Chapter 704 - Pterosaur (2/2)

He didn’t care about other matters. Duo Kang just felt a sudden interest in these creatures so he wanted to bring these things back to show to his tribesmen at home. It was just another new discovery they made at sea. These were things from very long ago after all. After he showed these to his people, there was no way for them to continue preserving them like this. They still didn’t have enough resources to keep these things the way they were and preserve them, and the Flaming Horn tribe definitely wouldn’t waste their resources on something that had no practical use. So he figured that after his people had seen them, he would throw these insects and beasts into marshes or pits or use them as fertiliser.

However, the only thing Shao Xuan really cared about was the creature he scooped up.

After it was frozen again, Shao Xuan didn’t notice much of a change when he moved the wooden box, but now that he took a closer look at it, he noticed that there were some changes in the creature’s bones.

No, not its bones exactly. Some of its other parts had also changed. Shao Xuan could feel a weak breath of life within the creature. It was very subtle. If the ice melted and the creature was taken out of the ice, perhaps it would lose its very last breath and die.

He realised that this creature, whatever it was, was very close to dying, so it wasn’t too different from dead.

Shao Xuan wanted to test his hypothesis right away, but this wasn’t the right place. This was a ship. If he wasn’t careful, the ship might suffer severe casualties. That would be a huge problem that might hinder their travel back home.

The time will come for this, so he didn’t need to rush it. All Shao Xuan wanted to do was test whether his guess was true, so he would wait until they reached the Flaming River Trading Point. The conditions there were more suitable for him to experiment with these things.

Shao Xuan sighed as he looked at the frozen block. He covered the lid of the wooden case and took out a piece of grey linen cloth. Then, he started drawing on it with a carbon rod.

He drew out the skeletal structures he could identify. These bones formed the structure of the creature, and he remembered it clearly in his special vision. He drew it on the cloth and separated parts of the complete picture into different parts.

After he separated these, he felt like the drawing wasn’t realistic enough, so he found a piece of wood and sharpened it into small sticks. He then cut the small sticks into what seemed like small bones that resembled the original bones.

Some of the smaller bones might be missing, but what he needed was a full skeletal figure. He would make a copy of every single bone on the beast with the wooden sticks until he could assemble a complete skeleton.

After it was finally complete, Shao Xuan started assembling the wooden bones.

He started with the head. This was the most obvious part of the creature. He would slowly work his way from there. When he couldn’t determine which bone was which, he started working from the tail part, because it was very unique too. Then, he worked his way up the tail until he was stuck again. Finally, he started from its claws.

Once Shao Xuan put his full concentration on something, he could forget about time. He would rarely walk away from something if he wasn’t done with it.

After Duo Kang finished his conversation with You Yu and the others, he looked around and noticed Shao Xuan wasn’t there. He asked around and found out that Shao Xuan went to the cabins that stored the frozen creatures. He went over there to look.

The door was shut. Duo Kang stood outside the door and asked in a low voice, “Shao Xuan? Grand Elder?”

No one answered.

After a moment of hesitation, Duo Kang gently knocked a couple times on the door. “Shao Xuan, are you inside?”

“Yes.”

Shao Xuan finally came back to his senses. He was too focused examining the final product he had assembled. He didn’t hear him at all the first time Duo Kang called his name.

After Duo Kang entered the cabin, the first thing he saw was the skeleton on the wooden box. This skeleton was strange. At first sight, it seemed like a bat, but very soon he realized that it wasn’t. This figure appeared more aggressive than a bat’s.

Duo Kang gained enough experience on his hunts that allowed him to roughly guess what the creature was by simply analysing its skeleton.

“What is this?”

Shao Xuan rubbed his sore eyes and then said, “A pterosaur!”