Chapter 34: The Entire Internet Saves the Snow Leopard
Su Wudeng piloted the aircraft, tearing through the sky as the biting, frigid wind howled past the windshield. Her heart hammered violently against her ribs, and cold sweat slicked her palms.
The small craft hit a pocket of violent turbulence, nearly throwing her off balance. Regaining control, she suddenly noticed movement on the monitor tracking the snow leopard.
“Why is the snow leopard moving? What’s going on?”
She quickly switched the camera feed and magnified the tracking screen. Against all odds, the critically injured and exhausted snow leopard had struggled to its feet. It was staggering forward, moving with agonizing difficulty in a specific direction.
“Is it trying to escape?”
The viewers in the livestream were baffled by the creature’s actions.
“Oh my god, where is it going?”
“Snow leopard baby, stop! The streamer is coming to save you! Don’t run!”
“Is there a chance it’s just trying to find a place to hide?”
“The smell of blood is too strong. It’s going to attract other predators!”
Su Wudeng kept her eyes glued to the screen. She had a strong feeling that the snow leopard’s movements weren’t random. It was moving with purpose!
Wait.
Su Wudeng suddenly noticed a dark trail of blood dripping from the snow leopard’s lower abdomen. It looked entirely different from the spray of the gunshot wounds, flowing at a slow, steady pace.
“That’s not a gunshot wound!”
“What is it, then?” a viewer asked in the chat.
Her pupils shrank as a terrifying realization dawned on her. She muttered half to herself, “Could it be… she just gave birth?”
The microphone picked up her whisper, sending the chat into an instant uproar.
“What?! She just gave birth?!”
“Holy shit! Don’t scare me, streamer! Is she trying to find her cubs?!”
“Oh my god, if that’s true…”
“Wuwuwu, the poor leopard! Targeted by evil poachers right after giving birth!”
A verified doctor in the chat quickly chimed in with a professional analysis.
“The streamer’s guess is highly probable! There are visible lacerations on the snow leopard’s abdomen, and the bleeding pattern points to postpartum hemorrhaging. Judging by her behavioral patterns and the fresh blood trail, she likely gave birth very recently. The mother is currently in a state of extreme weakness and acute stress!”
Reading the doctor’s confirmation, the viewers’ hearts ached.
“Woo woo woo, so she really is going back for her babies!”
“She probably knows she’s dying and wants to see them one last time!”
“What did she ever do to deserve this? Why would they treat her like this?!”
“This is too heartbreaking! If she dies, what happens to her cubs?”
“Losing their mother right after being born… those poachers are pure evil!”
Su Wudeng couldn’t fathom the amount of agony the mother snow leopard was enduring, dragging her battered, bleeding body through the freezing snow just to see her children one last time.
“There’s another possibility,” Su Wudeng whispered, her voice trembling. “She doesn’t just want to see them.”
“Look at her,” she pointed at the screen. “Every few steps, she turns around to check if the scout drone is following her. She’s confirming our position.”
The viewers immediately grasped the implication.
“Does the streamer mean… the mother wants to entrust her cubs to the drone?!”
“But how is that possible? She doesn’t even know what a drone is.”
“Isn’t that a massive gamble with their lives?”
“If she stays where she is and waits to die, her cubs will definitely perish,” Su Wudeng explained softly. “But if she takes this gamble, there’s at least a sliver of hope. She is betting her life that this strange metal bird won’t harm her children. If she wins, her cubs live. If she loses…”
Sure enough, on the monitor, the snow leopard would walk a short distance and then pause to look back. Only after confirming the drone was still trailing her did she force herself to keep moving.
“Wuwuwu, I’m crying.”
“She’s trying to carve out a path of survival for her babies!”
“So much snow, so much blood… I can’t bear to watch.”
In the desolate, icy wasteland, a dying mother was making her final wager. She was begging an unknown entity to save her children.
The mother snow leopard pushed deep into the forest. She stopped frequently, casting vigilant glances around before turning back with complicated eyes, ensuring her follower was still there.
“She ran so far away to make sure the hunters couldn’t find the den.”
“She wanted to hide them somewhere safe!”
Finally, her trembling legs gave out. She stopped in front of what looked like an ordinary mound of snow.
Once powerful and majestic, her paws weakly swiped at the icy barrier. She no longer had the elemental energy to control the frost, so she resorted to digging with the last dregs of her physical strength.
With a soft thud, the snow collapsed, revealing a dense layer of evergreen foliage underneath. She used her snout to nudge the branches aside, exposing the dark entrance to a small cave.
She turned around, giving the drone one final, explicit look to follow her, before slipping inside.
The camera feed adjusted to the darkness. Instantly, a litter of shivering snow leopard cubs appeared on the screen. They were huddled tightly together, a thin layer of frost already clinging to their tiny bodies.
“She really did just give birth! There’s a whole litter!”
“They’re so tiny! They’re covered in frost, it must be freezing in there!”
The mother collapsed, panting heavily. It seemed that opening the den had consumed the very last of her strength. Slowly, painfully, she began using her nose to push her cubs forward, nudging them toward the hovering black drone.
Her crystalline gray eyes locked onto the camera, brimming with desperate, silent pleading. Her babies were too small, too fragile. They couldn’t walk, couldn’t hunt, couldn’t hide from danger. They knew nothing of the cruel world outside. How could they possibly survive on their own?
Please. Save them.
Su Wudeng’s heart shattered. Across the internet, countless viewers burst into tears.
“I can’t take this anymore!”
“My poor leopard!”
“I can’t even look at her eyes…”
“I’d rather take the bullet for her!”
“Streamer, you have to save them! Please!”
Su Wudeng fiercely rubbed her eyes, fighting back the tears. Her voice choked with emotion, she declared, “Don’t worry! I won’t let anything happen to them! I’m almost there!”
She slammed the throttle, sending the aircraft into a steep dive. The roar of the thrusters tore through the silent, snowy forest as she finally arrived at the coordinates.
Hovering just outside the den, Su Wudeng grabbed her tranquilizer gun.
“The snow leopard is in critical condition and is highly guarded against humans,” she explained rapidly to the camera. “To treat her safely and prevent her from panicking and causing further injury, I have to sedate her first.”
There was no time to slowly build trust. The mother needed immediate, life-saving first aid!
Taking a deep breath, Su Wudeng aimed the cold metal barrel of the tranquilizer gun. The red laser dot locked onto her target.
Bang!
The dart shot through the air.
At the exact moment she fired, the snow leopard jerked her head up. Her gray pupils contracted to pinpricks as she stared at the weapon in the human’s hands.
A gun?
A wave of absolute despair crashed over her. She didn’t have the strength to run, let alone fight back. But she couldn’t let them hurt her babies!
Running purely on a mother’s instinct, she threw herself forward, using her bloodied body as a shield to cover the entire litter.
Thwack!
The tranquilizer dart embedded itself into her flank. A heavy numbness instantly spread through her veins, and she collapsed heavily onto the snowy ground. Using the very last of her willpower, she stared up at the human with pleading, desperate eyes.
The gaze carried a crushing weight. Spare my cubs…
The livestream captured the agonizing moment in perfect clarity. The viewers were inconsolable.
“Oh my god! She thought it was a real gun!”
“She thought she was going to be executed!”
“She used her last moments to beg for their lives!”
“A mother’s love… I’m sobbing!”
The sedative worked fast. The snow leopard’s limbs went slack. She fought the darkness, desperately trying to stay awake, but her body betrayed her.
The aircraft landed with a heavy thud. The mother’s consciousness was slipping, her vision blurring. She tried to drag herself over her cubs to protect them from the approaching footsteps, but she couldn’t even twitch a single claw.
Seeing that the anesthesia had taken hold, Su Wudeng leaped out of the cockpit and sprinted toward the cave, her heart pounding frantically.
The mother lay paralyzed, but her gray eyes stubbornly refused to close.
“Don’t be afraid,” Su Wudeng whispered, dropping to her knees. “I’m here to save you. I’m going to save your babies too, I promise.”
She carefully reached out and gently stroked the leopard’s head. The creature’s fur bristled slightly in a mixture of cold and residual terror.
Su Wudeng’s voice was incredibly soft, yet firm. “I’m going to bandage your wounds now to stop the bleeding. Don’t be scared. After that, I’m taking you all back to my home. You’ll be safe there.”
She sprayed a heavy coat of medical coagulant over the worst of the wounds and rapidly wrapped them in pressure bandages.
The snow leopard felt the icy grip of death slowly receding. It was so cold. Is this human really trying to save me? Her voice was so gentle… completely different from the violent, shouting hunters.
As Su Wudeng secured the final bandage, she brushed her hand against the leopard’s ear. “If you agree to come with me, just hold my hand, okay?”
Before the paralyzed leopard could even process the request, Su Wudeng gently picked up her massive paw and wrapped it around her own hand.
“Perfect, I’ll take that as a yes! What a good girl!”
Snow Leopard: …?
She didn’t quite understand the human’s logic, but it no longer mattered. The darkness finally pulled her under, and she lost consciousness completely.
Su Wudeng turned back toward the ship. “Amber, hurry! Get the cubs!”
Amber darted into the cave. The biting chill of the frost magic still lingering inside made him shiver violently. Brrr! This leopard mama had frozen her own den! He quickly approached the pile of tiny, shivering cubs. They were completely covered in a fine layer of ice.
Carefully picking them up by the scruffs of their necks, Amber ferried them out one by one, dropping them gently at Su Wudeng’s side.
Su Wudeng quickly examined the newborns, inhaling sharply. “They’re freezing! Their core temperatures have dropped dangerously low. If we don’t warm them up now, they won’t make it!”
She hurriedly gathered the tiny bodies into her arms, trying to use her own body heat to stabilize them.
“Amber, grab the—”
She was cut off as Amber suddenly stiffened, his ears pinning back as he let out a low, menacing growl toward the tree line.
“Master, it’s bad!” Amber barked urgently. “I smell poachers. They’re coming this way!”
Su Wudeng’s stomach dropped. “Quick, we have to get out of here!”
She scrambled to her feet, hauling the unconscious mother leopard over her shoulder with immense effort, while clutching the fragile cubs tightly against her chest. Amber flanked her, keeping his body positioned between her and the approaching threat.
Just as she reached the cockpit door, the livestream feed abruptly cut to black.
The broadcast was completely dead. The chat froze in confusion before exploding.
“What’s going on?!”
“Why did it suddenly turn off?!”
“Did the poachers catch up?! Did they escape?!”
“Ahhh! Show me what happened!”
“Please, let the streamer and the leopards be okay!”
It had happened before—the stream cutting out at the absolute climax of the danger. The viewers were frantic, flooding the platform’s official customer service channels, demanding to know if it was a network error or something worse.
Unfortunately, the platform offered no explanation.
Some of the more level-headed viewers tried to calm the panic.
“Don’t worry, guys! The streamer has an aircraft. Escaping some guys on foot shouldn’t be an issue.”
“Exactly! The main thing we need to pray for right now is that the mother and cubs survive the flight!”
“She was shot five times…”
“And the cubs looked so weak. I don’t know if they can hold on.”
The verified doctor reappeared in the chat, their words sobering the crowd.
“Realistically, the prognosis is very poor. The mother has suffered catastrophic blood loss, and the neonates are experiencing severe hypothermia. Everything depends on how fast she can get them into a proper surgical environment. All we can do is place our faith in the streamer.”
“The mother has to hold on!”
“You can do it, little cubs! Your mom fought so hard for you!”
“God bless them. Please let them be safe.”
Even though the screen remained pitch black, viewer retention didn’t drop by a single digit. Millions of people stayed in the dark room, waiting for a miracle, terrified of hearing the worst.
The moment Su Wudeng arrived back at the Pet Love Home, she rushed straight to the operating room, completely bypassing Zhong Huihui and the others who had come out to greet her.
With Amber’s help, she hoisted the massive snow leopard onto the diagnostic scanner. Within seconds, the screen flashed with glaring red warnings: Massive Hemorrhaging, Multiple Organ Abrasions, Severe Internal Trauma…
Su Wudeng’s heart plummeted. The bullet trajectories were a nightmare. One was lodged mere millimeters from her heart. Another rested perilously close to the spine; the slightest twitch could leave her permanently paralyzed. A third was brushing against her aorta.
“Those damn poachers!”
Cold sweat beaded on Su Wudeng’s forehead. A surgery this complex would challenge the best elite veterinarians in the galaxy. There was no way she could do it with a scalpel and forceps.
She immediately summoned the System Mall interface, sorting the medical equipment by highest Hope Value cost. The very first item on the list made her eyes light up.
[Master-Level Fully Automated Surgery System] – Cost: 100,000 Hope Points.
Features: Nano-precision targeting, AI-assisted surgical decisions, holographic anatomical projection mapping…
“You’re exactly what I need!”
Without a second thought, she purchased the system. A sleek, state-of-the-art surgical suite materialized in the room.
She quickly transferred the mother leopard onto the auto-doc table and initialized the sequence. A holographic display hummed to life, projecting a 3D map of the leopard’s internal structure and isolating the exact location of each bullet. A secondary monitor tracked her vitals.
Heart Rate: < 40 BPM. Blood Pressure: 70/40 mmHg. Oxygen Saturation: 85%.
“Her numbers are crashing!”
The AI calculated the optimal surgical path in milliseconds and began the operation. Su Wudeng watched with bated breath as medical nanobots flooded the wound sites, bypassing the damaged tissue to secure the bullets. With flawless precision, the first slug was safely extracted. The nanobots immediately shifted tasks, cauterizing the surrounding tissue and sealing the hemorrhages.
Seeing the leopard’s vitals stabilize slightly, Su Wudeng let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. “A Master-Level system from the shop is truly a lifesaver.”
The automated table injected a precise dose of cardiotonics and seamlessly moved on to the next bullet.
With the mother in the AI’s capable hands, Su Wudeng rushed to a side table to check on the cubs. Their body temperatures were still dangerously low. She quickly powered on a neonatal incubator and carefully settled them inside.
While checking their vitals, she noticed a thick, viscous substance clinging to their noses, and one cub was making a horrifying, rattling wheeze.
“Damn it, they haven’t been properly cleaned! They still have fetal fluids blocking their airways!”
She grabbed a pediatric suction bulb and worked quickly, expertly clearing the amniotic fluid from their throats and nasal passages. Only when they began breathing clearly did she allow herself to relax. She set the incubator’s heat to optimal levels and administered a few drops of nutrient solution to each of them.
Hours bled into one another. Su Wudeng didn’t dare rest. She paced between the surgical table and the incubator, her surgical scrubs soaked through with nervous sweat.
Outside the operating room, the bright red “In Surgery” light remained stubbornly illuminated. Zhong Huihui, Amber, Professor Yang, and the others waited in the hallway, suffocated by the tense atmosphere.
Suddenly, the front door chime rang frantically. Ding Dong!
Zhong Huihui jumped out of her skin. “Who is it at this hour?”
She hurried over and pulled the door open. The moment she did, a delivery driver practically collapsed inward, exhausted.
“Sorry, sorry!” the courier gasped. “I have deliveries for the Pet Love Home. Please sign here.”
Zhong Huihui blinked. Looking past him, she saw a literal mountain of packages stacked outside the clinic. “What… what is all this?”
She leaned over and checked the shipping labels on the nearest boxes: Trauma Bandages, Neonatal Cub Formula, Heated Blankets, Hospital-Grade Disinfectants… It was an entire pharmacy’s worth of supplies.
Realization struck her like lightning. “Are these from the livestream viewers?”
The Pet Love Home was located on a fairly well-known Level-4 planet. Although the streamer hadn’t publicized her exact coordinates, it wasn’t hard for determined logistics networks to track down a famous clinic.
Overwhelmed, Zhong Huihui pulled out her comms tablet and opened the still-blackened livestream. Millions of viewers were still actively spamming the chat.
“I bought a thermal blanket for the babies! I hope it helps!”
“I expedited a shipment of high-grade nutrient paste! It should be there any minute!”
“Mama leopard and babies, you have to hold on! We are all praying for you!”
“You can do it, Shop Owner! We believe in you!”
Endless messages of love, concern, and hope blurred across the screen.
Tears welled up in Zhong Huihui’s eyes. “Everyone… everyone is cheering for them.”
She looked back at the glowing red light above the operating room doors and whispered fiercely, “If the boss is in there… she won’t let them die.”
Three hours later, the final bullet clattered onto the metal tray.
Su Wudeng slumped against the counter, exhaling a long, shuddering sigh. Her throat was dry and hoarse from the prolonged adrenaline rush. “It’s finally over.”
She looked down at the tray where five blood-soaked bullets lay. Then, she looked at the mother snow leopard. The beast’s chest rose and fell with a weak, but incredibly steady rhythm. She was hooked up to countless IVs and wrapped tightly in pristine white bandages. The few patches of fur left exposed were matted and chaotic.
“You poor thing.”
Su Wudeng’s heart ached as she examined the dried blood crusting the leopard’s beautiful, thick tail and matting her massive paws.
Grabbing a basin of warm water and a soft towel, she began gently cleaning the blood from the leopard’s coat. The steam rising from the basin mixed with the sharp, metallic scent of iron. As she wiped down one of the massive paws, she saw the deep, jagged lacerations on the footpads from her desperate flight. Tears spilled silently down Su Wudeng’s cheeks.
“It must have hurt so much,” she whispered, her voice cracking. “You are such an incredibly brave mother. You protected them.”
She leaned down and pressed a gentle kiss to the snow leopard’s forehead. “You survived. And I swear to you, the poachers who did this will rot for it.”
Stroking the soft fur between the leopard’s ears, she coaxed, “Your babies are safe. You don’t have to fight anymore. Just sleep. When you wake up, everything will be okay.”
She pulled up a chair and sat by the table, resting her hand lightly on the massive paw. The snow leopard’s breathing seemed to deepen, as if she understood the promise.
After a few minutes, Su Wudeng stood up and walked over to the incubator. Inside lay two tiny snow leopard cubs—a larger brother and a smaller sister, curled tightly around each other, sleeping peacefully.
“You did amazing too, little ones,” she smiled softly. “Just like your mom. You’re brave little fighters.”
The mechanical hum of the automated surgery table powered down. The room was perfectly quiet, save for the soft, rhythmic breathing of the three sleeping leopards.
Looking around the room, a sudden, ridiculous thought broke through her lingering stress.
“At this rate, I really should rebrand this clinic into a maternity ward.”
First, she had taken in the litter of Snow Crystal kittens. Then, Amber had brought home a pack of strays. After that was Aihua and her newborn puppies. Now, she was playing nursemaid to a snow leopard and her cubs.
That made four distinct families she had delivered or rescued. And miraculously, every single one of them was alive and healthy.
Thinking about the sheer absurdity of it all, she couldn’t help but laugh out loud. “Maybe I really will open a postpartum care center for Spirit Beasts.”
“Oh, wait! I almost forgot!”
She rushed to her storage locker and pulled out the two large eggs the white goose had aggressively gifted her. Placing them on the diagnostic scanner, she ran a quick vitals check.
Her jaw dropped. “Wait, they’re fertilized?! These can actually hatch!”
The realization hit her like a ton of bricks. “Hold on… did that damn goose pawn her kids off on me?! She wants me to raise her babies!”
The more she thought about the goose’s smug face, the more it made sense. “What a cunning bird.” She shook her head with a wry smile. “Whatever. Let’s get these into an incubator too.”
After securing the eggs in the nursery, Su Wudeng finally walked to the heavy operating room doors and pushed them open.
A crowd of terrified faces immediately whipped around to stare at her.
“Oh, crap,” she muttered, realizing she had completely forgotten they were waiting out here in agony.
Seeing their pale, anxious expressions, she quickly beamed a bright, exhausted smile. “Guys… everything went perfectly. They’re all going to be fine.”
The hallway erupted into deafening cheers.
Zhong Huihui burst into tears and launched herself forward, trapping Su Wudeng in a crushing hug. “I knew it! I knew you could do it! You’re incredible, Boss!”
Amber barked joyfully, running frantic circles around her legs, his tail wagging so hard it was a blur. “Master is the best! Master is the best!”
Aihua, who had trotted over from the recovery wards, bumped her head affectionately against Su Wudeng’s knee, letting out a soft, happy hum. “Aihua thinks you’re the best too, Sister!”
