After peeling the skin off the little finger of the captive, A’yi stopped.

He made several gestures to the captive, showed him the knife he had just used to peel off his skin, and made “咿呀咿呀” sounds, as if making some kind of threat.

Rouyi translated A’yi’s words to the team: "A’yi wants the captive to explain why he carved symbols on the trees."

The captive gritted his teeth, sweat pouring down his forehead. He refused A’yi’s request, seemingly determined to resist to the end.

Seeing that he was fearless, A’yi continued to peel the skin.

With each piece of skin he peeled, A’yi would sprinkle some grayish-white powder on the captive’s wound.

This grayish-white powder was some kind of hemostatic and coagulant substance. After sprinkling it on, the blood on the captive’s wound quickly clotted.

The skin on the captive's little finger, ring finger, and middle finger had all been peeled open. The skin of the captive's fingers hung on his palm, and a small amount of blood dripped down along the dangling skin.

A’yi stopped again, repeating the previous actions to the captive.

This time, the captive no longer had the initial vigor. His lips trembled, and it was clear that he was a little scared.

Forced by the pain and pressure, the captive nodded to A’yi.

A’yi untied the captive’s other hand, the one that hadn’t been skinned, and let him explain.

The captive endured the pain and used his single hand to make one gesture after another, truthfully answering the question about "carving symbols."

The hand gestures of different tribes were actually somewhat different, and Rouyi could only roughly understand the ins and outs of the whole incident from the captive's gestures.

But that was enough.

When the advance team went deep into the rainforest, they made marks along the way. When they passed near the captive’s tribe, they were discovered by the sentries of the captive’s tribe.

The sentries reported the traces of the advance team to the tribe, and the tribe sent people to track the advance team.

The advance team moved very quickly and was very stealthy, but the tribesmen failed to keep up.

But although the people in the tribe lived primitive lives, they were not fools.

After checking the marks left by the advance team, they confirmed that these were guiding marks, intended to guide those who came later. This meant that there might be more people coming.

So they imitated these guiding symbols and pointed the carved symbols near their territory, setting up an ambush.

But what they never expected was that the advance team, which had already been lost, suddenly returned.

What they didn't expect even more was that the advance team was misled by the symbols left by the tribe and strayed into the tribe's trap.

The captive claimed that one of them used something that could make thunder (Rouyi and Fatty suspected it was a gun) and killed one of their tribesmen.

Then, the two sides fought in the rainforest. After all, the natives in the rainforest knew the terrain better and had more combat advantages.

The advance team was caught off guard in the chaos. After shooting and killing one person, the rest of the tribe quickly hid in the rainforest, and all shooting targets within sight were lost.

A moment later, members of the team were shot and killed by cold arrows from people hiding in the dark one after another, and the team gradually lost its ability to fight.

In this battle, two members of the advance team died on the spot, one was injured, and two were captured alive.

And only one person died in the captive's tribe.

After the battle, the people of the captive's tribe took the three corpses who died in the battle and the three surviving members of the advance team back to the tribal camp.

The truly terrible and terrifying things happened after they returned to the tribe.

The three corpses were disemboweled and their hearts were dug out by the tribesmen on the spot. They were cut into pieces of meat and made into meals. With the amount of food consumed by the captive’s tribe, these three corpses could last them for two days.

At the same time, the captive's tribe did not intend to give up on those who would later enter the rainforest based on the symbols. While enjoying their prey, they sent people to continue leaving marks in the rainforest, setting traps, and burying sentries.

The Dodge team was shocked to hear that there were cannibalistic tribes in the Amazon rainforest.

Especially Dodge, who thought to himself that if they had encountered a cannibalistic tribe instead of A’yi’s tribe, the current fate of the advance team would be their fate.

According to the captive, after eating the three corpses, the cannibal tribe would then eat the injured person, and finally eat the two living people.

There were no doctors in the rainforest, and serious injuries that were not treated could easily lead to death. Moreover, there were no refrigerators in the primitive tribes, and meat products could not be stored, so taking meat from living people was a common method used by cannibals to preserve fresh meat.

The captive estimated that, barring any accidents, the injured person had already been killed and dismembered, and the tribe had already begun preparing food.

…

The lives of the advance team members were in imminent danger, and the rescue work was urgent.

These people were all brothers who had lived and died together with Derrick, and Derrick was anxious when he heard about their experiences.

Derrick immediately discussed the rescue plan with Dodge and Fatty. The three of them discussed it urgently for a long time, but the result was not satisfactory.

The cannibal tribes had been living in the rainforest for a long time, and no one knew the rainforest environment better than they did. They knew exactly where there were trees, where there was a river, where there were swamps, and where there were puddles. Facing the Dodge team, they were fighting on their home turf, and their advantages were obvious.

Without the help of a "local" who understood the rainforest environment, the Dodge team might not have even found the other party's camp before being discovered by the cannibal tribe's sentries, and eventually died miserably in the hidden arrows.

After a fruitless discussion, Dodge, Derrick, and Fatty turned their eyes to A’yi for help.

A’yi had always had a good impression of these outsiders from the Dodge team. Previously, when Fatty saw A’yi staring at his hunting knife, Fatty did a good deed and gave his hunting knife to A’yi. A’yi loved it after receiving it, and even hugged the knife while sleeping.

However, the tribal leader was somewhat hesitant about the "rescue plan" proposed by the Dodge team, because based on the information currently available to the tribe, the cannibal tribe had a greater advantage in numbers. If a war broke out, they would be forced to flee if they were defeated.

Considering the survival of the entire tribe, the tribal leader had not yet agreed to the Dodge team's request...