Chapter 1042: Chapter 1042: Looking for the Bird
In the dead of winter, I couldn’t help but break out in a cold sweat. Maybe I really am a guy who’s constantly plagued by trouble; this attribute seems deeply etched into my fate: even if I occasionally spend a day at home playing with the kids, those described as the unlucky ones facing doomsday are probably like me.
"Dingdang, double-check again to see if the leaf is buried too far away, or if you’re looking in the wrong place. This yard is filled with your power, which might be interfering with your connection to the leaf," I hurriedly said to Dingdang, then turned to Anwina, "Medivh is also missing? When did it disappear?"
"I didn’t see it since noon yesterday," Anwina floated lightly in the air, with snowflakes passing through her body and falling to the ground, apparently in a phantom state, "I thought it went to the sky to practice flying. Medivh’s body is growing too quickly, so it needed to start learning to fly ahead of time. It’s different from a regular crow, and it has to figure out its own way of flying. It only recently learned how to flap its wings, and it’s been frequently going out to play on its own these past days. However, it usually is very careful to fly behind clouds where humans can’t see... Well, anyway, it didn’t come back home last night! I can’t sense its energy in the nest, nor did it come to say good morning to me!"
"Could these two incidents be connected?" Sister, already aware of Medivh’s night out, ran into Dingdang frantically searching for the leaf and became worried, "Could Medivh have taken that leaf away?"
"Probably... not..." I couldn’t help but also become suspicious, "A crow, digging up a leaf from the ground and then running off with the spoils? What’s in it for it? Plus, Medivh is a crow that listens well to Anwina; it wouldn’t leave without saying a word."
"There’s definitely a connection," Lin Xue suddenly chimed in, holding a black feather. It looked like a crow’s feather, but it was larger than any crow’s feather I’d ever seen, with a metallic sheen of deep blue and edges sharp as a blade. Upon closer inspection, you could even see a swirling shadow cloud of energy at the base of the feather. This was Medivh’s quill, "I found this in the snow under the eaves, meaning Medivh dropped it before it snowed. This feather tells me that young Crow God took Dingdang’s leaf, but all I have is this single feather; the information linkage is very limited. I can see that crow undergoing some drastic change, but... I don’t know what it might become. There’s too much uncertainty about it."
I looked into Lin Xue’s eyes, which glimmered with a mystic white aura: "What else? Will it come back? Can you see where it is?"
Lin Xue squinted slightly: "It will return soon, and it’s very healthy. This isn’t a bad thing, but Dingdang might lose her leaf... I suddenly saw something quite powerful just now; guess what happened to that leaf?"
I shook my head in confusion, but out of the corner of my eye, I suddenly saw Sandora walking over, and a thought clicked: "Eat?!"
... Guess why this word suddenly came to my mind? Okay, don’t bother guessing, just don’t tell Sandora...
Lin Xue’s mouth twitched: "You interrupted—exactly, Medivh ate that leaf." As she spoke, she circled halfway around the big tree, pointing to a snow-covered patch of grass, "Right here, Medivh accidentally dug the leaf out yesterday morning. It hasn’t changed its habits as a bird yet, and the Life Goddess’s leaf seemed to have attracted it, so it ate the leaf."
Anwina was a bit dumbfounded and asked cautiously: "Isn’t Medivh not supposed to eat? It never eats food..."
"What if it’s just to evolve?" Sandora’s voice sounded beside us, "It hasn’t eaten since it was born, but that doesn’t mean it can’t eat—moreover, I always maintain that a creature that doesn’t eat is incomplete..."
We collectively ignored Sandora’s latter remark and considered there might be some validity to what she said first.
"Is Dingdang’s leaf just gone like that?" Little One suddenly leaped onto my shoulder, wailing with a mournful face, "Is this the end for Dingdang’s first leaf?"
I suddenly felt overwhelmed, thinking that the real trouble was just beginning. If Lin Xue’s vision wasn’t off (which is almost certainly not the case), then Medivh did improve its diet slightly but swallowed Dingdang’s most precious leaf. Although in my view, that thing is about as useful as a first baby tooth, for Dingdang, it is of great significance: the little one even carefully planted it into the ground.
Although a few days after planting it, she completely forgot about it...
"I think we should find that bird first," Bingdisi said sympathetically, glancing at Dingdang, "There’s nothing we can do about Little One’s leaf, but I think there’s no need to be too upset: the Life Goddess’s leaf can regenerate, just plant it again in maybe fifty thousand years or so. Moreover, they’re usually only interested in things for about three minutes, including planting their leaves. Ten days or so from now, Dingdang will likely not even remember this."
Little Douding immediately started bouncing on my shoulder, gesturing as if protesting, but then she thought it over and sat down quietly, muttering: "You might be right. Hey, Ah Jun, Dingdang is in a bad mood; can I have two more milk candies today?"
A sense of deep helplessness washed over me, thinking even if you’re absent-minded, it shouldn’t be so obvious...
Finding Medivh might not be so easy. If it were just a regular bird, it’d be easier, probably not flying beyond the outskirts and the vicinity of a few counties. But once Medivh learned to fly, it was much more than just supersonic speeds. Plus, it had recently learned about space jumps from Anwina. Based on her estimates, if Medivh were to travel at full speed, it could circle the Earth more than three times in a day, and who knows which direction it will fly—and where the heck do we find it?
Certainly, we have experienced Imperial Agents, wide-ranging atmospheric floating probes, and global scan-capable stealth satellites in outer space, but all those rely on knowing what Medivh looks like now; Lin Xue’s prediction indicated that the crow was mutating, which rendered the energy characteristics recorded during its previous check-ups obsolete. We immediately deployed our orbiting stealth satellite, but couldn’t locate any energy reaction of the crow on Earth. Sandora pulled some surveillance records from yesterday and discovered that some probes at the city’s edge had briefly caught a glimpse of Medivh, when its speed was 135 mach (this definitely used the newly learned spell, otherwise we couldn’t explain it aerodynamically), and after that, the probe lost track of it. Medivh is a unique member of the First Family, inherently a flying creature, so our atmospheric monitoring equipment generally isn’t set to deliberately track its movements. If it’s not careful and accidentally learns invisibility skills, we really have a big problem.
After brief discussions, Sandora and I both considered the matter very dangerous: Medivh hasn’t yet learned to fully control its power, but its growth is clearly outpacing its self-control abilities. Its shadow breath is almost enough to directly destroy a tank brigade if it loses control. It’s intelligent, but its current mental development is no more than that of a five or six-year-old human child, occasionally throwing childish tantrums. Do you know what’s the most dangerous thing in the world? Let me tell you—naughty kids—these creatures are the most unreasonable, their main purpose is to destroy the world, and drive their parents insane, and now Medivh is effectively a naughty kid, and this one can spit shadow arrows that can puncture tanks, all while being impervious to regular weapons...
Previously, I did set a seal on Medivh, so it’d turn into a regular bird outside of training, but that seal has obviously become ineffective, possibly due to the tremendous energy surge after eating Dingdang’s leaf, which overwhelmed the simple "chain" set according to its original strength.
The little ones were still cheerfully playing in the snow in the yard, but we were back in the house figuring out how to find the bird.
Sandora shared her view first: "Since we don’t know what that bird has mutated into now, we can only scour the globe for places with strange energy reactions. Wherever bizarre energy fluctuations are found, we’ll send someone to investigate. I’ve already put the satellite online, so hopefully, soon we’ll be able to map out the global energy snapshot. Medivh’s powers include things that never existed on Earth before, such as shadow and arcane. Finding these energy hotspots might allow us to locate Medivh."
"It’s the place it stayed," Lin Xue added, "That bird is still flying around everywhere. I just saw it sweep over the Alps... but that was the scene from yesterday afternoon. There’s a delay when I observe these extremely close-range events."
I nodded to show my understanding. Although Lin Xue’s power is strong, its limitations are quite significant, especially under the current circumstances. If Medivh stays in one place, Lin Xue would definitely spot it on the spot, but that bird is constantly flying around the Earth, which is driving Lin Xue a bit crazy. After all, starting a prediction requires time and focus, while Medivh only needs to get in gear. It’s like trying to find a cat with an astronomical telescope on the Xizhimen Overpass, and if you can’t find it, it’s definitely not the telescope’s fault...
"Now those idle Imperial soldiers finally have something to do," Lin Xue sighed, "We need a team that’s broadly distributed across the Earth, well-connected, knowledgeable about the environment, and highly mobile to assist satellites in capturing Medivh. There’s only one suitable candidate..."
I nodded heavily: "That guy... Who’s going to get him out of the detention room?"
Lin Xue was quite surprised: "Wow! Sicaro was captured? A while ago, I saw him quite active."
Sandora covered her face: "He had a big plan a couple of days ago, but as soon as he stepped outside, he was pinned by Ling Meng with over four hundred city management officers: Ling Meng was on a payroll high that day."
When the global satellites were activated to search for Arcane and shadow reactions on Earth, Sicaro finally came out of the detention room to see the light of day. He already knew about the mission, so he first led his most capable subordinates to the Shadow City Suburb to hold an oath-taking ceremony, which was quite spectacular. Sicaro’s special action team has its own designated setup and uniform when executing tasks on Earth, roughly divided into optical disk team, palmistry team, train ticket team, license team, traditional Chinese medicine team, and hereditary treatment for psoriasis team, among more than a dozen squads. When we rushed over, we saw at least 10,000 people divided into twelve phalanxes standing on the square, each phalanx uniformly dressed in black super-hero suits, Taoist robes, Zhongshan suits, lab coats, or yellow vests. I almost thought I was at Lanxiang School...
These Imperial soldiers, when they’re not fighting, truly immerse themselves in boredom.
"Boss, I guarantee to complete the task!" Sicaro, with a face full of enthusiasm, pledged to me with a righteous expression. If there were no subtitles, you’d think he was ready to blow up a bunker, and some might believe it. Curious about his recent activities, I asked, "Were you caught by Ling Meng a few days ago? Red-handed? What exactly were you planning to do then?"
Sicaro’s face showed some embarrassment: "No... It was actually a legal business. I didn’t have any mission recently, so I thought about selling some local specialties in the Outer World, like roasted quail. I just learned the skill of roasting quail from a shaman from Azeroth."
I found it strange instantly: Roasting quail? Doing that doesn’t seem to be much of a mistake, especially since it’s in the Outer World, not affecting the order in Shadow City. Why was Ling Meng so excited?
Then Sicaro added: "I planned to sell it in front of the Great Wall Station. That place is very cold, and I thought hot food would be quite popular there. I originally contacted two others who can make beef flatbread, planning to go together..."
Me: "..." If those Antarctic researchers were to open the door one day and find a barbecue stall and two noodle vendors at the entrance of their research station, wouldn’t that just scare them to death? Ling Meng was still being gentle then!
Anyway, Sicaro and his team of seasoned soldiers finally had something to do. That afternoon, he and his most capable subordinates were ordered to go to the European region to search for traces of Medivh’s presence (according to Lin Xue’s observations, Medivh stayed in the European region the longest, and there were more clues there; it might not have left, as something in Europe seemed to have caught the bird’s attention). By tomorrow at three-thirty in the afternoon, five-yuan disks should be visible at the entrance of the Louvre.
That’s when I suddenly realized that sometimes the things that make you scratch your head aren’t necessarily world-ending disasters. Some inconspicuous little creatures, once out of control, can be quite troublesome. No matter how formidable Medivh is, it is still an underaged Crow God. Remove the word "God," and it’s just a bird. Yet, its sudden disappearance has triggered quite a bit of chaos. Several groups of Imperial soldiers have already been dispatched to search for a giant crow without alerting ordinary people. When they run into each other on the street, they greet each other: "Oh, looking for the bird?"
Then the other party nodded: "Mm, the bird’s gone."
If it’s two female soldiers, it’s fine. But if it’s two male soldiers meeting, such a greeting might attract at least a dozen bored uncles and aunts to gather around... Later, I asked Sicaro, who was in charge of this task, to hold an emergency meeting with his soldiers, advising them not to mention bird hunting in the streets...
However, I’m relatively optimistic about the disappearance of Medivh. With so many people searching, along with our advanced reconnaissance equipment, finding a crow within the entire Earth’s range without alerting anyone shouldn’t be too difficult. The only urgent aspect of this situation is not knowing when that bird might cause a disaster. Anwina made a good point: It’s just a child, with a personality equivalent to a four or five-year-old human child, and it had never left home before. Even when practicing flying, it only hovered over the old town for a short while. A divine bird like this, which has never left home and is quite naive, suddenly circles the Earth several times and gets lost outside...
An frightened child is the most prone to accidents, especially when that child has a power not much less than a nuclear bomb.
In the afternoon, we collected a lot of information. Although Medivh’s whereabouts remained undiscovered, we gradually found traces of its activities: in the Alpine Mountains, large patches of scorched earth left by a shadow storm, four or five wandering Crow Spirits appeared halfway up the Andes Mountains, and roughly three square kilometers of the Taklamakan Desert’s central area was covered in glass, indicating it had encountered a plasma storm. Some African Primitive Tribes claimed to have been "inspired by a deity." After contacting their chieftain, the investigators confirmed they saw a giant crow with a wingspan of at least a hundred meters, carried by thunder and storm in the sky. That crow hovered over the primitive tribe’s village for a few minutes before using space jump to leave: the worst-case scenario, Medivh has masterfully learned space magic and has become immeasurably stronger than before. Let’s mention here that those Imperial soldiers peddling new diet weight loss therapies in the African Primitive Tribes are indeed talents...
Within twenty-four hours, Medivh had left traces of its activities all over the globe, with some sightings even witnessed by ordinary people. However, it seemed to remember the teachings of Anwina and me, as the crow mostly operated in remote mountains and other uninhabited areas, seemingly trying its best to hide its existence.
Strangely, although Medivh was so active, we still couldn’t catch it. All the Imperial soldiers ran into nothing. The traces they found of Medivh were at least six hours old, meaning no signs of its activity were detected within the last six hours globally. Our satellite scans and probe reports in the atmosphere yielded the same results.
"It may have really learned invisibility skills," Sandora said helplessly after reading a pile of reports in the living room, "I said before, some skills shouldn’t be taught to it prematurely. As a mutant species, all learning should progress gradually."
Anwina appeared worried: "But ever since it learned how to use the internet, it downloaded the Dalaran Magic Encyclopedia from XL Navigation on its own..."
Me: "..."
Damn, Medivh has already become such an impressive fellow? (To be continued. If you enjoy this work, please visit Qidian () to vote for recommendations and monthly tickets. Your support is my biggest motivation.)