After leaving the safe area of Oasis Town, the water source became less and less, and the barren Gobi was everywhere. As soon as the wind blows, it will roll up dust and sand. The laterite rocks seem to have been cut with a knife, and they are stuck in the vast expanse of the wasteland in the form of stone pillars. At this ninth site, it will obviously take longer and more effort for the investigators to obtain an adequate sample.

Dust, sand, soil grains, and stone chips are as many as they can be, but living things, plants, and water sources are hard to find. Ian watched as Leila carefully filled a red sand ant into a vial with tweezers, and then let out a long breath.

She was just about to get up when she saw more red sand ants crawling out of the cracks in the ground and migrating westward.

Ian was about to speak when Lyra suddenly ripped her hood off her head, pulled down her mask, and hung it around her neck. Her ears rolled, then she looked up and sniffed hard. The cat man's sense of smell seemed to have picked up something, and she looked at Investigator Bazaar.

Baza, the lizardman, was lying on the ground, as if searching for something, but her head was looking around uneasily. At this moment, her eyes met Layla and Ian. As if frightened, Basha jerked to her feet, sluggish from her knees for a long time, but still staggered as she threw down her hand and ran towards their horse.

"Catch her......" Layla said in a somewhat uncertain tone, as if to herself, "Catch her!" but she soon cried out. Sid stood up at the sound of a sound, and he was resting near the horses.

When the lizardman investigator saw Sid walking towards her, he quickly turned around and ran in the other direction. Layla rushed to the place where Basha was in charge of collecting the sample, and crouched on the ground to look carefully. She picked up a shattered collection bottle from the ground, the liquid seeping into the red earth beneath her feet. She put her nose over the broken bottle and sniffed it, letting go of her hand and letting it fall to the ground.

"What's wrong with you? What is this, what's going on?" Ian asked anxiously when he saw that she looked strange.

"The sheep fat of the guinea sheep and the flying squirrel grass are mixed with the blood of the monitor lizards of the plains...... " Leila replied in a daze.

"What do you mean?" Ian didn't understand.

“...... It smells like a dragon egg," Layla glanced at him, "it's the manticore's favorite food." ”

"But Bazaar...... Why did she ......?" Ian looked at Sid's back, chasing Bazaar.

"I don't know......" Lyra's cat ears suddenly stood upright, and her originally squinted eyes suddenly widened, "Here we are!"

As soon as she finished speaking, there was a muffled rumble ahead, as if something huge had hit the ground, and they all felt a slight tremor under their feet. Ian saw that Sid had turned around and was running towards them desperately. The dust behind him was covered with dust, and as Basha's mournful screams came, a vague beast shadow appeared in the dust.

The beast slowly walked out of the smoke and dust, allowing everyone to see its appearance clearly. Like an overdeveloped male lion, he is one size larger than ordinary lions in physique and size, and has a pair of bat wings on either side of his body. The dark brown mane around the neck swayed slightly in the wind, very imposing, but on the head wrapped in the mane was a strange man's face—expressionless, like a wood carving. If it hadn't been for the fact that it had cracked its lips to reveal its terrifying teeth from time to time, Ian would have thought it was a mask.

"Manticore......" Leila unconsciously took a step back, clutching her backpack in despair, which contained the samples she had accumulated along the way.

The manticore roared as if in response to Lyra's introduction. Its mouth can open so dramatically that it is by no means possible with a human jaw. The teeth look strange and terrifying on the human face.

What worries Ian the most is his eyes. In the same eye socket as a human, there is a blue color. It is like two lake-blue gems embedded in it, and the eyes are not visible.

"Run!" Sid yelled as he ran towards them, urging Ian, Leila, and a few of the investigators to run off the road.

Despite its size, the manticore still has the brisk pace of a feline. And it flapped its wings in a few steps, freed itself off the ground, and glided for a short distance, easily shortening the distance between it and Ian.

Sid looked at the open wilderness in front of him, and then at the stumbling and sluggish pace of the investigators, knowing that there was no way he could escape the wilderness before he could be overtaken. In this terrain, in the face of demonic beasts that are good at galloping and plundering, there is no possibility of retreating without a fight.

Quickly decided, Sid drew his sword and rested it on his right shoulder, keeping an eye out for the manticore approaching with his eyes.

The distance was getting shorter, and he could almost smell the stench of the beast. Just as the manticore flew down on his back, Sid suddenly tiptoed a little, then curled up his legs slightly, and shot into the air with his two-handed sword. Then he immediately twisted his body, took advantage of the situation to swing the two-handed sword from his right shoulder to the left, and slashed it behind his back, and the whole person turned around in mid-air with the strength of his waist and abdomen and the inertia of the two-handed sword--turn around and slash! Originally, it was a move used on the ground to deal with the sneak attack from behind, but after Sid jumped up, he calculated the timing of the manticore's attack, and used it in mid-air, wanting to give it a blow when the monster pounced in the air.

Ian, who was running ahead of Sid, heard a "bell" behind him, like metal striking each other, and saw Sid flying up from behind him. He used his two-handed sword to use his strength as he landed, but he still couldn't stop being repulsed, and slipped far away on the sand, instead going in front of Ian.

"Ian, do you see?" Sid steadied himself and ran back to Ian, shouting, a hint of excitement in his nervous voice, "What the hell is that, that tail!"

Ian fledgling with a sword in hand to protect Lyra and the others in front of him, and looked sideways at the manticore, just in time to catch a glimpse of a tail on its right side slowly retracting. In the gaps between the layers of blue-black armor on the tail, a strange green light flashed.

Three tails! Ian was terrified. Layla had told him that the longer the manticore lived, the more tails it had, the more dangerous it became.

Sid was equally frightened. He almost used all his strength to turn around just now, although he jumped into the air to avoid the flying pounce, but he didn't expect to be knocked so far. Now it's not just a tiger's mouth, the whole arm is numb, and he gritted his teeth and didn't let go of his two-handed sword.

"Be careful, that tail retracts!" he reminded loudly.

"Keep running!" Ian instructed Lyra.

Without waiting for Lyra to respond, Ian had already split up with Zack and quickly rushed towards the Manticore, intending to attack from the blind spots on the left and right sides at the same time.

As Sid said, on the left and right sides of the manticore's tail, green light flashed through the gaps in the carapace. Then, like the magic of the artists in the street market of Black Eagle City, the two tails suddenly exploded like huge whips, and whipped with the sound of the wind and the friction of iron pieces. Ian remembered Sid's blow just now, didn't dare to take it hard, kicked his feet, and rolled to the side. At the same time, he uses the psychic power control method of Lingshan, subdividing an action into countless moments, and constantly letting his psychic power switch to control Zach and himself.

There were two muffled "bangs", and the carapace tail slapped heavily on the ground beside Ian and Zack, leaving two deep ravines.

Standing closer, the oppression brought by the manticore's huge body became more and more obvious. Ian only now saw that the manticore was not covered with brownish-yellow hair like ordinary male lions, but had a slight crimson color and a faint reflection like pearls.

Ian and Zach rolled over and burst into the manticore's abdomen again. But as soon as they were approaching, the two tails turned from slapping to stabbing, and the venomous scorpion tail needle poked diagonally from mid-air at a very fast speed. Ian was rushing forward when he saw the two tails suddenly change their attack patterns and hurriedly dodged. Ian himself was fine, but Zack was a little sluggish, and his left arm was scratched by the sharp edge of the Scorpiontail carapace.

Although Zach does not hesitate because of the pain, at the moment of injury, Ian feels that his spirit has been damaged, and his fatigue has increased with the injury. Ian knew that he couldn't take the Manticore's attack like Sid, so he could only raise his concentration to the highest level and dodge with all his might.

The manticore's successive attacks were unsuccessful, as if he had lost his patience and became manic. As soon as the cone tip was pulled out of the ground, it fell down again, giving Ian no respite.

In the smoke, the manticore's tail danced wildly, and the figures of Ian and Zach flashed even more frantically. Not getting hit in a continuous dodge had exhausted all of his mental strength, and he didn't expect to be able to push another half step towards the manticore.

Ian's heart darkened. In fact, he had already heard from Lyra's words that this manticore was not something that the two of them could deal with. Now all he can do is delay as long as possible to buy Layla time to escape.

But what about after that?

It was impossible to go back to the mount, and by the time the manticore pounced, he had vaguely seen the horses break free from their reins and run. The only hope now is to survive as much as possible and buy a little more time. The investigation team ran down the main road, perhaps lucky enough to encounter a passing caravan, and willing to have their guards come to their aid.

At this moment, Sid let out a war cry and rushed up with his two-handed sword, heading straight for the manticore's face.

Seeing that another enemy was joining the beast, its tail suddenly stopped attacking, the hair on its body was unkempt, and its body fell to the ground, opening its bloody mouth and letting out a long roar. The sound resounded through the universe, shaking the eardrums of Ian and Sid, who were closest to it, and their hearts trembled, and they couldn't help but want to get away from the beast. Sid was even more in pain, and the stench of blood emanating from the manticore's mouth came to his face with a roar.

The roar stopped, and Ian struggled to hold his nerves, immediately urging Zach to rush forward.

This guy must not be allowed to have leeway, or else ...... Ian couldn't imagine it.

But whatever you're afraid of comes.

As soon as Sid recovered from the lion's roar, he saw the manticore spread its wings and slammed into the air! The wind pressure brought by the flapping of the wings blew Ian and Zack away in an instant, and they rolled seven or eight paces away before stopping.

The manticore stood erect in mid-air, curled up on all fours, and seemed to glance around, before continuing to soar into the sky. It swooped down in an arc high in the air.

Ian got up, looked in the direction it was diving, and screamed, "Oh no!"