Chapter 246
Chapter 246
“Where are we supposed to look for the Phoenix-Mimic Bird?”
They had been in the valley for several days now.
Shen Qingzhu was like a mouse that had fallen into a rice bin.
There were simply too many fine medicinal herbs here, not to mention all kinds of precious timber.
The hunter had also been lucky enough to dig up quite a haul. Shen Qingzhu bought everything from him with lavish abandon, promising to pay once they returned.
Still, none of them had forgotten their ultimate purpose in coming here: to find the Phoenix-Mimic Bird.
Ji Lu, Ji Si, the two dogs, and Milk Tea the golden eagle went out searching every day. But they found nothing. Aside from a few feathers, there was no trace of a Phoenix-Mimic Bird anywhere.
Jiang Yunsui picked Beauty Mushrooms from the ground, her little face creased with worry.
They couldn’t really be extinct, could they? If they were, what would happen to Ji Yan’an?
Still fretting, she gathered an armful of Beauty Mushrooms and went to find the tigers.
The two adults and four cubs had become firm friends with her by now. She could walk into the mother tiger’s territory as if it were completely deserted.
The mother’s grown son, on the other hand, got pinned down and thrashed every time she caught sight of him. It was as though the mother tiger took every last scrap of her temper out on this shameless old son of hers.
The plump tiger was much bigger than his mother, yet whenever she beat him, he hunched his neck and cowered like the world’s greatest coward. Even after a beating, he refused to leave. He simply thickened his hide and went to eat whatever prey his mother had caught.
Every time Jiang Yunsui saw it, she laughed until her stomach hurt.
“Fatty Tiger, if you’re so good at taking a beating, why don’t you hunt your own food?”
She stuffed a Beauty Mushroom into his mouth. He was not picky in the slightest and immediately began chewing.
“Awooo.”
Why bother hunting when mooching tasted so much better?
His mother was an expert hunter, and her territory was overflowing with food. Fatty Tiger had no intention of leaving. He was waiting for the day his old mother grew too old, so he could inherit this territory.
Surely it was better to give it to her own son than let some other beast take it over?
The great fat tiger launched into a long series of roars, as if he were having a heart-to-heart with Jiang Yunsui.
She nodded from time to time.
“That actually sounds kind of reasonable.”
And she was not pretending to understand him. She-Little Mushroom-had evolved!
Two nights ago, while she was asleep, an enormous mass of virtuous power had descended from the heavens and plunged into her body. It was more than all the virtuous power she had ever received before.
Jiang Yunsui could even sense that the merit had come from the grain she had discovered. Ji Yan’an had already delivered it to the people who needed it.
The grain had met the most urgent needs of most of the drought victims in Henan, while large quantities of sweet-potato vermicelli had also been sent there from Mobei. She deserved part of the credit for that too.
That was why virtuous power had dropped from the sky into Jiang Yunsui while she slept.
This vast infusion did far more than accelerate her absorption of Moonlight Essence and the Power of the Stars. She could now grow more special mushrooms, and her body had become considerably stronger. Better yet, she could understand animals!
Though only animals with a certain degree of intelligence were intelligible to her.
“Fatty Tiger, have you ever seen a kind of bird-a really, really beautiful bird?”
Jiang Yunsui gestured as she spoke.
As a native resident, Fatty Tiger ought to know more than they did, right?
It had only been a sudden thought and a casual question. To her surprise, Fatty Tiger considered it seriously for a moment, then nodded.
Jiang Yunsui’s eyes went round.
He nodded!
“Y-you just nodded, didn’t you? You really know where the bird I’m talking about is?”
Fatty Tiger let out a roar.
‘I don’t know, but I’ve heard of it.’
This great fat tiger shared one of Jiang Yunsui’s hobbies: he adored excitement and gossip.
He had no territory of his own to guard, so he wandered everywhere every day. Birds were the race that loved gossip and beauty most of all. So many birds gathered in this valley partly because its environment was ideal for them to breed and survive-but one of the most important reasons was that a clan of Phoenix-Mimic Birds had once lived here.
The Phoenix-Mimic Bird did not merely bear the phoenix’s name. It also looked very much like the divine beast of legend, though it lacked the phoenix’s earth-shattering powers.
The bird clans pursued splendor and beauty. The mere appearance of a Phoenix-Mimic Bird could attract vast flocks of birds to follow it, and so more and more species had gathered here.
Unfortunately, people coveted their flesh and magnificent plumage. Coupled with their difficulty reproducing, that had gradually driven them toward extinction.
Yet scraps of news about the Phoenix-Mimic Birds still circulated among birds. Fatty Tiger had naturally picked up some of it, from an elderly albatross.
At this moment, Jiang Yunsui wanted to bow to the heavens. That virtuous power could not have come at a better time!
“Come on, come on! Hurry and take me there.”
She grabbed Fatty Tiger by the tail at once and urged him to lead the way.
His whole body jiggled with every lumbering step as he walked ahead.
Following him, Jiang Yunsui arrived beneath the valley’s waterfall.
That was right-there was a waterfall in the valley too.
A swath of plants grew along the cliff beside it: Moonlight Flowers.
No buds could be seen on Moonlight Flowers during the day. Only at night, when the moon and stars appeared, did they grow rapidly and bloom.
Their flowers were beautiful: pure white, glowing, and all turned toward the moon.
Phoenix-Mimic Birds adored Moonlight Flowers, and other birds liked them as well. But eating one was no easy feat.
The flowers grew only on the cliffs surrounding the waterfall and behind its curtain of water. To reach them, a bird had to fly through the falls.
Jiang Yunsui had visited before to see the flowers. When the Moonlight Flowers bloomed, the sight was spectacular.
And the flowers were not the only spectacular part. There were birds too.
Countless birds competed frantically for the flowers. The lucky ones snatched one or two from the edges, while most flew toward the waterfall itself.
Some made it through, but those were only the strongest birds. The rest were battered down by the waterfall. The lucky ones merely fell with soaked feathers and no strength left to fly. The unlucky ones lost their lives outright.
“Awooo…”
As Fatty Tiger growled with an exaggeratedly solemn expression on his huge furry face, Jiang Yunsui finally understood.
Rumor had it that the Phoenix-Mimic Birds’ nest lay behind the waterfall, directly behind the stretch where the water struck hardest. Even the strongest birds dared not approach that section.
Jiang Yunsui eyed the waterfall and swallowed.
Well… there was no way she could climb up there.
“Thank you, Fatty Tiger.”
She threw her arms around the tiger who had brought her this news and planted two big kisses on his forehead.
Then she turned around without hesitation and went back to find help.
She could not think of a solution, but Shen Qingzhu was clever, while Si Si and Liu Liu were great fighters. They would definitely come up with something.
And so Jiang Yunsui brought the news back.
Shen Qingzhu stared at her for so long that Little Mushroom’s hackles rose.
“What are you looking at?!” she cried with fierce babyish indignation.
Shen Qingzhu said nothing. He merely stroked her little head with some emotion.
“What great deed did Ji Yan’an do in his last life to meet a lucky little mushroom like you?”
They had brought Jiang Yunsui precisely because of her uncanny luck. Yet after searching for so many days without glimpsing so much as a shadow of the Phoenix-Mimic Bird, Shen Qingzhu had already given up hope.
Who would have thought the road would twist and reveal a way forward after all?