...
Planet Aquablue, an unknown epoch, across a vast floodplain.
Sparse arbor trees, low-lying ferns, soft sandy soil... This place had become a prime nesting ground where dinosaurs congregated to incubate their eggs.
Beneath a clump of yellowish-green ferns, Haoyuan lay quietly in wait, his snow-white body perfectly concealed among the fallen leaves.
Not far away, atop a sandy mound nest on the flat ground, the parent dinosaur—famished after a long vigil—could finally endure no longer. It hauled itself up, preparing to venture out in search of food.
Haoyuan slowed his breathing. Once the parent dinosaur's heat signature drifted far enough away, he crept toward the nest, nudged aside the fallen leaves and sand with his head, and burrowed inside.
Inside the warm nest, massive white eggs lay neatly arranged.
They were too large to swallow whole.
Flicking his tongue, Haoyuan found a good angle, coiled his body around one of the white eggs, and constricted with all his might.
With a sharp crack, fissures appeared across the shell, and rich, savory egg fluid began oozing out.
Reinvigorated, Haoyuan eagerly leaned in, greedily lapping up every mouthful of the fresh egg fluid.
With each swallow, the heat within his body grew a fraction stronger, steadily replenishing his frame, which had been weakened by long days without food.
In this era ruled by dinosaurs, Haoyuan had the misfortune of reincarnating as a weak, helpless ancient snake.
He could only squirm and crawl through the dark, damp earth, hunting small lizards, tiny mammals, and plump grubs.
Over time, many of his memories of being human had gradually faded.
He couldn't even remember his name clearly, only recalling a vague impression that led him to call himself Haoyuan.
Terrified of forgetting too much, he fought every single day against his meager cranial capacity and smooth, unwrinkled brain, desperate to preserve whatever scrap of human intellect he could.
Even if what remained was meager, it would still be his greatest reliance in confronting this brutal era.
Thus, day after day, he honed his hunting skills. He kept his mind active, refining his techniques while recalling his past life to hold on to his memories.
Slowly but surely, a few things truly did stick.
For instance, he managed to firmly remember the name Haoyuan without forgetting it.
For instance, he retained the capacity for reason and imagination, capable of contemplating thoughts rather than merely acting on instinct, stuck in a monotonous cycle of hunting and resting.
As time passed and he reached adulthood, he suppressed his instinctive urge to mate and altered his way of life.
He used to be like the rest of his kind, fond of burrowing into holes and crevices to hunt lizards and small mammals, viewing even insects as rare delicacies.
Now, his gaze was set on dinosaurs—set on those far greater sources of thermal energy.
He sought to achieve evolution through his own efforts.
The more you ate, and the better you ate, the larger you would generally grow.
Following the principles in his memories, he finally found a way of living that suited him.
And that was stealing eggs.
Dinosaur eggs were packed with nutrients, far superior to an equal weight of meat.
It was bound to be of immense benefit to his physical development.
He firmly believed this, striving to break past his limits and become the strongest ancient snake alive.
Slurp, slurp...
After consuming three dinosaur eggs in succession, Haoyuan didn't dare linger. Dragging a body so stuffed it could hold no more, he carefully vacated the sandy mound nest.
Under the cover of dense fern thickets, he made his way to another dinosaur nest he frequently inhabited and hid inside.
A wily hare has three burrows.
Haoyuan had three burrows of his own.
He clearly remembered several convenient hiding spots and the optimal routes between them, ensuring he would never scramble blindly in a panic should danger strike.
The dinosaur eggs he ate today were larger than before, which meant they likely held more nutrients as well.
Feeling his steadily growing body and his increasingly smooth, lustrous, translucent white scales, Haoyuan could not help feeling a sense of satisfaction.
Based on genetic memory and what he had seen in the past, he realized his body was already more than three sizes larger than that of his kin. He had clearly shattered their limits and become a king of ancient snakes.
In his daily life, whenever he crossed paths with female snakes, their adoration and fervent advances had already proven everything.
Better yet, his scales were growing more beautiful and aesthetically pleasing by the day, a world apart from the rough scales of ordinary ancient snakes.
“Is this enough to prove that I'm evolving?”
Haoyuan eagerly anticipated such a prospect.
He did not want to merely be an unusually large anomaly; he wanted genuine, true evolution.
He had no desire to be trapped within the genetic ceiling of his species, living out a dull, ordinary life.
Of course, deep down he knew that evolution normally required vast epochs of time to accumulate, yet he also remembered that biological explosions had occurred in history.
Therefore, he still had a chance.
What if?
What if he truly did evolve?
“My body is growing larger, my constricting power is getting stronger, and my scales are smoother and prettier... Can these changes be considered evolution?”
He didn't know.
Haoyuan could not deceive himself. Even with all his efforts up to this point, in the end, he had merely grown a bit larger. No qualitative transformation had taken place.
Carnivorous dinosaurs could still effortlessly kill and devour him, while a massive herbivore could snuff his life out with an inadvertent stomp.
His diet had merely shifted from small animals to dinosaur eggs.
On the whole, not much had really changed.
“At least I got bigger...”
Haoyuan’s gaze hardened once more with determination.
Prolonged isolation and having no one to talk to could drive anyone insane.
The doubts and wavering just now were merely fleeting moments of despair over an uncertain future.
He didn't want to live as an ordinary snake.
He yearned for change, yearned to break free from this stagnant life.
He yearned for great liberation, boundless freedom, and profound transformation.
Haoyuan suppressed his restless heart once more.
“At least I got bigger, didn't I?”
“It shows I'm heading in the right direction.”
“As long as I keep trying, maybe a real change will happen.”
He felt inside his body and discovered that his internal heat was higher.
“Is this a normal metabolism? Or does physical growth require heat?”
Haoyuan didn't know. After every meal, there would be heat, and when the heat was high enough, his body would grow.
“Isn't every living creature like this? Digestion produces heat, and then they grow.”
Having forgotten much of his past life's memories, coupled with his meager knowledge of biology to begin with, he was truly out of his depth after reincarnating as an ancient snake.
“Sigh...”
Haoyuan let out a long sigh.
Deep down, he harbored a faint glimmer of hope regarding this heat.
He always felt there was something special about it, like it might be his cheat.
Yet every organism had heat, and as they grew, their heat would change as well.
The patterns of his own heat were difficult to observe; after all, he hunted every day and steadily grew.
Thus, it was hard to tell.
“If only there were a status panel so I could see my own patterns clearly...”
Haoyuan shook his head, tucked his head into his coiled body, and drifted off into a deep sleep.
This was a habit he had gradually developed. He had no idea what obscure corner of his memories it came from, but tucking his head inside his coils just felt right.
In his impression, doing so kept him safe.
By now, his mental capacity had grown considerably, unlike during those early days when he fought with all his might just to survive and retain his human intellect.
That had been a time of agonizing struggle, a desperate battle waged to preserve his intellect and keep from devolving into an ordinary beast.
It was precisely because he had endured that period that he could now think clearly about heat, evolution, and what lay ahead.
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