Jacob kept a close eye on the situation in the clearing, then glanced at Su Fan, who was stretching inside the tent, and couldn’t help but ask:
“Su, aren’t you even a little worried?”
“They came here for wilderness survival—they should at least have brought firearms, plus companions who know how to shoot.”
Su Fan spoke calmly, as if he and the fast-talking Jacob were discussing two completely different things.
“You’re unarmed right now. Besides shouting from the sidelines, what else can you do? And they’re not even listening to you.”
Jacob opened his mouth but said nothing.
Su Fan was absolutely right.
He really couldn’t do anything at the moment.
He couldn’t even say much.
Otherwise, it would likely trigger those drunk men’s rebellious streak and make them do something even more outrageous.
Now he could only hope that it was just a lost cub with no mother bear nearby.
But soon, a series of startled cries came from not far away.
Jacob poked his head out again, and what he saw made his heart pound with fright.
From the bushes where the cub had appeared earlier, an enormous head emerged.
Such a massive creature appearing up close made everyone’s breath catch instinctively.
But the adult brown bear that appeared seemed entirely focused on its cub, not even glancing at the crowd.
Seeing this, the somewhat tense atmosphere in the clearing returned to normal.
The brown bear didn’t seem as dangerous as they’d imagined…
Was this what harmonious coexistence between man and nature felt like?
Someone in the crowd thought this to themselves with emotion.
“One of the brown bear’s most classic hunting techniques…”
Behind Jacob, Su Fan walked forward unhurriedly.
“Acting as if it’s casually strolling around, but actually closing the distance bit by bit, ready to pounce at any moment.”
“However, these two seem a bit… different.”
“Different?”
Hearing this, Jacob began carefully observing the bears’ behavior.
Under everyone’s teasing, the bears could always perform actions very similar to humans.
Waving, standing upright, even clapping and grabbing bottles to drink from with their paws.
Normally, only bears in circuses that had received years of training could perform such actions.
But these two did them effortlessly, as if they’d known how all along.
As Jacob watched, he gradually noticed something off.
Every time the bears completed an action according to the crowd’s instructions, they would blink a few times and narrow their eyes slightly.
A look of contempt that could only be seen in humans flowed from those small black bean-like eyes.
A terrifying suspicion suddenly surfaced in Jacob’s mind.
They weren’t teasing the bears… they were being played by the bears!
“How is this possible…”
An unconscious murmur escaped Jacob’s lips.
“Bears aren’t exactly unintelligent to begin with. They’re cunning and cruel, extremely vengeful yet also patient.”
“You should know—a bear can track its prey for hours, across dozens of kilometers, just to kill it.”
Jacob didn’t notice that behind him, Su Fan was rolling his shoulders, turning his neck, doing something like warm-up exercises.
“Of course I understand all that. But bears can only be called not stupid—they’re hardly smart. Yet this situation…”
“In a distant Eastern country, there’s a saying: ‘like supplements like’—meaning you become what you eat.”
Su Fan’s voice was flat, yet it made Jacob shudder.
“Guess—how many human brains did a brown bear have to eat to gain intelligence like this?”
As Su Fan’s words landed, commotion broke out again nearby.
The previously docile cub had actually bypassed the people constantly warning and shooing it away, heading straight for the roast meat by the campfire and helping itself.
Seeing this beast eating their midnight snack, someone immediately stepped forward to drive it away.
But they didn’t expect the response to be the bear’s sharp claws!
Rip!
The man who stepped in to stop it had his arm slashed open by the claws—a wound so deep the bone was visible, blood pouring out.
His agonized scream jolted everyone awake.
In that instant, all the information about bear attacks they’d heard but never paid much attention to exploded from the corners of their memories!
Fear spread through the air. It was at that moment that the mother bear, previously lying down, had somehow already stood up straight.
A massive frame nearly three meters tall blocked the moonlight, casting a shadow over everyone below.
Right before everyone’s eyes, the bear’s mouth actually curved into an arc, revealing an eerie smile, drool dripping from its jaws.
The director, closest to it, dropped his camera to the ground. Urine ran down his pant leg, yet he was completely unaware.
It was then that a strange sound came from nearby.
Everyone instinctively turned toward the noise, only to see the previously adorable cub holding a bottle in its paw, making sounds resembling human laughter.
As if mocking the director’s cowardice.
Such a deeply evil and unnatural scene made everyone who saw it tremble!
It felt as though tiny ice needles were piercing through every pore of their bodies!
“Monster!”
A shrill, cracking howl finally shattered the deathly silence!
Everyone except the director scattered and fled like madmen.
The director himself also snapped to his senses, not caring about anything, running desperately away from the two bears.
The campfire gathering that had been full of laughter and joy no longer had any of its former atmosphere. In the flickering firelight, human shadows leapt about in chaos.
Among them, the director—the slowest—became the first prey.
The cub by the fire suddenly charged forward, knocking the director to the ground!
The powerful impact was like a massive iron hammer slamming into her body. Pain spread through her nerves to every organ. Before she could get up, a paw pressed down on her head.
Her brain was compressed, and the woman screamed in agony.
Just then, the cameraman holding a hunting rifle ran out from the other side.
Having been farther from the bears, he hadn’t been paralyzed by fear like the others. He had immediately retrieved the hunting rifle the production crew carried.
The others who hadn’t run far yet saw this and felt a flicker of hope.
A gun!
No carbon-based creature could withstand a large-caliber hunting rifle—even an elephant, the largest land animal, could be brought down with one shot!
The cameraman aimed at the cub pressing down on the director and fired, hitting it in the abdomen. The cub let out a pained howl and ran off.
This also gave the director ample time to escape.
She immediately scrambled up from the ground—and it was at that moment that the mother bear’s furious roar came from behind, along with the dull thuds of bear paws hitting the ground as it ran!
The director quickly scanned her surroundings, then actually ran toward the tent of Su Fan and his group—the closest to her!
Seeing this, Su Fan narrowed his eyes slightly.
Diverting trouble eastward?
