Xiang Kun recalled the two fights with the giant owl.
The first one happened by the lake and the owl had obtained the upper hand. Strictly speaking, though, it was a failed ambush on the owl’s part because Xiang Kun had already located it using his senses before it attacked, which gave him more time to react.
In terms of strategy, Xiang Kun had done a perfect job. After he had dodged the first attack, he decided to fight the owl head-on with his close combat skills, instead of running away, which would expose his back as a weak point. Therefore, despite the lack of time to plan his moves carefully, he had managed to injure the owl and force it to retreat.
The second one happened in the mountains, and Xiang Kun was the one who had initiated the fight. He had even cut himself to lure the owl into attacking him. Then, when the owl dove towards him from the sky, he successfully seized the opportunity at that very instant, leaping upwards from between the claws and driving the screwdriver deep into the owl’s eye.
It sounded like a risky move, but Xiang Kun knew that his chances were high based on his judgment of the situation. On the one hand, Xiang Kun’s powerful dynamic vision enabled him to analyze the owl’s movements extremely accurately. On the other hand, with one of its eyes injured, the owl wouldn’t be able to gage the distance precisely and timely with its disadvantaged eyesight.
Hence, Xiang Kun concluded that:
As Xiang Kun recalled the details of the two fights, he realized that he hadn’t felt scared at all throughout the entire process, except the shock when he first saw the owl. There was only nervousness and some excitement, even when he was injured or during the most intense moments of the fights.
Actually, the wounds torn open by the owl hurt a lot, but the pain made him exhilarated. He even felt that he could be much stronger than he usually was. It seemed pain cleared up his mind. Moreover, he even sensed pleasure after his wounds healed, just like how he always felt after a long-distance run or a good workout.
He realized that he seemed to enjoy death matches.
This should probably be attributed to his body transformations, because his old self was extremely cautious and, to be more precise, timid.
This also triggered an alarm deep inside him that he should watch over his emotions.
While he could be as aggressive as possible in the face of danger, he had to restrain himself under usual circumstances and not be affected by his belligerent nature.
After that, Xiang Kun spent a few hours collating the memories he had obtained from the giant owl.
The images after the owl’s transformation spanned across four seasons. Hence, it must have been at least one year since the owl had first mutated.
Its memories recorded a total of 213 prey that the owl had fed on after its mutation.
Following the same pattern that Xiang Kun had experienced, it meant that the owl must have undergone at least 213 mutations – it was possible that there were other feeding scenes that Xiang Kun didn’t manage to receive.
Other than some parts of the city that Xiang Kun was living in, the owl had also been to a relatively backward village right after it left the mountains.
Although there were no iconic buildings or shop names in its memories that could show where the owl was, Xiang Kun saw the Chinese characters and the letters on the license plates on some of the cars on the road. He then knew that it was a nearby city.
That reminded Xiang Kun of the post he had seen when he was searching for information online after he was attacked by the giant owl. Indeed, it was sent from that very village.
Hence, Xiang Kun found the post and messaged the sender directly. He self-introduced as a reporter from some news website, interested in interviewing the person about the incident.
After that, he searched for more posts sent by the same person and googled his username, city of residence, and age. He even managed to find the man’s Weibo account and finally confirmed his home address.
In the afternoon, Xiang Kun’s new phone arrived. After that, he immediately headed towards the train station and bought a ticket to the city.
After reaching the city, Xiang Kun took a bus to the town.
He finally received a reply when he was on the bus. Apparently, though, the man didn’t believe that Xiang Kun was a reporter. He thought that Xiang Kun was a scammer.
Without wasting much effort on him, Xiang Kun asked him to send over his phone number and promised to top up 100-yuan phone bills as initial payment. He assured the man that he would receive more money after the interview.
Still skeptical, the man sent his phone number to Xiang Kun. Soon, he was notified that he had received a 100-yuan top-up.
Immediately afterwards, Xiang Kun dialed over and inquired about the incident. He asked the man where exactly he had seen the “strange man in the tree”.
The man explained what he had described in the post in greater detail, but Xiang Kun often interrupted him to probe further.
“Did the strange man in the tree move? How did he move?
“What did he look like? Did he have a big head, or could you see his limbs?
“Did you approach for a closer look after he left? Did he leave any traces behind, like footprints, claw prints, or feces?
“Did you manage to see the direction he was moving in right before he disappeared? Was it up or down?”
The man answered every question to the best of his knowledge. In the end, he asked curiously, “Which news website do you work for? Why are you interested in my post? I received very few replies to that post, I don’t think it’d attract many hits at all.”
Xiang Kun made up some excuses at once. “I’m working at UC News. Recently, we’ve been writing a column on rural tales, thus we have to look for all kinds of weird stories. We can only write about things that truly happened before and must interview the witnesses. That’s how I came across your article, and I thought that it’s worth a dig… By the way, is this a real incident? You didn’t make it up, did you?”
“Of course it’s real! Oh yes, how much is the post-interview payment that you mentioned…?” The man was now fully convinced and started wondering about his money.
“Don’t worry. I’ll send the story to our editor first. If it’s approved, I’ll request for a formal face-to-face interview with you. By that time, you’ll surely be paid well.”
Xiang Kun had already reached the town station when the call ended. He then headed towards the village the sender had mentioned by car.
In fact, he was already almost certain that the “strange man” the man had seen was the giant owl. When the car drove onto the mountain road towards the village, Xiang Kun was even more confident about his speculation now – he had seen this road before, from the owl’s memories, when it was soaring in the sky.
Xiang Kun had decided to follow the clues to this place immediately just so that he could find the place where the owl used to live. He was hoping to figure out how the owl had transformed, or whether there were other mutated creatures out there.