Demons Beside You

Chen Zhao did not like unexpected events like this. All he wanted was an ordinary tour in the wild, a normal hunting experience.

The carca.s.ses were piled up before them. While they had yet to rot, they already smelled extremely unpleasant.

In the warm environment, the carca.s.ses were already emitting a pungent odor.

“Let"s go back,” Chen Zhao said.

Even the death seeker Laurent did not object to the suggestion.

However, before long, Black-Ma suddenly ran toward them from the front.

“Master, I smell humans from the headwind, and also the strong smell of blood.”

Chen Zhao frowned. Headwind, which was the direction they had come from and were currently heading toward.

“Stop,” Chen Zhao said.

“What"s wrong?”

“The poachers might be in front of us,” Chen Zhao said. “Black-Ma smelled them. It"s that direction.”

Everyone was slightly hesitant, but they knew that Chen Zhao"s pets were all extraordinarily intelligent.

“What do we do now?”

“Let"s take another direction,” Chen Zhao said.

“Huh? Human footprints. Quite a few of them, in that direction. Five males and two females.”

“That"s where we skinned the animals.” Milfred Leon frowned.

“Boss, what do we do?”

“Continue the search. We won"t look for them, but if they b.u.mp into us we"ll keep them here,” Milfred said.

“F**k, that guy"s really hard to catch.”

“If it"s easy, it wouldn"t be worth five million.”

Poachers were usually also skilled trackers, especially in the woods.

They could track their prey using footprints, feces, and even smell.

Nevertheless, their prey this time was special.

It was an albino cougar. In the black market, a rich person had placed a five million bounty on catching the cougar.

Cougars had always been a popular pet among the rich.

Cougars were also big cats, but their sizes were very different from lions.

They wouldn"t be that big, so they were less threatening to humans.

On the other hand, they were significantly larger than normal cats.

Hence, raising a cougar had become a symbol of status among the rich.

An ordinary, healthy cougar cost from thirty thousand to a hundred thousand.

Strangely enough, in America, it was illegal to sell cougars, but not illegal to raise them.

Due to market demands, the cougar black market was born.

Every year, more than a thousand cougars would be sold in the black market.

Most of them were captured by poaching teams.

As for this particular team, they had skinned the animals only for some extra income.

A normal buckskin could be sold for a hundred dollars. If they did not manage to catch the white cougar, they could at least sell the skins and not make a loss.

As a poaching team, their hunting methods were far more efficient than an ordinary hunter.

They would set up various traps. Even humans might get hurt, not to mention animals.

As for things like ecological balance, they were clearly unconcerned.

“Boss, look at this footprint.”

Milfred walked up to check the footprint. Upon seeing it, he gasped uncontrollably.

“What is it? Can you tell?”

“Think it"s a bear.”

“Black bear? Brown bear? They can"t be this big. From the depth of the footprint, it"s at least 1200 kilograms,” Milfred guessed, uncertain.

As the head of a poaching team, he had good knowledge of various wild animals.

He had studied them before, especially the valuable ones.

In the black markets, special and rare animals were worth a lot.

For example, a panda would cost at least five million.

However, if anyone dared to steal a panda from China, he would probably be shot before being able to leave.

It was riskier than drug trafficking. The panda was a national treasure to China.

Clearly, offenders would not be spared.

Therefore, even though pandas had high prices in the black market, n.o.body would dare or be able to get one.

Mutated species were worth a lot too.

An example was the albino cougar they were tracking at the moment. It was a rare mutant.

But now, they seemed to have discovered a new target.

An ordinary bear would cost no more than fifty thousand.

However, if it was a mutated bear, the price would increase at least tenfold.

“From the paw prints, it should be a brown bear, but a few times bigger than a normal one.”

“Let"s get the bear.” Milfred licked his lips. It was a delightful surprise.

Catching the bear would surely earn them much more money than skinning animals along the way.

“The bear"s footprints overlap with those people"s.”

“Could the bear be tamed?”

“In any case, let"s get the bear first. So what if it"s tamed? Now it"s mine,” Milfred said firmly.

The team began to track the footprints.

Until it was evening, they still had not caught up with the group ahead.

“Boss, I think that they know we"re here. They"ve been avoiding us.”

“We"re getting deeper into the forest. They can"t leave. Sooner or later, they"ll be tired and we"ll catch up with them.”

Like what the poachers guessed, Chen Zhao"s group was indeed somewhat exhausted.

Apart from Chen Zhao, everyone was almost too tired to walk further.

It would be a bad idea to walk too quickly on a mountain because the humid air and warmth would rapidly drain one"s water and energy.

Even a marathon runner would not be able to move at a consistently high speed in such an environment.

The rugged mountain terrain and frequent vegetation obstructing their way were all factors that slowed them down and consumed their energy.

“I can"t… I can"t… I need to rest…” Laurent was too tired to walk. He sat down before a bush with a thud.

Suddenly, a white figure shot out from the bush. Shocked, Laurent threw himself on the ground, covering his head with his hands.

Nonetheless, the white figure had no intention to attack the group. It dashed into the thick forest in an instant and disappeared.

It was a big guy, about the same size as Black-Ma and White-Ma.

“Did you see that?”

“What"s that?”

“Looks like a cougar. But are there white cougars?” Laurent asked suspiciously after he had calmed down.

“It"s definitely worth a lot of money,” Howard said.