Watching the four-legged snake eat with such evident enthusiasm, Shen Cong felt the corner of his mouth twitch. There was an unavoidable association in his mind — the spheres had been buried underground by dung beetles. The black outer shells were clearly former carcass-balls, transformed by whatever process had been happening under the soil.

He was having a difficult time putting his hand in.

The grove's outer edge was thick with hanging aerial roots, most of their leaves already dropped for winter. The four-legged snake was too large to fit between the root curtains and apparently unwilling to simply bulldoze through them — it kept pushing with one foreleg from outside while the rest of its body remained wedged between the roots, which made it look briefly ridiculous.

"These aerial roots are remarkably hard if a creature that size can't snap through them." Shen Cong ran his fingers along the nearest root. Solid. Dense. He extended his perception into the tree.

The banyan was in the Lv1 era.

He could only sense its Talent now — 1.874H — the Activity Value sealed away in the way all Lv1 organisms sealed themselves after the threshold was crossed.

"A Lv1 era banyan tree."

He was beginning to examine it more carefully when something hit him without warning. A gust of displaced air, a massive presence moving fast — his scalp prickled and he started to react, but the bouncing stilts needed running speed to generate their defensive mobility, and he hadn't had time.

Something warm and enormous pressed across him from head to foot.

The four-legged snake's tongue.

It had noticed Shen Cong standing still rather than eating, and had apparently decided the appropriate response was to lick him from crown to ankle in encouragement. The tongue was thicker than his torso. It was thoroughly coated in milky-white, osmanthus-scented liquid. Now so was he.

He consciously suppressed his first instinct — which was to put the Tyrant Broadsword through the creature's skull — and reminded himself that it hadn't done anything actively harmful yet.

He crouched down, forced himself past the objections,…