Heart of ash

Since he couldn't sit still, Xie Luan got up from the stool and cast his eyes on the person beside him, "I'll go and have a look with you."

There were a dozen cubs in the house. Xie Luan naturally could not take all these cubs with him, especially as many of these babies had just been born a few days ago.

But as Nick wanted to follow him, Xie Luan felt that it would be no problem to bring one big muka cub with him. As for the other cubs, an adult muka came over to look after them.

Adding the humanoid form of the nox to the little group as well, Xie Luan followed the person next to him and together they left the village.

The planet the mukas lived on really had comparatively low vegetational coverage, but it was not a desert. For the uninhabited areas, it was actually better fit to describe them as "wilderness".

After Xie Luan left the village, he traveled through the zone lacking jurisdiction and was met with this kind of scene.

A vast land with sparse vegetation— some bushes and a bit of green grass, a few trees could also be seen. Even though it wasn't much, at least it made the land look less barren.

“If there were many trees in this place…”

Looking at the wilderness as they traveled, Xie Luan walked up to the person leading the way and put forward his idea, "If we plant a protective forest here, the sandstorms should not affect the village too much."

Wind breaking and sand fixation, it was some knowledge Xie Luan had acquired in his original world, he had not expected it to be useful here.

Although mukas had been able to adapt and survive in the current environment, if they could create a more comfortable living environment, why shouldn’t they?

Duke nodded and took note of what he said. Walking through this uninhabited and desolate area, he did not dare to relax his vigilance.

Contrary to what one might expect, Duke wouldn't normally worry too much about his safety. However, now there were a few adult mukas who hadn't returned to the village when they were supposed to, this made Duke subconsciously wonder whether those mukas had encountered something on their way back.

Due to the zones with lacking jurisdiction on Saina, some wanted people in the interstellar who needed to conceal their identity may come this planet in order to go into hiding for a while. This was also the reason Saina was considered to have poor security.

Normally, the criminals who went to Saina to evade the law would not dare to provoke the native people of this planet. After all, the fighting prowess of the mukas was obvious to all in the interstellar. Moreover, the mukas lived in large groups and their numbers were not few, to provoke one was equal to provoking a group.

If you wanted to fight against a group of mukas, you would have to be a professional squad, otherwise there was no need to even think about it.

It went without saying that as they needed to hide their identity, fugitives who evaded the law would naturally try to keep a low profile. But this time was an exception.

As Xie Luan and the others gradually neared the mine, the several adult mukas they worried about were at this time indeed in the middle of confronting a group of enemies.

The four members of the group had chosen to come to Saina in order to escape the Star Alliance's bounty and to temporarily lay low. These four had originally belonged to a space pirate gang which was quite famous in the interstellar, of course, it was an infamous kind of fame.

In recent years, the Oka space pirate group had been jointly wanted by multiple races due to their rampant crimes. The Star Alliance had played its role well and soon after also issued a reward for their capture.

Roughly three months ago, the space pirate gang split up while pursued by multiple armies. Most of the members of the space pirate gang had already been arrested and imprisoned at the Star Alliance prison.

Unfortunately, the pursuing party had not been able to smoothly capture the person presumed to be the leader and he, together with a few high ranking personnel of the space pirate gang, had slipped out of their grasp. The ones who got away were the four people who had fled to Saina at this time.

Only three of his men remained. Taking them with him and going into hiding on Saina, Feilun originally wanted to just quietly bid his time. As long as he avoided this round of pursuit and relied on the money he had previously hidden on a small remote planet, he wouldn't need to worry about not getting a chance at a comeback. [1]

But when they came to this area and saw the few mukas with a cart full of baseda ore, the four couldn't help but start formulating a plan.

Baseda ore, something that would forever be in short supply on the interstellar market. It had always been a scarce resource on the market, in other words, it was very valuable.

The mukas had not raised the price for many years, but this kind of rare ore actually sold on the black market for more than ten or even twenty times the price. As space pirates who lived by plundering, seeing a pile of glittering money in front of their very eyes, of course, they couldn't help themselves.

When facing a group of mukas, they also did not have the guts to be thieves.

However, there were merely three adult mukas transporting this cart of baseda ore, this could be considered as close to one. They would be able to take them down as long as they could find a place to ambush.

They had been hiding on this planet for a while and had already more or less avoided the limelight. After going over the pros and cons, Feilun soon made up his mind.

Although he knew that the adult mukas possessed very strong close combat capabilities, Feilun was still confident in the ambush's success. All four of them were ability users.

[1] – There is an idiom here, "To return to office after living as a hermit on Mount Dongshan", it basically means to make a comeback.