Ugh... the new meal ticket had ascended to heaven.
Qin Yi felt that he should probably let out some screams right now, like those terrified brats in horror movies.
This monster should be a Furious Ape.
That elder sister had once told him that monsters like the Furious Ape enjoyed toying with their prey, and as long as it was entertained, it wouldn't kill you right away.
But Qin Yi didn't have that kind of thought right now.
All he felt was speechlessness.
He thought the girl was playing possum to lure in a tiger, but it turned out she was just eating pig feed.
Tsk...
Well, at least it was somewhat useful, since it had blocked the disaster for him.
As the thought flashed through his mind, Qin Yi moved.Under the Furious Ape's gaze, he suddenly slammed open the courtyard gate before him.
The yard wasn't particularly large, roughly forty or fifty square meters. Green flagstone bricks formed a path through the dirt, with various flowers and plants his elder sister had grown lining both sides. At the far end stood a log cabin, and in the corner, two swings hung from the trunk of a century-old locust tree.
Qin Yi ran forward along the flagstone path.
But before he could make any further move—
Whoosh!
With a single bound, the Furious Ape leaped onto the old locust tree in the yard, the swings below swaying violently from the impact.
In that instant of eye contact, the Furious Ape's protruding jaw pulled back into a grin, revealing sharp fangs stained with shreds of meat and blood. Its small crimson eyes held a trace of human-like displeasure.
It wanted to see fear on the face of this skinny-as-a-stick human cub, but it didn't get what it wanted.
Under Qin Yi's calm, placid gaze, the Furious Ape suddenly smiled. Grinning widely, it raised the rich girl's corpse before its face, its slender fingers clamping around one of her arms.
Its massive body crouched on the treetop, the thick trunk groaning under its weight.
It had seen many rational two-legged beasts before.
When they witnessed this kind of scene, when they saw their companion's corpse being handled this way, they would invariably become agitated—either terrified or enraged. But the scene it had anticipated didn't happen.
This two-legged beast cub was indeed looking, but its gaze remained utterly flat, like a stagnant pool of water, simply staring at it without any fluctuation.
If pretending to be terrified could increase his chances of survival, Qin Yi wouldn't mind putting on a performance of hoarse screaming terror. But with the rich girl dead on the spot, his elder sister's fate unknown, and if the traps in the yard didn't work, with his current physical condition, facing the Furious Ape alone would end in only one way—death.
Performing would just be single-handedly providing emotional entertainment for this beast.
So there was no need for that.
Cold silver moonlight spilled across the forest clearing, casting long shadows of the human and the ape.
In this unsettling dead silence,
Qin Yi raised his handheld crossbow, aiming it at the giant ape among the tree branches.
"ROAR!!"
Seeing this, the Furious Ape was finally provoked by the cub's infuriatingly calm and provocative attitude. It let out an angry, guttural roar, and casually hurled the corpse in its grip toward the cub below!
Qin Yi had already moved first. This body had remarkable innate talent—though his strength and speed were limited by his young age, his reaction speed and physical coordination were nothing short of "divine gifts."
His preemptive evasive movement allowed Qin Yi to narrowly dodge the flying corpse. But the sound coming from his side reminded him that the Furious Ape hadn't stayed in place.
The rustling through the treetops sounded like sudden rain lashing against dead leaves.
Without any hesitation, without any aiming, Qin Yi spun his gaze around and fired a bolt at the massive silhouette in midair.
The crossbow bolt tore through the air, tracing a fleeting silver line in the moonlight, heading straight for the Furious Ape's airborne form.
It should have had no way to dodge.
But in that moment, Qin Yi saw a clear, sinister smile on the ape's protruding jawbone.
The monster's massive body spun in midair, its grayish-brown fur tracing a wide arc as it rotated. When it tumbled and landed, the gleaming crossbow bolt was already pinched between its slender fingers.
This Furious Ape had seen human crossbows before!
The towering ape slowly rose to its feet. The full moon's light cascaded down from its broad shoulders and back, casting a dense, heavy shadow over Qin Yi, swallowing him entirely in darkness.
The Furious Ape's grayish-brown lips peeled back on both sides, revealing two rows of interlocking fangs, with unswallowed fragments of the rich girl still wedged between its teeth.
It smiled at him again.
Qin Yi tilted his head, looking at the creature.
He realized this Furious Ape really loved to smile.
The night wind suddenly stopped at that moment.
But replacing it was the faint rustling of ropes rapidly tightening.
Those were the traps in the yard—the layers of insurance Qin Yi had set for himself. An adult's weight would trigger them upon stepping on them, let alone a massive Furious Ape.
The Furious Ape's broad feet were instantly snared by ropes the moment they hit the ground. The counterweight stone bags in the corner of the yard plummeted, the ropes running through the locust tree trunk tightening at breakneck speed, snapping taut in an instant!
But the upside-down hanging never materialized.
Qin Yi retreated backward, rapidly cranking the crossbow's winch to reload.
The trap was designed for humans. The counterweight stone bags weren't enough to drag the massive Furious Ape down—they only yanked it into a face-plant before it grabbed the ground with its slender arms and stabilized itself.
"ROAR!!!"
The sudden attack made the Furious Ape howl in fury. Its long, thin arms swung toward the cub before it with razor-sharp force, but Qin Yi had already retreated two zhang away by then.
Failing its attack, the Furious Ape struggled, trying to slash through the ropes with its sharp claws.
"SHWIP!!"
Qin Yi, who had already retreated to the cabin door, didn't give it that chance. The moment the crossbow finished loading, he fired another bolt.
The bolt struck the Furious Ape square in the back of the head, but was stopped by its rock-hard skull, sinking in only half an inch before going no further.
"ROAR!!!"
The intense pain drove the Furious Ape into a frenzy of agonized howling. It thrashed and rolled on the ground for a moment, then suddenly grabbed the hemp rope binding its ankle. Its elongated arms exploded with terrifying brute force, actually sending the counterweight stone bag flying.
Whoom—
The stone bag traced an arc through the moonlight before crashing into the yard with a heavy thud!
The Furious Ape rose again, yanking the crossbow bolt from the back of its head. Seeing the bloodstains on it, it instantly lost all reason. Locking its eyes on the human cub before the cabin, it charged at him like a small mountain!
But what met its eyes—
The cub standing before the wooden door wasn't even looking at its terrifying momentum. He simply reached back and slammed his hand against the wooden wall behind him.
"Thump..."
Then,
Click... click... click...
A series of faint sounds, as if triggering some kind of mechanism.
And then,
"Whoosh—"
Accompanying the sound of air being split, a spear-pointed log over three meters long, carrying the accumulated kinetic energy of its fall, dropped from the roof beam and swung out from the pitch-black doorway!
The charging Furious Ape, carried forward by its own momentum, had no way to avoid it.
For an ordinary human, this was lethal force. But for a monster as massive as the Furious Ape, this wasn't unstoppable.
The Furious Ape let out a savage low growl and spread its long, corded arms wide. Just before the conical wooden stake crashed down, it lunged forward and grabbed it with all its might!
Thud!
Its feet carved a foot-long gash into the earth. With a faint sound of flesh being pierced, the conical stake's kinetic energy embedded itself barely an inch into its chest before being halted!
The searing pain, combined with the humiliation of being repeatedly outwitted by someone weaker, drove the Furious Ape nearly mad. It growled low and raised its bloodshot eyes.
Next, it would slaughter this two-legged beast cub in the most brutal way imaginable.
But what it saw made it freeze mid-motion.
What the Furious Ape saw wasn't the panic of a failed trap, but a handheld crossbow already aimed squarely at its eye.
"ROAR!!!!!"
The Furious Ape realized what was about to happen. It desperately tried to dodge, its screams shaking the heavens, but the log clutched in its arms gave it no chance to evade...
"Bye-bye."
The crossbow string released.
The bolt turned into a streak of light, instantly piercing through the Furious Ape's eye and the soft tissue of its brain. The iron arrowhead only stopped after its kinetic energy carried it through the skull and out the back of its head...
...
Everything returned to silence.
The night wind drifted in from the mountain forest, carrying the scent of blood.
The boy sat alone at the threshold, holding a bamboo tube and sipping water in small mouthfuls. Behind him, the conical log swung back and forth on its ropes like a pendulum in the pitch-black doorway.
Weakness isn't the obstacle to survival—incompetence is.
Both the Furious Ape's and the rich girl's corpses lying flat in the yard were testament to that truth.
But what was he supposed to do next?
Qin Yi's jet-black pupils reflected the moonlight, carrying a calm that didn't match his age.
This sudden Furious Ape attack and the meal ticket's violent death had completely thrown his original plans into chaos.
His elder sister's fate was still unknown.
He only had six reusable crossbow bolts left.
Although he had resolved the immediate crisis, his overall situation hadn't fundamentally changed.
An infant's brain couldn't handle the vast information from his previous life. He had forgotten the people and events of his past life, even his own name—only remembering a surname, along with the strange knowledge and habits lodged in his mind.
Of course,
the most critical issue remained his illness—the intermittent loss of consciousness.
In this world, without anyone to protect you, losing consciousness was the same as losing your life.
But... he still had to find a way to survive.
Qin Yi rested, regaining his strength while pondering his options, and soon arrived at the optimal solution for the moment.
His brain condition was gradually recovering as he aged. Find an uninhabited cave, tie himself up, stockpile enough food and water, rely on instinct to eat and drink, and wait for the next awakening—repeating this cycle until the illness fully healed.
Though he knew his odds of surviving like that were slim, there didn't seem to be any other choice.
If the two roaming bandits' accomplices saw the carnage in the hidden room, they could come back to check this cabin at any moment. This place couldn't be stayed in for long.
For the initial food supply, he could only take meat from the Furious Ape.
Cut the meat off first, use the cart at home to haul it into the mountains, then figure out smoking and curing it later. Water was also a problem—he'd need to carve a water trough out of rock once he found a cave, so he'd need to bring a proper tool along.
Qin Yi sorted through his requirements one by one. Pulling out the short dagger at his waist, he carved some marks into the cabin wall. If his elder sister was still alive and saw them, she would naturally come into the mountains to find him.
After doing all this, he walked toward the Furious Ape.
But,
a faint rustling rapidly approaching from the distance made Qin Yi freeze in his tracks.
The sound came from the forest beyond the courtyard—
It was a sound he had heard just moments ago, like sudden rain lashing against dead leaves!
Realizing who was coming, Qin Yi drew his handheld crossbow and quickly began cranking the winch while trying to retreat toward the cabin behind him. But it was already too late!
Crash—
The treetops beyond the yard shook violently as thick branches were snapped off. Then, a massive humanoid silhouette, mountain-like in scale, tore through the moonlight and came into view!
Thud!
The ground trembled for an instant as dust exploded into the air. An even more massive Furious Ape landed in the yard.
Its frame was larger than the one he had just hunted—standing over three meters tall. Its arms were still long, but no longer slender. Corded muscles bulged and rippled beneath its coarse, tough hide, making it look like a towering wall of flesh.
His gaze traveled downward.
Male.
The air solidified once more.
His mind raced through possible strategies. There were other traps in the yard, but against a behemoth like this, they clearly weren't going to cut it.
Every possible path his mind mapped out led to only one conclusion—
Death.
Qin Yi took a deep breath, then lightly rested his finger on the crossbow trigger:
"Tsk... one after another. Am I guarding some kind of arena today?"