Chapter 927: The Giant Eagle Appears

The golden eagle that had spotted the flock of birds appearing in the southwest stopped paying attention to its nest, which somehow didn't feel quite right, and landed on a pine branch, letting out a low cry toward the southwest.

Such a huge eagle, yet its cry sounds just like a chick that hatched only a few days ago—listening to it made Xia Qing's headache ease a little.

"Flock location, twenty kilometers to the southwest." Zhang Jingwu's voice sounded in Xia Qing's ear.

Gazing at the flock of birds sweeping in like dark clouds from the southwest, Xia Qing thought of a phrase she had learned a few days ago: "collective stupidity." Whether humans or other animals, once their numbers reached a certain scale, they were easily driven by emotion rather than reason, producing a series of "stupid" behaviors.

Beast tides were like this, and so were human riots in the safe zones. This flock of raptors that had swooped over after their defeat at Guisan were no longer rational animals who knew what fear was—they were killers and destroyers.

A dark cloud composed of nearly two hundred large and medium-sized raptors drew near from afar, their furious screeches blanketing the sky, prompting the raptors in this stretch of Shi Lin to either shriek back or take to the air to defend their territory. Countless small birds and beasts scattered in all directions, the scene in complete chaos.

The ever-growing dark cloud headed straight north, not passing through the stone pillar forest where Xia Qing was hidden.

Zhang Jingwu's voice sounded again: "Eighty-five large raptors, one hundred and two medium. First defensive line snipers, fire!"

"Bang!"

"Bang!"

"Bang bang!"

"……"

The snipers on the first defensive line in southern Hui-Three pressed their triggers at the same instant; one raptor after another, shot dead, plummeted rapidly from the sky, their torn feathers drifting down on the wind. From Xia Qing's angle, it looked as though that dark cloud of birds was snowing.

As the snow fell, the cloud thinned, and the pressure in the human hearts eased at once.

"Chirp, chirp—"

The golden eagle crouching in the nest was in a completely different mood from Xia Qing. It let out a loud cry, the earlier chick-like low calls now becoming extremely high-pitched and shrill, which, together with the magnetic field of the two attack-type aberrant-evolution trees beside it, battered Xia Qing's brain.

Xia Qing didn't even blink. She had undergone more than a year of professional and rigorous anti-interference ability and endurance training. Let alone a single eagle—even when being chased by dozens of artillery shells last time, she couldn't hear a thing and could still hold her sniper rifle steady.

Twenty-five seconds later, only a small dark cloud had escaped to high altitude, passing through the first defensive line and continuing north.

Six minutes later, dense gunfire rang out from the second defensive line five kilometers to the north, then the third, then the fourth.

"First wave of birds ninety-five percent eliminated. Everyone rest in place. Second wave is thirty kilometers from the first defensive line." Zhang Jingwu's voice sounded in Xia Qing's ear.

Last August, when the bird tide struck, the defensive line led by Luo Pei had whittled down the raptor numbers layer by layer in exactly this way.

It was now the eleventh year of the Catastrophe. Humanity's experience in dealing with beast tides was extremely rich. As long as firepower was sufficient and it wasn't the aberrant-rain period when hot weapons were restricted, large animals on Blue Star simply couldn't pose a threat to human bases.

But a few evolvers among the raptors might still escape, remember this grudge, and look for a chance to strike back at humanity. Xia Qing didn't dare let her guard down in the slightest; she gripped her rifle and stared toward the southwest, waiting for her mission target.

Over the next three hours, four more flocks of raptors were successfully intercepted by the human defensive lines. The golden eagle above Xia Qing had gone numb and stopped chirping.

Hearing others engaged in lively combat, someone in the Eagle-Extermination Squad, who had been lying in ambush for over three hours without firing a single shot, finally couldn't hold back any longer and asked lazily over the channel, "There's a palm-sized bug on the vine in front of me, camouflaged as a green bamboo viper. Does anyone want this thing? How many points is it worth?"

Xia Qing recognized that voice: Aurora Squad's Third Master, Level-6 visual evolver and senior sniper Zhou Chuan'an, nicknamed Zhou Baldy.

Zhou Baldy was also a famous tightwad in the Hui-Three squads. Unlike Yang Jin, who strictly followed trading rules, Zhou Baldy would take money from anyone, so his reputation in the safe zone was terrible.

After the Sufeng Squad's incident this spring, the Aurora Squad seized the opportunity and poached over thirty evolvers with decent combat power from the Sufeng Squad, vaulting their ranking from sixth to second in one stroke.

After muttering a few words, Zhou Baldy suddenly began calling Xia Qing, "Shi Zhu One, Night Heron, which squad were you with before?"

Zhang Ling was one of the hidden combat assets of the Azure Dragon Squad and rarely appeared in public, so of course her voice wasn't well known. Xia Qing, lying beneath the bird's nest, was already in silent mode and naturally wouldn't answer his question.

Zhou Baldy continued talking to himself, "Did Azure Dragon ever have a female senior sniper before? The name Night Heron sounds a bit familiar…"

"Shut up." Before Zhou Baldy could finish, another female voice, smoky and husky, rang out in the channel.

Xia Qing was also familiar with this voice: the No Way Squad's fourth-ranked combatant in Hui-Three base, Level-5 visual evolver and senior sniper Mo Shaozhi, codename No Way Yama.

Mo Shaozhi had been poisoned by toxic fumes during a mission and lost her voice. Because she always wore a one-way transparent pure-black protective mask, some people guessed she had been disfigured and gave her the nickname "Ghost-Face Yama." Mo Shaozhi thought the nickname wasn't bad and simply adopted it.

Zhou Baldy didn't dare provoke No Way Yama and fell silent. After the channel returned to quiet, Xia Qing heard the eagle above her head let out a low cry resembling fear. She immediately scanned her surroundings, but within the range of sky her eyes could reach, there was nothing unusual.

Not seeing anything unusual didn't mean nothing was unusual—it meant her ability to catch anomalies was insufficient. Xia Qing worked hard to block out the interference of aberrant-element anomalies and used her hearing to carefully sense the movements of the golden eagle above the nest.

Above!

It was letting out low cries toward directly above. Above, beyond the clouds, was something that frightened it. Xia Qing began to gently move her body, which had grown stiff from lying motionless for so long.

The target was likely about to appear. She was hiding beneath the nest and couldn't snipe a target directly overhead, but a giant eagle was a flying creature—as soon as it appeared, it would surely fly out of the blind spot and enter Xia Qing's sniping range.

"Chirp…" The golden eagle crouching in the nest kept crying out, but its voice was soon scattered by the wind whistling between the stone pillars.

This aerial overlord, with a wingspan exceeding four meters, actually jumped straight from the nest to the ground, hopped over to one of the attack-type aberrant-evolution trees beside it, then carefully stepped up along the branches and tucked itself into the dense foliage.

It seemed this eagle knew those two trees were aggressive, and very likely that the sap was poisonous. It had built its nest here, treating those two trees as its safety barrier.

The golden eagle's raised feathers, slightly trembling wings, and barely audible low cries all radiated fear. Xia Qing, hiding beneath the bird's nest, followed the direction of its gaze, carefully shifted her body, and turned to look toward the west-southwest sky.

A dozen seconds later, she saw two black dots shoot through the white clouds at extreme speed!

Good news: the target had finally arrived. Bad news: the target was flying too high and too fast.