds.
"Pause! Right there!"
Han Ning reached out and pointed to a small blotch in the bottom-left of the screen. "Does anyone else think this blotch looks a bit like a human thigh?"
"It... actually does..."
"It’s long, thicker at the top and thinner at the bottom, with a rounded part at the base... Could it be?"
"And did you notice the radial specks of color nearby?"
The others looked closer, and their expressions involuntarily grew grim.
"Teacher Xiuning, can you switch to night vision mode?"
Without anyone needing to ask, Lü Xiuning was already working the tablet, setting the left side of the screen to infrared mode and the right side to night vision.
In the blurry, black-and-green image, a dark, oblong shadow lay silently on the grass.
Comparing the two views side-by-side, the group came to a conclusion they didn’t want to admit.
It was... unmistakably, a human thigh.
