"Don't disconnect yet!"
The incoming Star Spirit commander immediately withdrew his power. Gravity briefly went out of balance, and both sides of the riverbed ruptured upward. The original commander promptly pressed the cub and the entire layer of rock back down, his hand trembling again after having just relaxed.
"I'll keep it pinned down." He looked at the commander on the eastern bank. "Go south. Don't make a move until the Thorn-Mouthed Burrower emerges from the ground. Don't waste your power on the mud layer."
The incoming commander confirmed that his power had withdrawn from the Star Rune, then turned and flew toward the Thorn-Mouthed Burrower. Only commanders of the same tier could stop it head-on; the players could only use the opportunity to clear an escape route.
Someone asked in the channel, "With two Tier Three commanders here, can't we kill the cub first?"
The team leader rejected the idea outright. "The moment the commander suppressing the cub switches to a killing move, it'll break free immediately. If the other one comes back to help, no one will be stopping the Burrowing Beast. Even if we really kill it, we can't transport a corpse that huge. We'd just be feeding this beast for nothing! We'd have done all that work for free!"
[Light in the Night] looked toward the cub, which was still struggling. "If we let it escape alive, it'll at least avoid the Burrowing Beast on its own. If there really are tentacles blocking the way ahead, it'll fight desperately too."
The calculation was clear, and no one in the channel objected.
[Hua Qingwan] used [Shadow Step] to cross the broken-log zone and retreated along the treetops. The moment she appeared behind a tree, the soil beneath her feet swelled upward.
"It followed an old blood trail