Chapter 234: Bounty Target

Bai Lang flipped through the booklet in his hand; this booklet made of special paper was waterproof, stain-resistant, and partially fireproof, and the printed images and text were extremely clear. He rustled through it, looking for the sand worm before him: "Hmm, as expected, it's listed under rare monsters and sighted monsters. Only sighting records, no definite capture records?"

Based on records from elsewhere, the sand worm entry roughly notes the materials obtainable from its body. The mucus on its surface is quite valuable, a highly effective lubricant that resists high temperatures, is non-corrosive, and hardly evaporates—one of the best lubricants for steam engines. Its leather is likewise a superb material for high-temperature, wear-resistant belt drives.

The sand worm likely has other valuable parts, but the main ones are these two. Bai Lang stared at the sand worm before him, which was about the size of a giant dragon cart, and after a long while he still hadn't decided whether to take the job. Killing the sand worm looks easy, but scraping off its surface mucus... one can imagine it's a dirty task, and Bai Lang really doesn't want to do it.

Besides, he was just pulling a cart; even if he killed a sand worm and managed to store the mucus in the stripped hide, it would be too much for a single cart to carry. Bai Lang looked for a moment, then crouched on the cart and shook out the contents—the parts wet from rain could be sun‑dried, and they would surely dry quickly.

He looked again at the sand worms constantly wandering the undulating earth amid the thunderstorm; these creatures emitted a strange shriek while standing in the scalding geysers erupting from the ground and amidst the lightning and torrential rain falling from the sky, and Bai Lang could feel his viscera vibrating—an ordinary person would probably collapse and vomit blood.

Bai Lang continued pulling his cart, and this time he finally saw the so‑called bounty target—a shark.

Bai Lang sat on the cart; he saw a shark fin more than two people high plowing open the desert wasteland before him, rolling up clouds of dust as it glided. "Its speed exceeds that of a steam truck." Bai Lang estimated the monster's speed; at that rate, an ordinary person on the wilderness could hardly escape.

Judging by the fin, this monster must be at least twenty to thirty meters long, already qualifying as a giant creature. "Trailing black smoke and rolling dust, it should be visible from far away, allowing escape, right? With such a grand display, how does this monster locate its prey? Perhaps by sensing vibrations?"

Bai Lang sat on the cart; if he remained still there would be no vibration, and the huge shark, spewing black smoke, passed over a hundred meters ahead of him, revealing the front half of its body—including its terrifying head and huge maw.

It resembled a great white shark, except its lower jaw and teeth were unmistakably metal; Bai Lang even saw that the muscles controlling its lower jaw were hydraulic pipes. The monster opened its maw to swallow a vast amount of air, then dove back into the ground amid impact sounds and swirling dust. "Is its nose a drill?"

Bai Lang found it strange that such a creature could swim beneath the desert, but only after stepping onto the gravel plain, now composed of fist‑sized stones, did he confirm it could indeed travel underground. This was essentially an ocean of gravel, though ordinary people would not sink into it.

Fighting that monster down here? Bai Lang stomped his foot, sending true qi shaking the ground: "Hard to say, but the depth below is probably at least two or three hundred meters?" For an ordinary person this is unsolvable—how would one drive the monster out from below? And dealing with such a monster would require cannons, wouldn't it?

"Such a monster only gets a twenty‑thousand‑dollar bounty? No wonder nobody wants to take it on." Bai Lang had had enough of these people's stinginess—twenty thousand dollars would, by local prices, barely cover building a house with a garden fountain at a outpost, the kind that could house a dozen people in Victorian style.

Of course, if they didn't build such a large house, a small western cabin would probably last about ten years? In any case, compared to the risk of selling one's life to hunt this shark, the payment is truly paltry.

Bai Lang's surging true qi made the distant dust suddenly pause, then rush straight toward him. Bai Shaobao certainly wouldn't pull the cart away—if he left, the cart couldn't be dragged, its wheels would sink. Bai Lang crossed his arms and simply waited for the mechanical shark to crash into him.

At a point over a hundred meters from Bai Lang, the shark's fin suddenly sank. "Next it should lunge upward with a sudden bite." Bai Lang's true qi kept vibrating; he sensed the shark rapidly rising. He took a small step forward and gave a slight hop upward.

The gravel below exploded upward like a volcanic eruption, and a gigantic mouth lunged at Bai Lang. However, Bai Lang now stood on the shark's nose; the drill's rotation did nothing to his foot. His protective gang qi, transmitted through his soles, firmly held the drill in place.

"What a huge mouth—two people stacked as a human pyramid would barely fill the upper and lower jaws." Bai Lang continued commenting on the shark, which kept surging upward, already lifting him over forty meters into the air. From his angle he couldn't see the shark's full form, so he jumped down from its nose and slid along its body...

"Indeed half‑organic, half‑mechanical—this spine is basically a machine, a roaring boiler." Bai Lang's Lightness Skill, as light as wind, gracefully circled the mighty shark bursting from the sea of stone. The shark had cannons on both sides, and its open maw could spew high‑temperature, high‑pressure steam, but none of it mattered to Bai Lang.

Against Bai Lang alone, the shark was like using a cannon to swat a mosquito—no matter how it unleashed a full‑range steam blast or fired its rapid‑fire cannons, charging out of the stone sea again and again to bite, it could not hit the human before it. Yet the disturbances Bai Lang created underground were something an entire convoy could not produce.

As for dealing with this bounty target? Bai Lang really gave it a try—his palms smashed straight through the creature's flesh, even denting its steel hull, but inside lay various oils and scalding pipes; crushing its brain might work—yet when Bai Lang placed his palm on it, he heard a rattling, clanking sound from within. "This shark's brain is actually a drilling machine, or an oversized version of one."

Bai Lang also threw a punch at the shark's head; the recoil told him it wasn't that easy—the shark's skull must be a heavy steel box, and given the world's material strength, that thickness isn't something Bai Lang can easily break open. If he had a divine weapon he could try, but relying solely on fists and feet... he's at a disadvantage.