bookrandom Chapter 67 does not meet the standards
Chapter 67 does not meet the standards
The top of the tent was dark, with only a little bit of weak orange light coming through the tent wall near the generator, giving the top a blurry, warm edge.
Two weeks to develop a verifiable plan to achieve the objectives, with a 30% reduction in funding.
What they wanted was not "the possibility of the existence of some unusually large feline," but a clear photograph, a measurable genetic sample, and an identifiable video.
Any of these will do, but they must be the kind of thing that can be included in a scientific report and peer-reviewed.
None of what he had received in the past eleven days met this standard.
He stood up, lifted the tent flap a crack, and peeked outside.
The campsite was quiet.
There was no light in Marcus's tent, nor in Kenneth's tent. Caller slept in the outermost small tent, whose curtain had a small gap that wasn't fully closed, and it was dark inside.
They're all asleep.
He lowered the curtain, sat back down in the folding chair, picked up the equipment, and began drafting a response.
Outside the tent, Kaller was not asleep.
He lay in his sleeping bag, eyes open, staring at the narrow slit at the top of the tent.
Beyond the narrow slit was the night sky, not a complete night sky, but an extremely narrow strip of black, with an occasional star drifting through this blackness and then disappearing at the edge of the tent.
He was listening.
They weren't listening to what was happening inside the camp, but rather outside.
The night on the grasslands has its own layers of sound, and he has been in Africa for nearly twelve years, so he recognizes these layers.
At the very bottom is the wind, the rustling of grass blades, low-frequency and continuous, like a blanket spread beneath all other sounds.
The middle layer consists of animals, nocturnal, with various footsteps, calls, and wing sounds appearing and disappearing randomly.
The top layer is sporadic, a sudden high-frequency sound, a sudden burst of intense group activity. Pay attention when this sound appears, because it means something is happening.
He listened for nearly two hours tonight, but there was no sound from the top.
However, there is one incorrect part in the middle layer.
South side.
The sound from the middle layer on the south side started to thin out about half an hour ago.
Thinning means that the sounds of nocturnal animals trotting, rodents rustling, and night birds calling, which should have appeared in that direction, have decreased, and the decrease is uneven, as if something has ripped a portion out of the middle layer.
When animals avoid a certain area, the sound layers in that area become thinner; this is the most basic grassland perception.
He kept the signal in his mind for a while, comparing it with the information he had read at the edge of the water source earlier that day.
Then he didn't move, continuing to stare at the narrow slit at the top of the tent, his eyes open, waiting for dawn.
At the same time, on the southern boundary of the territory.
Chen Fei is walking.
He left earlier than usual, setting off from his lodgings in the early morning and walking along the southern border from east to west, which took him nearly an hour.
He would stop every fifty meters or so, turn his nostrils to the south, and mentally count the concentration of the odor.
It's not a real number, but a comparison of perceived levels: whether it's heavier or lighter than yesterday, by how much heavier, and whether the distribution range has changed.
After walking through it once, he stopped on a sloping hill in the middle of the southern boundary, stood at the highest point of the hill, and pushed his super vision southward.
In night vision, the grassland appears as a gray-white plane, the distant vegetation outlines are dark, and the horizon is blurred.
He pushed his gaze from near to far: one kilometer, one and a half kilometers, two kilometers.
Two kilometers away, there is an anomaly in the density of the grassland.
It's not vegetation density, it's dynamic density.
Something is moving, not just one thing, but a whole group, low-lying and moving slowly, heading northeast, directly towards the central axis of the territory.
He focused his gaze on that dynamic density for a moment, taking in the outline features.
They are low-slung, live in packs, and move with a gait somewhere between walking and trotting. It's not the straight-line sprint of a cheetah, nor the leisurely wandering of a wild dog, but the distinctive, slightly swaying, advancing rhythm of a hyena pack.
He couldn't accurately count the number at this distance, but the horizontal width of the outline was the widest he had ever seen in a hyena pack.
He pressed his front paws firmly and didn't move.
Two kilometers, heading northeast, with an estimated speed of about seven to eight kilometers per hour. If this speed and direction are maintained without acceleration, it will take two to three hours to reach the southern boundary of the territory.
But the hyena pack won't maintain this speed indefinitely.
They will stop, probe, take detours, wait near the border, and then advance.
Therefore, the actual arrival time is not two to three hours, but some uncertain time tonight.
He suppressed this uncertainty in his mind, glanced at the direction where he was going, and then turned his gaze back to the south.
That dynamic density is still moving, but the direction hasn't changed.
[Host: Chen Fei]
[Identity: Sub-adult male lion]
[Energy Points: 884↑]
He came down the slope and walked towards his spot, his pace half a beat faster than when he came out.
Our landing spot is in the northeast corner.
The wandering creature sat on a low rock at the edge of the outpost, its front paws placed on the front of the rock, its hind legs tucked under its body, its whole body in a low posture.
He stayed here all night.
The smell on the south side started getting stronger last night. He could feel it, and once he could feel it, he didn't want to sleep anymore. It wasn't fear, but a familiar sense of vigilance. This vigilance was what saved him when he was still a stray, and it was still there. It hadn't faded just because he had joined the pride.
He turned his ear tips to the south and twitched his nostrils every half minute or so to reconfirm the concentration of the odor.
It's heavier than it was an hour ago.
The homeless man was sleeping two meters away from him, in a low-alert side-lying position, his belly half-up, his hind legs kicking twice, but he didn't wake up.
The homeless man didn't call him.
The situation hasn't reached the point where both people need to be on alert simultaneously.
He refocused his attention and looked straight ahead again.
The northeast corner's view points eastward, towards the open hunting grounds. He knows there's no threat in that direction, but he still keeps an eye on it because it's a habit of those on guard duty. When on guard duty, you have to keep an eye on the direction you're responsible for. You can't turn your eyes away just because there's a threat in another direction, otherwise no one will be watching either direction.
He tightened his hind legs under the rock, changed his posture, shifted the pressure point on his right shoulder blade, then lowered them again and waited.
Footsteps came from the south, light and clean, it was Chen Fei's.
He turned the tip of his ear in that direction.