Hunting a Serpent, Gaining a Gift

The creature above looked like a flying snake, with a pair of wing membranes supported by umbrella-like ribs and an extraordinarily long, slender tail trailing behind it.

Its body was blue-green. Several long, nimble tendrils grew from its neck to help it hunt, each tipped with a hook, while sharp, curved scales covered its body. The moment it arrived, it plunged into the flock of Gold Essence Birds and unleashed a bloody slaughter.

Chen Chuan studied it and confirmed that the field guide had no record of such a creature, or even anything resembling it. He immediately knew he had encountered a new species.

Encountering new species in the Convergence Zone was common enough, but powerful ones were rare. Such creatures tended to sit near the top of the food chain, and their arrival could affect the local ecosystem. They were well worth studying.

He took a specially made World Token from inside his coat, placed it beside his ear, and tapped it lightly to record images of the creature.

Pollution was fairly intense in the Convergence Zone, and the spiritual world shifted at night. Ordinary World Tokens could not last long in the wild, while cameras were affected by the overlapping Domain Fields. That left him with this specially made World Token.

It had a limited number of uses, though—about twenty-four or twenty-five. He only took it out when he found something worth recording.

He could have drawn the creature from memory or collected some Mutated Tissue, but that would be troublesome and require further assessment and verification.

As its first discoverer, he had the right to name it. After some thought, he tentatively called it the "Azure Winged Flying Serpent."

The flying serpent tore through the birds overhead. With a flick of its neck tendrils, it hooked a