The Sand Howl Tiger!

By dusk, Zhang Xiaohou had already sent his reply — the guy said that even if it meant risking a disciplinary citation, there was no way he was missing out on something this exciting.

With Zhang Xiaohou sorted, what remained was the matter of Xinxia — a subject both Zhao Manyan and Lingling had raised.

That night, Mo Fan had actually been on the verge of telling Zhang Xiaohou to stand down — he'd made up his mind not to go to the Blazing Plains this time. But as bad luck would have it, Xinxia called him first.

Mo Fan knew that whenever he'd decided on something he wanted to do, and it was within Xinxia's power to participate, she would never hesitate for even a moment — even for a trip this dangerous, all the way out to the Dunhuang region.

But he didn't want to put her through it. The fact that Xinxia couldn't walk was already a wound on his conscience. If something else were to happen to her, he would never forgive himself.

He told her plainly what he'd decided.

"Mo Fan, you've protected me so well that I never have to worry about anything at all. If you tell me not to go, I'll listen. Only — when word reached me that something might have happened to you, I was devastated. My Healing Element magic has saved so many people, but there was nothing I could do for you. I had to stay far away and just worry and pray. I want to be at your side. Closer to you. Not waiting somewhere alone, and then — when something goes wrong — realizing too late that I'm too far away to do anything at all, left with nothing but useless regret over what I could have done..."

Xinxia's voice was soft, almost a whisper — and yet threaded through it was something unmistakably firm.

Xinxia had been frail from birth. Unable to walk, she invited a kind of heartbreaking tenderness in everyone who knew her. But Mo Fan understood that her inner world had always been as clear and bright as an open sky — and stronger than anyone might suppose. Back during the Bo City disaster, in that abandoned supermarket, if she had truly given up, she would never have curled herself inside a freezer cold as a coffin and clung to a hope that felt like almost nothing.

Hearing her say this now, Mo Fan felt something shake loose in him.

He really had kept Xinxia too sheltered. Not a single breath of impure air — he'd never wanted any of it to reach her.

Perhaps he had indeed been a great tree standing over her, shielding her from every storm and squall. But in doing so he had also blocked out the brilliance that was rightfully hers — and the bloom she had been waiting to open for him.

He thought it over for a long time. In the end, he decided to honor Xinxia's own choice. Her willingness to be looked after was her way of trusting him, of leaning on him — but maybe what she truly wanted was simply to be at his side, doing what her heart most longed for.

When Mo Fan said yes, laughter came floating through the phone — as bright and lovely as wind chimes ringing through a mountain pass — and it was clear she had been hoping for this answer all along.

For someone in her condition, even a Field Expedition was a luxury she could rarely afford to dream of, to say nothing of this kind of wilderness operation. The less she could walk, the more fiercely she longed someday to see a wider world — open, boundless, limitless. Not from any boredom with the life she knew, but from something deep and innate.

Hearing her laughter, the last of Mo Fan's reservations slowly lifted. Getting to experience the vast desert landscape — so utterly unlike the south she knew — was perhaps one of her small, quietly cherished dreams. He shouldn't be keeping her caged. He should do everything he could to give her what she longed for.

Mo Fan's side of the team was now complete: Lingling, his sharp-eyed strategist and partner; Zhang Xiaohou, his fearless vanguard; and Xinxia, an unmatched support Mage.

Zhao Manyan had also brought along a trusted Mage — another member of the Zhao Clan, a woman named Chenying, whose primary element was Earth.

Earth elemental energy ran thick throughout the desert, with fire energy a close second. Zhang Xiaohou's secondary element was already Earth, which gave the group a solid Earth Mage to rely on — but bringing a second dedicated Earth Mage would only improve their odds.

Chenying was Zhao Manyan's older cousin, a student at the Main Campus of the Imperial Capital Magic Academy. She had run into Zhao Manyan while he was gathering information on the Blazing Plains and the Flame Queen, and the moment she heard he was planning a trip to the Dunhuang region, she had volunteered without waiting to be asked.

Zhao Manyan had made it clear that this Field Expedition offered very little in the way of dividable rewards, but Chenying remained just as eager. Given that she ranked near the very top of the Imperial Capital's Main Campus overall standings — both frighteningly capable and thoroughly reliable — Zhao Manyan had added her to the roster.

If Zhao Manyan vouched for her, Mo Fan had no reason to doubt her either. The team was complete: six members in total.

Not a large group, but an elite one by any measure. Even if they came up empty on the Flame Queen and her young, a trip to the Dunhuang Blazing Plains was sure to yield solid returns — and there was no faster, more effective training ground for mages to grow stronger than demon-beast territory.

All six packed their gear to Lingling's specifications. They were young, and there was fire in their veins — once the call was made, they wasted no time and set off for Dunhuang.

The moment they arrived, it hit them: that peculiar, chest-expanding pull that this stretch of loess earth had over anyone who laid eyes on it.

In every direction, endless yellow sand stretched all the way to the horizon's edge.

Amid the dunes, earthen mounds rose in warm shades of brown, layered one behind the next, uneven in height, some low and some towering.

Unlike the gentle, rolling terrain of the south and east, the land here broke into distinct levels. In the midst of the vast, sweeping emptiness, the scorching sun would suddenly vanish without warning — the air ahead dropping into a shadow that the eyes took a moment to adjust to. Look up, and you'd find yourself facing a sheer cliff face: a fault line extending in both directions like a great city wall, with the ground ahead of you sitting high atop that earthen rampart.

All six were mages, but not every one of them had movement or displacement abilities. They mounted the locally bred wind camels and rode gradually closer to the already-renowned Blazing Plains.

The distance wasn't great — yet for reasons no one could quite explain, the moment they crossed one of these fault-line terraces, the density of demon-beasts would spike dramatically.

The locals called this dividing line the Boundary Marker. On the near side — the direction Mo Fan and the others had come from — it was still within Dunhuang City's territory, with a Safe Zone established inside. But past the Boundary Marker, the further you ventured, the more dangers lay in wait.

The creatures that made the desert wastelands their home were plentiful. The abundance of Earth and Fire elemental energy had given rise to vast numbers of Elemental Demons, and on top of that, the Sand Tiger clans — lords of the local wilds — prowled in every direction. For most Hunter-mage teams, crossing the Boundary Marker meant going on absolute, undivided alert.

At the Boundary Marker itself, the wind camels became useless. These pack animals — barely a step above ordinary livestock — went weak in the knees the moment they caught even a trace of demon-beast scent, and no amount of urging could make them cross the line.

They dismounted and released the wind camels, then picked their way down onto the sunken stretch of desolate wasteland on foot. From somewhere among the distant swollen dunes came a deep, heart-shaking roar — like a squad of sentinels on patrol broadcasting a signal across the land, announcing to every restless creature within earshot: *prey had walked right into their hands.*

**"ROOAARR——!"**

Less than five kilometers in, a sand-laden roar surged up from between two dunes, driving a wave of wild sand before it.

The sound was deep and resonant, powerful enough to shake loose rivulets of sand that went cascading down the dune faces.

"Just our damn luck — barely set foot in here and we're already up against the local top dog." Zhao Manyan recognized the cry the moment he heard it and swore loudly.

"That's a Sand Howl Tiger," Lingling told the group. "Fierce even by Battle-General-class standards. Stay sharp."