High School of Demon Hunting

Chapter 632: Chapter 301: Awareness of Being Provision_1

”No more running, no more running!”

”I can’t run anymore!!”

Zheng Qing sat on the ground, swearing at the tiger following him, ”Are you hungry or not?! I offered you food and you refused! If you’re not hungry, stop following me... Do Wild Demons now keep live food?!”

The Black Tiger Demon didn’t speak, it only stared at him with its big, golden-red eyes.

One second, two seconds, three seconds.

Then Zheng Qing’s bravado slowly faded.

”Actually, I didn’t mean to blame you...”

”You know, I’m straight talker, I call things as I see them.”

”Everybody panics when they’re away from home... so you must understand.”

”I just think, our meeting was a coincidence, though there seems to be some destiny involved, humans and demons are destined to travel on different paths.”

”As the saying goes, everyone goes their own way... but you following me everywhere, it’s really hard to handle.”

The young wizard was rambling to the Tiger Demon in front of him.

The Tiger Demon still didn’t reply, it casually swished its tail, smashing the head of the dead cow demon behind it to pieces. Blood and brains splattered onto the grass, painting a graphic postmodern abstract mural.

The young wizard immediately stopped his rambling and obediently shut his mouth.

But sitting quietly got boring too quickly, so he picked a stalk of yellow reed beside him, winding its tender stem around his fingers.

Round and round he went.

His gaze was wandering around the Tiger Demon, and soon fell on the shattered corpse of the cow demon.

The large, black horns stuck out of the grass, covered with red and white spots, with few shattered pieces of skull hanging from the base. A cow demon’s eyeball had luckily escaped the carnage and was now calmly lying in the shadow of the horn, staring at the young wizard not too far away.

”Such a waste.”

Zheng Qing was thinking to himself, estimating how much he could earn in gold beans if he sold that eyeball or the horns at the Wandering Bar.

Then, he finally remembered his identity--he was a hunter, the captain of the Absolution hunting team, a wizard leading his team to survive in this unfamiliar hunting ground.

According to the information given by the puppet, only one hunting team could leave this hunting ground alive.

He hoped it would be his team.

Thinking of the members of Absolution, he couldn’t help recalling Blue Bird who was swallowed by the Wolf Demon, and Xiao Xiao who went into the mouth of the Monkey Demon. The sight of the battlefield in front of the small hill filled him with sorrow.

So he gradually became restless.

”Since I’m still alive, I must do something.” He glanced at the Tiger Demon and heaved a sigh, ”Anyway, death is inevitable. Might as well make my death worthwhile... give them another reason to remember me.”

With that, he stood up, shouted at the Tiger Demon, ”You’ve killed so many Wild Demons, but you don’t eat them, what a waste... I’ll help you clean them up!”

The Black Tiger seemed to understand his intentions and made no move to stop him. Instead, it simply lay down where it was, grabbed the head of a Monkey Demon, and started playing with it - God knows where it had been hiding this head before!

Feeling reassured by the Tiger Demon’s nonchalant attitude, Zheng Qing felt a bit relieved.

He immediately took out a bunch of bottles, jars and dissecting tools from his grey cloth bag - standard issue equipment for hunting teams to collect trophies, every hunter had a set.

He used the bone knife to cut the skin and meat, the bone saw to dismember the demons. During this process, he had to wear the deer-skin gloves that reached up to his elbows to prevent being scratched by bone fragments or being infected by demon blood.

After dissection, he had to change into silk gloves - the following operation was more precise - like removing the demon’s eyeball from the socket intact, carefully peeling off each nerve along the spine, or squeezing every drop of demon blood from the heart without damaging it.

All these were just part of the dissection task. Collecting the trophies required further work - preservation.

Most of the organs needed to be submerged in a specified solution within a certain time after removal to prevent oxidation or external contamination. Some organs, like demon bones, needed to be dried as much as possible, and demon hairs needed some initial tanning. Demon blood needed the addition of specific doses of anticoagulants, etc.

Normally, these tasks required division of labor among the hunting team members, but it was only Zheng Qing who was available at the moment. So he skipped as many steps as possible and tried to get as much done as possible.

For instance, he wore deer-skin gloves from beginning to end: as soon as an eyeball was removed, it was directly thrown into the protection liquid, without bothering to clean the surface; the demon’s nerves were casually peeled off, if he was lucky and they came off intact, they would be thrown into the jar for soaking; if he was unlucky and they got damaged, they were just thrown to the ground - anyway, there was no shortage of dead demons in this slaughterhouse.

And the bones, all kinds of bones scattered all over the ground, Zheng Qing had neither the energy nor the patience to sort them out. He simply piled them together and turned them into ashes using a pulverizing symbol, leaving only the bone powder behind - a popular ingredient in the market, whether used as fertilizer for medicinal fields or additives for spirit insect feed, they always had a market.

The hand of his pocket watch kept revolving around the dial, round and round. In the hustle and bustle, Zheng Qing soon gave up on keeping track of time.

It was only when all the bottles and jars he had prepared beforehand were filled to the brim and his grey cloth bag couldn’t hold any more containers, and there was no more space left that he finally finished clearing all the visible demon corpses in this ’slaughterhouse’.

Even then, there were still a few bundles of skins at his feet.

These were the backskins he had hastily skinned from the cow and pig demons and bundled together. Their material was good, but they were heavy and took up too much space, which made them hard to handle.

The Tiger Demon was laying on the grassland, watching the busy young wizard, and let out a bored yawn.

Zheng Qing propped up the bundles of skins, massaged his aching legs and looked up, just as he saw the Tiger Demon yawning. His exhaustion instantly turned into rage.

”I’m here slaving away while you’re lazing around!”

All of a sudden, his heart was filled with anger. Clutching the bundles of skins, he walked towards the Tiger Demon.

”Since you won’t eat me or work... then you can at least carry these!”

With that said, he dumped the bundles of cowhide heavily on the Tiger Demon’s back.

Perhaps finding it uncomfortable, the Tiger Demon shook its shoulders. The cowhide slipped down slightly along its back and was now settled more securely.

The Black Tiger tilted its head, looking at the young wizard challengingly.

The look seemed to say-- Is that all? Do you underestimate my strength?

”What the hell, what’s your game!” Zheng Qing felt his worldview was crumbling: ”I’ve never been bullied to this extent, even by my own food!”