Feng Ling felt a knot of rage lodged in her throat, impossible to swallow and impossible to spit out.
She had been so close to her prey, yet now she could only watch helplessly as they escaped.
For the Stitched Beast to travel smoothly through the sandstorm with the Messenger, it either possessed a special Card or carried a special item.
Feng Ling paced back and forth along the edge of the sandstorm, deeply unwilling to give up.
She lowered her head and asked the Tiger Head Worm, "Can you dig a tunnel through this damned place?"
The Tiger Head Worm let out a howl and twisted its massive body into the sand. It was even more nimble and efficient than digging through soil, but the sand at every spot it excavated immediately slid back down, rapidly filling the gaps and making it impossible to form a stable passage.
Meanwhile, the Human-faced Crows had gathered into a large mass because they could not withstand the freezing desert night.
Feng Ling had never counted exactly how many Little Third Children there were, but she could tell at a glance that their numbers had dwindled dramatically. Their overall volume had clearly shrunk.
—When Third Child had first hatched, it had already been quite large, nearly a hundred cubic meters, about the size of a six-meter-by-six-meter living room. Later, during the locust extermination operation, it had eaten its fill and doubled in volume. Then, when White Dragon Azdaha was killed, more than half of it had been burned to death. Some had died while killing Naga, Lord of the Abyss River, and still more had failed to escape when the Messenger unleashed Doomsday Judgment, leaving its volume even smaller.
Now all the Human-faced Crows were packed together and shivering. Feng Ling felt that