Early the next morning, as dawn was just breaking, Emerald Mountain Village was still shrouded in a thin mist.
In the yard of the ramshackle wooden hut, Lin He was already drenched in sweat.
Bare-chested, he held the powerful black python sinew bow with a draw weight of over a hundred jin, doing basic draw exercises according to the "hellish training plan" Su Qiuran had devised the night before.
"Straighten your back! Steady your stance! Tighten your core! Do you think you're slacking off at the office?"
Su Qiuran sat in her wheelchair with a steaming bowl of white flour gruel in her hands, slurping it as she mercilessly directed him.
"Wifey, I've already drawn it to a full moon fifty times! This bow has a hundred-and-twenty-jin draw weight! Even the production team's donkeys weren't worked this hard!"
Lin He panted heavily, the muscles in his arms bulging as sweat slid down his taut skin and dripped into the dirt.
Although he complained, Lin He knew perfectly well that the body-tempering effects of the Essence of the Sun were simply absurd.
With his old body, which had spent every day sitting in front of a computer writing code, even carrying a bucket of water would have been a struggle, let alone drawing this powerful bow.
Now, after fifty draws, he was tired, but the feeling of explosive strength filling his joints left him extraordinarily exhilarated.
"Cut the chatter! Selling that top-grade Green Spike Grass yesterday left us with over a tael of loose silver, but that's still nowhere near enough."
Su Qiuran set down her bowl, her gaze turning serious. "We need to buy spirit rice seeds, save up Grand Yin Essence to cleanse our essence and marrow, and prepare for any dangers that might arise. This little bit of money isn't even enough to fill the gaps between our teeth."
"We need to get more Green Spike Grass seeds from the mountain out back and expand our planting."
"You got it! Whatever the boss says!" Lin He chuckled, put away the bow, and grabbed the newly purchased, sharpened short-handled woodcutting saber beside him. He swung it twice through the air, whipping up a rush of sound.
"Let's go stock up on the mountain out back!"
After they made a few simple preparations, Lin He once again displayed his inhuman strength, pushing Su Qiuran, wheelchair and all, toward the mountain out back.
The mountain path was somewhat slippery that morning, but for Lin He, who had now achieved initial success in Body Tempering, it was like walking on level ground.
Knowing the way well, the two arrived at the rocky stretch on the mountain's shaded slope.
"Let's split up. You gather around here, and I'll head farther in to see if I can find plumper seeds." Lin He parked the wheelchair in a relatively flat spot and gave Su Qiuran his instructions.
"All right. Be careful, and don't go running deep into that mass burial ground or whatever it is. We're still weak little chickens. Lying low and developing is the way to go," Su Qiuran cautioned.
"Don't worry. I know what I'm doing." Lin He waved a hand and climbed up through the rocks with his woodcutting saber.
The higher he went up the shaded slope, the more rugged the terrain became. The gaps between the rocks grew larger, and the Green Spike Grass growing there looked a little sturdier too.
Lin He swung his saber, clearing away the thorny brush blocking his way while carefully searching for plump grass seeds.
The benefits of Body Tempering were obvious. His eyesight had grown sharper, and his stamina seemed like a bottomless pit.
In less than an hour, he had already gathered a great heaping handful of seeds.
Just as he was about to retrace his steps and rejoin Su Qiuran, a huge dark-brown boulder suddenly caught his eye.
Its surface was covered in moss, and it was shaped like a crouching toad.
At the base of the boulder was an extremely deep crevice. The dirt around it was an eerie, scorched black, without so much as a single weed growing there.
There's something strange about this place, Lin He muttered inwardly, moving closer out of curiosity.
He lay on the ground and craned his head to peer into the crevice. It was pitch-black inside, and he couldn't make anything out.
Lin He picked up a twig and poked it into the crevice.
There was a muffled thunk.
It didn't sound like he had struck stone. It sounded more like he had poked some kind of hollow shell, producing an echo.
Something stirred in Lin He's mind. He shifted the twig aside, and in the faint, scattered light, he vaguely made out what seemed to be something red deep inside the crevice.
"What the heck is that?"
He carefully reached into the crevice and felt around for a while before his fingertips touched something smooth and rounded, with a trace of warmth.
Lin He dug it out with a forceful tug.
When he saw what he was holding, he froze.
It was an egg.
An egg fully the size of an adult's fist, dark red all over. Its shell was covered in eerie black markings resembling some ancient totem. It felt heavy in his hand and gave off an extremely faint warmth.
"Holy shit... how's there an egg in this place where birds don't even shit?"
Countless plotlines from the fantasy novels Lin He had read in his previous life instantly flashed through his mind.
Finding a divine artifact at the bottom of a cliff, encountering a master in a cave, digging a divine beast egg out of a rock crevice...
"Could this guy have a protagonist halo now too? Could there be some ferocious beast from High Antiquity in this egg, or a divine dragon of the nine heavens?"
Lin He's heartbeat involuntarily quickened. He gazed at the red egg in his hand with the same fervor he would have shown a pile of top-grade Spirit Stones.
He hurriedly tucked the egg against his chest, wrapped it securely in his clothes, and jogged down the slope.
"Wifey! Wifey! I hit the jackpot!" Lin He shouted excitedly from far away.
Su Qiuran was sitting on the handcart, intently stripping grass seeds. At his shouts, she looked up and rolled her eyes. "What jackpot? Did you dig up a hundred-year-old wild mountain ginseng?"
"Way better than that!" Lin He ran up to the handcart and looked around secretively. Only after making sure no one was around did he carefully lift the hem of his clothes and bring out the dark-red egg in both hands.
"Look! What's this?"
Su Qiuran paused, then leaned closer to inspect it. "A... tea egg?"
"Tea egg, my ass! Since when are tea eggs this big, with totem markings on them?" Lin He was speechless. "I dug this out of an extremely well-hidden crevice up there. Not a blade of grass grew around it, and the egg's giving off heat! This is definitely some kind of divine beast egg!"
Su Qiuran dropped her joking expression and examined the egg closely.
"Are you sure this is a divine beast egg? Deep in this mountain's shaded slope is a mass burial ground for immortals. What if this thing is some evil object that rolled out of a pile of corpses?"
Su Qiuran's brows knitted slightly, and she looked somewhat worried.
"Whatever it is, won't we find out if we take it home and hatch it?" Excitement sparkled in Lin He's eyes.
"We have the Essence of the Sun! That stuff can spur the growth of all things. Hatching an egg should be as easy as reaching out and grabbing it!"
Su Qiuran thought for a moment, then nodded. "All right. Since you've already dug it out, let's take it back and give it a try."
Without further delay, the two hurried back to the wooden hut with over half a sack of Green Spike Grass seeds and the mysterious red egg.