Going back to the village chief only confirmed what Biri had already told them. It seemed that the hammer-wielding man was as straightforward as his weapon suggested.
The weathered old man with the scorpion-stinger necklace explained that he had twenty stingers and that he was willing to give these as a reward as long as his daughter was brought back safely. He looked a bit guilty as he explained, likely because he'd let the girl out of sight for long enough for this to occur.
He answered a few more questions about the environment and the dangers, but after confirming that they would take the quest, he returned to his large mud hut and left the cultivator group to discuss amongst themselves.
"We should probably answer a few questions amongst ourselves before fully committing to this path," Jin said cautiously as the group lounged underneath a palm tree. Biri and Xiao were sweating profusely at this point, seemingly not being capable of fending off the heat with their levels of external qi circulation.
"What do you mean?" Hashimi asked helpfully.
"We should ask ourselves if taking this quest, instead of simply hunting for the requisite materials, is actually easier. After all, the oasis will have more than twelve scorching wingbats, which is how many we would technically need to gather three pairs of wings each," Jin proposed.
Xiao sharply cut in at this. "But liberating the captives of the bats is a morally superior way of passing the exam. Simply killing beasts until we have enough materials is a crude method that serves no one but the Blazing Fire Sect, which will collect the materials for themselves."
"I didn't know this was an ethics class," Biri sarcastically interrupted. "But in my opinion, distracting the bats while we grab one girl is easier than each one of us hunting down three of them."
"The question is," Hashimi said, cutting to the heart of the matter, "if the girl is still alive."
"She was taken two weeks ago," Jin mused. "The bats feed off blood, laying their captives next to the oasis and letting them drink to replenish liquids. Technically, it takes as long for a captive to die as it would otherwise take them to starve. Ignoring the constant blood-letting, of course."
"Then they throw the desiccated corpse to the sands outside their oasis to feed the desert horned snakes, which lie in wait there to protect them during the day when they sleep," Biri said grimly. He spat to the side. "What a disgusting system. Give me a horde of Kelpies any day of the week."
"It's just the cycle of life, nothing special if you accept the human as just another item on the food chain," Jin said. "They're beasts, there's no reason to confront them with any sort of disgust or feeling."
"Couldn't we just kill the snakes? If we now know where they gather?" Hashimi asked.
The village chief had kindly explained to them that the man-eating scorpions and desert horned snakes could be found anywhere, which made it a bit harder to hunt for them, especially since none of them had particularly good sensing capabilities and also no experience in the desert.
The way that the wingbats protected the snakes at night while the cold-blooded beasts slept, and the snakes protected the wingbats during the day… Technically, they could just try to get to the snakes instead of the "hostage."
"I'd rather fight an enemy I can see any day of the week," Biri said pessimistically. "Also, going for the snakes, since they're underground, we'd never know how many of them there actually are. We could be walking into a death trap."
Xiao nodded. "The best option is to go for the scorching wingbats and save the captives. You three are all inner disciples of non-combat focused sects, so that means your cultivation level is higher on average. Perhaps this isn't as complicated as we're making it out to be; perhaps we could even kill the bats."
"Scorching wingbats. Their bite serves as a sort of sedative, while the flap of their wings releases hot air that can scorch a person if they're not careful. An oasis holdfast of them is supposed to have between 15 and 20. If three of us distract them for a few minutes, a fourth can sneak over and carry away at least all the female captives," Biri said strategically before shaking his head. "Going in with the aim of killing them…. I don't know. Unless the girl is already dead, there's no need."
"I have a suggestion," Jin said, noticing that the conversation was becoming circular. "We should hide in a dune overlooking the oasis during the day before the bats are out. From there, we can observe the place for 24 hours before making a decision. It's already evening now, and this exam lasts three days and two nights. During the wait time, other disciples may come to attack the oasis. If they took the same mission from the village chief, which I doubt, then they will exhaust the wingbats during the extraction of the target. If they succeed, we can then simply go in and mop up a dozen of the tired ones and take their wings. If they come with the intent of killing the bats, then we can sneak by and save the target while they're fighting. More than anything else, an observation period can help us recognise the habits of our enemies while also potentially setting us up to take advantage of any chaos that may occur."
Biri and Xiao exchanged a look, and after a few minutes of not being able to find fault in the plan, eventually nodded in acquiescence.
"That's very scheming," Hashimi commented. "I like it!" She sent him a thumbs-up.
-/-
The trek towards the oasis was not particularly long for a quartet of cultivators, even if it would have taken a mortal six hours.
They covered that ground in one hour instead, and as the sun started nearing the horizon, they stood on a dune overlooking the oasis of the wingbats.
The creatures were hanging upside down on the palm trees surrounding their oasis, which were numerous enough to provide shade for the entire pool of water.
Around the pool, there were several human bodies in various stages of emancipation. They lay there in complete stillness, only occasionally taking a sip of water.
"Beautiful sunset," Jin commented idly as he watched the sands turn red beneath the plasma giant. Dust made the sun red, right?
"It's so peaceful," Hashimi commented, looking at the still oasis. "It's almost like we could just walk in there and carry off the people."
The sands on the outside of the oasis were eerily still, and even Jin's qi-enhanced eyesight could not perceive the snakes supposedly hidden there.
"The oasis pool is approximately the size of three courtyards. I count 17 scorching wingbats, eight human captives, two cows and one goat. No sight of the snakes," Biri said critically, hefting his hammer as if he wanted to run down there and start fighting.
A loud roar suddenly resounded throughout the desert, and a small dot appeared in the sky, opposite the group, a distance away.
"Down!" Jin shouted as he recognised the outline of the form and promptly dropped to his knees and started burying himself in the sand.
His team, smartly, decided to follow his actions and quickly did the same. As the flying dot came closer, it revealed a pair of large scaly wings and a horned head.
A bit more digging, and only their eyes were peeking out of the sands. They got a front-row view as the wyvern, a creature Jin recognised from an Illusion Room, landed by the oasis.
A tremor went through the ground, and all at once the sands around the oasis wriggled menacingly, dozens of snakes suddenly bursting out of the sand to observe their surroundings. An intricate web of death. After noticing that there were no intruders, the beasts then promptly dug themselves back into the sand.
The wyvern lowered its massive head towards the water and took deep gulps from the pool.
"That thing is as big as our apartment building." Jin heard Hashimi mutter from next to him. "How is anyone supposed to hunt that? Is that Blazing Fire Sect girl crazy?"
"Let's not bother with what others are planning to do," Jin replied critically as they watched the wyvern finish drinking.
The wingbats were still resting, seemingly uncaring about the monster in their midst.
The wyvern looked around curiously, looking at the captive creatures, which all lay there motionlessly. Jin was able to identify two women amongst them, although it was impossible to tell if they were young or old by the state of their bodies. They both looked like they'd been starving for weeks.
The fanged maw of the wyvern suddenly snapped forward and bit at the less-starved cow laying lamely on its side, barely fitting half the thing in its mouth. Then it got on its haunches, jumped in the air, and flew away deeper into the desert.
"Well, that certainly puts things into perspective," Jin muttered.
"What now?" Biri asked from the side.
"Now, we wait. Had we attacked immediately, we would be dead; we would have been in the middle of a fight as the wyvern came. Observation is the smartest thing we can do."
For once, Xiao did not have a snappy remark at that. It seemed that the appearance of the wyvern had shaken him just as much as it had the rest of the group.
-/-
Hours quickly passed by, the sun setting fully, at which the desert suddenly went from incredibly hot to incredibly cold. Rather than channelling qi to cool down around himself, Jin had to now switch to circulating it inside his body to stay warm.
As they waited, nothing happened, and Jin had the time to do a bit of mental arithmetic. On the platform, he'd counted 89 disciples participating in the tournament.
Out of those 89, seven Blazing Fire disciples had already passed the test with the beast parts they had hidden in the desert. Three disciples of an unknown affiliation had been killed back in the village, and one Blazing Fire Sect girl was apparently hunting a wyvern.
That meant that out of 89 disciples, of which their group represented four, there were 74 disciples running around trying to complete the task.
Considering that several had already passed and died, just as Jin had seen, he could probably safely assume that the ten disciples already out of commission, that number was at least double, putting the remaining disciples running through the desert at around 60. Considering that from the platform they had been able to see two villages and one oasis, this one having been out of sight, the chances of something happening here were still relatively high.
After all, to the disciples from other sects, those that wouldn't know how to find the desert horned snakes or the man-eating scorpions, an oasis full of wingbats represented an alluring target through which they could complete the mission in one go while only having to fight, not search.
So, in the middle of the night, perhaps one, or two in the morning, after two groups of three wingbats had left the oasis behind to patrol or to find new prey, it was not too unexpected that a group of disciples appeared on the very dune that Jin and his group were hiding in and promptly stormed down towards the oasis brandishing their weapons.
It was a group of three, led by a man clad in black and wielding three sickles. The other two were wielding swords and seemed to be part of the same sect, going by the similar cut of their robes and the way they hovered around each other.
Jin watched with bated breath as the group fearlessly ran over the sands under which the snakes were resting and into the oasis where the wingbats were already coming to meet them.
"Good to confirm," he said to the rest of the group as they watched the two sides clash beneath them. "Running to the oasis at night indeed does not trigger the snakes."
"Get ready to sneak by in case the group successfully manages to distract the wingbats," Biri said coldly.
"Or if they tire them out significantly," Xiao added with a frown apparent in his voice.
They never got a chance to act, however.
Because what occurred down at the oasis wasn't a distraction, but a massacre that barely lasted one minute.
-/-
AN: Enjoy your cliffhanger, I have the flu so I don't even have the capacity to say something funny… Love y'all, Patreon plug