Enduring the putrid stench hanging in the air.
Chen Wen and Vikram walked down toward the bottom of the valley.
As the two of them drew closer, Chen Wen was the first to notice something wrong with the soil underfoot: "What we're stepping on here hardly counts as soil. It's a mixture of flesh and dirt. The winters here are freezing cold—blood that seeps into the ground will freeze. How much blood would have to accumulate to form such a vast stretch of blood-soaked earth?"
Chen Wen felt a chill run all through him.
This Hunting Owl group had been poaching here far longer than he'd imagined!
Vikram didn't speak. He just stared at the heap of bones piled up in the valley.
Chen Wen shifted his gaze to the bones as well, and noticed that the most numerous among them were yak and Tibetan antelope bones.
Those two kinds of bones were also fairly easy to recognize.
