Chapter 39: 38. Bird of Sorrow

38. Bird of Sorrow

Suspended in the high altitude, looking out over the earth from beneath the boundless night sky, while marveling at the greatness of heaven and earth and the insignificance of humans like mayflies, Li Jiahong felt more panic and unease in his heart at this moment.

Yet as time passed, Li Jiahong instead found an indescribable peace from those sharp talons; he looked suspiciously at that strange, terrifying bird-like human face, "Are you going to take me to find my child?"

The two giant eyeballs on that expressionless face rotated halfway, gazing down at Li Jiahong, but when it opened its mouth, it emitted a cry of unclear meaning.

Li Jiahong stared at the strange bird, and after examining it closely, his fear thinned, but his eyes grew increasingly sorrowful; when his gaze fell upon a familiar set of pajamas, and the Black-edged White Feather scattered across the earth like falling snow, his pain replaced all other emotions, and he could not help but shout out the truth he dared not face.

"Wife..."

That night, a man's painful screams resounded through the night sky, and unknown Feathers were scattered along the path of the sound; the Feathers fell like frost and snow and vanished upon touching the ground, and only the few lucky ones who caught a Feather realized that the things falling in swarms that night were individual unknown Feathers.

"What is this?" The lucky ones looked at the Black-edged White Feather in their hands, lost in deep confusion, while the women among them felt a craving magic within it and were fascinated by it.

As the area of the Abnormal phenomenon gradually expanded, the matter soon reached the ears of He Jia'an and the other two, who were driving.

"Feathers?" Yu Lianyun and Li Yingqi were startled upon hearing this, and both simultaneously thought of the Feather that Li Jiahong had rented from the Forest Cabin; the two looked back behind them and truly saw, from far away, bright, light specks slowly drifting down in the night sky.

Tracing the trajectory of those falling Feathers, Yu Lianyun soon discovered that familiar, strange female bird, and faintly saw that the strange bird was also clutching a human figure beneath its feet.

"It's that strange bird! It even grabbed a person? Wait... isn't that person Li Jiahong?" The more Yu Lianyun looked, the more familiar the figure of the person grabbed into the high sky by the strange bird seemed, and she could not restrain herself from shouting loudly.

Li Yingqi looked at He Jia'an with a solemn expression: "Team Leader He, what should we do?"

He Jia'an, however, seemed not to feel any crisis at all and said calmly: "Do nothing. Pass down the order: other Mysterious Agents are not to interfere with that strange bird either."

Hearing He Jia'an's words, both Yu Lianyun and Li Yingqi could not help but look at each other in confusion, seemingly unable to understand why he was so calm.

"That strange bird seems to be following us?" Yu Lianyun then discovered another oddity.

"It doesn't matter," He Jia'an said with a light sigh, "Let them follow."

Li Yingqi rummaged through the front passenger seat box and took out a pair of night-vision binoculars; when she saw the situation in the sky, her expression quickly changed from shock to a lingering silence, and the same happened to Yu Lianyun after she took the binoculars to observe.

"Team Leader He, so you knew all along?" Yu Lianyun looked at He Jia'an, who was driving the car, with a complex expression and gritted her teeth, "The true form of that strange bird."

"Yes, after seeing the balcony of Jiang Gu's hospital room, I faintly guessed some things," He Jia'an admitted generously and explained, "The claw marks left on the balcony wall were facing outward, and only outward; if it had descended normally from the outside, there should have been claw marks facing inward. This means that the balcony of that hospital room was very likely the starting point for the strange bird.

If that strange bird did not have the ability to appear out of thin air, this means the strange bird possesses the ability to merge into the crowd. Moreover, haven't there been too many 'miracles' happening to Li Jiahong's wife during this time? So at the time, I was wondering, is there a possibility that the true power of the Feather is not to summon the strange bird, but to undergo Metamorphosis into the strange bird?"

He Jia'an quickly took his phone out of his pocket and handed it to his two teammates, "Of course, what made me completely certain of my guess was that headquarters found records regarding that strange bird."

Yu Lianyun and Li Yingqi put their heads together and began to flip through the information on the strange bird that He Jia'an had obtained.

"It is a type of Abnormal creature known as a Guhuoniao; legend says it is the daughter of the Heavenly Emperor, and others say it is formed from the sorrowful soul of a woman who died in childbirth. It sheds its feathers to become human, and dons feathers to become a bird...

Because it lost its own child, it has an abnormal love for other people's children; when it sees someone hanging out children's clothes outside at night, it will quietly take away that family's child," He Jia'an said.

As he spoke, he paused for a moment and continued: "And the sighting records for this Abnormal creature stopped 500 years ago; they haven't appeared for a very long time."

Li Yingqi was silent after hearing this, "Formed by a mother who lost her child? What principle is this Abnormal creature based on this time? It's just as unfathomable as the Blessing."

Feeling that she had been pointed out, Yu Lianyun felt inexplicably guilty, while at the same time feeling as if she could understand the reason why such an Abnormality could be born.

The Blessing was born based on the most primitive fear, and fear is the most primitive emotion, and emotion is a concept born alongside life itself—here, life even includes the Alien Gods.

If emotion could be expressed in a concrete way, then to an Alien God, wouldn't its weight be just as 'indescribable' as 'the Alien God is to humanity'?

The Blessing has already proven that Alien Gods are not existences completely unaffected by emotion, and the historical deeds of using the Old Seal to drive away Alien Gods prove that even among the Alien Gods, the One Who Returns All Things, the Key of Transcendence, also possesses the emotion of disgust.

These are all enough to prove the potential power that emotion possesses.

Since the emotion of fear can give birth to a Blessing, then why can't the emotions of love and resentment give birth to a Guhuoniao?

Perhaps it was precisely because she thought of the reasons for the birth of the Blessing and the Guhuoniao being so similar that Yu Lianyun suddenly felt a sense of unease; she looked back at the joy that had suddenly become clear, finally noticed a detail she had inadvertently overlooked, and immediately shuddered violently.

"Are you very cold?" Li Yingqi asked with concern, and even thoughtfully helped turn up the temperature of the car's air conditioning.

Yu Lianyun looked in terror at the two who had not yet reacted, and tremblingly pointed out: "Team Leader He just said, if the Feather is not a summoning, but a Metamorphosis... then assuming that the scattered Feathers are also..."

He Jia'an's hands shook and his legs trembled, and the car swerved and accelerated, nearly crashing into the side of the road.

Li Yingqi even had bloodshot eyes, and she said in a trembling voice: "No, that can't be."

"If it can't be, then why did Lin Laoban say that after discovering the second Feather, he demanded the immediate recovery of all Feathers?" Yu Lianyun swallowed her saliva, enunciating every word, with the emphasis falling on the word "all".

In an instant, the two were speechless; the truth killed their last shred of naive luck, and a strong sense of suffocation nearly choked the sanity of the three.

A Curse... the Curse has spread again!?

"Heh," Lin Ling stuck the Feathers into a potted plant full of Stone Leek, decorating the Stone Leek in a gaudy but slightly deformed, beautiful way, "It's truly extremely beautiful."

"Boss, should we burn all the Feathers?" Wei Jiang was starting a fire in the stove at the door, dragging out a cart of Feathers, and poked his head in to ask Lin Ling inside the house.

Lin Ling said with a smile: "Yes, because there are already enough of them."