Wet viviparity

Chapter 7: Young Crow, Faint Shadow
Outside the temple, on the old locust tree, in the crow's nest.

There were six white eggs in the nest. Suddenly, a female crow with a bloody beak appeared outside the nest and flew back to the nest in panic.

"Gah~"

Another crow returned to the nest, looking up and shouting, as if complaining that the female crow had left the nest without permission and delayed the hatching of the eggs in the nest.

The female crow did not respond, but sat quietly back in the nest, keeping the eggs warm and turning them over from time to time to promote the development of the embryo inside.

Seeing this, the male crow tilted his head and did not continue to blame.

He called the adult crows from the previous nests, formed a flock, and went out to look for food together.

About two weeks later, the baby birds hatched from the nest one after another, with their eyes closed and mouths wide open, waiting for their father crow to feed them.

One of them would always flap its fleshy wings and get the food fed by the crow father before its brothers and sisters, and eat its fill.

After feeding the bird for about a week, the father crow discovered this chick with a huge appetite.

This young bird eats everything from insects, grains, nuts to mice and river frogs. Its stomach is like a bottomless pit.

As a last resort, the female crow left the nest early and took on the responsibility of feeding the crows together with the father crow.

A week later, Crow Father made another new discovery.

This baby bird always does two actions in the nest, one is standing on one leg, the other is stretching its wings, and these two actions can always be maintained for a long time.

Even with Crow Father's wisdom, he is not able to analyze the reason behind this.

As one of the few responsible birds in nature, this crow couple has been busy for more than a month, providing food for the big-eating chicks.

The big-eating chicks have grown rapidly in size over the past month or so. Their wings are now fully grown, shiny black, and they have long surpassed their father crow in size.

"Gah~"

On the first day of the test flight, the Great Gorgon crow issued a high-pitched call.

"quack."

For a moment, all the crow brothers on the branches of the locust tree were cheering for this strong new brother.

Big-Eating Crow, no, Ji Ming stood on one leg at the head of the nest. The crow couple in front were circling, looking forward to the first flight of this strong chick.

Ji Ming spread his wings lightly and landed on the nest without hesitation, carefully feeling the wind under his wings, and then flapped his wings and flew away into the distance.

He only needed to flap his wings slightly to fly through the forest and across the stream.

The breeze gently caressed the wings on his body, and he felt an indescribable joy at that moment, allowing him to temporarily forget the unhappiness of his previous life.

Fly over the hills and skim over the treetops.

Before his eyes, the mountains rose and fell like a flowing scroll, with layers of emerald green and dark green closely intertwined together.

"Gah!"

With a cry, the whole body dived down, and the wings slightly retracted to increase the speed of its tilted descent.

In the bushes, Ji Ming's crow body flashed like a black line, and under his claws, there was a struggling gray rabbit.

As soon as the claws tightened, the living rabbit became silent.

Ji Ming landed on a branch, enjoying the fresh flesh and blood, eating it with relish.

Ever since he broke out of his shell, he instinctively began to practice the standing and spreading forms of the "Controlling the Crane Skill", which led to a great increase in his appetite.

Fortunately, the crow couple was responsible, otherwise he would have starved to death.

No life is easy!

After catching another fat rabbit in the forest, Ji Ming immediately returned to the bird's nest and presented the fat rabbit to the crow couple who had been feeding him.

The crow couple took a look at the fat rabbit, then looked at the several baby crows in the nest that were obviously smaller than Ji Ming, and then they tore off the rabbit meat one by one and divided it into the nest.

"Gah~"

Ji Ming cried out in embarrassment and went back to hunting.

With the practice of the two forms of controlling the crane, as long as there is sufficient supply of blood and flesh, his physical strength will grow visibly.

In the nearby forests, mice, rabbits, pheasants and other small animals could not escape his sharp claws, and became the nutrients for his continued growth. In just three or four months, his size had surpassed that of an ordinary crow and was comparable to that of a hawk.

When he stood at the highest point of the forest, no bird dared to fly in front of him, because his diet had expanded to include birds.

Except for crows, of course.

When his body size reached this point, Ji Ming knew that even his secret skills would not allow him to grow any bigger.

Now his beak can peck through rocks, his sharp claws can easily break bones, and with his full hunting dive speed, few prey can escape.

He has become the hunting king in this forest.

It would be a lie to say that he was not happy after achieving this little bit of success. However, when he thought of the faint shadow of the word "reincarnation" emerging in his precious eyes, a cloud of worry weighed on his heart.

Without the support of the precious eye, he always felt uneasy.

In his last two lives, when he was born as a human, it took about ten years for the shadows of the words in his precious eyes to turn from light to dark and truly appear.

Does he have to wait another ten years in this life?

If something unexpected happened to him within these ten years, he would have no way out.

With a "bang" sound, in his excitement, he accidentally pinched the thick branches under his claws, causing them to burst, and the whole crow's body sank at once.

The big wings opened and closed, easily supporting the wind and soaring into the sky.

He knew that he had to continue to become stronger to ensure his survival for the next ten years.

Now there is only one way for him to continue to become stronger, and that is to become a "monster".

He needs a "master" to guide him, but before looking for this "master", he has to verify one thing first.

Next to the big locust tree is the place where Ji Ming died in his previous life - the old temple of Bonni Gong.

When Ji Ming landed on the big locust tree, the crows on the tree were frightened and flew away immediately, which made Ji Ming feel helpless.

Perhaps it was because he hunted too much in the past few months, or perhaps it was because his aura was too strong, he always managed to scare away the birds and animals nearby.

He had been watching the old temple from the tree for months.

During the day, the clay man was still dressed as a clay ghost, leading a clay horse. No one knew who he was performing for.

At night, he would leave the old temple early, and always come back riding a mud horse happily with a big belly.

I don't know if he knew it or not, but there was a crow on the locust tree outside the old temple, always observing him secretly through the shabby roof of the temple.

Finally, one day, Ji Ming saw the familiar tiger spirit, once again carrying a person into the temple.

"Sure enough, it's another gambling game. It seems that even the content of the gambling game has not changed."

Ji Ming lightly spread his wings and landed on one side of the temple ridge like a light feather. The black crow feathers all over his body made him indistinguishable from the stone ridge beasts on the temple.

He had a complete view of the situation inside the temple.

The skeleton lady arrived early as usual, bringing with her seven or eight ghost fires to illuminate the temple.

The next one to arrive was Rat Four, wearing a round hat.

In Ji Ming's eyes, neither Rat Four nor Rat Three who died at his hands were particularly powerful, and they didn't know how they could become monsters.

Shu Si was in a bad mood. As soon as he entered the old temple, he knelt down and begged Master Bo Ni.

"Third brother's death was truly tragic. Could you please, for the sake of our past friendship, give me the head of that corpse so that I can pay tribute to him?"

"Don't joke around." With a bit of displeasure on his face, Mr. Bo Ni scolded, "How dare you, a mere rat, disturb my elegant mood."

"Master, my brother and I are also servants of the Hu family, serving Master Hu. If you don't want to give face to the monk, you should at least give face to the Buddha!"

Shu Si took off the round hat on his head and said in a deep voice.

Bo Ni Gong was very disdainful of Shu Si's threat and was too lazy to even pay attention to him, and violently kicked him out of the temple.

Not long after that, two new "gamblers" came to the old temple.

(End of this chapter)