Chapter 897: Brother Leopard and Sister Leopard

Although among the three leopards before her, only the adult leopardess in the middle posed any real threat to Xia Qing, she did not dare relax in the slightest, and decided to take her samples quickly and withdraw from the leopards' territory.

The common leopard is an exceptionally ferocious ambush predator, adept at crouching in the shadows for long periods before launching a sudden attack. In one-on-one combat, an ordinary common leopard is even more powerful than an ordinary wolf.

An even more dangerous point is that the solitary-hunting common leopard, after the Great Star-Life Evolution, also evolved cooperative behavior—when encountering danger it cannot repel alone, a common leopard will howl to call nearby common leopards to help fend off the enemy.

Generally, a leopardess's territory is adjacent to or partially overlaps with that of a strong male common leopard, which helps raise the survival rate of leopard cubs.

Quite possibly, right now a strong male common leopard is crouching on some large tree nearby, or in some dense thicket or grass, ready to launch an attack on Xia Qing.

Besides common leopards, this leopardess might also call in a wolf pack. Because during this spring's beast tide, several leopards had acted together with the western wolf pack, which shows the leopards here are very likely allies of the western wolf pack—and Xia Qing's relationship with the western wolf pack is, to put it mildly, very ordinary.

To show she had not come to hunt the leopards or contest their territory, Xia Qing put away her weapons, lowered her hands, slowed her speech very amicably, and communicated with the adult leopardess: "I've come looking for a plant—the one right behind you."

She certainly knew the leopards couldn't understand what she was saying, but communication between animals is done through howling. When different species communicate by howling, what is said doesn't matter; what matters is the emotion carried in the howl.

"Aaaoooo—"

"Aaaoo—"

"Aaaoo—"

One large and two small common leopards roared loudly. They could probably tell the human before them was no weakling, so they didn't charge.

"I'll leave right away," Xia Qing raised her hand and pointed at the leopardess's feet, then took a small step forward. "I need to take my phone."

"Aaaoooo—"

The leopardess roared again, and—whether intentionally or not—swiped the already perforated, screen-shattered phone once more, before shielding the two cubs and retreating two steps.

"Thanks, Leopard Sis."

Their willingness to retreat made things easy. Xia Qing let out a breath of relief, moved forward again, step by step, until she stood before the phone. As she bent to pick it up, she casually reached for the big tree entwined with vines beside it.

The seemingly casual motion was actually planned by Xia Qing. She had used full force and picked the spot precisely. The moment she touched the tree, she would "accidentally" strip off a piece of bark, a handful of vine leaves, and a clump of mistletoe.

She could bring these samples back and report to her idol, and while her idol was in a good mood, trade for some good medicine with the straightforward, handsome giant wolf.

Just as Xia Qing was about to succeed, she suddenly felt a vicious gust of wind coming from behind. The beast lurking behind her had seized the moment she bent over to attack!

Xia Qing scooped up the phone with her left hand, drew her blade with her right and pretended to counterattack, slicing off a piece of bark, a length of vine, and two large clumps of mistletoe, while her eyes locked onto the leopard that had sprung out to attack her.

It was a male common leopard, with a very obvious finger-length black scar above its left eye—looking imposing and very much like a street boss.

When Xia Qing operated around Mountain 50 and Mountain 52, she had run into this fellow more than once. But in those previous encounters, she and it had only matched each other's momentum at a distance; this was the first time they had actually clashed.

"Brother Leopard, we meet again. Your range really is huge."

Xia Qing kept an eye on the leopardess moving around behind her while staring down the Scar-Face leopard in front. While making small talk with it, she used her left hand to tuck the broken phone into her pocket, then pulled out a plastic bag, shook it open, covered the precious samples she had cut, grabbed them along with some dirt from the ground, and stuffed them into the side pocket of her backpack.

Right after packing the samples, Xia Qing pretended to stand up. The leopardess, which had climbed a tree, indeed leapt down and seized the chance to attack. At the same moment, the Scar-Face leopard across from her also pounced.

If bitten, even if the leopards' sharp teeth couldn't pierce Xia Qing's protective suit, the tremendous bite force and impact could still injure her bones.

Xia Qing, who had been prepared, punched the leaping leopardess away with her right fist, then planted her left hand on the ground and swept the Scar-Face leopard away with her right leg like a whip.

The two beaten leopards adjusted their posture in mid-air, landed steadily on all four paws, and began to size up Xia Qing warily. From that reaction alone, Xia Qing judged that although the two leopards hadn't reached the intelligence of brain-domain-evolved animals, their IQ was certainly not low.

Having achieved her goal, Xia Qing began slowly retreating, once again signaling that she had no wish for conflict.

Sure enough, the two leopards didn't attack her, because Xia Qing had put seventy percent of her strength into those two strikes—otherwise she couldn't have sent the leopards flying.

After retreating to a safe distance, Xia Qing amiably bade the two leopards farewell: "Brother Leopard, Sister Leopard, I didn't know this was your territory. Sorry for the intrusion—till we meet again."

There was a Yì-element magnetic-field anomalous plant here, and unless something unexpected happened, her idol would send her back to take samples, which was why she said "till we meet again."

Of course, next time she would definitely pick a time when the two leopards weren't active in the area. How to find out?

She herself had a helicopter, and her good friend had a trained bird—monitoring the two leopards from the air was no difficult task.

Xia Qing retreated to her original spot and waited a few minutes. Xiao Jiang soon flew the helicopter over, opened the cabin door, and lowered the rope ladder. Once airborne, Xia Qing looked down, but her eyes could no longer spot the common leopards—they hid themselves extremely well.

After taking off her protective mask, Xia Qing asked, "Brother Luo, may I use your phone to call Third Brother? Mine is broken."

"Got into a fight with common leopards?" Luo Pei pulled out his phone, dialed Zhang San's number, and handed it over.

"Mm, accidentally walked into the core territory of the common leopards and got ambushed." Once the call connected, Xia Qing immediately reported to her idol: "Third Brother, this is Xia Qing. I've already got the samples—I'll bring them to you as soon as I'm back."

Zhang San grunted an acknowledgment. "Not hurt?"

"No, don't worry."

When she hung up and handed the phone back to Luo Pei, Xia Qing volunteered an explanation: "I found an unfamiliar mistletoe in that evolved forest down below, so I called Third Brother to ask. He told me to dig it up and bring it back."

Luo Pei nodded. The plants inside an evolved forest were bizarre and countless, and Zhang San was a pharmacist specialist—it was perfectly normal for him to have Xia Qing collect samples.

Chen Cheng was full of admiration and gave Xia Qing a thumbs-up. In all of Northern Region One, only Xia Qing dared contact Zhang San during his sleeping hours without worrying about being blacklisted.

After Luo Pei guided her through a few more laps of piloting the helicopter, Xia Qing returned to her own territory, took the SIM card out of the broken phone, inserted it into the pink new phone of the Broken-Waist Wolf, and only then headed for Territory Seven.

, she once again chose to give up exploring the Yì-element magnetic-field anomalous plant that had been blocked off by the three leopards.