For someone who suddenly loses their eyesight, even ten minutes is unbearable, let alone ten days.
Ten days went. Yan Mo saw light again when he opened his eyes. He covered his eyes and opened and closed them several times.
He didn’t shout out and didn’t run out to rejoice, he just silently said thanks, and not particularly towards anyone.
God created the world in 7 days. Under the joint effort of the three species in this little piece of land, there were a lot of changes in these 10 days, including the living beings.
Let’s talk about the non-humans first.
Great lord, mountain god Jiu Feng, took the reins over the entire house with his domineering strength. Yan Mo had pacified and told him not to, but he still killed and ate a lot of man-eater bees.
Unable to fight against the tyrannical Jiu Feng and with their new king’s urging, the man-eater bees ended up leaving the house. They flew to the woods nearby and made a nest on a thick big tree, the trunk was as thick as four people’s arm diameter.
At first, the man-eater bees waited for their king to come live with them on the tree, so that they could build the new nest with the king as the centre. But the king always dragged it out and just wouldn’t come live on the tree. He even gave them a clear-cut order to choose a new queen.
The whole colony was bewildered, the king(queen) wanted them to choose a new queen, but the king(queen) hadn’t laid eggs yet, how would they rear the new queen?
But the confusion was soon smashed to pieces by the cold winter. These heroic bees had rushed out of their warm nest in winter to chase after their newborn king, fought with their bird and human enemies. Although they can stand the cold better than other bees, they also can’t stay out in the cold air for that long.
The man-eater bees who were starting to lose mobility because of the cold chose a new leader promptly. It was the strongest and healthiest small female bee, she was chosen to lead everyone in making the nest instead of the king. The bees can then start making their nest on the big tree.
When Yan Mo can see again, the bee nest was almost half built. Probably because the man-eater bees are bigger in size, the nest was also bigger than the usual bees’. So Yan Mo can see that the nest was not hanging by a small branch, but resting on a thicker tree bough. Although it’s still half-done, the size already occupied a large area. When the whole nest is finished, it’d be as if there’s a little house on the tree.
During his visit, Yan Mo had also ‘granted audience’ to the female bee that was in charge of the nest building in his stead. He had also relegated the important duty of continuing the bee colony ‘ceremoniously’ to the female bee.
The female bee felt very anxious… Well that’s just Yan Mo’s interpretation. He felt the slight unease from the female bee. Probably because she(it) didn’t know if she could become the new queen bee on her own.
On common knowledge, if a bee colony’s king/queen suddenly dies and there was no suitable larva to cultivate as the new leader, then a female bee from the colony, commonly called worker bee, will take the responsibility to breed new ones. While the other worker bees will build her a queen cell and provide her with ample nutrition to give birth.
That female bee will first lay the unfertilised eggs, which would become male bees(drones). When the male bees are big enough, the queen-candidate will then mate with the males and store their sperms. This will allow her to lay both fertilised and unfertilised eggs, and the fertilised eggs will become the female bees(workers). Some of these new worker eggs might be lucky enough to be groomed as the next queen.
Of course, a queen bee would not only be mating with her own offspring, she(it) will also accept the males from other colonies, even if they’re bees, they also try to avoid inbreeding as much as possible.
In order to make a worker bee who usually isn’t in charge of birthing to start giving birth, her nutrition is very important.
If the female bee can’t evolve to be a queen bee in the end, wouldn’t that signal this colony’s decline? Yan Mo thought of the guide’s shitty nature. Although he didn’t know how many scum points he would get for complete extinction of a whole bee colony, he thought that it wouldn’t be lower than 10 points. In order to avoid adding more points to himself as much as possible and avoid punishment, Yan Mo did something that others would find inconceivable.
He dripped a lot of blood in the queen room, and let the man-eater bees drink it. The man-eater bees drank his blood and made it into a sort of special royal jelly. The worker bees then feed the chosen female bee this royal jelly.
At first Yan Mo only wanted to ensure the colony could continue, while also returning the nutrition he took from the bees a bit, he even overlooked the fact that if the new queen bee emerged, he as the old king(queen) might end up challenged and abandoned by the colony.
Either because of the special nature of his body or because he kept repeating things like ‘you drank Laozi’s blood so you have to be good and obedient’ in his head while feeding them his blood, it will cause the female bee who’d turn into queen with his blood and her offspring to all have a strong imprint on their genes, which was to be subservient to this ‘old king’ Yan Mo.
Yan Mo still didn’t know yet about the ‘happy accident’ his thoughtless move would bring.
Now that we know what happened to the non-humans, let’s move on to the four humans.
Because Yan Mo couldn’t see, he was only taking care of communication with Jiu Feng and the bee colony. This resulted in another six pointed star on his face in this very short amount of time.
Yuan Zhan was rather shocked by this but Meng felt that the priest of the ancestor god should be like this.
Yan Mo knew clearer than anyone that that thing he ate must’ve contributed largely to why his ability improved and his body adapted. Otherwise, with the condition of his old body, there’s no way he could have enough energy to upgrade his ability or withstand the various after-effects from the upgrade.
While Yuan Zhan didn’t upgrade in these ten days, it was as if he had been enlightened on how to use his power. He no longer confined himself to the previous limitations, but worked on controlling the earth directly with his mind.
Yan Mo was glad to see it. The stonemason went up in level and became a bricklayer. They won’t have to worry when they want to build houses or make constructions in the future. Too bad that Yuan Zhan was more interested in various ways to fight using earth, and not developing towards everyday uses like Yan Mo wanted.
But once he’s good at one, he’ll be good at most things. Yan Mo comforted himself that the future was still full of promise.
Er Meng can be said to be the busiest one among all four of them in these ten days. Because Jiu Feng couldn’t hunt for the time being, Yuan Zhan was digging out a cave on the mountain, Yan Mo simply couldn’t be counted on, Meng was the only one who could take over hunting and cooking duties. At the same time he had to look after the little kid and tan the animal skin and so on.
It’s good that Meng’s personality liked some noise. He had felt that it’s too quiet when he was working alone. Now he had one more kid he had to look after… well he didn’t really have the idea of ‘looking after’. It’s just like there’s one more person to talk to and help him to do the chores to him. That’s why even if he would scare A’wu now and then, he was actually happy inside. He was also the one who liked A’wu the best between the three of them.
Probably due to the children of the primitive environment being stronger. Little A’wu had cried, had made noise, but after one night of sleep and eating actual meat, he didn’t look scared of Yan Mo anymore. His attitude of resigning himself to anything that’ll come was really funny. After eating and filling up his stomach, he’d obediently follow Meng to do chores. Whatever Meng told him to do, he’ll do. He didn’t cry and shout that he wants to go home or about other things.
Meng was happy to have someone accompanying him, he didn’t care if the kid could understand or not, he would talk about anything that comes to mind with the kid.
The little kid would always listen in a serious manner, and sometimes he would learn one or two words.
This natural change of the little boy instead made Yan Mo feel caught between laugh and tears. He was even worried that the kid might get trauma because he’s so sensitive and cowardly, he didn’t expect the boy to be able to adapt on his own. He couldn’t see the kid’s expressions, but from the fact that he kept stealthily trying to get closer to him, this little barbarian might have made up some story in his brain, probably thinking that Yan Mo was the Mountain God’s slave, and his life is surely very good, eating well and never getting cold? And to not be eaten, the little kid thought he had to curry favour with the mountain god’s slave who can talk to the god?
In truth, it was Yan Mo who overthought. The little boy doesn’t even fully understand the concept of death yet. Before, he acted purely from instinctive fear at seeing scary things, now, the kid had already told himself that seeing all those was normal in the mountain god’s territory, the older boy who can speak to the mountain god and man-eater bees is of course different from himself, he really didn’t need to be afraid, because he not only didn’t get eaten, he even got to eat great smelling and hot roasted meat the next day.
There’s meat to eat, there’s a warm place to sleep in. The kid accepted the reality with a strange relief and joy and started adapting to his new life — although Er Meng would always scare him, Meng would always give him his meat. He was one who ate least in his family, because he eats well now and also wears something warmer than before, he even wanted to bring his whole family to come live here, but he would definitely not bring the big witch!
Yan Mo’s eyes finally adapted to the light. Yan Mo stroked Jiu Feng beside him, he was a bit sluggish.
Jiu Feng was very bored with his inactivity. His wing was injured and he couldn’t fly, he could only walk on the ground like those two-legs. That two-legged monster called Er Meng even dared to feed him with a dead prey, chieek—!
“You pecked him already, after that he always fed you live prey…”
Jiu Feng cut in Yan Mo’s words with coos, “No need to feed! Only two-legs and little chicks need feeding! Me, hunt!”
It might be because he kept talking with Yan Mo, Jiu Feng’s vocabulary became larger, and he now had the concept of ‘me’.
“Yep, our Jiu Feng can hunt by himself, you’re the strongest hunter in the skies, no one can surpass you.” Yan Mo sincerely thought so and also said so.
“Want to fly! I hunt! Feed you!” Jiu Feng rubbed his head against the young boy.
Yan Mo had a rare moment of soft-heartedness. He stroked Jiu Feng’s head and smiled, “Okay. You’ll hunt and raise me. Don’t worry, I checked just now, your ability to recover is very strong, your wing has already healed a lot, after two more days you will be able to fly a short distance, at most ten days and you’ll be able to return to ruling the skies.”
While talking, Yan Mo pricked himself without looking and squeezed out a drop of blood towards Jiu Feng’s mouth.
This was not the first time he made such actions, that first night, he already started giving Jiu Feng his blood. This was inspired by the story of that blond god messenger Yuan Zhan told him. He thought, his self-healing ability was so strong now that his blood must have some effect, not to mention Jiu Feng had given him the bee’s treasured item that gave him a lot of nutrition. Based on the replies coming from the man-eater bees, what he ate was most probably the larva of the queen bee that was about to become pupa.
Yan Mo is shit to humans. No matter how good someone is to him, he would first doubt their intentions. Because human hearts are hard to guess and can easily change. But Jiu Feng to him is completely different. This dumb bird might be silly, but he was genuinely good to Yan Mo. Yan Mo also felt that a bird won’t have so many schemes, as long as he was good to Jiu Feng, then the bird will definitely pay him back with something of the same value or even better thing.
What’s more, Jiu Feng and the bees can’t tell other living beings about this thing. He didn’t need to worry he’s exposing his body’s special constitution. As for humans… he’d be stupid to bleed himself and feed it to other humans!
Jiu Feng saw Yan Mo pricking his finger and dropped blood for him, as if he knew the benefit of this blood, he didn’t refuse at all, and even opened his beak wide when Yan Mo moved his hand closer to him.
“Gurguruu.” Jiu Feng made a happy and trusting noise, his eyes partly closed.
Yan Mo licked his finger then stroked his bowing head. He didn’t make a sound to not disturb his recovery, he quietly stood up and went out.
Now that he can see, Yan Mo didn’t need others to guide him. He made his way to the woods himself.
Before, it was always Yuan Zhan who took him there, and he would drop Yan Mo to the big tree before running away at quickest speed.
Edited by Padam and Silversun
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