An adult Red Date Crab was roughly the size of a quail egg. When Lin Hui picked it up, he found a large mass of red, cotton-like material clinging to its underbelly, from which hung a dense, uncountable cluster of pale red eggs.
The crab fought back with everything it had, its eight legs raking the air in rapid, papery slashes. Against an ordinary person, those legs would have carved bloody gashes in an instant.
Considerably stronger than the common crabs from my previous life. For a creature this small, the raw strength feels roughly on par with a three- or four-year-old child, Lin Hui noted.
The Life Form objective requires
to save ninety-nine different species of living beings and then experience the pulsation of life. Would flora, insects, and animals all qualify? And what exactly constitutes saving them?
He set the crab down and wandered a little further. Before long, he ca across another Red Date Crab wedged in a rock crevice, so tightly packed by its neighbors that its shell had begun to deform.
He reached in, plucked it free, and set it on an open stretch of beach. The mont its legs touched stone, it brandished both pincers and bolted sideways toward the water as if its life depended on it.
Does that count as saving one species?
Monts later, sothing faint and warm trickled into his chest—faint as a single thread of warm water, almost like a gentle pressure against the heart. But it was so thin and so brief that it dissolved before he could fix his attention on it, leaving him uncertain whether the sensation had been real at all.
So that is the pulsation of life. I knew it wouldn't be this straightforward.
Lin Hui frowned. If insects were included among the ninety-nine species, the available candidates would number in the hundreds. If Mist monsters also qualified, the categories would easily stretch further still. But the deeper problem was that if the saved creature was too weak, the pulsation would vanish the instant it appeared—over before he could register it. He would gain nothing at all.
He straightened and looked around. Red Stone Beach t the sea on one side; on the other, it gave way to a stretch of black forest three or four hundred ters off. Most of the trees were dark as charcoal, as if scorched long ago. Drifting between their trunks were creatures that resembled terrestrial jellyfish—black-bodied, trailing long tentacles that flickered with pale green fluorescence.
Orchard Cricket. He had seen them before on his walks. According to his fellow teachers, they occupied an ambiguous niche between insect and animal: highly venomous, yet entirely docile, and inclined to feed solely on fruits and nuts.
His mind turned. He crossed the distance in a blur, arriving at the forest's edge before one of the floating creatures.
The Orchard Cricket was over a ter in length, drifting before him like a lantern. Its lower tentacles rippled in a slow, rhythmic undulation, generating the subtle, formless force that kept it aloft.
Gulu, gulu. A sound like clusters of water bubbles bursting in sequence—soft, continuous, and wholly unintelligible.
Lin Hui scanned the area. None of the Orchard Cricket in sight appeared to be in any distress.
What if the living beings I need to save simply don't require saving in the first place?
Then I'll give them a reason to need it. He looked at the Orchard Cricket in front of him.
Smack.
He reached out and slapped it.
Struck by overwhelming force, the Orchard Cricket shot off like a crossbow bolt and crashed into the nearest black trunk, gouging a deep, jagged crater in the wood. Bark exploded outward. The creature's carapace buckled inward, fracturing across a wide section of its body.
It dropped to the ground and rolled twice, tentacles writhing, unable to right itself.
Lin Hui stepped forward at once and gently lifted it. He drew a dicinal powder from the pouch at his waist—an antiseptic formulation—and applied it carefully. He had no idea whether human dicine would do anything for this creature, but treating the injury was non-negotiable. Fortunately, there was no bleeding; the outer shell was dented and cracked, but the body beneath seed intact. The Orchard Cricket gave off a faint, fruity warmth—sothing between banana and peach.
After a mont's struggle, the Orchard Cricket lifted free of his hands and accelerated sharply away, vanishing into the trees. It left behind not the faintest trace of life pulsation.
So that approach doesn't work. Is the pulsation determined subjectively? Or does it require specific conditions to trigger?
He retreated from the forest and concealed himself, then sent a asured burst of Internal Force from a distance, catching an Orchard Cricket resting against a trunk.
Thwack. The creature dropped hard, its body trembling, unable to move. Lin Hui had calibrated the force with precision—the shell was unbroken, the creature rely dazed, likely rattled by the equivalent of a mild concussion.
Just as the Orchard Cricket was presumably wondering where the blow had co from, Lin Hui descended from above, scooped it gently into his arms, applied dicine, soothed it, and released it back into the air.
The Orchard Cricket circled him once or twice—sothing that might have been gratitude—then drifted away.
And then: nothing. Not the faintest stirring of life pulsation.
Perhaps the injury wasn't severe enough? He repeated the test several more tis, varying the degree of injury before each treatnt. After nearly two hours of this, the result was the sa.
The sky was beginning to darken. He called it off and headed back.
On his way, he stopped at a street vendor and bought two pots of wilting flowers—one a Golden Water Orchid, the other a Wind Chi Daffodil. Both were suffering from the sa straightforward problem: pest infestations.
He carried them back and set them down by his study door.
This ti: the life pulsation of flora.
After consulting the groundskeeper responsible for the courtyard's plants, he procured the appropriate dicinal powders for both pests, then ticulously uprooted each plant, rinsed the roots, applied the treatnts, repotted them in fresh soil, and watered them through.
By the ti he finished the second pot, the sky had gone fully dark. Li Yuanyuan was directing the maids to draw the night canopies shut across the open sections of the manor. With the Night Mist posing a constant threat, most structures here were fully enclosed; only the gardens and open corridors required covering.
Once the flowers were treated, Lin Hui didn't linger. Looking at the two pots, he estimated that any aningful response would take hours at a minimum—perhaps days. Plants had always moved on their own tiline. He knew better than to expect otherwise.
Over the days that followed, he kept to his routine: teaching at the academy, cultivating, and occasionally returning to the Lin Manor to guide Lin Xiaoliu and navigate the quietly awkward company of Liu Xiao.
Ever since his father had made his intentions transparent, Liu Xiao would color deeply whenever Lin Hui ca ho—sitting with her head down, refusing to speak. He had taken to filling the silence by recounting his teaching experiences, particularly his dealings with Fan Lingxi. Liu Xiao had her own teaching post at the academy by then, and after a year, she had found her footing in the classroom, so discussing the work gave them natural ground to stand on.
In ti, his attention circled back to the pulsation of life.
A few days later, the Golden Water Orchid had recovered. The Wind Chi Daffodil had not—it had withered completely and died.
When Lin Hui ca ho at noon after morning classes, he felt a faint warmth filter into his chest the mont he crossed the threshold. Even thinner than what the Red Date Crab had produced, and just as brief.
So that's the life pulsation of flora. Far too little, and it took far too long. A large tree might yield more. But even so, this approach is too slow. If I could save every species of living being across an entire area at once... wouldn't I absorb a substantial volu of life pulsation in a single pass?
Before that line of thinking could develop further, sothing else demanded his attention. It was ti for Wang Hongshi's wedding.
…
Myriad Feathers Manor sat north of Xinque Town, out beyond the town's edge among the farmsteads that stretched toward the neighboring Baishui Town. The Manor Lord, by reputation, was a forr pirate who had retired from the trade. The surrounding farmland was his, and he leased out his several manor houses for wedding celebrations to earn a living from it.
The bride's side arrived in considerable numbers. Her family was evidently well-off.
Lin Hui and the Clear Wind Dao mbers attended in disguise, passing themselves off as Wang Hongshi's ordinary relatives and friends.
A series of ceremonies followed—lively in appearance, tedious in duration.
Wang Hongshi and his bride, Zhao Feiyue, knelt before both sets of parents and perford their bows. Lin Hui sat in the elders' row, hands folded in his lap, watching the proceedings approach their final stage—the sending of the couple to the bridal chamber.
Bang!
Without warning, a gray figure vaulted down from the courtyard wall and lunged directly at the bride.
"Hahahaha! What luck tonight! To think I'd stumble across such a charming little thing just passing by!"
He swept one large hand through the air, conjuring a vast fan of palm shadows that pressed down over Zhao Feiyue.
"Just you wait—I'll take my ti enjoying you once I get you ho!"
"Insolent!"
"Stop him!"
"You dare crash the Zhao family's wedding? Die!"
Three figures burst from among the Zhao family's guests. Three white-blazing surges of Internal Force tore through the air, shattered the fan of palm shadows outright, and hamred into the intruder's body in rapid succession.
Pfft. The gray figure coughed blood and went airborne, sailing dozens of ters back before disappearing over the wall with a crash.
Lin Hui stared.
None of the Clear Wind Dao mbers had moved either. Everyone present understood that with Lin Hui presiding, no sudden disruption would amount to a real threat. It was simply that no one had anticipated the lecher being this feeble—unable to get past the Zhao family's guests.
The crowd surged. The intruder was run down, dragged back, and hauled to his knees in front of everyone. A gray sack was yanked over his head. He was beaten thoroughly, wailing without pause.
"We might as well kill him," said Zhao Feichi, the bride's elder brother, with a look of mild boredom. He served as head constable at the local yan and knew its laws intimately. "If we hand him over, he'll end up in the blade cage regardless. Save everyone the trouble."
"Deal with it quickly, then. Don't let it hold up the auspicious hour." Wang Hongshi's father nodded his agreent. After years as the Clear Wind Dao's chief supervisor, Wang Hongshi had ensured his family rose comfortably above its forr station; his father now carried himself with the easy bearing of a prosperous rchant.
"Since we're all in agreent." The Zhao family man who had dragged the intruder back smiled pleasantly, raised his blade, and prepared to make it clean.
"Wait." Lin Hui raised a hand.
Sothing had just occurred to him: if he saved this man—this particular lecher—would that generate a portion of life pulsation? He wanted to know whether the pulsation carried any moral weight, whether it cared about the quality of the life being preserved.
And beyond that, if he did obtain it, what would happen if he turned around and killed the man imdiately after?
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