Chapter 614 - 611: Ear

Chapter 614: Chapter 611: Ear

The giant ear fly’s voice was devoid of inflection, yet Mo Ling could sense its pessimism. Faced with the flock of Feeding Birds of Prey, this ear fly known as the "Great Clan Leader" was utterly helpless.

The Guard was still reluctant to accept this. He moved closer to the Great Clan Leader and said sorrowfully, "But we’ve only just settled down. Everyone has just started getting used to this place, and the newborns have only just been born. If we leave now, the newborns might not be able to handle the migration. They could die..."

At the Guard’s words, the Great Clan Leader fell silent. A long time passed before its voice was heard again.

"If we leave now, some of us can live. If we stay, all of us will die."

"Isn’t there any other way?"

"No," the Great Clan Leader said bluntly. "The flocks of Feeding Birds of Prey are invincible. A desperate last stand will only lead to death. You are young. You don’t know how prosperous the ear fly clans once were. Even a people as flourishing as that couldn’t withstand the Feeding Birds of Prey, to say nothing of us now..."

At this, the Great Clan Leader seemed to grow sorrowful and began to tell the Guard about the former days of the ear fly people...

The ear fly is an exceptionally weak life form.

They feed on sound and are found all throughout the mountains and forests.

For generations, they lived deep within Heaven’s End Mountain.

From the moment they are born, newborns cannot be exposed to excessively loud noises and can only feed on gentle sounds.

The babbling of a stream, the rustling of leaves in the wind, the scraping of insects crawling through the mountains... The newborns would consume these fragile sounds and slowly grow.

As they matured, their ability to withstand sound would grow stronger and their thoughts would become clearer, no longer muddled and confused as they were in their larval stage.

Back then, the ear fly clans had established vast tribes deep within Heaven’s End Mountain. They didn’t compete with other creatures for resources; they simply wanted to slowly collect all sorts of sounds and then transmit them to their companions.

They could imitate different sounds and pass them on to other groups. Through this constant communication, the ear flies’ tribal civilization became increasingly prosperous.

The more sounds they collected, the clearer the ear flies’ perception of the world became, and they began to study the fundamental nature of sound.

Thanks to their powerful hearing and understanding of sound, they quickly figured out its source—

The essence of sound is the vibration of objects; different vibrations produce different sounds.

The ear flies also discovered that they weren’t actually feeding on sound, but on the energy transmitted by it.

Newborns could handle little energy, while adults could handle much more. As an ear fly grew older, the amount of sound energy it could withstand would also increase.

Once they understood the nature of sound, the ear flies’ research became more systematic. They classified sounds transmitted by different sources and through different media. These frail creatures knocked on the door of "science" for the first time, beginning their journey toward civilization.

However, they only thought of using different sounds to understand the world, never considering using sound to create weapons and make themselves stronger.

They had always lived in peace with the world and had no natural predators. They never would have imagined that a catastrophe was creeping up on them.

Then, the Feeding Birds of Prey appeared...

These giant birds, which seemed to appear from nowhere, had an astonishing reproductive rate. With bronze heads, iron feathers, sharp fangs, and vicious claws, they suddenly emerged from the other side of Heaven’s End Mountain.

The ear flies had no idea where they came from. With no warning, they suddenly swarmed into Heaven’s End Mountain.

These Feeding Birds of Prey frantically devoured every living creature they saw. Anything that moved would be surrounded, killed, and gnawed down to nothing.

The ear flies were engrossed in their study of sound, completely unaware of the impending disaster. In just three days, the ear fly tribes deep within Heaven’s End Mountain were slaughtered, with less than one in ten surviving.

Some ear flies tried to resist, but they were slaughtered even more thoroughly.

Ear flies from some tribes discovered that the Feeding Birds of Prey only attacked moving creatures, so they hid underground, pretending to be stationary plants. But the Feeding Birds of Prey saw right through their disguise and dug deep into the earth to pull them out.

The Feeding Birds of Prey would even find ways to destroy places they couldn’t enter. They left absolutely no path to survival.

In the end, the surviving ear flies were all either injured or had fled. The bud of their civilization was violently snuffed out.

The ear flies split into different groups, fleeing to different places. But wherever they went, after a certain period of time, the Feeding Birds of Prey would hunt them down. The ear flies never had an opportunity to rebuild their civilization.

Although ear flies reproduced quickly, their newborns couldn’t withstand much sound energy and could only mature in quiet places. Therefore, every migration resulted in the deaths of a vast number of newborns.

But, faced with these terrifying birds, the ear flies had no choice but to migrate. As a result, the clans continued to fracture and scatter.

They ran from the depths of Heaven’s End Mountain to its outer edges, hid in the forest, then in the sea caves beyond the beach. After hiding and fleeing through many hardships, most of the ear flies who had witnessed the slaughter by the flocks of Feeding Birds of Prey had died off.

The surviving newborns grew up without ever getting a chance to appreciate the wonders of the world of sound, always being urged to keep running.

"I don’t want to keep running, either... I was originally just a sound-transmitter for my tribe..."

"Then, during our first escape, I became an escort for the newborns."

"The second time, I was given a command in a moment of crisis and became the old clan leader’s guard."

"By the fifth time, the old clan leader sacrificed himself, and I became the acting clan leader."

"On the sixth and seventh escapes, they made me the new clan leader."

"The eighth time was a close call... The ninth and tenth times, we were constantly in peril, but I succeeded in leading everyone away..."

"You might not understand just how terrifying those Feeding Birds of Prey are. They don’t let you lose consciousness completely. They use their sharp beaks to drill holes in you, then carry you to their nests and let their hatchlings gnaw on you. If you dare resist, they’ll pin you down with their claws, torture you, and rip you to shreds..."

"That’s how the old clan leader died. I don’t want to see any of my kin go through that ever again."

The Great Clan Leader’s voice trembled. When it finished speaking, the few ear flies present were all stunned, and a profound silence fell over the depths of the cave.

The fear of the Feeding Birds of Prey was carved deep into the Great Clan Leader’s very soul. It didn’t have the courage to think about other solutions, nor did it dare to gamble with the safety of the entire clan.

However, just then, the ear fly that had brought Mo Ling here broke the silence:

"They are indeed terrifying, but they aren’t invincible."

"What?" the Great Clan Leader asked in disbelief. "Has the Tree Cave Clan found a way to deal with them?"

"Yes," the ear fly replied. "But we failed..."