The perceptual link established, Shen Cong's Activity flowed through it immediately, and the bleeding from the torn root wounds slowed and began to stop. Vitality was returning — slowly, still very faint — but the trajectory had reversed.

Little Four could barely move. But her emotional signal was bright.

Her cognition was clearly far beyond the Antgod's. Where the Antgod communicated in simple drives and moods, the four-legged snake's emotional transmissions had structure and direction — complete enough that Shen Cong felt less like he was reading an animal's instincts and more like he was sitting with a small child, maybe four or five years old, who had a lot to express and her own clear sense of things.

Female. He could feel that too, now.

Through the perceptual link, what came through most clearly was attachment — a particular quality of looking-up-to, of closeness, of wanting to be near. The first two were easy to understand. She'd almost died. He'd pulled her out. The admiration was more interesting: by body mass alone, Shen Cong should be the one looking up. But in Activity terms, especially Activity Value, the snake could feel the difference. His Talent at 3.012H had long since triggered the phase transition that took him beyond normal measurement. Whatever she was reading from him registered as something far above her.

As for her own condition: Talent unchanged at 2.911H — hard to move that ceiling. But her level had changed significantly. She'd been Lv0.91 with an Activity Value of 2.648H when he'd last seen her. Now she registered at Lv0.968, Activity Value 2.818H. An increase of 0.17H, achieved in the time since they'd last met.

For natural wild evolution, that was fast.

"Was it the ginkgo tree?"

He looked at the dense fruit clusters on the branches. Ginkgo fruit — white fruit, traditionally both medicinal and mildly toxic. The four-legged snake had probably eaten from the tree, been poisoned into immobility, and the roots had found her while she couldn't move.

He already had a way to check. He and Little Four had a perceptual link now.