King of the Wilderness

Chapter 705: Chapter 334: Poaching Ring, Crime Intensified! (Part 2)

They wanted to know what kind of spiritual power supported this man to win on another battlefield.

Lin Yu’an smiled and put down the meal box in his hand. The firelight reflected his determined and weathered face, seemingly illuminating certain memories hidden deep in his eyes.

He glanced over at the warriors and said, ”You run five kilometers every day, practice shooting, do tactical drills to ensure that you can survive and come back when facing a group of scumbags with guns, right?”

”Yes!” all the warriors answered in unison, their voices strong and powerful.

”So, everything I do in the wilderness is just like you guys, I’m not persevering, I’m working.”

This answer surprised everyone.

Lin Yu’an explained, ”Perseverance means you’re enduring. When you feel like you’re persevering, you’re not far from collapsing. Because the option to give up is already in your mind.”

He tapped his temple with his finger, ”I do not allow my mind to have the option to give up.”

”Every day when I wake up, there is only one checklist in my mind: find water, find food, reinforce the shelter, check traps, gather firewood.”

”I decompose the act of survival into a hundred specific, trivial, must-complete tasks.”

”Keep myself busy so I have no time to think about how lonely I am, and no energy to ponder why I’m here.”

”Because any irrelevant thought could distract me and lead to a mistake, and in the wilderness, the cost of a mistake could be death.”

He picked up a burning piece of wood and watched the flickering flame, his gaze becoming deep.

”So, if you ask what I rely on... I do not rely on some powerful belief, or some vague spirit.”

”I rely on the most primal fear of death engraved in my genes, and transforming this fear into a work checklist filled with tasks to be done.”

”Then, complete them one by one, and after they’re done, live until tomorrow.”

These words carried not a single trace of grandiloquence, nor any touching emotional embellishment.

Yet this logic of survival which stripped away all emotions to an extreme, almost mechanized level, struck the heart of every listener like a heavy hammer.

The warriors fell into a long silence, able to empathize with how pale and powerless individual heroism truly is in genuine extreme despair.

It is the practicalism that maximizes the survival instinct that is the only truth enabling you to see the sun the next day.

The warriors looked at Lin Yu’an, their eyes filled with respect. This man before them was a warrior, dancing with death in his own way, just like them.

He paused, his tone becoming solemn, ”Actually, the most frightening thing in such places is not the beasts. The most terrifying enemy is solitude.”

”Being alone for a long time, unable to hear any human voice, you’ll start talking to yourself and doubting every decision you make.”

”You might even talk to a rock for an entire afternoon just to hear your own voice. That kind of loneliness and despair rising from the depths of your heart is more fatal than any beast.”

Lin Yu’an looked at them curiously and steered the topic towards them, ”I have always admired you. Is a chase like today your norm?”

Before Yang Zhen could respond, an old soldier, wiping the gun barrel repeatedly with a cleaning rod, spoke in a deep voice.

His age was similar to Yang Zhen’s, with a shallow scar on his face and eyes as steady as a mountain, ”It’s not that there aren’t any more dangerous situations than this.”

”Two years ago, at the border, we blocked a group of drug traffickers who even used AKs, bullets raining down like the storm. But rarely do we have such huge fire inside us like today.”

Yang Zhen came back from his memories, he sighed and added a thick piece of wood to the fire, causing a burst of sparks.

”Before, every time we went into the mountain to execute such tasks, we would hire a local guide.” His gaze became somewhat distant.

”Ailao Mountain is too big, too complex, without a living map familiar with the terrain leading us, less than half of our skills can be used.”

He glanced at Lin Yu’an, ”Our original fixed partner was a ranger named Old Li, also the captain of the local militia.”

”He’s a real mountain man, over fifty, spent his life in these mountains. He can find any water source blindfolded, having him with us gave us confidence.”

”Unfortunately, a month ago he had a motorcycle accident riding into town, broke his leg and is still in the hospital.”

”For now, we can’t find a newcomer to replace him, when we got the task today, we were ready for a hard and tough battle.”

”Honestly,” Yang Zhen sincerely looked at Lin Yu’an, ”if it weren’t for you today, we’d likely still be aimlessly wandering on that fake trail left by the poachers.”

”Your ability to identify tracks, your tracking knowledge, these things are incredibly worthwhile for us to learn.”

Lin Yu’an shook his head modestly, ”There’s nothing to be proud of, these were forcibly taught by nature’s teacher, through hunger and danger, during numerous hunting and tracking.”

”I once learned tracking from an old Native American hunter in North America, he told me, the secret to tracking is not using your eyes, but feeling with your heart.”

”You need to imagine yourself as your prey, think about how it would walk, what it would fear, where it would stop to drink water, practice is always the best teacher.”