My Apocalypse System Arrives 10 Years Early

Chapter 272: Chapter 202: The Tier Seventeen Mountain-Moving Little Jade Elephant

Laos was historically known as the Lancang Kingdom.

In the Lao language, ”Lancang” means ”a million elephants.” This is why Laos is also called ”the Land of a Million Elephants” or the ”Land of Vientiane.” In fact, its current capital is named Vientiane.

Thus, Laos was historically abundant with elephants. Now, however, according to incomplete statistics, only about 1,200 remain, with less than half of them living in the wild.

Within Asia, India likely has the most elephants. Some reports claim there are about 31,000, but other—and most likely unreliable—statistics suggest the number of Indian elephants might exceed one million.

These are Asian Elephants. Earth, however, is home to even more African Elephants, with an estimated population between 400,000 and 600,000, spread across approximately 37 countries and regions.

Li Xiang turned off his phone and tossed it into his System warehouse. As a result, he could only pinpoint his approximate location. It didn’t matter. As long as he was in a vast jungle, he could just sweep the mountains for his targets.

System: ”Detected Tier Five Mutated Creature: Five Unlikes.”

A strange animal appeared before Li Xiang. It was about two meters long and weighed around three hundred kilograms. Its ears were like a horse’s, its nose like an elephant’s, its body like a pig’s, its tail like a cow’s, and its paws like a tiger’s.

”Is that an Asian Tapir?” Li Xiang muttered. He’d seen one at a zoo before. They were most common in Malaysia and Indonesia, though they were also found in southern Thailand and Southern Myanmar. He never expected to run into one here.

They were excellent swimmers and tended to live near water.

The Asian Tapir saw Li Xiang staring and was instantly startled. It bolted toward a nearby lake, but it was far too slow for him. With a flash, Li Xiang was right behind it.

A light tap from the eight-hundred-kilogram Profound Iron Mountain-Removal Rod was all it took. A graze from it would wound; a direct hit meant death. The Asian Tapir’s life was forfeit.

Li Xiang felt no guilt about killing wild animals. In places like Southeast Asia, all sorts of wildlife were openly sold at the local markets. The countries he had visited—Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar, and Laos—were all the same.

For instance, at a market he’d once passed through in Laos, the wild game for sale covered everything from the sky above to the waters below. You could find anything: eagles, owls, all kinds of birds he couldn’t name, wild boars, hedgehogs, venison, civet cats, lizards, snakes, crocodiles, slow lorises, pangolins... Sometimes, they even had bear paws and tiger claws.

Bat and snake meat were sold on skewers. Other common wild animals and insects—like dragonflies, crickets, and silkworm pupae—were so numerous it was dizzying.

In coastal countries like Indonesia and East Timor, you could also find rare animals from the sea.

Some were dried, some were fresh, and some were still alive. They would butcher the animal for you right on the spot—a bloody spectacle. Some of the more timid tourists from China who witnessed it were so horrified they didn’t dare to buy or eat anything.

So, what was Li Xiang’s little hunt in comparison? It wasn’t even worth mentioning.

The Asian Tapir was a strange-looking animal and didn’t seem like it would make for a good meal, so Li Xiang had no interest in it. After collecting the System reward, he simply left the carcass and moved on.

System: ”Detected Tier Six Mutated Creature: King Cobra.”

System: ”Detected Tier Three Mutated Creature: Unicorn.”

These were two good finds. Li Xiang hunted them down and stored them in his System warehouse. The little cats back home had never tried King Cobra before.

The Unicorn was a peculiar creature. It resembled a deer, and its meat looked to be of good quality. However, the horns on its head were completely different from Deer Antlers. It had two sharp horns, each fifty to sixty centimeters long. When viewed from the side, they aligned to look like a single horn, just like a unicorn of myth. That was likely the origin of its name.

Along the way, Li Xiang came across a few wild elephant herds, each with five to ten members. None of them had any Extraordinary potential, so he ignored them. ’Elephant meat tastes bad, there’s no System reward, and they’re huge and take up too much space. Why bother killing them?’