Chapter 402: Hatching and Regressing!(Sixth)

The egg was a bottomless pit. No matter how much soulforce it absorbed, it didn’t seem to have any intentions of stopping. Bai Yunfei was a late-stage Soul Ancestor, and his soulforce was much higher than the average one, yet it barely took ten seconds to drain him completely dry of both soulforce and elemental fire!

The lack of soulforce resulted in the warning signs of blacking out, and the absorption of elemental fire meant the coming instability of the essence fireseed!

Unlike soulforce which could be recovered, losing all of one’s elemental fire meant the debilitation of one’s capability to be a soul cultivator!

Not even a single thought was to be had for Bai Yunfei to respond to this situation. All he knew was that his soulsense was rapidly dimming, and his own vision fading away starting from the corners.

Knowing not what he should do, despair filled at the very center of Bai Yunfei’s mind and heart….

“Th-thump….”

Another pecking sound was heard in his ears—

No.

Saying that he could hear it in his ears would be wrong.

He was hearing it straight in his mind!

“Th-thump, th-thump….”

It came again. If Bai Yunfei wasn’t hearing things, then the sound was becoming more clear, and louder!

A bizarre sound was happening simultaneously inside his head.

It felt a little….familial. Like if the sound was ‘connected’ to him in a way he didn’t understand.

“Crack….”

Another sound he hadn’t heard before, but this time, it occurred in the real world rather than in his head.

Like the switch for everything to break loose, the sound he heard was the start for Bai Yunfei’s entire body to suddenly lose any semblance of force on it. Even the suction force he had been feeling earlier from the egg disappeared without any prior warnings!

The sudden change in his body was startling to say the least. Not even aware that he had dropped the egg, Bai Yunfei stumbled backwards, his head still unsure of what was going on.

It took ten or so steps for his back to touch the wall, but even then, Bai Yunfei felt himself unsteady and slumped to the ground with a heavy thud!

A few ways away, the egg thumped on the ground at the same time he did.

“Cerrrack….”

The sound of something cracking into pieces was heard next.

This was the sound of an egg being broken from the inside out!

For the first time in seemingly forever, clarity hit Bai Yunfei. Since he was still without strength, he could only stare out in front of him in disbelief. “Thi—wha? How’s this happening!!”

His mind was filled with disbelief, but the proof of what was going on was evident in his eyes.

There was ‘life’ being born into the world just a few steps away from him!

This wasn’t told to him by his soulsense, but rather some sort of other signal that made itself known to his consciousness and mind. A multicolored light was starting to take form in the shape of an ovalish egg. A red beak was poking its way out of the egg and making even bigger cracks of it.

Eventually, a small head poked through, and then, its wings….

“Chirp chirp….”

A faint cry from the creature snapped Bai Yunfei awake. Stunned, his head beckoned downwards to look at it. The multicolored light that had previously been burning away at his eyes was already petered away to levels just barely visible from behind the egg shells.

And at the very center of the egg, a small but colorful bird-shape figure was shivering just slightly in it…..

At an estimation, the bird was roughly the size of two fists put together. Its plumage was the color of the rainbow, and little claws hung at the bottom of its feet. Its tiny head shook side to side softly, as if it was feeling muddle-headed.

It let out a shrill chirp once before spreading its wings out. With a tentative claw on the ground, it tried to take a step away from its egg.

When it noticed Bai Yunfei, the bird lifted its head to look at him with eyes filled with innocence found only in a newborn.

“Chirp chirp….”

For two seconds, Bai Yunfei and the soulbeast stared at one another. Then, when the bird let loose an excited chirp, it teetered towards Bai Yunfei!

Completely caught off guard by the third chirp, Bai Yunfei found himself instinctively trying to move backwards.

For some reason, the things that were happening in front of him was scaring him.

“D-don’t come over, or I-I’ll….” He stammered incoherently.

He originally wanted to say ,’or I’ll scream’, but that didn’t seem quite right, and neither did ‘or I won’t take it easy on you’. The latter especially felt extremely wrong to say to a little bird of all things, so he chose to stay quiet instead.

The longer Bai Yunfei failed to say or do something, the more the bird was able to move smoothly over to where he was. Soon, it was able to cross the two meters over to Bai Yunfei and leapt onto his thigh to embrace him while he was motionless….

“Chirp chirp!!”

The soft feathers on the head of the bird tickled at Bai Yunfei’s chest. Chirping twice, it fluffed its wings and stared innocently at him.

Somehow, Bai Yunfei had the feeling that the looks the little bird was giving him were of ‘happiness’....

…………

A soft red gleam of light emanated from within the cave as elemental fire manifested into the cave to be absorbed into Bai Yunfei’s body.

He was in the middle of recovering his soulforce and elemental fire. Due to the unexpected mishaps a while ago, both his tanks were basically empty and would require some time for them both to fully recover.

A small ball of fluff was curled on top of his right leg. Identified as a baby prisma oriole by Bai Yunfei, the bird looked as though it was sleeping with it being curled up and its eyes being closed.

But in actuality, it was also absorbing some of the elemental fire along with Bai Yunfei!

A while later, the elemental fire in the cave fluctuated by a tiny amount before being fully absorbed into Bai Yunfei’s body.

Sighing as he felt the last wisp of it enter him, Bai Yunfei slowly opened his eyes.

Rather than relief, only depression existed in them.

“Is there really no way to recover my strength right now? I was so close to breaking through….” Bai Yunfei sighed to himself. “I came to the forest to make progress, not regress!”

Bai Yunfei’s strength had been negatively affected by the recent events, dropping him from a late-stage Soul Ancestor on the verge of breaking through to just a late-stage Soul Ancestor!

From standing at the peak of a mountain to falling down to near the top of it!

The average soul cultivator would’ve blown their stack should this happen to them, since it’d require several years of work in order to regain what they had lost. Luckily, Bai Yunfei was far more calm-headed than other soul cultivators, since he had several available resources, such as the Equipment Upgrade Technique, the Cultivation Pendant, and the Dual Flame Arts in order to help him train back to his original state.

But still.

Depression couldn’t be helped. He’d been training the Soulbeast Forest for so long for so hard already. To regress after all of that was painful, and the fact that it happened because of some sort of mysterious circumstance made him feel all the more terrible.

It felt like he was serving out a punishment for a crime he was innocent of.

“Eh?”

Just then, Bai Yunfei felt movement from the small ball of fluff on his leg.

The bird was starting to wake….