The next morning.
After all these years, Shatuo had few real hobbies. Making noodles every morning was one of the happiest parts of his day.
The morning air carried a slight chill.
The steps for cooking noodles never changed. He dropped two chilies into the steaming pot, then watched the heat and water work their magic. The noodles slowly went from raw to cooked. One moment longer and they would turn mushy; one moment less and they would be tough and dry. He served them at just the right time, when they were perfectly chewy.
The delicious aroma filled the room, and his mouth watered uncontrollably. Shatuo looked pleased.
"Mm..."
He couldn't help letting out a sigh of pure enjoyment.
Knock, knock, knock!
The familiar sound of knocking announced his junior brother, right on time as they'd agreed. The noodles had just finished cooking—a perfect moment, and everything was wonderful. In high spirits, Shatuo opened the door.
"Good morning, Senior Brother."
His junior brother came inside. Seeing Reilo's dark circles, Shatuo furrowed his brow.
It seemed his junior brother had stayed up studying again.
Reilo stepped into the room. The fragrant smell seemed to sweep away the exhaustion of the past few days, and a happy expression came over his face.
Then he noticed something was off with his senior brother. Reilo asked, puzzled, "What's wrong?"
Shatuo frowned. "Junior Brother, you really don't look well. Did you stay up late again? I think you should take the day off and rest. Don't wear yourself out."
Reilo paused. Physically, he really had been exhausted these past few days. But his thirst for knowledge and his desire to earn his mentor's approval had made him completely ignore his fatigue.
He shook his head, unconcerned. "It's fine. I'm not tired!"
With that, Reilo went to the dining table and happily sampled his senior brother's cooking, praising it over and over.
Seeing how determined Reilo was, Shatuo could only shake his head and say no more. After spending several days together, he knew his junior brother was just like him: both of them refused to give up and longed for their mentor's approval and praise. They were willing to work tirelessly and give everything to earn it.
After breakfast, the two began another day of Enlightenment Scholar studies.
"Junior Brother, today we're studying this little white mouse, one of the most common experimental specimens. Like us, it's a mammal, and it shares many traits with humans."
Its fur was white, and its eyes were red.
The little white mouse sniffed in Reilo's hands. Its white fur was soft, and it looked adorable.
Unfortunately, living in a scholar's laboratory was the mouse's greatest misfortune. To scholars studying the Profound Meaning of Evolution, only specimens that could be preserved forever were truly beautiful.
Squeak, squeak.
The mouse barely felt pain. Following Shatuo's instructions, Reilo skillfully severed its pain nerves and laid it out on the experiment table. It had become nothing more than an object of study beneath a scholar's scalpel.
"Mammals are generally divided into a head, neck, torso, limbs, and tail. Some have wings, while others have vestigial tails. They breathe through lungs, have well-developed brains, maintain a constant body temperature, give birth to live young, and nurse them. They're the dominant class among modern species. The intelligent beings commonly found in our Starveil Land are all mammals: humans, Elves, Dwarves, werewolves, Bloodkin, Gnomes..."
Shatuo paused his scalpel and added, "According to our mentor's research into Ancestral Clone and biological fossils, prehistoric creatures were enormous. The best-known and most widely talked about Ancient Creatures include the Ancient Dragons, hydras, Mountain Giants, and Undying Firebirds. All of them laid eggs."
Huh?
Reilo was only an Enlightenment Scholar. His research was limited to common specimens like flowers, birds, fish, and insects. To him, legends about Ancient Creatures were almost like the myths about the Gods studied by theology colleges.
"Oh, right! I heard that the Blood Demons in Night's Veil Land form their core embryos in the blood of other creatures and feed on the emotions of intelligent beings. They're a kind of elemental creature that survived from ancient times..."
Beneath the sharp scalpels of Shatuo and Reilo, the little white mouse's skeletal structure and the secrets of its internal organs were laid bare before them.
"Today, we're mainly studying the mammal's specialized diaphragm, its highly developed excretory system, and the advanced nervous system that coordinates the body's temperature and quickly responds to external changes."
Another day passed as Shatuo explained everything at a leisurely pace.
Reilo listened with keen interest, filling more and more pages in his notes. He also grew increasingly impressed by Shatuo's vast knowledge. He had no idea how many specimens his senior brother had studied, but from beginning to end, not a drop of blood spilled over the edge of the tray beneath the Dissection Table. It seemed less like a simple lesson and more like a demonstration of the art of dissection.
Evening.
Beneath the sunset's fiery clouds and the fresh green willow branches along the lakeshore, young scholars strolled in pairs, enjoying the return of life to the world and dreaming of their future travels.
An inconspicuous figure squatted on the stone steps by the lake, awkwardly scooping up fish with a net. It was Reilo, trying to collect a black carp specimen.
"Haha! What a huge one!"
Reilo excitedly pulled in his net. A big fish thrashed and struggled inside it.
He carefully placed the black carp in the tank he had prepared. Before a specimen was dissected, even losing a single scale would damage it. A seemingly insignificant loss might leave him full of regret decades or even centuries later.
Perhaps Reilo's extensive specimen collecting around campus over the past few days had given him a bit of a fearsome reputation. Some of the campus's stray cats and dogs began avoiding him from afar, as if to say, "Oh no, it's that evil two-legged beast! Run!"
"La la la la la..."
Reilo was in a good mood.
The college had no explicit rule against collecting natural specimens on campus. But most scholars came from noble families, and their upbringing meant they would rather spend a few silver coins buying common specimens on Scholar Street than stoop to such an uncouth act.
"Stop!"
A girl with short blond hair suddenly called out to Reilo, interrupting his good mood.
Puzzled, Reilo looked at the girl, then at the boy beside her. "Is something wrong?"
The girl with short blond hair stood only five feet tall. She had beautiful, Persian-cat-like eyes and wore a pair of pearl earrings. Her cherry-red lips, vivid as flames, contrasted sharply with her fair skin, which looked soft enough to squeeze milk from. She approached Reilo with an air of haughty confidence and looked at the black carp in his tank.
"What are you doing?"
Reilo caught on. His eyes darted about as he came up with an idea. "Beautiful miss, your skin is simply enviable."
"Huh?"
The girl, who had been fuming just moments before, froze at Reilo's compliment. A flash of smugness crossed her face before she put on a coy smile. "Hehe, really?"
The boy beside her answered before Reilo could. "Of course it is! My dear Nira, I can't even find the right words to praise you."
As he complimented the girl, the boy shot Reilo a warning look, evidently taking him for a smooth-talking flatterer.
While the girl basked in her own delight, Reilo quietly slipped away.
"I'd better avoid collecting common specimens on campus from now on."
Reilo carried the tank back to his little house.
The next morning.
Something unexpected had happened while Reilo was dissecting the black carp the night before!
Inside the carp's mouth, he'd been stunned to discover that the place where its tongue should have been was occupied by a strange insect!
"Huh, a Fish Tongue Louse?"
Shatuo looked surprised. "I didn't expect this parasite to have spread to the college, too. I haven't studied parasites much, but I happen to know a little about the Fish Tongue Louse."
He paused, looking thoughtful.
"For fish, the Fish Tongue Louse is a rather terrifying parasite. It enters the fish's mouth as a larva and uses its seven pairs of legs to fasten itself to the tongue. It feeds on the fish's blood until the tongue completely withers away. Then it takes over the tongue's role, attaching itself inside the mouth to help its host eat. It shifts from parasitism to symbiosis."
Shaking his head, Shatuo carefully removed the Fish Tongue Louse from Reilo's black carp specimen with a pair of tweezers.
"Besides its bizarre way of life, this parasite also has a fascinating reproductive process. It repeatedly changes sex, but it isn't hermaphroditic; it still needs to mate with another to reproduce. It's quite remarkable. I heard that a certain great scholar once used this to develop a branch of the Profound Meaning of Evolution. It allowed him to parasitize powerful Ancient Creatures and merge with them."
Reilo already knew a little about parasites, but he'd never imagined that a terrifying parasite like the Fish Tongue Louse existed!
"Ah..."
Thrilled by his unexpected discovery, Reilo hurriedly prepared the Fish Tongue Louse as a specimen and rapidly recorded his observations in the Ice Fire Bird Notebook.