Ye Ming continued his treasure hunt in the Dark Mountains for another week, during which he found quite a number of treasure chests, but most of them contained only basic ingredients. Surprisingly, he did not get a single drop of Blood Essence. Ye Ming was a little disappointed. He could not help but wonder if the Dark Mountains was a place that specifically produced ingredients.
Today, Ye Ming was gathering herbs while looking for treasure chests in the Dark Mountains as usual. He looked up to the sky and found that it was almost noon, so he took a rest on a rock.
Suddenly, three large wolves sped past not far away from him. Ye Ming hastily ducked down to hide himself and observed carefully. He soon saw the fourth wolf, then the fifth…
Ye Ming silently counted. When the last Werewolf ran past, Ye Ming was already stunned beyond words. He counted more than four hundred Werewolves! That’s about the same number as the entire population of Puyol’s tribe! Why were these Werewolves suddenly gathering? Something big must be happening!
Ye Ming had an ominous premonition. He took out his map and checked the rough direction the Werewolves were heading towards. “North! Isn’t that where Puyol’s tribe is located? Are the Werewolves going to attack Puyol’s tribe? It can’t be!”
The thought made Ye Ming shudder. He must inform Puyol. Even if he could not make it in time, he had to go to see if he could help. If the Werewolves were not actually attacking them, that would be even better.
Ye Ming activated {Stealth} and chased after the Werewolves. The Werewolves moved extremely fast. The few moments that Ye Ming had used to gather his thoughts were enough for the Werewolves to leave him behind by a significant margin. But Ye Ming did not panic. Puyol had taught him some tracking skills.
By tracking the traces that the Werewolves left behind, he soon caught up to them. The last Werewolf was only about a hundred meters ahead of him now. He did not try rashly to move any further forward.
Ye Ming thought it was a suitable distance. At this distance, he could track them while making sure that he was not discovered.
The longer he followed after the Werewolves, he more uneasy he felt. The terrain here was way too familiar to him. It was not very far from Puyol’s tribe.
‘It seems like the Werewolves are really aiming for Puyol’s tribe. I won’t be able to notify them before the Werewolves get there. I can only hope that the Vampires on sentry duty outside the canyon will discover the Werewolves in advance so that they can make preparations.’
While he was thinking that, he heard the sound of a fight coming from up ahead. He had a bad feeling because the fight did not last long at all. Apparently, the Werewolves had defeated the enemy very quickly.
After moving for some distance, Ye Ming came across four Vampire corpses. He recognized one of them – it was the Vampire who greeted Puyol the first time Ye Ming arrived at the canyon.
The Vampire’s innards had fallen out of his abdomen that the Werewolves had cut open. It was a tragic sight. Ye Ming used his hand to close the Vampire’s eyes that were still open after he died. He could not bear to look any more. He continued running in the direction of the canyon.
The moment Ye Ming ran out of the forest, he heard the howl of wolves all over the place, as well as the sound of fierce fighting coming from the direction of the canyon mouth. He picked up his pace. Upon arriving at the mouth of the canyon, he looked inside.
Over a dozen corpses were lying on the ground. Some of them belonged to the Werewolves and some belonged to the Vampires. They scattered across the place, and some that had died fighting each other were tightly entangled together.
Ye Ming continued moving forward with the Vampiric Dagger in hand. Screams and howls rose one after another. At the canyon exit, Ye Ming finally saw the clash between the two sides. The Werewolves were unnaturally ferocious, while Puyol was leading the Vampires’ resistance.
Excluding the old and weak, there were less than 400 Vampires who could fight in Puyol’s tribe. On the other hand, all the Werewolves that had come on this raid were young and strong, so they had a slight advantage in both strength and numbers. But thanks to Ye Ming’s strength potions, the individual combat power of the members of Puyol’s tribe was slightly higher than the Werewolves’, plus they were skilled fighters, so the two sides were about evenly matched.
However, tonight was a night of full moon, and the moon was slowly rising. This was no doubt a great advantage for the Werewolves. It was the reason they had chosen today to attack Puyol’s tribe.
When the moon fully rose, Puyol’s tribe would really be in deep trouble.
Ye Ming joined the battle without any delay. With his very first attack, he killed a Werewolf who was trying to attack Puyol, taking the Werewolf by surprise. When Puyol saw that it was Ye Ming who had saved him, he looked towards Ye Ming gratefully. They did not have time to exchange any words, so they merely nodded in understanding and went back to battle.
Ye Ming had now broken through to the rank of a Count. If he was a Werewolf, he would be considered an Alpha Wolf. Puyol himself was also a Count power-wise. Therefore, the Vampire side now had two figureheads to rally around.
“We have to catch the snake by the head. Aim for the Alpha Wolf with me,” said Ye Ming as he lunged towards the Alpha Wolf, the strongest among the Werewolves. Puyol followed closely behind at his behest. Ye Ming used a mental attack to try and interfere with the Alpha Wolf. Now that Ye Ming had gotten more powerful, so had his mental attack. Sure enough, the {Embrace of Pain} made the Alpha Wolf stagger. Puyol seized the chance to strike at the Werewolf’s chest with his claws, leaving behind five bloody trails.
Pain gripped the Alpha Wolf. Under the effect of {Embrace of Pain}, the pain was magnified several fold. He desperately attacked Puyol, while Ye Ming launched another mental attack on him.
The Alpha Wolf stumbled again, and he immediately received another attack from Puyol. Puyol’s claws pierced through his abdomen.
The Alpha Wolf roared in pain. He covered his injured abdomen and tried to flee, but Ye Ming would not give him that chance. He threw the Vampiric Dagger. With a cold glint, the blade of the dagger stabbed into the Alpha Wolf’s waist from the back. The Alpha Wolf dropped to the ground. He only managed to squirm a few times before he was completely drained of blood. When the other Werewolves saw that, they no longer had the courage to continue fighting. Once the Alpha Wolf died, the other Werewolves scattered.
Those who were slow to run away ended up being surrounded and killed by the Vampires.
Ye Ming walked to the body of the Alpha Wolf to retrieve his dagger. The Werewolves dispersed into the forest after paying the price of over fifty lives.
The Vampire side had also sustained more than twenty deaths.
Puyol came to Ye Ming’s side and said gratefully, “Thanks a lot, Yelina. I definitely wouldn’t have been able to kill the Alpha Wolf by myself without your help. How come you’re here, by the way?”
“I was actually gathering herbs nearby. This group of Werewolves happened to pass by where I was on their way here. When I saw that they were heading in this direction, I knew something bad was going to happen, so I chased after them. Good thing I wasn’t too late.”
“Well, since you’re here already, don’t be in a hurry to leave. You must stay with us tonight! Hahahaha…”
“Sure.”
Ye Ming thus stayed in Puyol’s tribe for a few days afterwards and helped them make more potions with the ingredients they had collected. He even gave Puyol a few bottles of his own strength potion that contained Blood Essence before he left the tribe.
Ye Ming now planned to leave the Dark Mountains because the treasure chests he opened here rarely contained the Blood Essences that he sorely needed. Most of them only contained ingredients. This was not beneficial for his cultivation because he urgently needed to get stronger. That was why he made the decision to leave.