1265 Finally Rewarded (1/2)

Nabari squinted his eyes. His vision was no longer as good as when he was in his prime, but it was nevertheless still much stronger than the average person's.

He didn't know the names of the wild cats, but they completely coincided with the image in his memory and complemented the blurry parts that he could not remember.

At this time, the usually stern Nabari suddenly smiled. His mood became clear and relaxed, as if he had set down all his responsibilities and burdens. He felt that he was now closer to the true God then ever before.

He now felt that his life was almost complete. As long as the others were taken out of the desert safely, it would then be truly complete.

Wei Kang's mood was different from Nabari's. He was so excited that he feared he would have a heart attack.

He set up a tripod and kept pressing the shutter. However, due to the low light setting, there was a time lag between each picture. Nevertheless, each one was extremely precious.

Was this the original Egyptian cat?

He was not sure—what exactly was the original Egyptian cat? There was no exact definition.

Human beings began to consciously engage in breeding of domestic cats, producing the colors and shapes that people liked. This had not been going on for long—likely no more than 200 years. This was in stark comparison with breeding dogs, which had started as early as thousands of years ago.

What he was looking for was a transitional cat species in the history of cat evolution. He believed that such a cat species most likely existed in Egypt.

Just as the fennec fox was the smallest canine, the sand cat was also one of the smallest felines. Perhaps mammals in the desert could only try to reduce their size in order to survive the heat.

The sand cat was a close relative to the domestic cat's bloodline. There were four known subspecies. Among them, the Pakistani subspecies had gone extinct decades ago. The North African subspecies was previously thought to exist only in the southeastern parts of Egypt. Now, Wei Kang had discovered a new subspecies at the junction of Libya and the western parts of Egypt.

It was deep in the Sahara Desert, far away from the Siwa Oasis and the Kufra Oasis. This place should have been an oasis as well many years ago, as described in folktales. There was reason to believe that these sand cats had lived here for thousands of years. Having been isolated for a long time, just like Australia, they retained the most original bloodline of the species.

It was probably exaggerated to say that these sand cats were fossils, but they were indeed quite an origin species.

Similar to other kinds of sand cats, their ears were large. They were larger than those of ordinary domestic cats. The ears of the fennec foxes were more exaggerated compared to theirs, but they had more sensitive hearing than the typical domestic cat.

Their faces were neither pointed nor round, and the hair made their chins look like the longitudinal section of the bowl, very similar to the inverted trapezoid. They had a faint squid pattern on their bodies, which was almost invisible in the night. They also had two prominent black circles on both their forelimbs.

Although Wei Kang's movements were very quiet, it was inevitable that the tripod and the camera would make sounds. He thought that these sensitive sand cats would have already heard them, but somehow they did not choose to escape.

It was probably because of Fina.

Wei Kang looked at Fina with relief and worry. Fortunately, he had come to Egypt with her. Otherwise, he would definitely return empty-handed. At the same time, he also hoped that Fina had not had physical contact with the sand cats, for fear that she might be infected with germs. These sand cats had lived here for a long time and likely produced antibodies to counter the germs, but Fina would not have that immunity.

He did not know that Fina had lived here before.