Shane squatted in front of the chicken coop, his gaze sweeping over the scattered feathers and the darkening bloodstains on the sand. His expression was dreadfully grim.
After all, this directly impacted the future economy of the oasis as well as the progress of his desert reclamation. Any loss pained him deeply.
“We're missing six.”
Elon walked around from the other side of the chicken coop, his voice low and his brow furrowed as he held a blood-stained feather. “There were twenty-one; only fifteen are left.”
His tone was also quite grim. After all, he had personally taken charge of this flock from Lanche and had personally soothed them before putting them into the coop. Having nearly a third of them vanish overnight would make anyone unhappy.
Alicia stood a couple of paces away, her arms crossed and her brow tightly knit. “You didn't hear any commotion last night?”
“No.”
Ksaz shook his head, recalling the morning's events. “Sir had me do a patrol to check on the chickens, but when I arrived, the door was already crooked.”
As he spoke, he pointed at the wooden door of the chicken coop.
Shane looked in that direction. The door was indeed crooked, looking as if something had burst it open from the inside.
But what caught Shane's attention even more was a prominent gap in one corner of the coop.
The edges of the gap were jagged and fractured outward, resembling bite marks left by some creature.
“Elon.”
Shane called out, raising his hand to point at the gap.
The old druid approached, squatted down, and ran his hand along the edges of the gap before falling into thought. “It looks like it was bitten open. Whoever did this has quite a bit of strength.”
As he spoke, he glanced inside the chicken coop.
The fifteen surviving hens were huddled in the furthest corner, clustering around the rooster. Their feathers were disheveled, and they looked thoroughly listless, with a few even shivering slightly.
Elon stood up, brushing the sand off his hands as he looked at Shane. “The chickens are spooked. We need to relocate them first. Do we have any spare coops?”
“Yes, we built two extra beforehand, remember?”
Shane nodded and raised his hand to summon two skeletons.
They lifted the damaged coop and set it aside, then brought over an intact spare from the other side of the oasis, setting it down in its place.
Once the attendants had ushered the chickens into the new coop one by one, Shane turned around, his gaze falling back to the ground.
Suddenly, he felt that something wasn't quite right.
The soil of the bean field had just been tilled a few days ago and was generally level. Even with the chickens stepping on it, only shallow claw prints remained. Yet, about two paces directly in front of the coop, he spotted a distinct depression.
The depression wasn't large, with a radius of nearly a meter, forming an irregular, shallow dish-like shape.
Logically, even if the wind blew across the loose, tilled soil, it shouldn't have formed a depression of this shape.
Shane squatted down and poked the soil in the center of the depression with his finger. The dirt was soft and uncompacted, indicating it had formed recently.
Instead of jumping to conclusions, he walked around the perimeter of the coop to confirm there were no similar marks elsewhere. Only then did he walk back to Elon. “Come take a look at this.”
Elon, who was adjusting the angle of the new coop's door, straightened up at his words and walked over. He squatted beside Shane, glanced at the depression, and his face instantly fell. “This shape... it looks like something burst out from underground.”
“The corner of the coop was bitten open, which means that thing bit it from the outside.”
Shane pointed at the break in the coop, then at the depression in the ground. “Being able to do both at the same time means that creature was half-buried in the soil and half-exposed.”
Elon remained silent for a moment, seemingly searching his mind for known desert creatures. After a short pause, he whispered, “A sand worm.”
“What?”
“A juvenile sand worm.”
Elon stood up, gesturing to the diameter of the depression, then comparing it to the width of the gap in the coop. “Adult sand worms generally don't approach the surface. They are too massive, and the vibrations they make when moving underground are so obvious that prey flees long before they arrive. But juveniles are different.”
“Juveniles roam in soil layers closer to the surface, sensing vibrations on the ground. If the frequency and size of the vibrations match their predatory preferences, they will push up through the soil from below, expose their heads, and drag the prey down into the earth.”
“The bloodstains on the ground and the gnawed corner of the coop were likely left by the chickens thrashing about as they were dragged away in the night.”
Shane frowned upon hearing this. “Is there a way to deal with it?”
“We have to confirm what it is first. After all, there are plenty of burrowing creatures in the Golden Sea.”
Elon turned and raised his hand to summon an owl phantom, sending it flying above the oasis. He closed his eyes to share its vision, then opened them again a moment later. “I can't see any traces on the surface. A sand worm's movements are entirely subterranean, so I can't make a direct judgment.”
“Then let's find something that can burrow to investigate.”
Shane spoke almost without thinking, and then the two exchanged a glance, speaking in unison: “Sara.”
Twenty minutes later, Sara burrowed out of the sand.
She seemed to have just woken from her rest, with some damp soil still clinging to her carapace, but she was in high spirits. As soon as she emerged, she scurried toward Elon, tapping her giant pincers against the ground to make a few brief clicking sounds.
Elon listened intently, then turned to Shane. “She says she can conduct a search underground around the coop, but...”
“But what?”
“She asked if she could bring her children along to help if she finds it.”
Shane stared blankly at Sara. The latter was staring back at him, her stinger swaying gently behind her as if trying to hide her little scheme.
“What did she say?”
“She said that while a juvenile sand worm is indeed a nuisance for humans, for her and her children, a single petrification ray can solve it without much effort.”
“And what does she want?”
“She didn't say explicitly.”
At this, Elon smiled and casually added, as if it weren't Sara's little scheme at all, “But I reckon she wants to build a nest at the edge of the oasis.”
The corner of Shane's mouth twitched. Sara was truly becoming more like a human by the day. However, he had no reason to refuse, so he gave a slight nod. “Fine.”
Once the matter was settled, Ksaz led his tribesmen to dig a shallow pit at a spot Sara had chosen on the outskirts of the oasis. Sara solidified the bottom of the pit with her petrification ray, and they lined it with a layer of wheat straw and Red Willow branches before constructing a simple roof out of bone plates.
Though it could hardly be called exquisite, for earth stingers accustomed to dirt burrows and sand pits, it was already a move-in-ready home.
Sara personally inspected her new nest, tapping her giant pincers against the ground twice to signal her approval.
She then turned around and let out a low series of clicks to the five small earth stingers lined up behind her. The little ones immediately dispersed, burrowing into the nest and quickly vanishing from sight.
Shane stood not far away, watching the scene with mixed feelings. He muttered casually under his breath, “Maybe I should make a shift schedule for them too.”
“What?”
Elon, standing nearby, didn't seem to hear him clearly, but Shane was too lazy to explain. “Nothing. Let's wrap up.”
The next day.
Ksaz's shouts once again echoed through the camp. “Sir! Sir! Come quickly and look!”
Shane rolled out of bed and flipped open his tent flap. Walking out, he saw Ksaz standing in front of the chicken coop, waving frantically in his direction.
He strode over, with Elon and Alicia arriving almost at the same time.
Then, the three of them saw the creature.
About three meters in front of the coop, a grayish-white, tubular creature stood upright in the sand. Its head was circular, frozen with a ring of multi-layered, barbed fangs agape, as if it had been paralyzed before it could even snap them shut.
Its entire body, from the head down for about a meter, had completely turned into grayish-white stone.
The luster was dull, the texture dense, and fine cracks lined the edges. However, the structure remained entirely intact, clearly indicating it had suffered no secondary damage after being petrified.
Beside this petrified juvenile sand worm, three small earth stingers were lined up in a row, their stingers held high as if waiting for inspection.
Seeing Shane and Elon approach, the small earth stinger in the middle took two steps forward, tapping its giant pincer against the ground with a brief click.
It was as if to say: Here, homework submitted.
Elon squatted down. He first carefully inspected the petrified sand worm carcass, then listened to the small earth stinger's “report.” Looking up, he offered Shane a smile. “These three were on patrol duty last night. They said this juvenile sand worm poked its head out of the soil at dawn. Just as it approached the coop, they pinned it down together, unleashing a chain of petrification rays to freeze it right in its tracks.”
Shane glanced at the three proud little earth stingers, then at the thoroughly petrified juvenile sand worm. The corner of his mouth twitched. “Good job.”
The little earth stingers held their tails even higher.
Alicia stood to the side with her arms crossed, her expression subtle. “Honestly, I'm starting to feel like our oasis's security is more reliable than all my guards in the Imperial Capital combined.”
“If your guards heard that, they'd be heartbroken,” Shane teased.
As Shane made his retort, the sand not far away suddenly began to heave violently.
Bang!
Sara's massive body erupted from the sand, kicking up a cloud of dust as she landed.
At this moment, she was nothing like her usual leisurely self crawling over to greet them. She practically charged right up to Elon, her two giant pincers flailing frantically in front of her. A series of rapid, sharp screeches escaped her mouthparts, and her entire body was in a state of high tension.
Elon's face paled the moment he heard her first click.
He whirled around to Shane, his dark green pupils contracting slightly.
“Sara says she sensed a massive source of vibration deep in the soil, three kilometers southwest of the oasis.”
“A mother sand worm is heading our way.”
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