Chapter 463: Chapter 328: Circling Vultures, Long-Awaited Treasure Chest!
This giant bird’s body is covered in dense feathers, with a mane-like ruff around its neck that looks quite warm, but its entire head is bald and featherless, making it appear fierce yet somewhat comical.
Xu Xin’s pupils suddenly contracted.
This is...
A vulture!
The largest flying creature on Earth!
The vulture, also known as the condor, is a large bird of prey from the family Accipitridae, just like the bald eagle Xu Xin encountered earlier. They can stay aloft in the sky for five hours, gliding without flapping their wings, effortlessly covering distances of over 170 kilometers at high altitudes, making them the supermasters of gliding!
Furthermore, most condors on Earth are much larger in size than bald eagles!
However, due to their enormous size, even with their long wingspan, they need some assistance to fly.
Most vultures prefer to live in windy areas, allowing them to effortlessly glide on ascending air currents and soar freely in the sky.
... No wonder, no wonder this area suddenly had wind and ascending currents. He thought it was a boon for his climbing, never expecting it to be providing a good flying environment for giant vultures!
Wait a minute...
The sound earlier, it seemed like there was more than just this one...
Sure enough, under Xu Xin’s terrified gaze, as this vulture glided out, one vulture after another leapt out from the protruding rock face.
An endless stream.
They began to circle around the giant stone pillar peak, as if patrolling, determined to kill anyone trying to climb this towering peak.
Xu Xin dared not move.
Because the vulture that first flew out from the rock face was clearly coming for him!
After it soared out from the stone pillar peak, it immediately went into a nosedive, rushing straight at Xu Xin, obviously intent on attacking him!
But because Xu Xin was hanging on the rock wall without moving, it lost its target.
After circling behind Xu Xin twice without finding its target, it began to spiral around the stone pillar peak at the height Xu Xin had climbed to.
Xu Xin slowly exhaled with relief.
It lost its target not because it couldn’t catch non-moving prey, so if Xu Xin didn’t move, it wouldn’t see him.
Vultures are birds of prey! Their eyesight is incredibly keen, about eight times stronger than a human’s!
Even while soaring at high altitudes, a vulture can easily spot small prey on the ground.
It lost its target only because of what Xu Xin was currently wearing.
[Cloak of Concealment (Purple): A cloak that can hide one’s aura. When worn by a survivor, as long as they remain still, they will be ignored by enemies as if they were just roadside stones.]
That’s right, the vulture that originally came at him ignored Xu Xin, who was motionless on the rock face, as if he were part of the cliff!
The vulture must have been puzzled, which was why it kept circling at this height.
Xu Xin could almost guess what it was thinking right now.
What happened? How did the prey suddenly disappear? Wasn’t it just here?
At the same time, its actions also attracted a large number of other vultures to this height. Taking advantage of the ascending currents, they spread their wings and began to glide around the stone pillar peak.
Xu Xin was now gripping the rock with both hands, his head turned to the side, allowing him to clearly observe what was happening behind him.
Currently, there were as many as twenty to thirty vultures circling at this height behind him!
Heavens! That’s way too many!
If it were two or three, he could have held onto the rock face with his grappling hook, hanging in mid-air to counter the vultures, but twenty or thirty vultures...
He didn’t dare move at all!
Moving even a little, wouldn’t he be picked apart immediately!
Moreover...
These vultures bore no blood marks!
They did appear enormous, even larger than the bald eagles encountered before, yet in comparison to Earth’s largest vultures, the Andean condor, they were just slightly larger!
This meant that their size was actually within the normal range of this world’s creatures, which, due to the subtle effects of giant blood, were naturally a bit larger than those on Earth.
In other words, these vultures were actually ordinary creatures of this world!
He had stumbled upon a genuine, non-mutated group of birds of prey!
Encountering non-mutated birds of prey might initially seem fortunate, as they are theoretically weaker than mutated vultures, yet this situation left Xu Xin utterly stranded!
Because if they were blood-marked creatures, he could use his energy core to drive them away, but against ordinary creatures...
The light emitted by the energy core fragments couldn’t deter them at all! It might even draw their attention!
He never imagined, a normal group of birds of prey could be so difficult to handle!
If on the ground, Xu Xin might have had a fighting chance, but hanging off such a high cliff, he stood no chance against this group of vultures!
Behind him circled Earth’s most ferocious giant birds, even larger than the largest birds on Earth, which left Xu Xin deeply troubled.
He couldn’t dare to move, completely dared not move, not even a single motion.
His mind raced, he thought of many solutions, like using a grappling hook to hang himself from the rock face and turn to attack, or quickly climbing forty meters to reach the platform from which these vultures flew out, yet all these ideas were dismissed.