The Flaming Horns thought that the five Chang Le’s would leave immediately after they were released. However, they decided to stay on the Flaming Horn’s territory for a longer time. They stayed away from the Flaming Horn headquarters because they didn’t want to stay near where they were locked up for so long. They remained in the Flaming River Trading Point and chatted with the Taihe tribesmen. They all came from the other side of the sea after all.
The Flaming Horns kept a close watch over these Chang Le’s. If they tried to steal again, the Flaming Horns wouldn’t hesitate to kill them right away.
After the Taihe tribe picked the place for their settlement, they started building houses. The Flaming Horns also lent them a hand. Shao Xuan didn’t need to be there to watch over them, and he also knew that building houses wasn’t at all difficult for the Flaming Horns, so he left. The Flaming Horns couldn’t help them if they started cultivating the land for growing medicinal herbs, but they could still help with building houses.
After safely bringing the Taihe tribesmen across, Shao Xuan no longer had any important work to do, so he headed to the secret chamber in the basement of the Flaming River Castle.
The frozen creature, what Shao Xuan called the Pterosaur, was in the secret room. That was the same one Shao Xuan scooped up from the sea. Besides this creature, there were also two *Gomphos the size of rabbits. One had just died recently. The other one was half rotten.
[TL Note: Gomphos is a genus name of an ancient rabbit-like creature that looks like that]
The monster the Hui tribe brought over was put to a corner of the room. Shao Xuan didn’t need to study it anymore. After this, he could burn the monster immediately because it was no longer needed. The Hui tribesmen didn’t want it anyway, so it was better to burn it than leave it here to rot. There could possibly be some hidden dangers in the monster, so the earlier they burned it, the earlier they could eliminate the dangers.
If the Hui tribesmen were here now, they would also notice what had changed about the monster. Even though this monster seemed dead the time they brought it back, he could feel something special within its body back then. Now, this monster was really dead. Even the special energy within its body had disappeared.
Shao Xuan had discovered some of the secrets hidden in this body before he departed to the sea, but he didn’t have time to prove whether his guesses were correct. On the ship, there were too many factors restricting him, and he also didn’t want to take any risks. If he wasn’t careful, he might even bring problems to the entire fleet. That was why he waited all the way till now. He could finally put all of his focus on this subject and not worry about blasting a giant hole in the ship.
During his study, Shao Xuan also noticed that there were secrets hidden in the monster’s bones. It was dead merely because all of his internal organs had been removed. It wasn’t supposed to be possible for it to move but this monster could still move, run, chase and kill other people. The source of energy that allowed them to move was hidden within their bones.
The bone marrow can produce more blood cells. Even if these bones no longer made blood, if it needed to, it could still produce blood. An animal’s corpse still had enough potential to make blood. Shao Xuan called this potential “active potential”. As long as there was still active potential in the bone marrow, it could still be endowed with power that could allow it to move. Even though the corpse no longer had consciousness and was no longer the same person or animal as before, the power that could drive them was the hidden active potential in their bones.
They were like puppets without self-consciousness.
Usually, the active potential inside a creature’s bones would weaken after its death, and the longer they waited, the lower the rate of success. If he wanted to successfully recreate a monster, he had to do it fast.
Amongst the two Gomphos , the one that had died had much stronger active potential within its bones compared to the half-rotten one. Even if Shao Xuan was able to make the half-rotten one stand on its feet again, it would be no different from a rusty machinery. It wouldn’t be able to move naturally.
Of course, these were all Shao Xuan’s guesses. They were all based on his theory, but this theory had not been proven.
Shao Xuan never anticipated meeting those ancient creatures preserved in ice on his trip out at sea.
Why did Shao Xuan choose this Pterosaur and not the others? The active potential in the other creatures’ bones were all too weak. He would rather pick out some dead animals that had died for a long time in the forest, like the half-rotten Gomphos, than pick up any of those frozen animals. There was no difference in the active potential of their bones.
The pterosaur, however, was different. Shao Xuan was confident he could reactivate the potential within that creature’s bones. It was only after they arrived safely at this continent, when the ice melted, when he noticed a change in the creature’s body. The weak life force within the creature had slightly reactivated the active components in the creature’s bones.
The main difference that distinguished this pterosaur from the other frozen creatures was that it was alive before it was frozen. The other frozen ancient creatures had all been killed before they were frozen.
Shao Xuan didn’t experiment on the Gomphos in front of him that had died not long ago. Instead, he looked at the frozen creature in front of him and brought a torch closer and started melting away the ice.
As the ice melted, the creature that looked like a pterosaur was once again revealed in front of Shao Xuan.
It was still rolled up in a ball. Its wings covered its body and its head was also hiding within.He couldn’t see what it looked like exactly. Below, two hind claws were slightly revealed.
Shao Xuan tried to pull the creature’s wings to the side but he couldn’t move it, so stopped. He didn’t forcefully pull them apart.
In order to activate the potential within the creature’s bones, the first thing he needed to do was endow it with power, the power of the fire seed!
The fire seed’s energy could be merged with the bodies of the tribesmen, and its power could flow through the blood in their veins. This power could be passed from one generation to the next, so of course it was also within their bone marrow. Even if their blood could no longer be used and their bone marrow no longer produced blood, it could still carry the power of the fire seed!
He wiped away the water on the stone table and observed the still creature. It was still alive, but its breath wasn’t stable. Its energy was constantly fluctuating, sometimes strong, sometimes weak. It was fighting to survive. If it won this battle, its breath would grow stronger and perhaps this ancient creature could bring itself back to life, but if it lost, it would fall silent and die, just like the other ancient creatures that had died in the ice. It would then rot away.
Shao Xuan didn’t make a move right away. Instead, he watched and observed whether this ancient creature could survive.
The creature’s breath was constantly changing. It was changing from slow to fast, but then started to slow down again, and then it started to weaken.
It lost.
Perhaps it was because it was frozen in the ice for too long. It wasn’t strong enough to win this battle of life and death.
Shao Xuan only lifted his hand when the creature’s energy had weakened and almost disappeared. The success rate of his test would be higher if the host of the body wasn’t rejecting his power. Now, the creature’s life force was almost nonexistent, so it naturally couldn’t fight back. This was the reason Shao Xuan waited.
Shao Xuan summoned the fire seed’s energy from within his body. This was similar to the time he marked Caesar. However, he used totemic power back then. Even though the totemic power originated from the fire seed, it was still a little different compared to the fire seed.
Now, Shao Xuan was directly using the power of the Flaming Horn’s fire seed that was merged with his body. He did not completely suppress the other energy in his body though. He let the energy of the fire seed influence that energy, so that energy was also charging up.
Sometimes, this special power within him was even more useful than the Flaming Horn’s fire seed. If the fire seed’s energy couldn’t make this work, perhaps he would consider trying that energy. Maybe the success rate would be higher.
The totemic lines surfaced to his skin. A flame appeared on Shao Xuan’s hand.
He placed his hand directly on top of the creature. He was slowly testing the creature with the flames. Soon, the entire creature was engulfed in the flames.
The flames burned through its skin and reached its muscles and entered every single bone.
The high active potential within the bones allowed this creature to rapidly absorb the energy of the flames.
Shao Xuan examined the creature with his special vision. The bones on this creature were indeed experiencing a change. The bones were slowly changing colours, and were burning bright red. The energy was seeping through.
At first, only those bones that still had bone marrow experienced the change, but very soon, Shao Xuan noticed that it didn’t stop there.
The frozen blood within the creature was melting, and Shao Xuan could feel the blood starting flowing within the creature. From what he observed, a few red lines started appearing. Those were the creature’s blood vessels. The red colour was the power of the fire seed. To some extent, this was actually another type of fire seed merging process, except their target and purpose were different.
Thump! Thump!
It was the sound of a heart pumping.
Shao Xuan was stunned when he heard this sound.
Logically, this should not be happening. This was a dead body. It was no different from the monster. The monster could still stand up and move around without its heart and other organs. This meant that the monster didn’t really need a heart.
However, the heart within this creature under his palm had actually started beating.
Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump!
At first it was very weak, but gradually, it grew stronger until more red thin lines appeared, especially in the area near the creature’s heart. Its heart was beating faster. A few moments ago, its heart was only beating twice every minute, but now, it was beating to a rhythm similar to breathing. The life force of this creature was growing stronger, as if it was breaking through the ice. All of these facts could only prove that this creature was waking up!
Shao Xuan did not stop there though. The pterosaur was not rejecting Shao Xuan’s actions. It did not reject the power of the fire seed.
Perhaps the creature knew that this was the only way for it to wake up.
Its frozen body was starting to warm up.
The wings that were wrapped tightly around it also started to move, making gentle creaking sounds.
Its hind claws also unraveled and slowly extended outwards.
Shao Xuan noticed that its hindlegs were thicker compared to a bat’s, and looked a lot stronger too.
Click! Click! Click!
The wings moved once again and slowly opened towards the side. Its head also protruded from under its wings.
Shao Xuan looked at the ancient creature that was slowly unravelling. It was no doubt a pterosaur.
However, this was a lot smaller in size compared to most of the pterosaurs Shao Xuan knew about.