Chapter 331: What Is a Wild Beast? The Lord of the Desert!

Countless mutant bats fell to the ground in a clatter, and only then did that grey light come to a stop, slowly transforming into a tiger over five meters long?

It was a giant tiger, grey-white in color, with flickering black stripes, and two grey ribbon-like wisps of Grey Mist drifting from its body!

Beneath the grey-white body, one abnormally exaggerated right paw and the two grey iron tails behind it, like steel whips, were extremely conspicuous.

"Looks like I didn't arrive too late."

Baichuan sighed inwardly. If he hadn't left a mark on that pair of siblings when he had previously strengthened his tracking ability, finding a tiny human on the oasis within this dark Grey Mist would have been no easy feat.

At a thought, the ribbon-like things on Baichuan's body moved in response, like two nimble arms lifting aside the already lifeless Sand Beast leader, revealing the two people pressed beneath in a rather wretched state.

"Cough, cough…"

"Cough… ha…"

With the heavy weight on them finally lifted, Zhou Yun and You Shi struggled out, gasping violently, coughing from time to time as their breaths came too fast.

"Mao Mao?"

Suddenly, Zhou Yun, who had raised his head, froze. He looked with some uncertainty at the mutant bats that lay dead around him, and at the giant tiger that carried a trace of familiarity within its majestic bearing, and called out softly.

He kept feeling that the giant tiger was very familiar, like the Mao Mao from his home—but Mao Mao should be staying with his sister on the Hunting Ship right now, and was nowhere near this big.

Could this be a creature that carried the same wild beast bloodline as his family's Mao Mao?

Zhou Yun suddenly recalled what Uncle Dan had said before, about Mao Mao being a being with wild beast bloodline.

"Mao Mao? Young man, don't let your guard down—this isn't that wild beast being of yours that hasn't grown up yet." Beside him, You Shi, who had been on high alert from the moment he saw the giant tiger, spoke in a low voice. Though still somewhat weak, the body lying prone on the sand couldn't help but tense up in vigilance.

But fearing he might provoke the terrifying beast before him, he dared not move rashly, only softly warning the youth beside him.

Unlike Zhou Yun, who still knew nothing, he, as a member of the most elite Sand Beast squad, could sense the overwhelmingly dense aura of primordial wildness emanating from the giant tiger that had suddenly appeared!

Wild beasts, also known as Primeval Wild Beasts, are beings that have existed on this land since primeval times—the true masters of this world once, the overlords of the earth, the very synonym of power.

Even though the giant tiger before them was not yet a true wild beast, the overwhelmingly dense aura of primordial wildness on its body was already extremely close to that of a real one. It was absolutely not something that little beast of the youth's, which merely carried a trace of wild beast bloodline, could compare to.

You Shi slowly recalled the knowledge he had once read in ancient texts—knowledge that the extraordinary-origin Dan had once brought to Sand Castle.

Coincidentally, at that moment, the ground trembled slightly once more.

Facing Zhou Yun's call, Baichuan said nothing, showing not the slightest reaction.

Because, from the moment he truly stepped into the Grey Mist, having taken on the form before him, he had already formed the intention to leave.

Wild beasts—what are wild beasts? Why are they powerful, daring to be called the overlords of the earth?

Baichuan hadn't been particularly clear on this before, but from the moment he tore apart the first Mist Spirit within the Grey Mist, and the broken, unknown substance from what he had shredded began to wrap around his body, he understood.

Excitement!

Utter, absolute excitement!!

His body was more excited and active than ever before!!!

Born in response to the Grey Mist, feeding on Mist Spirits, drawing on the power of the Grey Mist, transforming it into his own strength.

And… an extremely intense tendency toward cannibalism among their own kind!

Wild beasts never appear in pairs; they are solitary overlords, sovereigns!

When two meet, one must die; the survivor takes everything from the fallen, metamorphosing into something even stronger!

The strong live, the weak die. Nothing more to it.

And the purer and more powerful the bloodline, the more so this holds true.

As it happens, in this very Desert, there exists a wild beast currently sleeping, but about to awaken!

And the rank of the wild beast bloodline he himself carried was extremely high!

Come to think of it, a wild beast that dared to obstruct his descent at such a great height couldn't possibly be an ordinary one.

Therefore, whether for the sake of growing stronger or avoiding that powerful creature, he had to leave soon.

The Hunting Ship before him could not withstand a true Lord of the Desert.

Staying on the Hunting Ship, he also couldn't grow stronger at the fastest possible speed.

At a thought, the pair of ribbon-like things on Baichuan's back moved nimbly once more, shooting out straight as rods, directly binding the two people before him.

Ignoring the infant-like struggles of the two, Baichuan picked his direction and broke into a gallop on all fours.

The earth trembled more and more.

In the dim world between heaven and earth, countless shadowy figures emerged from within the Grey Mist, extending limbs and claws, baring fangs and brandishing claws to snatch at the living humans wrapped in the wispy substance, flying through the air.

Yellow sand flew, foul winds gusted. In the bone-chilling cold, the galloping grey-white giant tiger paid it no heed. Its aura of primordial wildness gushed forth like something tangible; the flying soft grey-white fur and wispy ribbons danced with the wind, emitting faint wisps of weak fluorescence, like a streak of flowing light! Determined to destroy everything in its path!

Though clearly within an icy, frozen land, Baichuan felt his own body growing hotter and more scalding, his thick right paw increasingly unable to be held back.

"Boom boom boom…"

At that moment, a series of enormous rumbles suddenly rose!

The golden pupils of the galloping giant tiger narrowed. Its four limbs suddenly gathered strength and it leaped up. The next instant, the ground beneath its feet violently split open with a fissure, stretching on for untold miles, revealing the dark, bottomless Abyss below.

At this moment, all the creatures that had shrunk into their various sandy burrows for the night began to panic everywhere!

Desert-specific sand crabs and various sand beasts scrambled sideways on their claws, burrowing straight into the ground, or shoving their heads into the sand…

One panicked cry after another kept shrieking out, mingled with a string of chaotic footsteps.

At this moment, even the constantly churning Grey Mist showed a brief pause, as if about to thin and vanish!

Because.

On the edge of this vast expanse of oasis land, two enormous, swallowing holes had suddenly appeared!

Vast amounts of dense Grey Mist were being constantly pulled, drawn, drifting toward the southern edge of the oasis! The dry yellow sand began to flow, like water come to life, slowly forming a massive vortex within the desert!

……

"Wooo—"

The Hunting Ship sailing along the edge of the oasis abruptly paused for a moment, its rhythmic, distant long cry coming to a stop!

"Vice Captain, the Hunting Ship has detected an intense Sand Quake!"

Sand Quake, a disaster unique to the Desert.

Every once in a while, those traveling through the Desert may encounter this great disaster that swallows everything whole, shaped like a vortex.

"What?!" Ren's eyes went wide as he cried out, then cursed under his breath, "Damn it!"

"Quick, turn around, sound the alarm, get everyone back inside the cabin except those on reception duty… full power… if things go south, retreat!"

Hurry, Dan.

After issuing the order, Ren came to the window somewhat uneasily, watching the increasingly terrifying scene outside and muttered to himself.

At this moment, outside was already a mass of darkness, the Desert had turned to quicksand, flowing slowly, dry yellow sand flying all over the sky, occasionally flashing with azure lightning due to friction from extreme dryness — a scene straight out of the apocalypse.

The people on the Hunting Ship had no idea how terrifying this flying sand was, but Baichuan knew all too well!

Wrapped in the violent gale, every grain of sand that swept past was like a small knife scraping by. If his entire body hadn't been encased in a layer of grey-white unknown substance left behind after the Spirit of Grey Mist vanished, he would likely already be torn of fur and skin, drenched in blood by now.

Even so, it wasn't much better.

As the earth shook more and more, Baichuan's movements grew increasingly difficult. The already loose sandy soil mixed ground completely turned into loose sand, his running speed constantly dropping — and this was even with his current peculiar form!

Dimly, he finally saw the verdant great trees at the edge of the oasis, and the massive rift spanning between the oasis and the Desert. That rift was like a heavenly moat blocking the last hope, and on the other side was the bright light-spot of the Hunting Ship.

Almost there! Almost there!

Baichuan steeled himself, constantly quickening his pace. Suddenly his gaze sharpened as he looked down beneath the rift.

There, a tiny human figure was barely clinging to a greatsword driven deep into the rift wall, refusing to let himself fall completely into the Abyss — it was—

Dan, who had entered the Grey Mist before him!

"That is? — That's great…"

At this moment, Dan, his strength nearly spent, eroded by cold and heat, was growing drowsy and about to pass out. Suddenly hearing movement nearby, he struggled to open his eyes and look, and saw a grey-white, majestic giant tiger fleeing with two people on its back. His heart leaped with joy, and he was about to lose his grip and fall.

"Moo—!!!"

At that very moment, the Grey Mist's pulling abruptly stopped, and a distant, vast moo suddenly rang out.

Accompanied by nearly tangible wind pillars violently erupting from those two "caves," a gale of extreme violence swept up near where the Grey Mist was being swallowed!

A terrifying pressure surged from behind. At the very last moment, Baichuan squeezed out the last shred of his strength, leaping desperately the instant he neared the rift. At the same time, a ribbon-like object shot out, snatching up the one about to fall, and flew toward the Hunting Ship coming to receive them on the other side.

In an instant, all the sand around the oasis was completely lifted, drifting down like snow about to fall back to the ground. Before it could land, it was wrapped in the fierce, scattering wind vortex and transformed into a sand tornado reaching to the heavens!

In the dim world, the earth rumbled and trembled without cease. A sand tornado connecting heaven and earth rose up, interspersed with brilliant flashes of lightning. Within it, a snake-like, dragon-like shadow stretched out, scales spreading with a clanging sound, sparks flying. Then a pair of emerald-green eyes lit up within the tornado.

The earth began to rise, yellow sand pouring down like waterfalls around the rift. A massive head rose from the pitch-black rift, shaped like a tiger beast, its cyan eyes in this dimness like an undying bright lamp! It was the head of some powerful creature!

Its form like a tortoise with a tiger's head and a viper's tail, its name is Tuolong, its cry like that of a liu-niu.

Lord of the Desert, the wild beast Tuolong!

With Tuolong's appearance, the surrounding Grey Mist seemed to thin and clear considerably, as if absorbed by it. The raging gale, controlled by its snake-like, dragon-like tail, also fell silent.

All around was a pre-apocalyptic calm!

"What?!"

Ren and the others on the Hunting Ship, witnessing this scene with their own eyes, cried out in disbelief. The Life Continent in this stretch of Desert was actually formed on the back of some slumbering unknown wild beast! The Sand Quakes that had always panicked everyone were actually the work of a wild beast!

Amid the figure rising to prop up the heavens at the world's end, endless yellow sand flowed beneath its feet like water, like a sovereign wielding gale and sand!

……

But Baichuan had long stopped paying attention to this scene.

The moment Tuolong emerged, he had abandoned everyone on the Hunting Ship and left on his own.

Because he knew that the wild beast's target was him — or rather, the special substance that had caused the mutation in his right paw, namely the wild beast's bloodline.

So he had already fled toward a more distant direction.

With the burden of those two ribbon-like things on his back gone, Baichuan controlled them to extend and spread to their maximum, now forming a pair of wings on his back — or rather, a glider!

Thanks to this, his fleeing speed was finally somewhat satisfactory. Even though the soft sand was ill-suited, he could still leap with all his might the instant he touched ground, gliding with the help of those wing-like ribbons.

The moment Tuolong awoke, its pair of bright cyan eyes locked dead onto the ever-shrinking tiger shadow, filled with longing!

Thin strands of transparent, viscous liquid slowly dripped from the corners of Tuolong's tiger-like mouth.

The next moment, Tuolong moved.

Its forelimb, like a pillar of the sky, moved, carrying an unparalleled wind pressure as it slowly stepped forward.

"Boom!"

The sandy ground suddenly sank, as if unable to bear its weight!

"Quick! Quick! Retreat!!"

At this tremor, Ren on the Hunting Ship finally reacted. While receiving the captain and others, he also had the Hunting Ship, already at full power, begin to move.

But the slow-moving Tuolong showed no interest in this. Its gaze shifted, watching the tiger shadow grow ever more distant. That massive tiger-head suddenly opened wide, and within its mouth filled with dense, sharp teeth, brilliant light began to glow.

Then the entire sandy land came completely alive. Yellow sand writhed, raising up a sky-obscuring sand wave that swept over everything like a colossal wave of the sea, and Tuolong rode this sand wave in pursuit.

"Everyone, that mysterious tiger beast saved us — we can't just stand by and watch it die!"

On the Hunting Ship, the recovered Dan, seeing the sand sea controlled by Tuolong closing in on the giant tiger ill-suited to running on sand, spoke up.

"Yes! Uncle Dan is right!"

The first to echo was Zhou Yun. When that giant tiger had carried them to escape, he had already had a premonition — that giant tiger was his family's Mao Mao.

Now that Mao Mao was in danger, how could he turn a blind eye?

"Indeed." You Shi also nodded in agreement.

"Anyway, you're the captain, your word is law." Ren replied helplessly, but a closer look would reveal a smile curling at the corner of his mouth.

"Good! Since that's the case, open the Central Cannon on the Hunting Ship! Let's give that big fellow a big shot!"

With everyone in agreement, this massive Hunting Ship also began to change form. At the very front, the bow slowly revealed a huge cannon mouth, from which a pitch-black, spiral-shaped giant spearhead carved with countless mysterious patterns emerged.

The next instant, the Hunting Ship's speed suddenly increased, and then the Spiral Spearhead shot out!

……

(End of this chapter)