“Grandpa, don’t kingfishers want to be caught for their feathers?” the little girl asked, blinking her bright black and white eyes and looking up.
“Yes, of course kingfishers don’t want that,” the director answered gently.
“But what about pearls? Oysters don’t want to be killed for the pearls in their bellies either, right? The beef, lamb, and pork we eat—they don’t want to lose their lives for that either, right?” the little girl asked innocently.
“This…” The director was stunned. This touched on philosophical questions, even Buddhist ones. How could he explain this clearly to a child?
“What about plants then? Trees grow well, then they’re cut down and carved up—they definitely don’t want that either! What about stones? I read in books that stones change too. Maybe they grow very slowly. Who knows if stones have life? They definitely don’t want to be stepped on or broken apart either!” The little girl turned into a walking “hundred thousand whys,” asking seemingly innocent but deeply terrifying questions that rendered the group speechless in minutes. The little girl’s mother looked embarrassed, clearly familiar with her daughter’s formidable destructive power but still not knowing how to resolve the situation.
“Little sister, there are kingfisher hairpins for sale on Taobao, many different kinds!” The doctor heard a familiar voice and looked closely to discover Tang Yuan had appeared from nowhere. With this one sentence, he immediately diverted the little girl’s attention. The little girl’s mother knowingly took out her phone—naturally, many of the kingfisher hairpins on Taobao were imitations, some costing only dozens of yuan with free shipping in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai, enough to fool a little girl. Besides, the little girl’s persistent questioning wasn’t really seeking answers but wanting a shiny piece of jewelry. Who cared if it was made from real kingfisher feathers? The universal weapon against all females was shopping, whether they were eight or eighty years old.
The doctor felt inferior—Tang Yuan was only 12 years old and already knew how to make girls happy like this. What would happen when he grew up?
Next came a group of parents exchanging Taobao shopping tips. The director was also called away by others, while the woman in blue returned to the exhibition hall to look at that kingfisher feather hairpin. The doctor himself didn’t want to look at it anymore.
Thinking that such beautiful ornaments were made by taking the lives of beautiful creatures made the doctor feel uncomfortable all over.
“You’re not getting confused by that little girl’s words, are you?” Tang Yuan looked at his expression and curled his lips. “According to her logic, not only couldn’t you eat meat, you couldn’t even eat vegetables. Would you starve to death to avoid killing?”
The doctor shuddered and quickly shook his head. As a foodie, he naturally couldn’t give up delicious food.
“Farmed and cultivated ingredients were bred by humans in the first place. If we didn’t use them for food and other purposes, they wouldn’t exist,” Tang Yuan said matter-of-factly. “Wild animals are all impossible to domesticate and have scarce numbers. To ensure the integrity of the food chain and natural environmental balance, they naturally can’t be hunted at will. Besides, if peacock really tasted better than chicken, peacocks would be in farms now instead of in zoos for people to admire. Trust our great heavenly dynasty’s thousands of years of food culture.”
The doctor listened speechlessly. He didn’t dwell on whether what Tang Yuan said was right or wrong, but had to admit he was actually convinced by a 12-year-old child.
“Let’s go! Next is the ‘Glinting Blades and Swords’ exhibition hall—all weapons! You’ll definitely like it, Uncle!” Tang Yuan grabbed the doctor’s sleeve and charged toward the next exhibition hall with great momentum.
Not far away, the director watched the big and small figures leave and couldn’t help complaining to Lu Zigang: “Look at you—why were you so eager to have me come over? I didn’t even get to say a few words to that young man!”
Lu Zigang thought to himself, how dare he let the director chat more with the doctor? A few more sentences and the director would have blabbed about the boss’s affairs. Although the Hengwu Incense had erased the doctor’s memories related to the boss, the memories of related personnel couldn’t be completely erased—only blurred. What if he got a few more clues and remembered something?
“I’ve checked everything for you. Besides that Yuan blue and white porcelain, there’s one other antique with serious problems,” Lu Zigang seriously changed the subject. He had come to the museum at the director’s request to check if the antiques showed any abnormalities. He chose to investigate when there were many people because heavy yang energy made it easier to see the location of yin energy. Actually, many antiques retained spirits to varying degrees, but some didn’t need attention while others couldn’t be ignored. “That Yuan blue and white porcelain isn’t a big problem since you’re here, but the other one…”
“Which one?” The director immediately stopped complaining, his expression grave. After the last Shadow Celadon figurine incident, although the director knew feudal superstition was wrong, he still occasionally asked Lu Zigang to come take a look.
“The Tang Dynasty bird-shaped kingfisher feather hairpin in the Ten Miles of Red Dowry exhibition hall.”
After five o’clock in the afternoon, the museum returned to silence after a whole day of noise. Cleaning staff swept through each exhibition hall, quickly completing their tasks. The brilliant lights went out one by one as no one was visiting, and finally even the central air conditioning stopped running, returning to complete silence.
“Tsk, those human brats are too noisy—so annoying,” an eerie voice broke the silence after an unknown amount of time, complaining hoarsely.
“Ara ara, it’s not the first day like this—what’s there to get used to? But the humans coming to see us have gotten much younger in recent years. It’s not like before when we saw old men every day. Now we can see handsome boys and cute little boys to refresh our eyes!” a sweet voice said with giggles.
“But I hate those metal boxes in their hands. Some people just don’t remember to turn off that flash thing—so blinding! If this continues, my old presbyopic eyes will definitely go blind in a few years!” an aged voice sighed.
“Tch, didn’t you notice there was a strange young man today?”
“Which one? That guy with glasses who wandered around aimlessly and complained constantly? He couldn’t even pronounce my name—is the character ‘gui’ really that hard? He doesn’t even recognize it!”
“Oh… that character is pronounced ‘gui’…”
“Ay yoy yoy, I just learned that too…”
“…”
“Tsk, not that one.”
“Then it’s that girl in the blue dress? The one with the birthmark at the corner of her right eye? She’s just a brainless fan smitten by Qing Yu’s beauty—nothing worth paying attention to.”
“There was a young man carrying strange jade artifacts. He definitely saw that we’re different, especially looking at Qing Yu several extra times.”
“So what if he saw something? Could he do anything to us? We’re all national-level cultural relics!”
Tonight’s museum night was not very peaceful, as usual.
Qing Yu, at the center of the discussion, was the name of that Tang Dynasty bird-shaped kingfisher feather hairpin. It lay quietly on black velvet, its pearl eyes staring fixedly outside the glass case, as if penetrating the suffocating darkness to see distant memories.
866 AD
It was a young kingfisher, and like its brothers and sisters, had just been driven from the warm nest by its mother, never allowed to return.
They had grown up and must now feed themselves.
Its brothers and sisters all flew off in different directions. It flew aimlessly for a while before finally stopping beside a small river. After settling down, it used its beak to preen the feathers on its body. Having just reached adulthood, its feathers were still far from as beautiful and thick as its mother’s, but after shedding its ugly down, both the turquoise blue and snow-blue colored feathers had grown in. It quite liked them and would think to preen them from time to time.
After spending quite a while, the little kingfisher finally finished arranging its feathers. Standing on the tree branch and looking down, it was satisfied to see a beautiful little kingfisher appear in the river’s reflection.
After admiring enough, its gaze slowly moved to the riverbank.
It couldn’t fly forward anymore—it had already seen some unnaturally broken vegetation and messy footprints, proving there were signs of human activity nearby. The little kingfisher stood on the branch, tilted its head, and among the warnings its mother had taught it, she had especially emphasized that humans were terrifying. Because humans couldn’t grow feathers themselves but envied their beautiful feathers, they would capture and kill them, plucking their feathers to stick on their heads. How cruel!
Its father had long since died at human hands, and its mother had also been captured by humans and taken to the capital, escaping after tremendous hardship. At that time, its mother had already left their homeland and could never return. Discovering she was pregnant with them and their siblings, she had to find a forest nearby to settle. The little kingfisher had never been to that homeland that was both warm and beautiful in its mother’s words. It was born in the hot summer, and now that autumn had arrived, the weather had become noticeably much colder. When driving them from the nest, mother had also instructed them to build nests quickly. But before that, they had to fill their bellies first.
The little kingfisher observed and found no signs of human presence nearby, so it perched peacefully on the riverbank branch, focusing intently on the ripples on the water surface.
Mother had taught them how to catch small fish, demonstrating many times before their eyes how to dive swiftly into the water, accurately catch fish and shrimp below the surface, then rise gracefully with spread wings. The little kingfisher had also tried several times, but its success rate wasn’t high—getting two or three out of ten attempts was quite good.
Now that it was out on its own, it had to increase its success rate, or it would waste energy and need to eat even more small fish to recover. The little kingfisher thought seriously while watching the water surface. Kingfishers possessed vision that other species could hardly match, easily seeing fish and shrimp underwater through the surface. The little kingfisher naturally inherited such vision, but experience told it there was still a difference between what was seen on the surface and reality. It didn’t know what caused this—it just needed to find the pattern.
The sparkling little river flowed murmuring through the forest. The little kingfisher on the riverbank branch remained motionless like a sculpture, but sunlight shining on it made the turquoise feathers glimmer with brilliant, gorgeous colors, like a pearl among gravel—impossible to hide its eye-catching form, involuntarily making people want to cup it in their palms and possess it.
The little kingfisher had long heard the softened footsteps behind it. It wasn’t in a hurry to fly away, instead holding its breath wanting to teach the other party a lesson.
Actually, it didn’t think humans were very scary.
It had seen some humans who intruded into the forest before, and had even risked flying out of the forest to see human settlements from afar.
Humans didn’t have sharp teeth, robust physiques, or wings to fly. They only had two legs, weren’t very fast runners, and fell easily. They had no self-defense capabilities and could only live in large nests piled with wood and stone—extremely fragile. It really didn’t understand why mother was so afraid of humans!
Watch this!
A wooden stick swung down with a whooshing sound. The little kingfisher suddenly flew up, avoiding the ill-intentioned stick. It didn’t immediately flee but instead used its sharp claws to scratch fiercely at the attacker.
One strike hit!
See! Humans were actually very weak! Just a casual scratch drew blood! Skin without fur or feather protection was pathetically tender.
The little kingfisher proudly flew to a high branch nearby and looked down.
But just this one glance left it stunned.
Its vision was excellent, clearly seeing that under the wooden stick it had thought was aimed at it lay a dead black snake, its body still twitching slightly. Judging by the distance, if that human hadn’t used the stick to kill the black snake, it should have already died in the snake’s mouth! That human had actually saved it! And what had it done? It had actually scratched that human’s face! If its claws had gone a bit more to the side, that human would have lost an eye… The little kingfisher flapped its wings several times in frustration and guilt, not knowing what to do.
The human in the blue dress covered the right side of her face and looked up, as if confirming the little kingfisher was safe, then still picked up the black snake and left. The little kingfisher stared at the pool of fresh blood in the grass and finally spread its wings to follow.