Chapter 5: The Squatter on the Eggshell
Gurgle.
Gurgle, gurgle—
Shen Lin drifted along with the swaying egg liquid, his body rocking back and forth.
Shen Lin: “…”
Shen Lin: Yue~!
After the Ghost Vines went mad, he had been huffing and puffing while “picking up trash.” Unfortunately, there was too much trash, and Shen Lin found it quite a struggle. Even though the egg liquid could provide a continuous stream of energy and his brain was spirited, his body was weak and limp. As an unhatched cub, his “hardware” wasn’t up to standard, so he was slightly lacking in everything he did.
Huff, huff~
Shen Lin endured the waves of drowsiness washing over his body as he piled up the “trash” he had collected. He stood up and used his small fists to thump his waist, easing the stiffness from bending over for so long.
Holding his breath and concentrating, a pink glow appeared in his hands. Strands of light drifted from his palms, affectionately rubbing against the cub’s milky cheeks. The cub let out a giggle and patted the light strands, signaling that it was time to work.
The light strands wove through the trash emitting black gas, knitting into a large-sized trash bag. The light strands changed rapidly into a pink broom, sweeping and sweeping until all the trash was in the bag. The pink light grew more intense. The trash inside the pink bag seemed to encounter high heat; it rapidly receded until it turned into clumps of pink cotton candy, which were then absorbed by the light strands.
As the trash disappeared, the light strands decomposed into particles of light that merged into the cub’s body. The fingernails that the cub had violently broken earlier grew back bit by bit, and a faint blush appeared on his pale little face, as if he had taken a powerful tonic.
The Ghost Vines’ sense of rejection weakened and they gradually quieted down. The gray-brown mold spots on them stopped spreading.
Shen Lin completely flattened out like a pancake, unwilling to move again. Picking up trash for several hours had reached the limit of his body; now he didn’t even want to move a finger. Shen Lin blinked his eyes, and his consciousness gradually drifted into darkness.
Crack!
A faint sound of cracking rang out.
Shen Lin’s eyelashes fluttered, but there was no sign of him waking up. With the rhythmic swaying of the cradle, he fell into an even deeper sleep.
The Ghost Vines moved their massive trunks to encircle the cub within their protection. The high-hanging vines were like venomous snakes lurking in the dark, not missing any target that might pose a danger to the cub. The energy stones spread across the floor continuously fed energy to the Ghost Vines. Without the mold eroding them, their size seemed to have grown even larger.
The entire underground space fell silent.
The pink egg, glowing with a gentle light, lay quietly in the nest. However, at the edge of the door, a dark shadow flashed.
Seen by the light of the energy stones, it was a limping Jackal, its gaze greedily fixed on the pink egg.
Xiong Si’s self-detonation had accelerated the evaporation of the inducer, causing the Ghost Vines to go into a frenzy. Shen Lin had been busy clearing the trash in the Ghost Vines’ brains and hadn’t spared any attention for him. Unexpectedly, Wil had managed to survive among the frenzy of Ghost Vines contaminated by the beastman’s self-detonation. One could only wonder if he was simply lucky.
Anyone else would have run for their lives after such a close call, yet he chose to do the opposite. Perhaps the inducer in the air hadn’t fully dissipated, obscuring the Ghost Vines’ “vision.” Or perhaps the Jackal used a special method to hide his scent, as the Ghost Vines didn’t immediately notice him moving toward the pink egg.
In the cavernous space, there was only the faint sound of the Jackal’s paws rubbing against the ground. Wil’s eyes never left the pink egg for a single second. To be able to pave such a massive nest with so many high-grade energy stones, the Shen family must place extreme importance on this unhatched cub. Perhaps he was the Shen family’s final trump card. If he got this egg, he might be able to add even more weight to the original bounty price.
But…
Wil, the Jackal beastman, felt the blood coursing backward through his body. His mind suffered from the constant pounding of stabs of pain, and veins crawled from his neck up to his temples. His bloodshot eyes stared fixedly at the increasing number of gray spots on the back of his hands.
Wil didn’t want to experience this “curse-inducing” feeling a second time. Feeling the agonizing pain of his bloodline-strengthened veins surging wave after wave, Wil squeezed his palms hard, barely suppressing his body that felt like it was about to explode. His Jackal nose, which he couldn’t retract, puffed out bursts of hot air in anger. In his heart, he cursed the big shot who had given him the inducer once again.
The other party had vowed and guaranteed that it wouldn’t have any impact on him, but it turned out to be all nonsense! He only wanted to kill Xiong Si and double-cross everyone so he could live a life of leisure; he didn’t want to get himself killed. However, once things happened, they were beyond his control.
Although Xiong Si was dead, the source of pollution from his self-detonation had triggered the Ghost Vine riot. To avoid the Ghost Vines, he had used almost all his life-saving items just to barely survive. But he couldn’t bear to leave so pathetically.
One could say the Jackal beastman’s beast form was indeed an ancient Jackal: greedy and insatiable. Even though his bloodline beastification was on the brink of collapse, he still wouldn’t give up the profit that was almost in his grasp.
As he approached the edge of the nest, he suddenly felt a strange but gentle power sweep over his bloodline, which was on the verge of going berserk. Like spring rain falling on parched, cracked earth, the sudden nourishment made his heart tremble. Wil widened his eyes in disbelief.
Refusing to believe it, he felt it again. That feeling of tension, like walking a tightrope at a great height, truly relaxed. This… what kind of ability had this cub awakened?
“A monster?” Wil couldn’t help but murmur.
After Shen Lin helped the Ghost Vines clear the trash, his consciousness fell into a deep sleep. His own healing power particles would unconsciously dissipate. this aura circled around the nest, nourishing the Ghost Vines closest to the cub. If it weren’t for the cub’s timely combing of the Ghost Vines, this planet would have been sucked dry to its core by the Ghost Vines desperately trying to prolong their next generation under the contamination.
Wil, whose beastification state was nearing collapse, was lucky enough to receive the combing of this special energy. He was surprised to find that not only had his bloodline riot slowed down, but even the gray spots on the back of his hands had faded considerably. Wil’s eyes lit up brilliantly, as if he had discovered some shocking secret, and his footsteps involuntarily grew heavier.
However, as the Ghost Vines’ aura grew more stable, the cub retracted his power, hiding his consciousness in the deepest depths until it was almost non-existent. That tiny bit of power was withdrawn from Wil’s mental sea, and immediately after, the earth-shattering pain returned.
“No…”
Wil’s eyes were bloodshot, and he subconsciously chased after that power like an addict. At that moment, his presence was exposed. The roaming Ghost Vines sensed a strange presence approaching and attacked him simultaneously. At the same time, he stepped on an energy stone, which seemed to trigger a mechanism, bursting with a blindingly bright light.
The entire underground space made “creak-creak” tooth-aching noises, similar to the sound of rotating machinery.
Suddenly!
A mechanical voice without a trace of emotion rang out.
[Found intruder!]
[Locking on intruder!!]
Wil clearly saw that around the massive nest built from energy stones, at intervals of a palm’s width, micro-laser cannons extending in conical shapes shimmered with cold light. He felt a chill spread from the soles of his feet all the way to the top of his skull.
Without a second of hesitation, Wil turned his four paws and ran toward the door. Heart-stopping lasers fired. Wil didn’t even have time to scream before he was annihilated in the blinding white light, truly having his bones ground to ashes.
[Danger cleared…]
The laser cannons slowly retracted, and the nest returned to its original state. These weapons, powered by energy stones, could keep accumulating energy as long as there were enough stones, waiting for the next target to approach. Judging by the massive pile of energy stones stacked around, they could probably be used for several hundred years without interruption.
The poor Jackal beastman didn’t even touch the edge of the nest before throwing his life away for nothing.
Shen Lin had no idea what was happening outside. He was even less aware that along with the crack at the bottom of the eggshell, the energy stones in the nest were bit by bit decreasing and turning into dust. The cub slept exceptionally sweetly, even murmuring a few words in his sleep.
“Big Monster…”
Tap—tap—
A steady sound of footsteps approached from outside the door.
What came into view was a pair of long legs. Black military boots stepped over the broken remains of the Ghost Vines to enter the nest.
The Ghost Vines, acting as guardian beasts, were currently regretting why they hadn’t noticed someone approaching the nest earlier, allowing the laser guns to take the credit instead. With their anger rising, someone just happened to walk into their line of fire. It was hard to imagine that plants could think.
Shen Zeyu’s fingers extended into razor-sharp beast claws. He easily cut through the Ghost Vine branches attacking him, clearing a circle around himself. Staring at the branches that were still twitching after leaving the main body, a hint of doubt flashed in Shen Zeyu’s eyes.
Without waiting for the branches to attack again, Shen Zeyu made a cut on his palm, letting fresh red blood drip onto the main trunk.
the giant Ghost Vine forest began to sway as if it were drunk. Only then did Shen Zeyu reach out and feel a certain spot on the Ghost Vine’s main body. Finding a protruding area, he pressed down.
Buzz—
A wave of energy rippled out. The hanging Ghost Vines began to sprout small flower buds on their branches. The green waterfall gained speckles of white dots, turning into a sea of flowers in the blink of an eye.
Shen Zeyu stepped into the nest again; this time, he was no longer attacked by the Ghost Vines. Inside the woven “vine basket,” the pink egg was covered in white flowers. Shen Zeyu looked at the egg in the basket and was about to reach out to pick it up. Unexpectedly, the white flowers in the Ghost Vine forest rapidly fell off, fluttering down until a thick layer covered the pink egg in moments.
Shen Zeyu reached out to catch a petal and was surprised to find that the petals contained a large amount of the Ghost Vines’ energy, and the energy in the petals landing on the pink egg was even more refined. Shen Zeyu was somewhat astonished. He hadn’t expected the Ghost Vines—notorious for being “plucking feathers from a passing goose” and absorbing all energy to strengthen themselves—would actually feed back most of the energy they had absorbed to the pink egg.
What was going on?
Unfortunately, no matter how much Shen Zeyu thought about it, he couldn’t imagine that after linking their consciousness, the Ghost Vines had unexpectedly learned to think. Knowing that the cub was worried about hatching and being unable to actively attack the cub, the Ghost Vines had simply absorbed all the power after their frenzy. Through the cub’s combing, it was all converted into their own power, and finally, they provided all the power to the cub in the gentlest way to help him hatch.
Having lost all its power, the entire forest rapidly shriveled and turned yellow, its trunks collapsing. In the blink of an eye, only a ground full of “dry wood” remained.
Shen Zeyu walked over, leaned down, and picked up the washbasin-sized pink egg from among the withered petals. A sprout of a Ghost Vine was wrapped around the pink egg. Clearly, the Ghost Vine had simply abandoned its dwelling place and intended to stay on the pink egg without leaving.
Shen Zeyu reached out to pull the Ghost Vine off the egg. The Ghost Vine stubbornly wrapped itself back on.
Shen Zeyu said coldly, “Get off.”
His voice wasn’t loud, but a hint of danger could be heard in his tone. The tip of the Ghost Vine branch trembled, but it ignored him.
After one warning failed, Shen Zeyu intended to do it himself and forcibly remove the “squatter” from the eggshell. He reached out and pulled, and the Ghost Vine was easily ripped off. The Ghost Vine immediately wrapped back around the pink egg and tied itself into a beautiful butterfly knot. It flicked the tip of its branch as if expressing its dissatisfaction.
Shen Zeyu was certain that the Ghost Vine now had its own consciousness.
Shen Zeyu thought for a moment and gave up on the Ghost Vine wrapped around the eggshell. Instead, he focused his attention on his unhatched brother. The abnormality of the Ghost Vine seemed inextricably linked to this brother of his. After reconsidering, he abandoned the plan to remove the Ghost Vine.
He carefully examined the cracks on the egg. There was a noticeable crack at the bottom, which extended to both sides. He raised his hand and lightly tapped the opening. The pink egg seemed a bit annoyed by the tapping and moved in his palm.
“Be good.”
Recommended Reads
![I Can See Esports Players’ Attribute Entries [Transmigration]](https://beereads.space/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/see-215x300.jpg)
![Those Years When the Son of Destiny Was Severely Scammed [Quick Transmigration]](https://beereads.space/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/QUICK-TRANSMIGRATION1-214x300.jpg)
![[ABO] After Accidental Marking, I Became Everyone’s Darling](https://beereads.space/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/ABO-225x300.jpeg)
![The League’s Hei Yueguang Has Fought His Way Back [E-sports]](https://beereads.space/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/hei-214x300.jpg)