Chapter Four: Any Terrestrial Creature That Lives Eight Hundred Years Must Be Extraordinary!

After a brief surge of excitement, Feng Xue composed himself and began inspecting the belongings he had brought along through his crossing.

“All of this actually came through? Could it be that I traversed in my clothes?” He felt a surge of relief upon confirming that none of the supplies he had prepared were missing.

Though well-prepared, he had never truly believed he could bring everything with him. After all, the “transcendence cases” he had encountered so far involved either vegetative states or mutilated corpses—both clearly soul transference scenarios.

However, considering that the island of Yingzhou where he found himself resembled the setting of a Japanese light novel, and that even soul-transmigration stories in isekai light novels often allow the protagonist to bring along items like sportswear, phones, and shopping bags, he had made thorough preparations.

Now, it seemed his efforts had not been in vain.

“My phone has no signal, and the radio function doesn’t respond. Still, it’s not useless as a data repository,” Feng Xue muttered, glancing at his phone before pulling out a compass.

“The needle is steady, not spinning wildly. There shouldn’t be any strong magnetic fields nearby. I wonder if the poles in this world align with Earth’s north and south.”

After running these tests, Feng Xue took out a compact drone, no larger than his palm, and began operating it.

This drone wasn’t anything high-end—just a two or three hundred yuan model bought online. Its flight ceiling was about 120 meters, but managing to fly even twenty or thirty meters without crashing was mostly luck. Its cruising and stabilization were poor, suitable only for basic filming. The sole advantage was low power consumption, which is why Feng Xue had bought six and stuffed them into his bag—consider it a reconnaissance skill.

It wasn’t that he, the “Mahjong Sage” who had once swept through mahjong parlors, couldn’t afford better gear; rather, he doubted whether his solar power banks could keep up with the power demands of a high-end drone.

With a single tap, the black drone buzzed into the sky, and Feng Xue finally confirmed his current surroundings.

“There don’t seem to be any prominent man-made structures. The forest is quite dense, and there’s a clear undulation of hills in the distance… barren mountains, perhaps?”

Frowning, Feng Xue steered the drone in a circle nearby but didn’t dare fly it too far. After confirming the direction of the hills, he switched the drone to follow mode.

The drone hovered above his head, transmitting real-time images to the controller’s screen. The initially shaky footage gradually stabilized, and from this elevated viewpoint, Feng Xue activated his superpower.

The thought “I want to see the remaining lifespan of ‘animals’” crystallized, and numbers began appearing on the screen.

His ability to see lifespan was quite flexible; as long as he could “see” the target, he could activate it. Moreover, he could identify according to his own will. For instance, at this moment, he was observing the category “animals” to detect any lurking dangers.

After all, there was a difference between “seeing” and “discovering.”

While watching the numbers on the screen, Feng Xue used his phone’s offline “Species Encyclopedia” app to photograph and identify nearby leaves, occasionally snapping pictures of small animals marked with remaining lifespan.

“Golden locust, autumn maple, camphor tree… these are all species found on Earth. The animals are common types, too. If they just happen to look the same, then maybe this world is a parallel Earth, most likely temperate or subtropical. I wonder if there’s any supernatural force here that extends lifespan.”

At this thought, he glanced at the label above his head: “Stroke of Luck.” This golden finger could only lock onto one attribute at a time. Locking the “Stroke of Luck” meant he couldn’t lock onto lifespan. If this lock didn’t guarantee a sure hit, things could go wrong.

“So I still need to find a subject with other tags to test,” Feng Xue muttered inwardly, his gaze never leaving the drone’s screen.

After about ten minutes on foot, Feng Xue began to feel winded. Ten days of sleepless nights and intense mahjong sessions weren’t something one could recover from in a single day of rest, especially carrying over ten kilograms of luggage. Now that the initial excitement had faded, physical fatigue surged back.

“Seriously, if this is the typical ‘reincarnated in another world’ trope, what’s with throwing me into the wilderness? Even if I’m not sent to the divine realm to pick a dumb goddess as a ‘travel companion,’ at least drop me in a bustling city! Don’t protagonists usually have someone to explain things after crossing over? Am I the type who fell into a dungeon or ancient ruins and got found by an adventuring party?”

Taking a few gulps of water, Feng Xue adjusted his breathing and resumed controlling the drone to scout the surroundings. The hills were densely forested with no clear signs of logging, and from the drone’s footage, it appeared to be near the mountain base.

So either this world was vast and sparsely populated, or it didn’t rely heavily on firewood for fuel.

“Hm, or maybe the mountains surround this area, and I’m dressed too thick,” Feng Xue mused, when suddenly his gaze sharpened.

Perhaps from constant vigilance since crossing over, his sensitivity to the numbers had reached a refined level. The moment a relatively long string of numbers flashed on the drone’s screen, he immediately reacted.

“Units, tens, hundreds, thousands, ten thousands… damn! What the hell can live for hundreds of years? A turtle? But there’s no river nearby!”

He commanded the drone to hover and confirmed he was indeed in the “see animal lifespan only” mode, but his heart burned with a mix of excitement and suspicion.

From his knowledge as an online writer, human lifespan is relatively long among animals. Even famously long-lived creatures like turtles mostly live only a few decades in the wild. In fact, most well-documented long-lived species on Earth are aquatic. Yet the drone’s footage showed this lifespan reading came from a grassy area.

Even if this creature was newly born, a lifespan of several hundred years was definitely unnatural!

For a moment, a flicker of fear arose in Feng Xue’s heart, but he quickly suppressed it.

Switching to an over-the-shoulder view and locking onto the front end of the lifespan number above his head, he steadied himself. Controlling the drone to close in, he slung his backpack over his shoulder and resolutely headed toward the entity boasting an eight-hundred-year lifespan.

Then...

“White snake?” Feng Xue stared at the pale figure coiled in the grass, so subtle that it could be easily missed. His brow furrowed.

Though white snakes symbolize longevity, snakes in reality rarely live beyond fifty years. A small snake about a foot long like this usually lives only two to five years.

Its long lifespan must be anomalous!

“Did it eat some rare medicinal herb? Or is it a demon cultivating for years?” Feng Xue squatted near the snake’s location, eyes glued to the screen, uncertain how to proceed.

An animal with an abnormal lifespan had been found, but what next? Observe its habits? Search for some longevity herb? Or try to capture and consume it to see if it grants longevity?

As these thoughts swirled, the snake suddenly lifted its head, flicked its tongue lightly, then transformed into a streak of white light and vanished into the grass.

“What the hell?” Feng Xue instantly raised the drone higher, attempting to track the snake’s trail through lifespan readings. But soon he realized it was pointless—because on the drone’s screen, chasing the lifespan numbers now was his own head.

Turning around, their eyes met—a pair of glossy black eyes locking with his.