Pupation

Waaah~, brothers and sisters, give me some fire support! Votes, please—I'm just one spot away from making the rankings! I'd be endlessly grateful!

The late-autumn wind carried a bone-chilling cold.

Ye Qin swiftly grabbed the rope and climbed up the steep cliff. Before the sky turned completely dark, he reached the summit and returned to his temporary shelter beneath a boulder.

The night wind howled across the summit.

Ye Qin gathered some dead branches and weeds, struck a flint to light them, and built a bonfire beneath the boulder. He set a small iron pot over it and boiled some water to drink. In the firelight, he could clearly see that his coarse blue clothes had been torn in several places. His arms and body were streaked with cuts, many of them crusted with dark, dried blood.

Looking at his injuries, he gave another bitter smile.

A wave of fatigue swept over him, but he couldn't rest yet. After cleaning his wounds, he took a low-grade blood-staunching herb from his large herb basket, chewed it up, and smeared it on. He gritted his teeth against the pain.

Once he was done, he sorted through his small herb basket and counted the day's harvest. It was the greatest reward for all his hard work—and his happiest moment of the day.

After counting the herbs, Ye Qin was so excited he nearly cheered aloud.

The herbs he'd gathered on the cliff that day were worth a hundred or more copper coins—equivalent to three or four days of his usual work. And that didn't even include the rare little green herb he'd picked from the edge of the outcropping. It seemed taking a risk had its rewards.

He sorted the herbs by type and put them into his large herb basket.

At last, Ye Qin picked up the little green herb. After being dug up, it hadn't wilted like the other herbs. It was still fresh and tender, and the sparkling dewdrop was still there. It even gave off a faint medicinal fragrance that made him desperately want to swallow it whole.

Ye Qin fought down the urge and gazed at it again and again, unable to put it down. Yet he still couldn't identify its exact value, which left him somewhat frustrated. It looked like he'd have to wait until he returned to the county town's Herb Gathering Hall and ask the experienced herb appraisers in the inner hall to examine it.

Carefully, he placed the little herb in a leather pouch, dirt, roots, and all.

Grrr.

Ye Qin rubbed his belly, feeling hungry.

He took the Gray Egg out of his small herb basket and grinned, pulling a fierce expression. Damn feathered beast! You tried to grab me and nearly cost me my life. I'll eat your egg!

He carefully wiped the stinking mud and dead leaves from the Gray Egg with his clothes.

The shell was a little strange. It seemed to bear several faint marks, like pale gray scratches the Grey Eagle had made by accident—or like some mysterious ancient runes. Now and then, a heart-stopping purple glimmer flickered deep within the marks.

But Ye Qin was nearly starving, and it was pitch-black atop the mountain. He had no reason to care what was strange about the egg.

Ye Qin picked up the egg and lightly tapped it against the edge of the pot. The shell immediately cracked in several places, but the thin membrane inside held it together, and not a drop of yolk leaked out. His touch had been remarkably deft.

He tapped the shell until it broke, then gently peeled away a piece. He punctured the membrane, pressed the shell to his mouth, and tilted his head back to gulp. Swish! He swallowed the entire Gray Egg in one mouthful, white and yolk together, then burped. Finally, he licked the inside and outside of the shell until it was spotless, not leaving behind a drop of egg white. He swallowed the membrane too. He never wasted a scrap of food.

"Sweet and delicious. Those feathered beasts' eggs taste pretty good!"

He licked his lips, still savoring the taste.

Night had fallen, and Ye Qin didn't notice that, though the Gray Egg's shell had looked ordinary, the egg white and yolk had glowed with a faint gray light, both ethereal and divine, weightless as nothingness yet heavy as a mountain. They slipped down his throat and vanished inside him.

He casually tossed the clean eggshell beside the bonfire.

After eating the Gray Egg, Ye Qin rubbed his little belly, completely satisfied.

He spread some straw beneath the boulder on the summit and put out the bonfire. He was just about to lie down when he suddenly felt a mighty force rise inside him, churning and surging like the sea in a storm, its waves leaping a hundred or even a thousand feet high. His small body was like a little lake, utterly unable to contain such a wild onslaught.

What was happening?

Ye Qin was horrified.

Had he eaten something poisonous without realizing it?

From his years of studying herbs, he knew that only poison could cause sudden, wrenching pain in the belly.

But he hadn't eaten anything unusual that evening.

Could it have been the eagle's egg?

That seemed unlikely.

No matter what wild beast or venomous creature laid an egg, it was almost never poisonous. An eagle's egg was even less likely to be toxic; he'd never heard anyone say anything so absurd. If the egg itself was out of the question, then the only possibility was that some poisonous mud had stuck to its shell, and he hadn't cleaned it off before swallowing it.

Ye Qin's mind instinctively raced through the possibilities.

The pain was almost unbearable. He crawled toward his large herb basket, hoping to find an antidote. He didn't know what kind of poison he'd taken, but there were plenty of remedies in the basket. There were even herbs that could make him vomit up what he'd eaten and lessen the poison's effects.

But he couldn't make it there. The pain was already so bad that he nearly rolled across the ground, desperate to scream and vent the monstrous waves raging inside him before he passed out from the agony.

He couldn't panic. He couldn't pass out. If he couldn't treat the poison in time, he would surely die!

Ye Qin clenched his teeth and struggled toward the thing that mattered most to him. He crawled to the large herb basket and reached inside. It was this calm resolve and will to survive that had kept him alive all these years.

Relying on the last of his strength, he grabbed an herb, unable to make out what it was. He only wanted to shove it into his mouth. But a powerful surge of energy struck his head. With a scream, he lost consciousness.

But it didn't stop there.

Heat rose from Ye Qin's skin, and soon white vapor enveloped his whole body. The veins bulged across his body, his face contorted in agony, and his meridians repeatedly swelled and contracted. A mysterious force rampaged through him, his blood and vital energy boiling as thin streams of blood seeped from his five orifices.

Even a vortex formed around him. Though there was no wind, it spun on its own, sweeping up dead grass, dirt, broken stones, unburnt branches from the bonfire, and tiny sparks that had yet to die out. They swirled around Ye Qin, gradually wrapping him in a sealed cocoon of dead grass.

Ye Qin lay unconscious inside the sealed cocoon, still clutching the fresh, tender, weightless little herb in his hand...