Chapter 628: Chapter 522: Tiger and Bear Clash—The Bear Remains, but Where Is the Tiger?_2

“Of course I can.” Kelas paused, operated his phone, and moments later, the screen transmitted the image.

Kelas suddenly jerked his head back, “My God, what is that? A deer?”

Chen Ying took the phone and glanced at it. Due to the angle, the camera Meidi carried only recorded a dead deer at the edge of the pit, which was not something allowed to be shown on a live stream.

But for Chen Ying and Uncle Alahan here, one look was enough to determine what caused it.

“Is there a carnivorous beast at the bottom of the pit?”

Chen Ying’s heart jumped. Could it possibly be the tigress they were searching for?

Unfortunately, the camera couldn’t transmit audio; otherwise, Chen Ying really wanted to voice control Meidi to change the shooting angle.

Judging by the shaking of the camera, Meidi seemed to be doing something, and one could faintly see small pieces of soil and rocky debris falling into the pit.

The three immediately quickened their pace towards Meidi, and twenty minutes later, they appeared, disheveled, in Meidi’s sight.

When they got closer, they could already hear Meidi shouting loudly.

“Meow, big guy, come up, come up!”

Upon hearing Meidi’s words, Chen Ying tightened the backpack strap and slid straight down the slope.

The trap pit was right on the animal trail in the middle of the slope, so sliding down was faster.

Before he could stand still, Chen Ying pounced directly to the pit’s edge and looked down to see a hairy face looking up from the bottom.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t the tigress he hoped for.

“Uncle Alahan, there’s a young adult Flower Leopard in here. Its forelimb is injured, and its eye is hurt, probably fell into the pit with a deer while hunting.”

Thankfully, it fell with prey, otherwise, it might have starved to death.

Uncle followed closely, and upon hearing this, actively dialed the number of their Protection Station, requesting the personnel to bring equipment and medicine for assistance.

Chen Ying took a few photos with his phone, sent them to the personnel at the camp below, and they would arrange the rescue in advance based on the photos.

This pit is at least about two and a half meters deep. Normally, the Flower Leopard could have jumped up by stepping on the deer’s corpse, but now, since it’s injured, its forelimb is pathetically hanging in front of its chest, and its forehead to eye area is a bloody mess. It’s unclear if the injured eye can still see.

This leopard has been injured and trapped for quite some time. Luckily, the weather is quite cold now, especially at night, it can directly be used as a fridge, otherwise, the prey would have rotted long ago.

But due to the overly cold weather, it might have previously been able to hide under the prey’s body to keep warm, but as it ate more, there were fewer parts of the prey to shelter it, and this poor Flower Leopard became unbearably cold.

Chen Ying decisively took out a tranquilizer and injection needle from the waist bag, roughly estimating the Flower Leopard’s weight with one look. After using the suitable amount of tranquilizer and decisively injecting it into the Flower Leopard, the already weak Flower Leopard completely collapsed in less than five minutes.

The three quickly used the rescue rope they carried to make a simple net, Chen Ying went down to the bottom of the pit, caught the Flower Leopard with the net, and Kelas and Uncle Alahan pulled it up with effort, finally rescuing the leopard.

Ten minutes later, Chen Ying and Kelas jointly treated the leopard’s wounds, did a simple bandage, and waited for the support personnel to arrive on the spot.

“Chen, what were you doing just now?”

During the waiting gap, Kelas gestured and asked what Chen Ying was doing when he checked the leopard’s forelimb.

“That’s a treatment method we traditional veterinarians use for bone fractures or dislocation in animals, called manual reduction.”

Kelas looked at him blankly, “Manual reduction? What’s that?”

Chen Ying scratched his head—it wasn’t easy to explain at this time. He suddenly remembered a teaching video he had recorded for his juniors before, so he found this video from the school’s resource library and let Kelas watch it himself.

While waiting, the leopard showed signs of waking up.

Chen Ying had preemptively tied it up securely and requested Alahan and Kelas to sit a bit farther away, while he stayed by the leopard’s side.

This leopard was relatively weak; during the examination earlier, it even seemed to have a slight fever. Even if it struggled, there wasn’t much strength behind it.

Taking advantage of it not being fully awake, Chen Ying quickly smoothed its fur and scratched it soothingly, so by the time the leopard’s eyes cleared, it was already familiar with Chen Ying’s presence.

Even though this leopard isn’t very old, it’s pretty calm in its actions.

The expected struggle didn’t happen; it just tried hard to change its lying position and then warily surveyed Kelas and Uncle Alahan from afar, finally raising its head to look at Chen Ying for a while.

“I smell a familiar scent on you, but it’s not yours.” It paused, slightly tilting its head, “Do you have anything to do with the big guy up the mountain?”

The key words emerged.

Up the mountain! The big guy!

Chen Ying turned over and knelt in front of it, asking softly where it had seen the big guy.

“In the forest on the mountain, oh, it used to have a cub, but last time I saw it, the cub was gone, it seemed kind of crazed.”

Confirmed, it must be that tigress.

But in the next second, the leopard’s words sent a chill down his spine.

“When I was hunting earlier, I saw it seemed to be fighting a bear, not sure what happened after.”

A possibly sick or wounded tigress fighting a healthy brown bear, it didn’t bode well.

He stood up and glanced at Uncle Alahan, “Uncle, when will the support personnel arrive? I want to go up the mountain first to check.”

“It’ll be at least two or three more hours.” Uncle Alahan checked his phone, eyebrows tightly knit together, “The personnel from below are already on their way. I estimate they’ll be here at most within an hour.”

“Why don’t you wait here, and I’ll go up with Kelas to check the situation?”

“Don’t worry, this little leopard is quite sensible. It won’t struggle mindlessly. Just watch over it and don’t undo its ropes.”

As for raising and lowering it from the mountain, aren’t there other rescue personnel? If need be, they could just give the leopard another shot to let it sleep soundly.

Right in front of the leopard, Chen Ying left a loaded injection needle with Uncle Alahan, reassured the little leopard with a few words, and then he and Kelas continued upward with Meidi.

It wasn’t far from the Observation Station here, and both Chen Ying and Kelas were experienced in the wilderness, not likely to get lost over this distance.

An hour and a half later, they finally found the small cabin of the Observation Station. Besides some spare firewood, it was empty inside.

The ground was relatively clean, and there was a waterproof pad stored in a small box in the corner. They took it out, spread it on the ground, and laid out the sleeping bags, ready to stay the night.

Chen Ying told Kelas and Meidi to rest here, and also to clean out the fire pit for cooking later on.

Meanwhile, he planned to take advantage of the remaining time to scout around.

Kelas was unwilling to rest and intended to scout around with Meidi.

The two split up, one going left and the other right, using the cabin as the center, with a radius of a hundred meters, to search the fan-shaped area behind the cabin first.

Chen Ying recalled that the leopard had told him it witnessed the tiger-bear fight near a slope. This small ice pit was surrounded on three sides by steep cliffs to the north, west, and south, leaving only the sloped east side, which they had carefully checked earlier and found no signs of animal fights.

He walked a hundred meters in a north-northeast direction, planning to turn westward when he seemed to hear an unusual howl.

Stopping to listen carefully, he heard nothing again.

After waiting about five minutes, Chen Ying continued forward; just as he walked less than ten meters, the howl resounded again.

This time he heard it clearly—it was a bear’s call. The sound was full of pain, panic, and seemingly a bit of despair.

This bear had quite a complex emotion.

Chen Ying took out his phone and sent a message to Kelas, then headed towards the direction from which the sound came.

He walked about fifty meters further, and the sound ceased.

Searching carefully around, aside from a patch of trampled underbrush, he didn’t see the bear in distress.

Could there be hunter-set traps here as well?

Chen Ying thought it over and found it unlikely, as Uncle Alahan would definitely have informed them if there were.

So, could the bear have fallen into a pit?

If it did, where was the pit? If the bear that fell in was still alive, what happened to the tiger it fought with? Did it escape or fall in as well?

As Chen Ying approached the toppled brush, a brownish-red shadow quickly flashed before his eyes.