I raise furry animals and fly them to my motherland.

Chapter 225 The Lone Warrior in the Desert

At this moment, a Pallas's cat that had been squatting to the side observing as if it were stuck suddenly tugged at Xu Ying's trouser leg with its paw.

[Station Chief Xu, look! Fish living in the desert!]
Xu Ying looked in the direction the Pallas's cat was pointing and saw a creature that looked like a catfish crawling along the dry sand, its body swaying from side to side, leaving trails of sand in its wake.

"It's a desert catfish!"

The desert catfish is a very rare fish that can "walk" on land.

They have powerful fins on their four limbs, which can act as tentacles for crawling in the sand, and they have an extremely strong ability to withstand drought.

When the waters where they live dry up, other aquatic creatures face the prospect of dying, but the desert catfish, with its thick skin and drought resistance, will crawl through the sand to find new water sources.

Xu Ying quickly went to the desert catfish. This creature was very sensitive to water sources and might know what was happening here.

[Help me, help me.]

The desert catfish's voice was as faint as a whisper: "The river dried up right after I laid my eggs."

Xu Ying immediately squatted down, took out a water bottle from the first aid kit, and carefully poured clean water onto the sand-covered surface of the catfish.

The cool water made it tremble violently.

My eggs are still in the sand of the riverbed.

The catfish struggled to raise its pectoral fins, pointing towards the distant, cracked riverbed. [If we can't take them with us, they'll die.]

Its tail fin has begun to turn white, a sign of severe dehydration.

The Pallas's cat anxiously circled the catfish, occasionally nudging its body with its paw.

"Hang in there!" Xu Ying quickly took out a portable water-oxygen tank and put the desert catfish into the tank.

Xu Ying picked up the water tank and said to the Pallas's cat, "Go call the gerbil team, bring the digging tools, we need to hurry!"

Seeing the critical situation, the gerbil leader called over many of his underlings. One group notified other small animals in the desert to go to the rescue station for water, while another group waited on Xu Ying's motorcycle, ready to be dispatched at any time.

The catfish weakly swayed its body: "[The riverbed. Southeast, under the reed roots. There are markers.]" After saying this, it collapsed at the bottom of the tank.

Xu Ying picked up the water tank and headed towards the desert catfish.

On the distant riverbed, the scorching sun baked the cracked soil, and a few withered reeds could be vaguely seen swaying in the heat.

Xu Ying knelt on one knee on the cracked riverbed, sweat dripping from her chin onto the sand, where it evaporated instantly.

She squinted and reached out to brush away the scalding sand.

The sand burned her fingertips, turning them red, but she didn't care.

Suddenly, she stopped moving.

"This is."

Xu Ying exclaimed in surprise, "Found it!"

Beneath the sand, several crystal-clear fish eggs gleamed with a pearly luster, their surfaces covered with a special mucus that refracted tiny specks of light in the sunlight.

She squinted and looked along the reflective egg cases—they formed a clear line that stretched into the distance!

The Pallas's cat came closer, tilting its head: [Why are these fish eggs arranged so neatly?]
Xu Ying's gaze sharpened: "Desert catfish lay their eggs at the boundaries of damp sand layers. They can sense the humidity of groundwater... This line indicates the direction of groundwater flow!"

She immediately got up and hurried along, following the signs indicating the fish eggs.

The gerbil squad was also brought along, following closely behind, occasionally digging through the sand with their paws to confirm the direction of the marker—until the marker suddenly stopped.

Xu Ying squatted on the Gobi Desert, and the moment his fingertips touched the sand, he noticed something was wrong.

The ground before her had been artificially leveled; the surface sand was loose and dry, a stark contrast to the naturally formed crust around her. She frowned, plunged her fingers into the sand, and suddenly lifted it up—

"Wow!"

The covering sand collapsed, revealing a pit nearly one meter in diameter, with clear shovel marks still visible on the pit walls.

Even more terrifying, deep at the bottom of the pit, a shocking crack runs across the soil layer, and groundwater is silently flowing out of the crack.

The jerboa poked its head out of her backpack, its beady black eyes wide open, and it screeched with bristling fur: "[Who did this?!]"
The Pallas's cat squatted a short distance away, tilting its head and watching for a long time before finally realizing what had happened. Its ears twitched: "[Who poked my water bottle!]"
Xu Ying's face darkened.

She grabbed a handful of sand and tossed it into the air.

The fine sand traced strange paths in the hot wind, as if drawn by some invisible force, all drifting towards the northeast.

“Underground airflow,” she whispered, her heart sinking. “The aquifer is cracking, and the water here is being pumped out.”

This is definitely not a natural collapse—someone has damaged the aquifer!
Xu Ying took a step back, stepping on a thin steel stake, which made a loud noise.

A desert lizard darted out of the sand, its scales scorched yellow and its tail broken off.

It breathed a sigh of relief when it saw the work badge with the five-star red flag hanging around Xu Ying's neck.

[Great! Are you the desert animal rescuer they were talking about?]

The desert lizard was flicking its tongue urgently: [Have you seen my child?]
Xu Ying was taken aback: "Your child is missing?"

The lizard frantically flicked its tail: [It was in its nest yesterday, and suddenly it's gone this morning!]
It suddenly approached the steel stake at the edge of the pit, its tongue trembling rapidly. [That's the smell! Those two-legged beasts used this thing to make strange noises, and all my people were lured away!]
"A vibration trap..." Xu Ying's pupils contracted.

She had heard that some poaching gangs would exploit lizards' sensitivity to vibrations of specific frequencies by driving steel stakes into the sand to attract lizards and then catching them all at once.

The steel pile in front of us probably happened to be driven into the weakest point of the aquifer, which caused the groundwater layer to rupture!

With the pet market growing larger in recent years, some people are no longer satisfied with just cats and dogs and prefer to keep exotic pets such as snakes, lizards, and spiders.

Some rare desert lizards are sold at extremely high prices on the market, ranging from several thousand to tens of thousands of yuan per lizard. Individuals with special colors or mutations are even more sought after; for example, albino lizards can sell for tens of thousands of yuan.

Lizard skins are also used to make leather goods for luxury brands, while dried lizard products are smuggled to Southeast Asia.

This huge mess must have been caused by these money-grubbing poachers. Xu Ying clenched her fists tightly.

Fix the leaks first, then arrest the people!
Xu Ying made a phone call to the desert rescue station's landline.

About thirty seconds later, the call was answered.

But instead of human voices, the sound coming from the other end of the phone was birdsong—

The grey drongo, which is adept at mimicking the calls of various birds, has now made its home at Xu Ying's desert rescue station for the winter.

It has now become the caretaker of the rescue station.

Its duty is to look after the Niya black chickens raised by Xu Ying and to notify them when there are birds of prey circling overhead that an air raid is coming and they should quickly return to their coop!

In addition, with its keen hearing, it also answers the rescue station's landline phone to "forward notifications" to birds such as vultures on behalf of Xu Ying.

The gray curly-tailed bird chattered: [Station Master Xu, what's wrong?]