Daily Egg Incubation: "Achoo!"

Lou Yu had picked it up and treasured it for over two months. Only he knew about it.

As for whose body the feather had come from, that went without saying.

The feather still had down on it. Unlike the outermost flight feathers, which were as hard as steel, it was like that Snow Bird, secretly hiding a soft heart beneath his formidable strength.

His fingertips brushed the feather's delicate surface, stirring Lou Yu's heartstrings.

In that moment, he seemed to return to that night, when a full moon hung high in the sky and the world was bright as day.

The young man's slender, blood-soaked body was half hidden beneath his wings. His snow-white hair spilled down like a waterfall, covering his face and leaving only half of his delicate, pale chin visible.

Even sprawled on the ground, with countless wounds on his body, his mighty bearing and graceful form kept him from looking the least bit disheveled. Instead, he looked like a god on high, so sacred that no one would dare harbor the slightest thought of defiling or violating him.

Under Lou Yu's long, steady gaze, the unconscious god finally woke. The god slowly raised his head, then gently opened his eyes.

His pale green eyes were as clear as a springtime brook, yet a mist that seemed both real and illusory veiled them in his confusion. Without warning, they met Lou Yu's gaze head-on.

Chapter 11: Daily Egg Incubation: "Achoo!"

"Achoo!"

Tao Qiu, who had been sleeping soundly, sneezed without warning. He didn't wake, though, merely hunching his neck instinctively and shielding the bird eggs in the nest more tightly.

The first thing Tao Qiu did when he opened his eyes the next day was check the bird eggs. He had been afraid he might accidentally crush them in his sleep, but luckily he had stayed still last night. All three eggs were still intact in the little grass nest he had put back together.

"Good morning, children." Tao Qiu stretched lazily and greeted the chicks, who were still eggs.

After a night of consideration, Tao Qiu had reached a compromise.

He simply couldn't turn a blind eye to the eggs he had laid himself, so he intended to do his best to hatch all three.

During that time, though, he wouldn't invest too much emotion in them. If they hatched, it would be good fortune; if they didn't, it would be fate.

In his previous life, he had never cared for egg-brooding poultry or kept birds as pets, so he had no experience at all.

In this life, his avian genes' inherited memories contained only general concepts about hatching eggs, with virtually no practical value. After his bird parents had laid him, they hadn't laid any more eggs before he left the nest, so he had no example to draw on. And in all these years, he hadn't even had another of his kind he could communicate with.

The knowledge of hatching eggs in his head consisted of scraps he had heard through various channels in his previous life. It wasn't systematic, and there was no guarantee it was all correct.

All in all, Tao Qiu was an illiterate when it came to hatching eggs.

On top of that, Tao Qiu had noticed that high-level mutated monsters like them seemed to have difficulty producing offspring. His bird parents, for example, had laid several eggs, but he was the only one who had hatched in the end.

He had laid even fewer eggs this time than his bird mother had, so there was a high chance they would all be lost.

To avoid being heartbroken in the end, Tao Qiu could only convince himself to do his best and leave the rest to fate.

It would be best if the chicks hatched successfully, and he would devote himself to raising them until they reached adulthood. If things went badly... there was nothing he could do.

Tao Qiu knew little about hatching eggs, and this was his first time doing it himself. As a result, once he decided to take the three eggs seriously, he became tense all over.

Afraid the air would be too dry, he sprinkled water on the cave floor to maintain the humidity. He had no container for carrying water, so he made several trips between the pool at the bottom of the valley and the cave with a "bowl" folded from a large leaf.

For the first few days, aside from getting food and relieving himself, he didn't dare stray a single step from the nest, as if he had taken root there.

Fortunately, he had previously kept a few injured prey animals, which helped him through the most frantic period.

Later, Tao Qiu realized that as long as he maintained the temperature, it was actually fine to leave for a while.

Besides, his food had run out and he had to hunt. He also needed to patrol his territory, so reality wouldn't allow him to stay holed up in the cave all the time.

He could go out less often, but he couldn't disappear for too long. That could easily lead to trouble, just like last time.

Tao Qiu gathered the feathers he had shed and painfully plucked out some down, barely managing to put together a small quilt. When he went out, he covered the eggs with it and some dry grass to keep them warm.

Sometimes, when the sun was shining but it wasn't too hot, Tao Qiu moved the little nest holding the eggs onto the platform at the cave entrance to bask in the sun.

But every time Tao Qiu went out, he finished his business as quickly as possible and returned to the cave. Without exception, the nest was still warm when he hurried back.

On days when he had plenty of food and didn't need to go out, Tao Qiu continued his great planting endeavor.

For now, Tao Qiu was still practicing on those little wild fruits. He wanted to try other edible plants too, but between carrying and incubating the eggs, he hadn't had time to look for new plants and seeds.

Although Tao Qiu favored meat, he remembered that there were plenty of wild fruits, as well as wild grains and vegetables, out in the wilderness. Their yields and flavors just didn't seem to be very good.

Without the intervention of human science, plants had no desire to make themselves delicious. What they needed was to evolve the most tenacious vitality and the strongest means of defense and attack, ensuring they wouldn't go extinct.

The worse they tasted, the better. Being poisonous was better still, allowing them to escape some predators.

Tao Qiu could improve the taste of fruit, which was a good thing for him. He could enjoy delicious food and extend his life at the same time—a perfect way to accomplish both.

Besides wanting to strengthen his ability, another reason he wanted to find new plants was that he was getting tired of eating these wild fruits.

After another half a month or so, the batch of wild fruit Tao Qiu had planted at the bottom of the valley ripened.

He had only accelerated their germination, not their growth or ripening, so he could compare them with fruit he had ripened directly.

Among these wild fruits whose germination alone he had accelerated, there were two groups. The seeds for the first had come from fruit Tao Qiu had ripened once, while those for the second had gone through two rounds of accelerated ripening. He wanted to see if there was a difference between them.

Tao Qiu stood at the bottom of the valley, looking down at the wild fruit plants swaying in the wind.

Tao Qiu remembered that this kind of wild fruit took about three months to go from germination to full ripeness, and he had planted them only a few days after discovering his ability to accelerate ripening.

It had only been close to two months so far.

The growth period of the wild fruits whose germination he had accelerated had shortened considerably.

But he didn't know whether, as his ability improved, the time would grow even shorter.

At least it now took him a little less time to ripen a wild fruit plant than it had at the beginning.

Setting his curiosity aside for now, Tao Qiu examined the wild fruits again.

From their appearance, there was no difference between the first- and second-generation seeds. There were ten plants in each group, and none had fallen sick or withered along the way. Their branches and leaves were equally green, and their fruit was equally fresh and plump, even identical in size.

The sweet fragrance of the fruit wafted over him. Even though Tao Qiu was getting a little tired of it, he couldn't help his mouth from watering.

Tao Qiu was glad the fragrance wasn't strong enough to drift beyond his territory yet. If it attracted mutated monsters that loved fruit as much as he did, he wouldn't want to deal with that kind of trouble, formidable as he was.

Tao Qiu wrapped all the fruit he picked in leaves, washed it upstream from the pool, and carried it back to his nest. There, he began eating the "life-extending fruit" while incubating the eggs.

In terms of taste and effect, there was no difference at all between the first and second generations.

Tao Qiu was a little disappointed. He had thought the life-extending effect of the nth generation would increase n-fold, but heaven wasn't giving him any chance to exploit a bug.

It looked like he would have to stay alive by honestly farming after all.

After eating the fruit, he felt much more comfortable. Even the occasional sharp pains that had come with the warning of death had hardly appeared lately.

In an excellent mood, Tao Qiu carried the bird eggs onto the platform to bask in the sun.

He held the eggs above his head one by one, trying to see what was inside against the sunlight. He had started doing this after incubating them for ten days, but every time, all he saw was a blurry dark mass and root-like threads of blood spreading out from it.

Remembering that humans spoke of fetal movement, he had also tried pressing his ear to the shells to listen, but he hadn't heard a thing.

If the dark masses inside hadn't moved slightly from time to time, Tao Qiu would have suspected that the chicks had already died.

After finishing the "prenatal checkup," Tao Qiu carried the eggs back to the nest. Afraid they might get thirsty, he also wiped a little water evenly over them.

Before going to sleep that night, Tao Qiu lay beside the three eggs and began telling a story in a high-pitched voice.

He was modeling this on humans' prenatal education. Tao Qiu only half understood both human pregnancy and avian egg incubation, so he simply mixed the two processes together. In any case, doing more couldn't hurt.

Tao Qiu still felt as though his previous life as a human had been only yesterday, so his memories were clear. Since he began incubating the eggs, he had told one story a day, without regard for

era

or national borders, covering everything from ancient to modern times, both Chinese and foreign.

After explaining the lessons about nature and emotion contained in "young birds feeding their parents," Tao Qiu poked each of the three eggs in turn and joked, "Your dad laid you and hatched you, and it was exhausting, so once you're out of your shells, you'll have to go straight out and find food to feed me. Got it?"

After saying that, Tao Qiu imagined three chicks whose feathers hadn't even grown in yet, chirping as they stumbled across the grass in pursuit of prey. The image was so funny and wicked that he was the first to burst out laughing.

After the prenatal education was over, Tao Qiu took on his bird form and fell into a sweet sleep, resting his head on the moon and holding the eggs.

After he fell fast asleep, one of the eggs in the nest rocked slightly. The movement was so faint that no one but the air noticed it, including the little life inside the egg that had yet to gain consciousness.

The next day was patrol day.

After covering the eggs with several layers of quilts, Tao Qiu left the cave and flew along his usual route.

He circled his territory without finding any intruders or encountering any unexpected incidents. Thinking he could get back sooner, Tao Qiu immediately felt much happier.

After finishing his patrol, Tao Qiu began looking for that night's prey.

The last time he had gone on a killing spree, his fearsome reputation had spread far and wide once more. In the past, his prey would at least struggle a little when he caught them, but now they simply lay flat and accepted their fate. The more hot-tempered ones even smashed themselves to death in advance, so hunting had suddenly become much easier for Tao Qiu.