The harsh winter had finally come to an end.
The warm sunlight and spring breeze swept across the land, melting the snow into streams that flowed into the river.
Deep within a cave nesting ground, Haoyuan's consciousness gradually stirred awake.
He groggily opened his eyes to pitch-black darkness.
The scent of soil and the faint, lingering smell of dinosaurs clearly drifted into his nasal cavity.
This strange sensation initially stunned him, followed by a surge of excitement.
Having lived as a snake for so long, he knew full well how different flicking a tongue to sample scents was compared to this.
In an instant, he realized he now possessed a nasal cavity capable of distinguishing scents.
“Panel!”
Excitement swelling in his chest, he called out in his mind.
Name: Haoyuan
Race: Ancient Snake (Custom)
Evolution Path: 1. Skull (Completed), 2. Large Body Size (Incomplete), 3. Foreclaws (Incomplete)
Energy: 0
“Awesome!”
Haoyuan was thrilled.
Under normal circumstances, evolution was an agonizingly slow process, but with the aid of his talent, Thought Evolution, he had completed the evolution of his ancient snake skull in less than a year.
Such speed was nothing short of an evolutionary miracle!
Haoyuan opened and closed his mouth, only to realize he had no hands to feel what he currently looked like.
“Sigh, ever since getting Thought Evolution, I feel like being a snake is inconvenient in every way. There are so many body parts I want to have.”
After a single second of dejection, Haoyuan thought of the next thing he wanted.
“Internal vision.”
“That way, I can know what I look like even without a mirror.”
“And I won't even need to touch myself.”
However, there was no rush for such a luxurious ability right now.
For now, the priority was to gain a massive body size, hunt for more energy, and accelerate his evolution.
“Based on the skull I imagined, it should look fairly similar to a dragon's head. I wonder how far the talent evolved it.”
“Did it fully evolve? How effective is it?”
In Haoyuan's memory, a dragon had nine anatomical resemblances to other creatures.
However, ordinary people rarely memorized such specifics.
Haoyuan was no exception.
He only vaguely remembered ears like a bull, antlers like a stag, whiskers like a catfish, eyes like a rabbit... and had completely forgotten the rest.
Even so, he remembered the general appearance of a dragon's head.
“Well, it should be roughly like that anyway. If anything's off, I can just modify it later.”
Not dwelling on it, Haoyuan was in high spirits.
Subconsciously wanting to flick his forked tongue, he found he couldn't stick it out properly, which felt quite awkward.
Only then did he recall that a dragon's tongue was unlike a snake's; it was more like that of a mammal.
Haoyuan felt an instant surge of excitement. This novel sensation was fascinating, even intoxicating.
At the same time, he harbored a slight worry: without a snake's tongue, would his new sensory organs be able to take over the tasks of scent identification, tracking, and locating prey?
Haoyuan wasn't entirely certain.
“Hopefully, the evolution compensates for any shortcomings.”
Sensing the vibrations outside, there seemed to be no danger.
Using his head and serpentine body to push aside the dirt, he climbed upward into the nest.
Taking his first breath of fresh air, Haoyuan felt invigorated.
In the dim cave, bright daylight caught his eyes.
Haoyuan instinctively looked toward the entrance.
In an instant, a kaleidoscopic, vibrant world bloomed before his eyes.
Tender green leaves, glistening dew drops, hazy white mist, a lofty azure sky, pale yellow wildflowers of unknown species, and towering dark red ferns...
“...” As Haoyuan stared, liquid unknowingly traced down his cheeks.
Drip!
The sound of a droplet falling.
Stunned, he looked down at the small patch of dampened soil on the ground.
A tidal wave of emotion surged in his heart.
His eyes grew warm.
“Tears! These are tears!”
“I can cry now!”
“Hahaha!”
Haoyuan was overjoyed. His eyes could now perceive the colors humans saw, and he could shed tears just like a person.
This was a vastly sharper visual acuity.
The development of tear glands also enriched his emotional expression.
He couldn't help but take a deep breath.
The air clearly filtered through his nasal passages into his lungs, giving him a long-lost sense of affinity and freedom in nature.
“Eyes, ears, and nose are all great, fully functional.”
Haoyuan was thoroughly satisfied.
Two long whiskers drifted lightly with the airflow, entering his field of vision.
His anticipation grew even stronger.
Closing his eyes, he carefully focused on the movements of the dragon whiskers.
The shifts and flows of the nearby air currents registered clearly in his sensory perception.
They painted a wondrous, brand-new world for Haoyuan.
It depicted an unknown dinosaur foraging outside the cave.
Its silhouette was distinctly outlined by the fluctuating air currents.
The swaying of flowers and grass, the topography and terrain, the shape of the wind... so much more.
The dragon whiskers could actually sense things hidden from sight.
Opening his eyes, Haoyuan couldn't help but feel awestruck.
“With this, hunting will be so much easier. When alert, I can even sense carnivorous dinosaurs approaching.”
“I can also scout the terrain and chart my path forward.”
“Great! What a fantastic sensory system!”
Haoyuan was ecstatic.
“The dragon whiskers aren't just for show! Organs created by Thought Evolution truly serve a practical purpose!”
“All that effort stockpiling energy over the past year wasn't in vain. This cheat is simply amazing!”
Haoyuan was instantly filled with drive.
The harsh winter had passed, spring had arrived, and the breeding season was just around the corner.
After a few months of absence, those juvenile dinosaurs had surely grown bigger and much plumper.
Just thinking about it made his mouth water.
“Hehehe, little dinosaurs, your strict father is back!”
With no humans around, no one to talk to, and no one watching, Haoyuan's expressions were often a bit exaggerated, his inner thoughts brimming with theatrical flair.
Yet he felt free and comfortable, unbothered by any of it.
After all, no one was around to see, so it was purely for his own amusement.
...
Relying on his whiskers' perception of airflow, his broad field of vision, distinct scent tracking, and sharp hearing, Haoyuan quickly located a dinosaur gathering ground.
At a glance, those juvenile dinosaurs were indeed exceptionally plump, enough to make any snake drool.
Haoyuan swallowed his saliva and crept closer in secret.
When emerging from the cave nest, he had already gained a rough understanding of his current appearance through his whiskers' sensing of airflow.
It was indeed virtually identical to his impression of a dragon's head.
His sensory organs were all functional.
His dragon horns were remarkably hard, which, paired with his three-dimensional, majestic dragon head, radiated immense intimidation.
Most importantly, he now possessed a mouthful of razor-sharp teeth, which would be an enormous help in tearing apart larger prey.
After sensing no other carnivorous dinosaurs nearby, Haoyuan used the dense fern thickets to conceal himself and quietly approached a herd of duck-billed dinosaurs.
Haoyuan's knowledge of dinosaurs was limited, so he could only loosely name them hadrosaurs.
In any case, they were herbivorous dinosaurs, easy targets.
These dinosaurs formed massive herds as well as smaller groups; the one Haoyuan was approaching was a smaller pack.
There were plenty of young hadrosaurs under 1.5 meters in length, making them perfect targets for the famished Haoyuan.
It was time for the familiar routine.
He lay motionless in ambush among the grass, waiting for a suitably sized young hadrosaur to wander near the fern thicket.
“Sneak attack!”
A white shadow suddenly burst out from the ferns, snapping open its gaping maw to clamp down hard on the young hadrosaur's snout before its three-meter-long body coiled instantly around it.
“Constrict!”
A constricting power far beyond what his body size warranted clamped down onto the young hadrosaur, violently crushing its chest and abdomen.
The immense pressure multiplied exponentially across its body, making the young hadrosaur feel as though its bones were about to shatter as it struggled to breathe.
Rate on N.U.
