23: Chapter 23 The Monkey Troops, Mo Yuemei

Seeing that the rock missed, the white-furred Monkey King, somewhat annoyed, struck the tree branch with the short wooden stick in its hand. It was issuing orders, commanding the monkey troop to follow suit and attack.

The rest of the monkey troop began hurling all sorts of things at them—rocks the size of ping-pong balls, nuts, wooden sticks, tree branches, and other miscellaneous items rained down upon them.

Incarnation then urgently said to them, "Keep your backs to them and run toward the mountain peak."

After dodging a few rock attacks, Wang An picked up the Compound Bow in his hand, nocked an arrow, aimed, and fired.

A large monkey beside the white-furred Monkey King was struck in the body; the monkey wailed and fell from the tree.

Seeing this, the Monkey King roared in anger, urging the monkey troop to continue the attack. However, before long, they had run out of things to throw.

Watching the Exploration Team retreat toward the mountain peak, it finally couldn't sit still and jumped down from the tree to pick up rocks. Seeing the Monkey King's actions, the other monkeys also followed suit, coming down to pick up rocks and throw them at them. However, because the distance was gradually increasing, even if they were hit, it had no real impact.

Incarnation, who was covering everyone's retreat, sneered when he saw them actually daring to come down from the trees to attack.

He nocked another arrow, this time aiming at the Monkey King. Seeing this hairless monkey attack with a bow and arrow, the Monkey King was startled and hurriedly pulled a monkey guard from its side to block the arrow.

However, after being struck, the guard monkey was left with more breath going in than coming out.

Only then did the furious Monkey King come to its senses. Seeing the state of the struck monkey, it began to feel fear and terror, immediately jumping onto a nearby branch and leaping toward the higher parts of the forest.

Seeing the Monkey King flee, the other monkeys also wanted to retreat, but they weren't as fast as the Monkey King. They could only climb back up the trees first and leap into the distance by moving from branch to branch.

In this brief moment, the four archery coaches came to their senses, took out their Compound Bows, nocked arrows, and fired. Four arrows flew toward the monkey troop, but because the monkeys were moving quite fast, only one was struck by Chen Zhenhua and fell, wailing for a moment before going silent.

Chen Yanshan and Liu Tingquan saw the coaches running toward the team leader. They also picked up rocks from the ground and ran over.

Seeing everyone counterattacking the monkey troop, they suddenly felt a bit ashamed and stammered, wanting to say something to Incarnation.

Looking at them like this, he knew what they were thinking and said to them sternly, "You two are still reserve members right now; you only need to focus on support work. For everything else, prioritize your own survival. You did nothing wrong; don't participate in combat if you lack the ability to protect yourselves. Otherwise, I'll have to divert my attention to protect you."

Incarnation was doing his best to train the two of them, explaining that one should do what is required of their position and not worry about things they shouldn't be concerned with.

As for the performance of the other four coaches, it was also acceptable, especially Mo Yuemei, who reacted the fastest and was very courageous, leading everyone in the counterattack; it was a fairly good start.

However, in usual training and competitions, she always used a recurve bow, and her accuracy wasn't as high as a veteran coach like Chen Zhenhua, who had been teaching for over a decade.

After comforting the two of them, Incarnation led everyone to clean up the battlefield, first retrieving the arrows he had fired.

A total of three monkeys were killed this time: two monkey guards and one smaller one.

The coaches excitedly asked Liu Tingquan to take pictures of them with the struck monkeys as a memento of their operation.

In fact, the authorities had already relaxed the list of protected animals, such as wild boars.

Especially for an Exploration Team entering the mountains, they wouldn't even ask about the death of a few monkeys if they knew.

What they mainly emphasized was not to cause large-scale slaughter of organisms within the protected area, as it could easily disrupt the ecological balance and lead to some unpredictable consequences.

After burying the monkey corpses on the spot, everyone returned to the mountain peak to cook and rest. The Monkey King had been sufficiently scared this time and likely wouldn't attack for a while.

Incarnation set down his luggage, organized his weapons, and told everyone, "I'm going to see where this monkey troop's lair is."

Afterward, he headed in the direction where the monkey troop had fled.

At this moment, Mo Yuemei, who was sitting to the side resting, saw Incarnation and, thinking he was going for revenge, immediately picked up her Compound Bow and followed him.

Hu Jun was just about to call out to Mo Yuemei when he was stopped by Chen Zhenhua. He knew that with the team leader's strength, there was no need to worry about him encountering any danger.

He said to Hu Jun, "Look at the team leader's reaction to the monkey troop earlier; when those monkeys came, it was one arrow per monkey. They couldn't even run away fast enough; there won't be any danger."

Chen Zhenhua looked at Mo Yuemei's retreating figure and thought about how this girl, upon learning that they were going hunting in the mountains, had kept calling to pester them, asking if she could join.

Chen Zhenhua was so annoyed by her that he finally said she could only come if she got her parents' consent, and that she must follow the Exploration Team coach's instructions and not run around.

Unexpectedly, she had actually managed to convince her parents to let her come to a place like this.

Hu Jun, of course, had also seen how Incarnation had acted.

To be honest, even if he practiced for another five or six years, he wouldn't reach the team leader's level, and he had no idea what his background was.

Li Guohua, meanwhile, looked at them thoughtfully.

Incarnation noticed that Mo Yuemei had also followed, knowing that she still hadn't gotten over the excitement of the hunt, and said to her, "I am going to investigate the situation at the monkeys' lair. If you want to follow, you must follow my instructions."

Mo Yuemei nodded earnestly; as long as she was allowed to follow, there would always be opportunities to hunt.

Then Mo Yuemei asked, "Team leader, how do you train? That distance earlier was at least forty or fifty meters, right? And you hit it with a single arrow."

Incarnation did not answer Mo Yuemei's question.

Instead, he asked, "Why did you think of participating in this exploration activity? Would your parents agree to you joining this kind of activity?"

Mo Yuemei was silent for a moment before saying, "Team leader, people like you must have experienced many things and many dangers for your archery and survival skills to be so formidable, right?"

She continued, "Since I was a teenager, I've been arranged by my family to participate in various sports activities."

"My parents are both top-tier athletes, even though they have already retired. But they wanted to train me in the direction of an athlete. After discovering I had a talent for archery, they kept making me participate in various training sessions and competitions."

"Every day was just training, competing, training, competing. There was no time that belonged to me, no life that I wanted."

"So, I wanted to experience what archery is really like. Not in a training facility, not in a competition arena, but in the real wild, in the forest."