Chapter 112: Trend
Anticipating someone’s movements was never a simple task.
Most intelligent lifeforms had complex thought processes and were able to adapt quickly, making it hard to predict their thoughts.
Planning battle strategies far in advance was impossible.
Saying things like “I anticipated what my opponent would do because his personality is blah blah blah” was all a bunch of crap.
Anyone who claimed to be able to plan ahead based on a person’s habits was full of it.
This was because people were just too hard to predict.
Back in West Laina Castle, Su Chen had planned on fighting alongside Zhu Xianyao, but she had sold him out and then baited Sark into pursuing him.
Her reasoning for this was ‘because she didn’t like it.’
Humans could make both logical and emotional decisions at the same time.
Because of this, logical predictions were often invalidated by emotional motivations.
As such, any and all predictions were inherently risky.
However, you couldn’t just not make predictions because they were risky.
On the battlefield, military maneuvers are often made based on predicted enemy behavior.
The difference between an outstanding general and a mediocre one was that outstanding generals made few mistakes, while mediocre ones made many.
As such, no matter how risky this prediction of his was going to be, Su Chen still had to make one.
If he didn’t, he would never be able to find the Heavenly Might Army.
His only option was to carefully scrutinize the materials in front of him.
The higher the desired accuracy of his prediction, the higher his need was for large quantities of information as a baseline for such a prediction.
His eyes flew across the pages as he racked his brains in an attempt to put it all together.
One piece of information in particular caught Su Chen’s eyes.
This information was from the Halma Forest, and it reported the appearance of some unidentified bandits within the forest. Even though they were unidentified, the traces left behind by them seemed to indicate that it was a branch of a human army. More importantly, the potentially human army had burned down a large swath of the forest after robbing the place. The report said that thankfully, the flames were not too intense, and a Demonic Beast had summoned the rain, putting out the fire.
Even so, Su Chen could tell that there was a hidden message concealed in the report: a large amount of wood had gone missing.
The human army had secretly chopped down many trees, and then used the flames to cover up their activity.
Were they really planning on crafting boots to try and sail across the sea?
Su Chen narrowed his eyes in suspicion.
The hidden message showed that the Heavenly Might Army was indeed gathering large quantities of wood to cross the sea. The other resources they had been gathering this entire time also pointed towards this conclusion.
However, this didn’t allay all of Su Chen’s suspicions.
This was because there was an illogical contradiction: If the Heavenly Might Army was secretly gathering wood to cross the sea, then they had no reason why they wouldn’t conceal their theft of Origin Stones as well.
Even though Origin Stones had many uses, the most likely usage for them was crossing the sea. Under these kinds of circumstances, did the Heavenly Might Army really need to conceal the fact that they were gathering lots of wood?
Or were they really hoping that the lower-intelligence Ferocious Race wouldn’t be able to spot the hole in this logic?
This was actually possible, since the Ferocious Race weren’t exactly known for using their heads. However, the chances of this being the case were quite low — individuals might be dumb, but it was hard to fool an entire race. There were so many Ferocious Race individuals, so at least one or two of them would be able to spot the contradiction, right?
But if that wasn’t their goal, then what was the point of spending so much energy on these activities?
A diversionary tactic?
No way. No one would spend that much energy on a mere diversionary tactic. The Heavenly Might Army was stuck deep in enemy territory and didn’t have the spare time or energy to mess around by playing tricks.
So what were they planning on doing?
Su Chen continued to look through the clues he had gathered as he stayed deep in thought.
Very quickly, Su Chen came upon another piece of information regarding the ambush of a small nearby tribe. This tribe’s leader said that a very important treasure had been taken away from him: the core of a Nereid Worm. This wouldn’t have been important if not for the fact that it jogged Su Chen’s memory and reminded him of something — it seemed like there were other cases of Demonic Beast cores being snatched before this as well.
However, not many of the reports mentioned what had been taken, so there weren’t much of the information Su Chen that was looking for. The main reason this report had mentioned the core by name was because the tribe was too poor and the leader of the tribe had pestered them repeatedly again and again, which was the only way it had made it into the officer’s report.
Su Chen carefully flipped through the materials. Indeed, he was able to find some related information, but most of them didn’t have any particularly noticeable details.
At this moment, Su Chen suddenly remembered something.
A piece of information regarding the Heavenly Might Army.
Before leaving the Flowing Gold Fort, Su Chen had specifically asked Xiao Feinan for information on the Heavenly Might Army. If there was an advantage that Su Chen had over the Ferocious Race in looking for the Heavenly Might Army, it was that he had a better understanding of his comrades.
If you know yourself and you know your enemy, then you will always prevail.
Su Chen didn’t know his enemies as well as the Ferocious Race did, but Su Chen knew his allies much better than the Ferocious Race did.
During this kind of pursuit, knowing his allies was more important than knowing the enemy.
Because of this, he thought of something else.
More specifically, he thought of a single person.
Su Chen’s eyes lit up when he thought of this person.
Suddenly, he had a guess as to where the Heavenly Might Army was heading next.
However, before this he needed to do some more searching to confirm his guesses.
Within the Jade Wolf Mountain Range.
“Zach! Where are you?” Aguli called out as she frantically searched her surroundings while carrying a basket in her hands.
“Mom, I’m over here!” Little Zach’s figure appeared on a somewhat distant tree. His face was covered in black ash.
“Heavens, where did you run off to this time? I told you not to go running off on your own,” Aguli lectured as she ran over and dusted the black ash off of his body.
“Cully bet me that I couldn’t climb up the cliff there, so I took the bet. In the end I won, but he ran away,” Zach replied, a little upset.
“You climbed the Lonely Eagle Cliff? I told you before child, do not climb it! Why won’t you just listen to me?” Aguli said angrily.
“I’m fine! I’m already eleven years old. The Lonely Eagle Cliff is nothing to me,” Zach muttered.
“That’s not fine. It’s still too dangerous.”
“I am the descendant of the Thunder Edge. The Thunder Edge’s descendant does not fear danger!” Zach said loudly.
Aguli’s expression grew cloudy. “Forget about the Thunder Edge, child. That no longer belongs to me or you anymore. There is no way for you to become the true Thunder Edge.”
“No, I can do it!” the youth yelled, dissatisfied.
Aguli gazed tenderly at her son and rubbed his head. She wanted to say something but ended up staying quiet.
A moment later, she suddenly felt trembling from beneath her feet.
Aguli was stunned for a moment before she leaned towards the ground to listen. Her expression changed immediately.
She leapt to her feet and looked behind her. An army had appeared off in the distance.
“Humans......” Aguli’s heart began to beat faster.
“Mama?” Little Zach didn’t understand what was going on, and he stared apprehensively at his mother.
“Hurry, run!” Aguli grabbed her son’s hand and began to run as fast as she could.
Behind her, a disheveled yet still spirited army surged forwards, exuding a strong killing intent as they engulfed this small tribe in a matter of minutes......