The first thing Yun Lei noticed besides all the trees was how injured he was. The back of his head was wet with blood, his entire abdominal region felt as though it had been hit repeatedly with a hammer and his right leg was almost useless with how much pain a single step would cause.
Of course, the pain wasn't much of an issue, he could endure it, however, the lack of mobility an injured leg would result in could be potentially fatal.
He rolled up the right leg of his pants to assess the situation, only to be met with the nastiest wound he had ever seen. Yun Lei almost gagged before he quickly turned away.
There seemed to be an entire chunk of flesh missing from his right thigh. The area around the missing flesh was completely necrosed and he could even see several wiggling maggots.
If there was anything left in his stomach, Yun Lei had no doubts he would have puked it up.
"Ugh!" He let out a disgusted grunt as he pulled his pant leg down. Just looking at the wound made him want to throw up but knowing that it was on his own body was far, far worse.
Even though he had stopped looking at it, the disgust did not fade away. Those tiny wiggling maggots would fill his thoughts and refuse to leave.
"Fuck!" He punched a nearby tree in frustration. A small part of him hoped that it was all a dream and the pain from that punch would wake him up. Alas, his knuckles bled but he was still in that same forest that seemed to go on in all directions for god knew how long.
Alright, calm yourself. Yun Lei thought. Panic and anger would not help him.
He took a deep breath. The clean and refreshing forest air filled his lungs as he began to think. He did not know where he was, he did not know how he got there. However, he knew one thing very clearly.
He had to survive.
Thinking in terms of survival, Yun Lei thought it was best to start from things that were most likely to kill him and then go down the list.
The first was his injuries. They were nasty but they seemed old. He concluded that it wouldn't be fatal in the short term. The blood coming out of the back of the head seemed to have been caused by a shallow cut so he wasn't very worried about that.
Next were predators. He was in a forest of some kind and it seemed thick enough to house predators strong enough to kill him. The best-case scenario was not encountering a predator at all but seeing that he was bleeding and had open injuries, that seemed unlikely.
In case he came face to face with a predator, he had three options: run, fight, hide. He doubted that the current him could even outrun a grandma in her deathbed, let alone a predator. He couldn't even climb up a tree and hide because of his non-functional legs.
Could he fight? He had checked and it seemed he could still unleash his aura. Perhaps he could use a moment of distraction to end the opponent's life in a single blow, granted that he had a means of doing that in the first place, which he didn't. An encounter with a predator would probably spell his death.
The next was food and water. He could already feel hunger pangs so he clearly hadn't eaten in a while and his throat seemed drier than a desert. Water took priority over food.
While thinking all this, Yun Lei had been checking his body. There was a cloth pouch tied around his torso. In it were a small knife and some herbs that had started rotting which he just threw away.
He looked around to see if he could find anything useful in the surroundings and saw nothing. He drew an arrow on the ground with a stick before slowly limping in that direction. Just sitting around doing nothing was a sure way to die.
He had only walked for a small bit before he saw something nearby. At the foot of a tree was a bow with a quiver full of arrows leaning against it.
This sight immediately reminded Yun Lei of the black book and how it had told him to learn archery.
"I should have learnt it." He grumbled before picking up the bow. The quiver was the type that was hung at the hips and he wore it as well.
It was well made, or so it seemed to him. He wasn't very knowledgeable about bows.
I should try it, was what he thought before readying the bow and nocking an arrow in it. As he pulled back the string, he felt quite a bit of resistance but it wasn't as difficult as he expected it to be.
He aimed for the leaf of a nearby tree before deciding against it. The arrows were in limited supply. He would have to go retrieve it after he shot it and he definitely didn't want to walk too far.
He then aimed at a spot on the tree directly in front of him. He inhaled before holding his breath and tried to make his arms as steady as he could. When he felt confident enough, he let the arrow loose.
With a whoosh, the arrow flew through the air before landing on a tree to the right of the one he had aimed at.
It was the first time he had ever shot a bow, him being off the mark was natural. Yun Lei gave himself a pep talk before nocking another arrow. This time, he readjusted his aim with the experience he had just gained.
Whoosh.
It landed on the same tree but it wasn't exactly where he was aiming for.
Another arrow was nocked before it flew through the air, landing inches away from the target.
Yun Lei was completely shocked. Am I an archery genius? He experienced a sense of déjà vu while having that thought.
The excitement of his success had made him fire arrow after arrow at the target. Before he even knew it, he had emptied the entire quiver however, he rarely missed his mark by then.
He plucked all the arrows from the bark of the trees before returning them to the quiver. He was relieved that he had a weapon he could use with decent reliability but his little shooting spree had made him even hungrier and thirstier.
He needed to find water first. Yun Lei closed his eyes and focused as hard as he could on his sense of hearing. He heard the leaves move with the wind, birds chirping, bugs crying.
It took him a while to isolate it but he did find the faint sound of flowing water. He let out an exhausted sigh as it seemed to be really far away.
Finding water was nice but it came with its own set of risks. Where there was water, there was life and where there was life, there was a chance of running into a predator. Whether the water would even be drinkable in the first place was another issue but as long as it was running water, he would take his chances.
Yun Lei limped slowly and painfully towards where he heard the sound, bow at the ready. As he walked, he would occasionally find some edible wild plants as well as some herbs. He collected anything useful that he could identify in his cloth pouch before moving on. Eating anything you couldn't identify was an easy way of dying.
After about an hour of limping, the sound of water was much louder. From what he could hear, it was a river and where there was a river, there was a chance of finding civilisation. Given that he didn't even know where he was, it was better to think that any sentient being would try to kill him.
The more he walked, the more exhausted he got. Trying to move with the state his right leg was in was severely taxing. He tried his best to keep himself motivated but a sense of dread was slowly starting to creep into his mind.
I might not survive this.
Yun Lei didn't know how he had gotten there. A part of him even thought that he would just wake up in the comfortable bed in Yun Meili's room if he died here.
But everything he felt seemed so real that he was hesitant to try it. The ground beneath his feet, the scent of the forest, the taste of the edible wild berry he had picked from a bush not too long ago. It all felt real.
"Argh, whatever. If I die, I die. What else can I do besides try my hardest not to?" Yun Lei gave himself a quick motivation boost as he walked on.
As Yun Lei exited the trees, he was greeted by a big river. It didn't seem very deep but it was quite wide and it wasn't flowing too fast.
Cautiously approaching the river, he crouched down next to it and greedily began guzzling the water. Only after his belly was about to burst did he feel satisfied.
He couldn't even believe that water, something he had always taken for granted, could be so precious to him.
Rumble!
He heard the sound of thunder overhead. Because the canopy had been covering the sky, he hadn't been able to see the dark clouds. It looked like it would start pouring at any moment.
He needed to find somewhere to hide from the rain. He couldn't afford to catch a cold with his already battered body. He looked around desperately for some sort of shelter before he saw a small opening to what seemed like a cave in one of the hills.
It was very easy to miss and without his sharpened senses, he probably would have. Without hesitation, he immediately started walking towards it.
Although it was much further than it looked, he just had to walk along the river bank which was a lot easier to navigate through than the forest. It took him about an hour and by the time he got there, it had already started raining.
The cave entrance in question was a perfectly cylindrical tunnel, about a meter in diameter, clearly manmade. He would have to crawl through it to enter. There was light coming from the other side so at least he could see that the tunnel would end and open up into a larger area.
He was worried that snakes and other poisonous critters might have made the cave their burrow but he would rather deal with that than the rain.
Crawling was quite a difficult task in the condition Yun Lei was in, especially since he didn't have much room to move around. He persisted, nevertheless. He had to practically drag his body with just his arms by the time that he reached the end of the tunnel.
There wasn't enough space in the tunnel to nock an arrow so he pulled out the small knife from his pouch and held it tightly in his hand. If there was any danger to him beyond the tunnel, he had to be swift in his strike and take the initiative.
He slowed down and crawled as silently as he could towards the light at the end of the tunnel. After confirming that there was nothing harmful on the other side, he fully exited it.
Yun Lei was standing in what appeared to be a room, complete with furniture and a fireplace and even a fire stove. It looked cosy and lived in but the thick layer of dust covering everything in the room was evidence that that wasn't the case.
There were all sorts of things around the room. A large closet, a bed in one corner, a lot of books and a cupboard full of alchemy ingredients.
He walked over to the closet and opened it, expecting to find some clothes however, what greeted him was glass jar after glass jar; all full to the brim with pills.
"Woah..." He couldn't help but exclaim.