Heaven Cherishes Life

Faced with the seagull's vicious strike, Zhang Ming ducked his head and hurled the glass jar containing the mushroom at it, roaring, "Look what this is!"

The glass jar reflected golden light in the sunshine.

Its graceful arc carried it straight into the seagull's beak with a clunk.

"Squawk?!"

The male seagull looked utterly horrified. Its sharp beak, which had been lunging forward so viciously, froze in place!

Should he keep pecking or not?

He really... really didn't dare peck!

The enormous seagull flapped his wings and squawked, sending clouds of dried bird-dropping dust billowing everywhere.

"Squawk! Squawk!"

Mother of my chicks, a powerful enemy is here! Retreat! Retreat!

The "mother of his chicks," who had been incubating their eggs, also let out a shrill squawk. She stared helplessly at the glass jar, her eyes wide and her face utterly bewildered.

When she saw what was inside the jar, she grew even more alarmed and looked at the father of her chicks.

"Squawk!"

What about the eggs?

Are we abandoning the eggs?

The father squawked, "Squawk! Squawk!"

As long as we survive, we can start over! Run!

The mother squawked, "Squawk!"

I can't bear to! After sitting on them for so long, we're just abandoning them?

The father squawked, "Squawk!"

The mother squawked, "Squawk!"

The two birds squawked wildly as they beat their wings and fled for their lives.

They were so terrified that they nearly forgot they were birds and dropped straight off the top of the coconut tree.

Only halfway down did they remember they could fly, flapping their wings and taking to the sky.

All that remained in the nest were three pale eggs.

"Good grief, I only wanted to eat one of your eggs. Did you have to get that scared?"

Zhang Ming approached the nest, delighted. Each egg was the size of a fist and weighed two or three pounds. Their yellowish-brown shells were speckled with black, making them look like oversized quail eggs.

He held the three eggs up to the sunlight for a while and discovered that one already contained an embryo. Its tiny blood vessels were clearly visible, along with the beginnings of a chick.

The other two seemed to be unfertilized, with no signs of development.

"Do mutated creatures have lower reproductive capacity...? No wonder juvenile mutants are so rare."

"Even little crabs are hard to find, despite how prolific crabs usually are."

Pondering this, Zhang Ming turned and placed the egg containing the embryo back in the nest.

"Heaven cherishes life, so I'll give this one back to you. I don't need that little bit extra."

He put the other two eggs and the glass jar containing the "mushroom" into his backpack, then climbed down the tree, brimming with joy.

At first, he kept up a cautious front, worried that the seagulls might retaliate. Eventually, though, he couldn't stop his delight from showing.

Back at camp, he immediately put one of the eggs into boiling water.

As the water bubbled away, the firewood gave off a resinous fragrance, and bubbles formed one after another on the eggshell.

An egg, that coveted source of life-an egg!

"An egg this big needs to boil a little longer."

To ease the anxiety of waiting, Zhang Ming even picked up a copy of Advanced Mathematics and eagerly studied knowledge he had long since abandoned.

What could he say about life these days?

It was fulfilling, yet dull and tedious, with vast amounts of time to squander.

Without the dopamine hits of information overload, anyone to talk to, or any entertainment at all, he could only pursue quiet, monotonous pleasures.

Besides, apart from the pile of books left behind by that fellow preparing for his postgraduate entrance exams, he had nothing to read!

"So that's it. You can't use L'Hôpital's Rule for this problem. Just use a Taylor Expansion... brilliant!"

"I still don't really understand Green's Formula."

A faint rustling came from the grass. Zhang Ming looked up and found a group of sea turtles studying the strange mushroom in the glass jar and the steaming pot with their beady black eyes.

They were utterly stunned. This man was still alive!

"Want a bite too? Considering how you deserted me last time, you're not getting a single bit of egg!"

The turtles cried, "Awoo!" They insisted they hadn't fled on purpose. They simply couldn't control their bodies; their four legs had run away on their own.

Some turtles loudly demanded to know how he had survived.

You must be full of mushrooms by now, you rascal!

Another turtle craned its neck to inspect the mushroom in the glass jar, suddenly got a fright, and turned tail!

That triggered a herd response, and a whole bunch of turtles ran after it!

Zhang Ming couldn't be bothered with their theatrics. Huffing at the heat, he picked up the boiled egg, peeled it, and enjoyed it himself.

The fresh fragrance of that source of life wafted into his face!

The egg tasted much like a goose egg. There wasn't much white, and the orange yolk made up more than seventy percent of it. Every bite was wonderfully fragrant, with a slight gamey taste.

Yet that very hint of gaminess gave it a marvelous wild flavor.

The sea breeze flowed ceaselessly. All things in the world existed independently yet remained connected, together forming the whole of destiny.

A faint warmth began circulating through his body. The egg didn't seem to contain much "spirit," but since this was his first time eating one, its attribute-boosting effect was still quite good... whether it would grant him a new skill remained unknown.

A question suddenly occurred to Zhang Ming: how exactly had humans domesticated the very first hen in ancient times?

When primitive humans took the eggs a hen had worked so hard to incubate, wouldn't she be heartbroken?

"Primitive humans probably had to secure enough food before they started keeping hens. Otherwise, they would've eaten the hens long before that..."

He always found that first step from zero to one remarkable: someone who happened to have a full stomach caught a trembling hen, one that couldn't be too good at escaping and was willing to surrender her eggs...

What an amazing scene!

Modern poultry farms might churn out hundreds of millions of eggs a year, but in the primitive days of slash-and-burn farming, finding a hen that met all those requirements would have been difficult.

Thank you, that first hen!

Zhang Ming gave his head a sharp shake and mentally spat, I'm eating a bird's egg, and somehow it's making me philosophical.

He was far too lonely.

Broken, then poked, one was like just, thoughts jumbled one by one in the sea of his mind

like soap bubbles. Or rather, he hadn't seen another human or had any social contact for a very, very long time. He had to find something, anything, to do, or the overwhelming tide of loneliness would swallow him whole.

"It'd be even better made into a salted duck egg. Though I suppose I couldn't call it a salted duck egg. It'd be... a salted bird egg?"

"How do you make salted duck eggs again? Should I ask on the beach?"

One bird egg weighed two pounds, just enough to fill him up.

[Attributes +3]

Pretty good!

He looked back at the turtles. They were staring suspiciously yet greedily at the pile of eggshells on the ground, then glancing at the mushroom in the jar.

"Awoo?" one of them called.

The other turtles cried out too. Humans died for wealth, and turtles died for food. They truly didn't dare eat the mushroom, but they had coveted those bird eggs for a very, very long time.

Please, give us a little!

Please!