Bird's Nest

Gu Shenwei plunged rapidly, but his will to survive did not fade. His hands clawed wildly in every direction. He could see nothing, only feel his body slamming again and again into obstacles—some trees, some half-rotted stones.

He did not know how long it lasted. Perhaps only a few breaths, perhaps an entire lifetime. At last, Gu Shenwei hit bottom. It felt as though every bone in his body had shattered. The one good thing was that he fainted at once and did not immediately feel the pain that pierced to the marrow.

He had not died. The obstacles along the way had slowed his fall, and where he landed happened to be piled with thin branches and soft grass.

He regained consciousness quickly. Pain everywhere drowned him whole like seawater. For a long while, he could neither think nor see nor hear.

At last, he could control his body again. Struggling to sit up, he surveyed his surroundings. The first thing he saw was billowing mist, which meant he had not fallen to the bottom of the cliff, but was somewhere on its mountainside.

Then he saw a sight too unbelievable to accept. At first, he had not noticed it at all, precisely because it was so inconceivable that his mind simply refused to acknowledge it as real.

A few steps before him lay a gigantic python, nearly as thick as an adult man's thigh. It did not attack the intruder who had fallen from the sky because an enormous egg was stuffed in its mouth. The egg resembled a smooth gray stone and was no smaller than Great Head God's head.

The python's upper and lower jaws were stretched completely apart, and its two yellow eyes could only stare skyward, greatly hampering its vision. That was another reason Gu Shenwei was still alive.

The scene was too bizarre, utterly at odds with the real world. Gu Shenwei felt certain he was in the underworld. It was as if he had already drunk Meng Po's soup and forgotten his former life, forgotten his family's vengeance, forgotten the girl who had tried to kill him. He merely stared blankly at the python, motionless.

In the end, a powerful urge to survive drew out every last bit of his potential. Ignoring the pain flooding every inch of him, Gu Shenwei rose to his feet and yanked the dagger from his left shoulder. The weapon had fallen with him the entire way without slipping free or being lost.

He wanted to retreat a few steps and keep a safe distance, but after taking only half a step, he discovered that he had nowhere left to retreat to.

He had fallen into a huge bird's nest, like a giant bowl made of branches and dried grass. Turned upside down, it was about the size of a small human house. He stood right at the edge of the nest, with branches beneath his feet that looked ready to collapse.

The python was still struggling to swallow the bird egg. Its muscles contracted repeatedly, and the egg slid a little farther in. There was not much left outside its mouth.

Gu Shenwei watched the python feed just like that. Only after the egg had entirely entered its mouth did he suddenly realize that this was the best chance to kill it. If he waited any longer, the python would send the egg into its belly, then twist its body and crush it with force. After that, it might be quite willing to swallow another human youth.

Half the python's body remained outside the nest. To help itself swallow the egg, it writhed forward by a foot, drawing closer to Gu Shenwei.

Gu Shenwei walked several steps to the python's head and drove his dagger into the space between its yellow eyes. Then, bent at the waist, he moved forward cautiously. The blade's tip traced a winding line along the python's body, cutting shallowly in some places and deeply in others where vertebrae obstructed it.

Gu Shenwei reached the end, turned around, and pressed tightly against the cliff. The rock at his back gave him immense strength and confidence.

The python's back had been slit open from head to tail, yet it seemed utterly unaware. It felt no pain and put up no violent resistance, continuing to writhe as it swallowed the egg. Its blood-spouting body still swayed from side to side.

Only after quite a while did the python gradually stop moving. The bird egg was fully exposed, and nearly all the python's blood had drained away, revealing white flesh. From between its skin and flesh, hundreds of milky-white threadworms squeezed out. Each was one or two feet long, their eyeless heads swaying about as though searching for a new home.

Fear turned to nausea. Gu Shenwei pressed himself even closer to the cliff, wishing he could become a stone himself and merge into it. He had originally intended to wait until the python was completely dead before kicking it out of the nest, but now he did not want to take even half a step toward it.

The bird egg standing at the python's head suddenly gave a crack. When Gu Shenwei had sliced open the python, he had not considered the egg's safety. The dagger tip had left a scratch on it as well, and this seemed to have directly caused the egg to split.

Even if immortals and ghosts had appeared before him at that moment, Gu Shenwei would not have found it strange. So he watched as the egg's slight rocking turned into violent shaking, accompanied by urgent cracking sounds. Finally, a chick broke free of its shell.

Yet even if ghosts truly had appeared, they probably would not have been as ugly as this chick.

It stood about a foot tall, already far larger than an ordinary bird despite having just been born. Not a single feather grew on its body, yet it was all skin and bones, as though only a layer of pink skin wrapped its skeleton. Its pair of bright yellow eyes were practically a miniature copy of the python's.

The chick had a long beak. It neither cried nor ran about, but held its head high and strutted proudly, utterly unaware that just moments ago it had been food in the python's mouth.

It seemed to have been starving inside the egg. After surveying the new world, the first thing it did was lower its head and eat the remaining fluid inside the shell. After a few bites, it was drawn to the python's corpse. It stepped over, first pecking out the golden-yellow eyeballs in two bites, then swallowing the wriggling threadworms one by one. It feasted heartily from head to tail, leaving not a single one behind.

It did not seem full yet. It selected several large chunks of tender python flesh and swallowed them, finally pausing. Then it raised its head and fixed its yellow eyes on the human at the edge of the cliff outside the nest, as if trying hard to determine whether he was food, enemy, or friend.

While the chick ate without end, Gu Shenwei watched it the whole time. He still gripped the dagger in his hand. Several times, he wanted to rush forward and stab the monster to death, but the revolting python corpse blocked him every time. His feet seemed rooted in place, unable to move even an inch.

The ugly chick stared at Gu Shenwei. Though it was not even as tall as his knee, its gaze was so wicked that it seemed like a demon reborn. He felt cowed by it, with no confidence at all that he could defeat it.

The chick suddenly spread its two bare wings and sprinted straight at him. Before Gu Shenwei could react, it was already pecking relentlessly at both his legs with its sharp beak.

It hurt badly. Gu Shenwei dodged left and right, but in such a cramped space, he could not evade the rain-like barrage of pecks. Still, the chick did not seem malicious. It only pecked; it did not open its beak to bite. Judging by the way it had devoured python flesh just now, if it truly used force, it could probably tear a huge chunk from his leg in one bite.

Even so, Gu Shenwei could not stand it any longer. He raised his dagger to threaten it. "Go away. Get away. I have a knife."

Gu Shenwei waved the dagger as he kicked at it, but the chick did not take the hint. Taking it for a post-meal game, it pecked even more merrily. Its aim was remarkably precise, always striking the foot he extended.

If this continued, his legs would be ruined. Gu Shenwei decided he could not remain merciful. He raised the dagger high, just about to stab down, when the sky suddenly darkened.

The bird's nest was surrounded by mist, but sunlight still pierced through in places. The darkness was like an enormous black cloud, blotting out all the sunlight at once.

Gu Shenwei instinctively looked up. He immediately rejoiced that he had not attacked the chick. He should have thought of it earlier—if there was such a huge bird egg, how could there be no even larger parents?

A giant bird flew in, taller than an adult man by a head when standing upright. With its wings spread, it nearly covered half the sky.

The giant bird landed swiftly on the nest. Its feathers were pure black, except for a tuft of golden plumage standing atop its head like a tiny crown. Its long iron-gray beak was like two sharp blades pressed together. Its eyes, like the chick's, were yellow, but held less inborn wickedness and more pride, contemplation, and endurance.

When the giant bird landed, it released its claws and set down a live small beast. The little animal curled into a ball, whimpering softly, without the slightest intention of fleeing.

Gu Shenwei was dumbstruck. He was completely, utterly certain that he was no match for this beast.

The giant bird first looked at the chick, then at the human. Finally, its gaze fell upon the dagger raised in the air.

Gu Shenwei hurriedly lowered his hand. He instinctively wanted to toss the dagger away, but immediately felt that would be too deliberate. For some reason, he believed the giant bird before him understood human nature and could see through every scheme.

He tucked the dagger into his clothes, pointed at the python's corpse with one hand and at the chick with the other. "I killed it. I saved it."

The giant bird hesitated, but the chick showed no interest in its newly arrived kin. It continued pecking eagerly at the human's legs and feet. Gu Shenwei did not even dare dodge now, and could only endure the pain.

The giant bird took a step inside the nest, and its gaze suddenly turned fierce.

Gu Shenwei inwardly cried that things were bad. The sky suddenly darkened again as the second giant bird returned.

This giant bird was even larger than the first, and the golden plumage atop its head was more striking as well. Gu Shenwei had to crane his neck to see it clearly. He guessed that the newcomer was the male, while the first was the female.

The male bird also carried a small beast in its claws. After setting it down, it did not fold its wings, but pounced straight at the invading human.

The female bird spread its wings too, not to attack alongside it, but to block its path. Its beak pointed toward the eggshell at the python's head. So it had held no malice; the ferocity in its eyes had merely been Gu Shenwei's misunderstanding.

The two giant birds gently tapped their beaks together. This was how they communicated. It seemed the birds here did not know how to sing.

Gu Shenwei waited, trembling with fear.

Before long, the male and female birds reached an understanding. Together, they folded their wings and nodded at the human.

Gu Shenwei let out a long breath. Since the moment Shangguan Yushi had driven her dagger toward him, this was the first time he had felt even a shred of safety. His heart had been hanging by a thread for so long that it had nearly forgotten how to settle back into place.

The chick never got any response from Gu Shenwei, and at last it noticed the two great birds behind it. It cocked its head, somewhat puzzled.

The female bird lowered her head and pecked the small beast she had caught on the head. The creature let out a shrill, miserable cry and soon died. The female paid it no heed, holding a bloody eyeball in her beak as she looked expectantly at the chick.

Only then did Gu Shenwei see clearly that it was no small beast at all, but a full-grown gray wolf. Its dying cry sounded much like the strange cries he had heard at Ghost Cry Cliff.

The chick immediately understood who its true parents were. It dashed over, took the beast's eye from its mother's beak, tipped back its head and swallowed it, then happily pecked at the great bird's claws.

The great bird's claws were wrapped in thick, hardened hide and calluses. Not only could they withstand the chick's sharp beak, but they seemed to take great pleasure in it.

The fall from the cliff top seemed to have dulled Gu Shenwei's mind. Only after all this time did he suddenly understand: what he was looking at was a Great Peng Bird. Golden Peng Fortress had been named for them.