Chapter 57: Night Encounter with a Fierce Tiger, a Narrow Escape with a Homemade Bomb!

Chu Feng did not know whether the three of them were lucky or cursed.

On the very first night after ascending the mountain, they encountered a tiger.

The roar of the tiger echoed throughout the entire Yulong Mountain.

Like some demonic incantation, it caused every creature on Yulong Mountain to press their bodies flat against the ground.

They were terrified of being heard by this harbinger of doom, who would snatch away their lives.

Wang Wei and Sun Can sprang up instantly as if their bottoms were fitted with springs.

Chu Feng was even faster than the two of them.

He dashed into the snow hut, retrieving a bow and arrows, along with a matchlock gun.

He also tucked an axe into his waistband.

"Let's move!"

Chu Feng said urgently.

Both men knew how formidable Chu Feng was in the great mountains.

They dared not disobey a single word he uttered.

Yet, what puzzled them was that Chu Feng was actually sprinting toward the dense forest at the foot of the second peak.

"Brother Feng, aren't we supposed to hunt the tiger? Why are we running back?"

Chu Feng smiled wryly. "This tiger has most likely attained sentience. To hunt a tiger, one must ambush it while it remains unaware; but right now, this tiger is coming to hunt us."

"Hunt us?"

Hearing these words, Sun Can's heart began to hammer wildly against his ribs.

He forced himself to take deep breaths.

Driving the sensations of tension and terror out from his chest.

All three of them knew this was the turning point that would determine the course of their lives.

If they brought down this tiger, they would rise above ordinary men.

If they failed, they might very well die upon this mountain.

"But wasn't the tiger on the third peak? Why is it suddenly attacking us?"

Wang Wei asked.

This was precisely what he and Sun Can found most incomprehensible.

Chu Feng replied, "Because this tiger has already tasted the flavor of human flesh."

Yulong Mountain remained uninhabited year-round; even the indigenous people took care to conceal their tracks.

Besides, the natives were hardly afraid of tigers.

They had lived alongside tigers in this region for so many years.

They had long since mastered the ways of dealing with them.

Yet those government runners ascending the mountain for the first time knew nothing of this.

A tiger is a wild beast, but one must never treat it merely as a simple beast.

This was a predator capable of ambushing, calculating, and perhaps even devising traps.

Among the hundred men who climbed the mountain, countless had fallen victim to the tiger's stealthy attacks.

That number was surely substantial.

Otherwise, they would not have retreated down the mountain without even catching a glimpse of the Lotus Sect.

Having killed the government runners, the tiger naturally acquired a taste for them.

It was likely around that time that the tiger learned what such exquisite delicacies felt like.

When Chu Feng and the others were on the mountain, they committed a grave taboo.

They lit a fire.

Ordinary beasts might dread a source of fire.

Yet massive apex predators such as Kamchatka bears, tigers, and snow leopards harbored no such fear.

To a tiger, a source of fire served merely as a beacon providing its exact location.

Those government runners had all retreated down the mountain; no one remained.

Now that three individuals had finally appeared, how could it possibly let them escape?

Thus, the tiger took the initiative to strike!

"Climb the trees!"

Chu Feng pointed toward a towering tree and commanded.

Chu Feng knew how to climb trees.

So did Wang Wei and Sun Can.

After all, they had grown up in the village since childhood.

They scaled the trees with practiced agility.

Stopping only when they reached branches nearly fifteen meters high.

They could run no further.

The snow was half a meter deep.

Every single step forward demanded a tremendous expenditure of energy.

To have run this far already pushed the physical limits of all three men.

Chu Feng's command had been issued with absolute precision.

Had they run for even two more steps, the tiger behind them would have overtaken them and knocked them to the ground.

Before climbing the tree, Chu Feng had even caught a fleeting glimpse of that yellow shadow in the corner of his eye.

Yet once all three had ascended into the trees, a strange stillness fell.

The tiger's shadow had vanished.

The entire dense forest grew utterly quiet.

Nothing remained except the ragged breathing of the three men.

After a long while, Wang Wei could no longer restrain himself and asked Chu Feng, "Brother Feng, where's the tiger?"

Chu Feng merely made a hushing sound.

He said nothing further.

Neither Wang Wei nor Sun Can dared to speak again.

As their breathing gradually grew steadier,

Chu Feng gripped his axe tightly and closed his eyes.

When attention was removed from sight,

hearing became extraordinarily acute.

Rustle, rustle, rustle...

The sound of claws scraping against bark.

The tiger had arrived.

Only, it was not right in front of them, but rather—

Chu Feng whirled around abruptly.

At the same time, the axe in his hand slashed fiercely downward.

Sure enough, a massive tiger's head was staring fixedly right at him.

Had Chu Feng's reaction been even a fraction of a second slower,

he would have been batted straight down from the tree by the beast.

And once down there, Chu Feng would have been left awaiting death.

Yet even though Chu Feng's reflexes were swift enough,

the tiger's reactions were faster still.

With a sideways twist, it dodged Chu Feng's axe.

We're doomed!

That single thought echoed in Chu Feng's mind.

He had anticipated that hunting the tiger would prove exceptionally difficult.

Yet he never imagined the difficulty would reach such staggering heights.

The transformation from hunter to prey sometimes happened in the blink of an eye.

"Crash!"

A woodcutting cleaver chopped viciously down onto the tiger's head.

The moment Chu Feng turned around, Wang Wei and Sun Can had also been maintaining extreme nervous tension.

Startled by the enormous tiger head that suddenly materialized behind them,

they snapped into action almost immediately.

Especially Wang Wei, who was closest to Chu Feng.

Seeing Chu Feng's strike miss completely, he knew that if he did not act, Chu Feng would surely die.

Without a second thought, and in order to put more force behind his blow, he even stood straight up, abandoning his balance entirely, determined to bring his blade down hard upon the tiger's skull.

Indeed, he succeeded.

This blow possessed enough force to cleave a human head in two.

Yet it rebounded sharply off the tiger's skull with a heavy clang.

Stung by the pain, the tiger let out a furious roar and leaped directly downward.

However, Wang Wei lost his balance as well and began to topple toward the snowy ground below.

Fortunately, two pairs of hands grabbed the back of his garments.

One belonged to Chu Feng, and the other to Sun Can.

"Roar!"

"Roar!"

"Roar!"

Continuous, earth-shaking roars echoed directly beneath their tree.

Raging furiously, the sound surged into their ears.

All three instinctively covered their ears.

The tiger had not departed; instead, it stood beneath the tree, fixing its crimson eyes upon them.

Even when those hundred government runners had ascended the mountain previously, they had not inflicted such injury upon it.

This had led the tiger to assume that humans were creatures exceptionally easy to capture.

As long as one was careful not to let them bunch up together, success was assured.

It had never expected that the three humans captured today would prove so thorny.

Yet the prospect of such a delicious meal made the tiger unwilling to abandon the hunt.

Blood trickled from its forehead, but it paid no heed.

Rubbing its head directly against the snow, it began climbing the tree once more.

Only at this moment did the tiger fully reveal itself within Chu Feng's field of vision.

Enormous, truly colossal!

It was even larger than the so-called Amur tigers of later generations!

Its body length easily surpassed three and a half meters.

It was roughly the size of a horse.

Its thick, muscular limbs treading upon the snow completely obliterated the footprint of Chu Feng's size-eleven boot.

When that bloody maw yawned open, it felt as though it could bite off a man's head in a single snap.

Chu Feng finally understood why the Kamchatka bears dared not venture to the third peak.

In his impression, the combat power of a bear and a tiger should have been roughly evenly matched.

If anything, it should lean slightly toward the bear.

Because a bear possessed a far more diverse array of fighting techniques.

Yet no matter how varied its techniques might be, the brown bear in the deep forest could never stand a chance against a tiger of this magnitude.

"Brother Feng, what do we do?"

Wang Wei and Sun Can had completely lost their composure by now, having no idea what course of action to take.

"Use the homemade explosives!"

Chu Feng commanded urgently.

He, too, carried homemade explosives on his person.

He cast the axe aside without hesitation.

That axe was entirely useless to him now.

There was no way he would engage this tiger in close quarters unless he had a death wish.

Gently blowing on his fire starter, the flint flared brightly at once.

He immediately ignited the animal-skin tube in his hand.

Wang Wei and Sun Can followed suit.

Igniting their own fuses in tandem with Chu Feng, Wang Wei and Sun Can hurled theirs away without a second thought.

Chu Feng did not throw his yet; he continued holding the burning animal-skin tube in his grip.

He began counting down silently in his mind.

When he reached the third second, he finally took aim at the tiger climbing upward and tossed the tube down.

The next instant, three explosions rang out as one!