Metamorphosis

Woo~, brothers and sisters, I need some fire support! Please, throw me some votes; I'm only one spot away from the rankings! I'd be eternally grateful!

The late autumn wind carried a bone-chilling cold.

Ye Qin nimbly gripped the rope and scrambled up the steep cliff face. Before the sky turned completely dark, he reached the summit and returned to his makeshift shelter beneath a massive boulder.

On the mountaintop, the night wind was biting.

Ye Qin gathered some dry wood and wild grass, ignited them with a flint, and started a bonfire under the boulder. He set up a small iron pot to boil some water. In the glow of the fire, he could clearly see that his coarse, cyan-colored cloth tunic had been torn in several places, and his arms and body were covered in various wounds and dark, hardened scabs of blood.

Looking at his battered body, he offered a bitter, self-deprecating smile.

A wave of exhaustion washed over him. However, he couldn't rest just yet. He cleaned his wounds, fished a low-grade hemostatic herb from his large herb basket, chewed it into a pulp, and applied it to his skin. He winced, baring his teeth against the pain.

Once that was done, he organized his small herb basket and tallied the day's harvest. This was the most rewarding part of his daily toil and the moment he felt happiest.

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

The herbs he had gathered on the cliffs today were worth a full hundred copper coins—equivalent to three or four days of his usual work. And that didn't even include the rare little green herb he had plucked from the edge of a protruding rock. It seemed that taking risks did have its rewards.

All the herbs were categorized and placed into the large basket.

Finally, Ye Qin picked up the little green herb. After being dug out, this plant hadn't wilted like the others; it remained fresh and tender, with a sparkling dewdrop still clinging to it. It even emitted a faint, herbal fragrance that gave him a powerful urge to swallow it whole.

Ye Qin fought back the impulse. He examined it lovingly over and over, but he couldn't identify its true value, which left him feeling somewhat frustrated. It seemed he would have to wait until he returned to the Herb Gathering Hall in the county town and ask the experienced herb appraisers in the inner hall to identify it.

He carefully used a leather pouch to store the little herb, keeping the roots and soil intact.

Gurgle.

Ye Qin rubbed his belly, feeling a pang of hunger.

He pulled the Grey Eagle egg out of his small herb basket and chuckled, wearing a fierce expression as he muttered to himself: "Damn feathered beast, daring to attack me and nearly costing me my life—I'm going to eat your egg."

He used his clothes to carefully wipe the foul mud and dried grass off the egg.

The shell of this Grey Eagle egg was strange; it had a few faint marks on it. They looked like scratches accidentally left by the eagle, yet they also resembled some mysterious, ancient inscription. Deep within these marks, a heart-stopping purple light occasionally flickered.

Unfortunately, Ye Qin was starving, and the mountaintop was pitch black; he had no mind to pay attention to any oddities about the egg.

Ye Qin tapped the egg gently against the edge of the pot. The shell immediately developed several fine cracks, but it remained held together by a thin membrane inside, preventing any yolk from leaking out—a testament to his delicate touch.

He cracked the shell further, peeled away a piece, punctured the membrane, and pressed the shell to his lips. Tilting his head back, he took a deep gulp. Slurp! The entire egg white and yolk were swallowed raw. He let out a small burp, then licked the inside and outside of the shell clean, not wasting a drop of egg white, and even swallowed the membrane. When it came to food, he never wasted a thing.

"So sweet and fragrant! The eggs from those feathered beasts actually taste pretty good!"

He licked his lips, still wanting more.

The sky was dark, and Ye Qin didn't notice that while the shell of the Grey Eagle egg was ordinary, the egg white and yolk inside had emitted a faint, grey light—ethereal and illusory, light as nothingness, yet heavy as a mountain—before sliding into his belly and vanishing.

He tossed the clean shell aside near the bonfire.

Having eaten the egg, Ye Qin rubbed his small belly, feeling satisfied.

He spread some straw under the boulder, extinguished the fire, and was just about to lie down to sleep when he suddenly felt a surging, massive energy erupt within his gut, churning and roiling like a thousand-foot wave in the ocean. His small frame was like a tiny lake, utterly unable to contain such a wild impact.

What was happening?

Ye Qin was horrified.

Had he eaten something poisonous?

Based on his years of studying herbs, only a potent poison would cause such sudden, knife-twisting pain in his gut.

But he hadn't eaten anything unusual tonight.

Could it be the eagle egg?

That seemed unlikely.

No matter what beast or insect laid an egg, it was almost impossible for it to be poisonous. An eagle egg certainly couldn't be toxic; he had never heard of such an absurd thing. If he ruled out the egg, the only possibility was that the shell had been covered in some kind of lethal, toxic soil that he hadn't wiped off properly, which he had then ingested.

Ye Qin's mind instinctively raced to analyze every possibility.

The pain became unbearable. He crawled toward his large herb basket, hoping to find some antidotes. Although he didn't know what poison he had ingested, the basket was full of detoxifying herbs. There were even herbs that could induce vomiting, which might help him expel the poison and reduce its effects.

But he couldn't make it. He was in so much pain he was nearly rolling on the ground, wanting only to scream and vent the raging torrent inside him before he lost consciousness.

Don't panic, don't pass out. If I can't detoxify in time, I'm dead for sure!

Ye Qin gritted his teeth, fighting with every ounce of his willpower to crawl toward the most important thing in his consciousness. He reached the herb basket and thrust his hand inside. Over the years, it was precisely this cold, survivalist instinct that had kept him alive.

Relying on his final shred of will, he grabbed a handful of herbs—he couldn't even see what they were—and tried to shove them into his mouth. But a powerful surge of energy slammed into his brain, and with a miserable cry, he blacked out.

Everything did not stop there.

Steam began to rise from Ye Qin's skin, and soon his entire body was shrouded in a white mist. His veins bulged, his face twisted in agony, and his meridians constantly swelled and contracted. A mysterious power rampaged through his body, causing his blood to boil, and thin trickles of blood began to seep from his seven orifices.

A vortex even formed around him. Though there was no wind, the air began to swirl on its own. Countless blades of dry grass, dirt, pebbles, unburnt firewood from the bonfire, and lingering sparks were caught in the vortex, dancing around Ye Qin and gradually wrapping him into a sealed cocoon of dry grass.

Ye Qin remained unconscious inside the sealed cocoon, his hand still tightly clutching that fresh, ethereal little herb.