Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
Name: Unknown Egg
Growth: Incubation
Conditions: Incubating
Potential: 0~2★
Description: An unknown egg. Due to the presence of blackwater fowls in the vicinity, the big data shows a high probability that these are blackwater fowl eggs. A friendly reminder: the energy that an unborn mutant creature receives determines the upper limit of its aptitude after it is hatched.
The corner of his eye twitched as Shao Zifeng looked at the information. Was that all?
How could it have the nerve to claim that it is the Goldfinger?
What is the use of big data?
Don’t let me get started with the limitation on mission listing, lucky draws, exchange of goods. The most bizarre thing about it is the latency in information retrieval during target identification. But this is not all. It is the failure to identify objects that drive me mad. Is this plug-in a defective, returned goods?
Shao Zifeng grumbled as he looked at the blackwater fowls, deep in thoughts.
An egg of the highest grade would hatch a 2-star creature, which was equivalent to the official B-rating. It was worth some money. But the thing was, no one was going to buy from him if he were to sell it directly. Even if there were buyers, he was not going to get a good price for the eggs.
What if he hatched them by himself, providing energy without spending a lot of money? But he could fail in hatching them. It was not going to work out, no matter what.
Chirp! Chirp!
The two blackwater fowls became even more anxious as shown by their high-pitch sound. Their feathers had puffed up as they flapped their wings to beat the water. The reddish bumps on their foreheads were giving out a weak energy wave as if telling him that if he dared to take their eggs, they would not hesitate to use their Tackle to stop him. Even if they had to die, they would want to make sure they brought him along.
Why would they not use a Water Shield? Because it was only a defensive skill.
It was pathetic of them to have only Tackle as their sole attacking skill.
Shao Zifeng let out a sigh. No matter what excuse he came up with, he still could not bring himself to take the offspring from the mutant creatures.
He was a weirdo, in the sense that while he always kept an emotional distance from people and things, turned a blind eye to murder and robbery as long as it did not concern him, and rarely showed affection to his mother like others did, or called her even though he missed her, let alone expressing his feelings.
In the eyes of others, he was not someone who was easy to get along with despite his always-on smile. He was always distant. Some relatives on his mother’s side even thought that he was as cold as ice.
However, when he was alone watching videos, he would be impressed at seeing children saluting soldiers, touched by teenagers giving out masks to scavengers, and even crying when seeing pets faithfully awaiting their masters’ return.
He had a tough outer shell and a soft heart, always cautious about others yet with a hint of kindness. All in all, he was a person of contradiction.
He gave the blackwater fowl couples an apologetic smile, then spun around to continue his journey upstream. The two blackwater fowls exchanged a look with each other before flapping their wings to fly back into the reed bushes, gingerly shifting their weights as they sat on the eggs.
…
After over ten minutes of walking, Shao Zifeng finally came in front of a decaying ancient structure. He looked up at the Taoist temple known for its phoenix legend and saw a putrefied plaque above the mottled doors with peeling paint. The once gilded characters had weathered, but the words ‘Qifeng Temple’ were still vaguely visible.
Hanging on the cornices on both sides of the temple’s front facade were two brass bells that jingled in the night breeze. When complemented by the soothing sound of flowing water, they formed a heart-purifying nature’s symphony
Wild peach trees were growing all around the Taoist temple. Legend had it that it was the last temple master who planted them. But for some reason, the supposedly blooming wild peach in March had withered, leaving behind black, crooked branches that gave out a creepy vibe at night.
Creeeak!
Shao Zifeng gave the doors a gentle push. The decayed brass lock instantly broke apart at the slightest force as the door creaked open with a nerve-wracking sound.
He looked inside and was wide-eyed.
Are you kidding me?
He saw standing in the center of the courtyard was a leafless, giant parasol tree, the trunk of which was about two-meter in diameter, its roots protruding out of the flagstone with cracks radiating out in all directions.
Something seemed to have cut the parasol tree in half from the middle, leaving behind a stump of the height of two persons. A layer of beige powder of what looked like the residue of the missing section of the trunk covered the surrounding ground.
Upon taking a closer look, he found that this giant parasol tree had not died entirely. There were twigs growing out of the roots, but they had lost their luster as if they would die at any moment.
Just as Shao Zifeng swept his eyes over the top of the parasol tree trunk, a blue dot popped up in the corner of his eyes. He quickly turned his eyes at the parasol tree and took a long, hard look at the cut section on the stump.
The blue dot continued to flicker for a moment.
“Sure enough, there is something.”
As he took a step closer to the parasol tree, the blue dot flickered again with much higher intensity.
Shao Zifeng was excited. It seemed that he had stumbled upon something. Not a bad outing, after all.
With each step he took toward the parasol tree, the blue dot would flicker once. When he finally came in front of the parasol tree and reached to touch the rough surface of the trunk, the blue dot in his peripheral vision was starting to spin in a slow motion.
Shao Zifeng stood there and waited for a moment, finding that the blue dot just kept spinning without forming into a virtual display.
“Maybe the problem lies at the top of the stump. I have got to climb up there to check it out,” he mumbled to himself.
The parasol tree was not very high, and the rotting stump was fragile. It took little effort in making some cutouts in the trunk with his kitchen knife for him to step on.
Shao Zifeng clenched the kitchen knife with his teeth as he hugged the tree trunk and carefully made his way up.
With his hands and legs working in tandem, he finally climbed onto the top of the stump, the top surface of which was so smooth that it looked like a clean cut. A thick layer of the same beige powder like that on the ground covered the surface.
As he wiped away the powdery stuff with his hand, he found the cutout section was not exactly flat but shaped like a funnel.
The blue dot in his peripheral vision spun like mad as if hurrying him to clean away the powder quickly.
Shao Zifeng coughed violently, ingesting the powdery stuff after he took a deep breath to blow away the powder.
Just then, the moon had poked out from behind the clouds, shining its silvery light down through the powder floating in the air onto an object at the bottom of the funnel-shaped stump. That object started to glow green as it received the moonlight.
The rapidly spinning blue dot formed a light blue virtual display in front of his eyes.
Name: Unknown elemental egg
Growth: Incubation/formation
Condition: Hatching impending/extremely low elemental level
Potential: 3~5★
Description: After undergoing a thousand years of baptism, the unknown element will form an energy egg that could give birth to a pure elemental life form. Based on the calculation of the big data, because of the presence of much rotten wood in its surrounding, this egg could be a wood elemental life form. Friendly reminder: this elemental egg is extremely weak and will disappear if it does not get a large dose of the wood element within a week.
Get the hell out of my sight, you bloody big data! Who needs you to tell me this when I can see it for myself!
You might look impressive on the outside, but your identification ability really sucks!
You are a matured version of a plug-in and should be able to update automatically.
Enough of grumbling. That blue dot would not talk back, no matter what he said. It was just a means of relieving his stress.
Shao Zifeng felt it was creepy to talk sense in such an atmosphere.
He carefully took the elemental egg in his hands. It was feather-light as if he was holding nothing. As if the elemental egg had sensed something, it rapidly flickered a few times in his hand while emitting a faint green light. It seemed that it was resisting something, but it was too weak, and before long, it quietened down.
The elemental egg looked as if it had given up. “I’m lying here, Come on!”