From Robinson Crusoe

The footprints stretched further and further across the snow, and the crimson light from the beacon outlined the silhouettes of the three figures.

Knowing that this was likely the strongest enemy he had ever faced, Chen Zhou deliberately maintained a relatively stable speed to conserve energy for the long term.

Right now, all he needs is an opportunity, a chance to break the deadlock—

The campfire in the distance grew dimmer, and the billowing smoke gradually disappeared into the vast night sky.

The two-man, two-mammoth caravan was pulled apart during the chase, and the distance between them grew larger and larger.

But neither the clods of earth nor the stones realized this. This has always been how the tribe hunts: as long as they chase and keep chasing, the prey will eventually die under their spears, and the same goes for people.

Wild animals feared them.

The strong ones will be tamed by them, while those who dare to resist will be killed.

……

The chase across the snow had already stretched for nearly three kilometers.

The stone and the uninjured mammoth ran in the lead, while the clod of earth pierced by the spear fell in the middle, about five or six hundred meters away from the stone.

The mammoth with the injured foot lagged behind, unable to run at all as it tiptoed on one foot.

The strenuous exercise accelerated blood flow, and Shi Kuai felt hot all over. He couldn't help but throw off his animal skin hat and glared fiercely at Chen Zhou, who was still running away.

He noticed that the cunning creature was slowing down, which meant that the prey was running out of energy, often indicating that the hunt was about to end.

After chasing for about another minute, Chen Zhou suddenly stopped, turned around to face the man and the mammoth, and narrowed his eyes slightly.

The time has come.

……

Although Chen Zhou no longer "ran away," Shi Kuai did not think that the prey deliberately let them scatter to be defeated one by one. He only thought that this guy who could only run away was out of strength.

He was wary of the spear in Chen Zhou's hand, fearing that he would also be pierced through. Therefore, when he saw Chen Zhou stop, he also slowed down and hid next to the mammoth, using the mammoth's mountain-like body as cover.

Unexpectedly, this move played right into Chen Zhou's hands—

He never intended to waste his last remaining spear on someone.

This beast-like, ugly monster was full of energy. Although it was not as fast as him, it was fully capable of dodging thrown weapons.

The spear had a high probability of being dodged once it was thrown, but the mammoth, whose pace had slowed down along with its master, was the perfect target.

Once the mammoth is no longer a powerful ally, this group of weirdos will never be able to catch up with him again, and they will no longer be so formidable in close combat. As long as he adopts a sufficiently steady guerrilla tactic, he can wear them down.

……

While searching the mountains and fields for hibernating animals to store fat, Chen Zhou accidentally came across the carcass of a mammoth.

It was from then on that he discovered that the skulls of such enormous creatures as mammoths were not as sturdy and thick as he had imagined. On the contrary, the mammoth's skeletal structure had a fatal weakness—

Beneath its high forehead, in the center above its trunk, there is a huge cavity where no bones are distributed. Thrown spears can pierce directly into the mammoth's vital parts from here, and even if they do not kill it instantly, they can completely incapacitate it.

Moreover, the sheer size of the mammoth greatly reduced the accuracy required to hit the hole.

Chen Zhou was already quite accurate with throwing weapons, and now that the distance had closed to this extent, he could hit the target every time.

……

"I refuse to believe that your mammoth is immortal!"

He raised his spear and assumed a standard throwing stance.

Fearing that this attack might not be enough to incapacitate the mammoth, Chen Zhou even took a long-absent running start, hoping that the spear would gain greater kinetic energy the moment it was thrown.

Seeing that the enemy was preparing for a desperate fight and had raised that terrifying weapon, the stone immediately hid behind the mammoth.

He naively believed that once his opponent lost that weapon, he would lose his threat, never imagining that Chen Zhou's target from beginning to end was not him.

With a leap of eight steps, Chen Zhou's spear flew out.

In the darkness, the trajectory of the gun was not visible; all that could be heard was a whooshing sound.

Stone watched as his prey, shrouded in a red glow, lost its weapon, and he felt no pain. This indicated that the prey had not hit him, and that the hunt was nearing its end.

A surge of joy welled up within him, and he expressed his excitement with a battle cry. Like a cave hyena seeing carrion, the stone bent over and pounced madly on Chen Zhou.

Just as he was about to reach Chen Zhou's side, a mournful cry came from the snow behind him.

The spear plunged deep into the mammoth's massive head, and life was rapidly being drained from the beast's body. In just a few seconds, it lost all its strength, managing only a dying sigh before collapsing to one side, crushing the snow and sprawling on the ground.

At this moment, the stone had already run in front of Chen Zhou, tightly gripping the spear in its hand and thrusting it at the "weaponless" man.

He could almost picture the scene after his attack succeeded.

Even the most skilled escapee will one day be killed by a hunter.

But clearly, Chen Zhou's death is not today.

Drawing his sword was faster than thrusting; Chen Zhou cleaved the sturdy wooden spear in two with a single stroke, then lunged forward and slashed directly at the rock.

Stone hadn't expected its prey to be able to fight back, and hurriedly withdrew its spear to defend itself.

One knife, two knives, three knives!

At first, Chen Zhou wanted to use his swordsmanship to fight, but he soon discovered that those moves were only learned by his body, not by his brain.

During the fight, he had no time to think about which move or style to use next; he only knew how to attack, attack, and attack again.

The spear blocked the attack, but it was also cut into a short stick.

The tall rock finally realized that something was wrong with the enemy, but it was not afraid.

The warriors of the tribe never back down.

He swung the short stick without flinching and smashed it heavily into Chen Zhou's head.

The blade was originally aimed straight at the stone's throat, capable of decapitating it in one strike, but Chen Zhou was unwilling to trade injury for injury with this crazed enemy. At the very moment he was about to slit the throat, he changed direction and blocked the short stick.

The short stick landed on the blade. Stone knew his weapon was far inferior to the enemy's strange weapon, so he let go of the stick and instead grabbed Chen Zhou's clothes.

He successfully obtained the animal hide, and a triumphant smile immediately spread across his face—

The tribe's warriors possess divine power, and even the strongest beasts cannot withstand their terrifying strength.

He pulled hard, intending to drag Chen Zhou down, then take the weapon and kill his prey. However, things did not go as smoothly as he had expected.

Despite the tug, Chen Zhou remained completely still.

The heavy feel of the stone made him almost think he was dragging a boulder or a beast much larger than himself.

Before his bewildered eyes, the blade swung horizontally.

Blood spurts.

Chen Zhou beheaded the strange man with a single stroke, and then cut off the arm that was gripping the fur on his shoulder.

A cold wind howled, and the blood was redder than the color of the beacon.

The headless, armless body of the stone mammoth stood frozen in the snow for a moment before collapsing backward. Things went even more smoothly than Chen Zhou had imagined; in less than two minutes, both the man and the mammoth were dead at his hands.

The remaining challenger and the wounded mammoth were even less of a threat.

……

Recalling the image of another challenger pulling out the spear that had been inserted into his body and resuming the fight, Chen Zhou added a few more blows before launching his own attack.

He severed the other hand from the corpse, then pierced its heart with a knife to ensure the man could not "come back to life," before pulling out the spear that had been embedded in the mammoth's head and heading straight for the remaining man.

……

The strength of the clods of earth and the stones was far inferior to that of Chen Zhou.

With the help of the moonlight and the beacon's glow, the two could only make out the outlines of the distant scenery, but knew nothing about the specific details.

Especially when the distance is so great that the clod of earth cannot even see the mammoth lying on the ground, one can only follow the footprints on the snow.

When Chen Zhou took the initiative to run towards him, the distance of over a hundred meters was covered in an instant.

Just as the clod of earth saw its "prey" come into view, it heard the whistling of the spear.

Before he could even react, the spear pierced through his body once again.

This time, the spear, after a running start and sprint, had even greater force, flying backward seven or eight meters, carrying with it a large clod of earth.

The intense pain roused the usually taciturn clod of earth, who roared and tried to pull out his spear once more.

However, after the spear pierced his body, the spearhead was deeply embedded in the soil, and no matter how hard he tried, he could not pull the spear out in a short time.

He was breathing rapidly, and Tu Kuai's face was flushed red.

His particularly prominent nostrils opened and closed, drawing in the cold air in an attempt to gain enough power.

Time was of the essence, and in this cold winter, even beads of sweat appeared on the hairy forehead of the clod of earth.

But Chen Zhou will not give him another chance to "come back to life".

Rushing forward, he raised his long sword high, giving his opponent no chance to catch his breath, and with one stroke he severed the huge head of the clod of earth.

……

The head detached from the body, rolled several times on the snow, and slowly came to a stop, leaving a long, broken line drawn with specks of blood.

As the head detached from the body, the clod of earth's hands, which had been gripping the gun barrel, loosened limply and fell to the ground.

The spear served as the last support for his body, keeping him from falling to the ground.

Having witnessed the man still fighting even after being pierced by a spear, Chen Zhou dared not be careless. Holding his long knife, he circled the clod of earth again and cautiously delivered a few more blows.

Only after confirming that the man was indeed dead did he turn his attention to the remaining mammoth and add it to his kill list.

……

A moment later, Chen Zhou returned to the two challengers, dragged their bodies together, and carefully searched their animal hide clothing.

When he first heard Bi Kai's story, he thought the two men were Negroes, that is, black people from Africa.

But when he actually met the two men, judging from their physical characteristics, he realized that they were not Negroes at all, or even Homo sapiens.

These two men had flat foreheads, short hairlines, uneven teeth, robust bodies, short forearms, small hands disproportionate to their size, dark brown skin, abundant hair, and much more muscle mass than modern humans, making them extremely strong.

Aside from their exceptionally tall stature, their physical characteristics match those of the extinct Neanderthals.

Furthermore, these two individuals had limited language communication and collaboration skills, which is also consistent with the characteristics of Neanderthals.

It is said that Neanderthals lost out to Homo sapiens in the competition because their level of socialization was far inferior to that of Homo sapiens, and they lacked the ability to communicate with each other. This led to their technology in making weapons and tools being far behind that of Homo sapiens, and they were eventually eliminated by Homo sapiens in the long course of history.

After some searching, Chen Zhou was basically able to confirm that the two people were both extinct Neanderthals and came from the same world.

What puzzled him was why, despite being challengers, neither of them possessed any survival tools provided by the Time and Space Administration.

"Could it be that their physical abilities were also weakened?"

Puzzled, Chen Zhou examined the leather bags on the backs of the two mammoths and found a large amount of coal inside. It seemed that these black stones were the key to the Neanderthals' survival on the wasteland.

Aside from his strange identity, Chen Zhou was equally curious about his formidable strength and the second person's regenerative abilities.

As they lit a campfire and kept an eye out for any new challengers at the supply landing site, Chen Zhou stripped off the animal skin clothing of the two men, trying to find more clues.

However, he ultimately found no useful medicine, only the same scars on the two men.

It was a cube carved from stone, with straight lines, and some kind of blue pigment was added to the scar while the pattern was being cut out.

Although the skin has covered the pigment in the scars after growth, faint blue lines can still be seen upon close inspection.

"A follower of the Time and Space Administration?"

After making a guess, Chen Zhouzai carefully searched through all the supplies carried by the two mammoths.

He hadn't held out much hope, but to his utter surprise, he actually found something extraordinary—

A plant branch, its tender green color frozen solid.

The branch, covered in coal and mud, stood out starkly against the icy landscape.

Clearly, it shouldn't be here at this time.

Chen Zhou gradually developed a bold conjecture.

"Perhaps they are not outside challengers, but natives of this world."

It is now roughly 10,000 BC. If the Neanderthals in this world were affected by the Time and Space Administration, they might have been able to escape extinction and survive.

If they had any understanding of the 'challenge,' they would very likely break through the barrier, come in from the outside, and get involved in the challenge..."

"From another perspective, it may be precisely because this prehistoric challenge site unexpectedly altered the timeline that the Neanderthals were able to grow and thrive, and gain more benefits from their contact with the Time and Space Administration."

It's important to know that the Time and Space Administration is very happy to see unexpected things happen, and they would also be happy to see "believers" participate in the challenge and compete with challengers from future generations.

……

The firelight reflected on his face, and Chen Zhou became increasingly convinced that his guess was correct.

Then he thought of something else—

If these Neanderthals came from outside the challenge zone, wouldn't other Neanderthals break in?

Is the total number of challengers still 100? Besides him, the 101st person, is it possible that there are 102, 103, or even more?

"I hope the main force of the Neanderthals doesn't break in. If they do, it's best to wait until I get this supply."

Wiping the bloodstains off his longsword, Chen Zhou gazed at the blood-red beacon hanging high in the night sky, and thought to himself.

The waters are getting muddier and muddier, and the situation is tilting in an unpredictable direction. Clearly, the Time and Space Administration's oversight of loopholes in the rules is not that strict.

Previously, Chen Zhou had always thought that he might be the only "exception," but now it seems that there may be far more than just him as an "exception." (End of Chapter)