Chapter 62: Smash All The Cages!
The moment Su Wudeng arrived at the room, her breath caught. Several of the largest birds of prey were frantically hurling themselves against the reinforced bars of their enclosures.
Their primary feathers had been clipped long ago by the poachers, and now the fragile, mangled bone structures of their wings were splintering into bloody shards from the violent collisions.
“Why is this happening all of a sudden?”
“Hurry! Get the sedatives!” Su Wudeng shouted, throwing herself toward the enclosures. “Stop it! Stop hitting the bars!”
But the raptors were completely beyond the reach of her voice. They lunged forward numbly, repeatedly ramming their bodies against the metal only to be thrown backward by the impact. They seemed entirely numb to the pain—or perhaps they simply no longer cared.
“Sister, catch!” Yu Lan yelled from the doorway, quickly tossing the anesthetic compressor rifle across the room.
Su Wudeng caught it in a fluid motion, leveled the sights at the Snowy Owl that was inflicting the most severe damage on itself, and squeezed the trigger.
Thwip.
The tranquilizer dart hit its mark cleanly. The Snowy Owl staggered back a few paces, propping its heavy weight against the rear bars of the cage. It lifted its head, its liquid-black eyes locking onto Su Wudeng—filled with a profound, suffocating mixture of despair and agony.
The raw emotion in the bird’s gaze caused Su Wudeng’s chest to tighten painfully. She realized with absolute clarity that the Snowy Owl wasn’t just panicking; it was actively seeking its own execution. It wanted release.
A wave of intense grief crashed over her, her fingers trembling against the grip of the rifle. How much torment must it have endured to decide that self-destruction was preferable to survival?
The fast-acting sedative took hold within seconds, and the Snowy Owl’s eyelids grew heavy as its body slowly slid down onto the floor.
The moment the Snowy Owl went still, the other thrashing raptors paused, freezing mid-motion. But when they processed that their companion was completely motionless and unresponsive, they let out a synchronized, mournful shriek that tore through the room.
Then, they threw themselves against the cages with even greater, more frantic violence, as if desperate to join the owl in oblivion.
Su Wudeng didn’t dare hesitate. She systematically targeted the remaining ringleaders, firing tranquilizer darts in rapid succession. It wasn’t until the last of the thrashing birds collapsed into a deep stupor that she finally lowered the weapon, the suffocating panic in her chest beginning to recede.
With the dominant raptors neutralized, the remaining birds gradually settled into a quiet, trembling stillness. The room returned to an absolute, heavy silence.
Right then, a breathless, panicked voice echoed from the doorway. “Manager Su! What happened? One of the handlers told me the raptors are trying to kill themselves?!”
It was Fei Yuanlin. She rushed into the room, her face pale with worry, her family’s companion Northern Long-tailed Tit clinging to her shoulder.
The sheer carnage of the room brought her to a dead halt. Several massive birds of prey lay unconscious across the floor, and Manager Su was already on her knees, frantically packing gauze onto their lacerated flesh.
The sight of so much fresh blood made Fei Yuanlin’s heart ache. “How could they throw themselves against the iron that hard?” She immediately dropped to her knees beside Su Wudeng, pulling out medical tape to help dress the wounds.
The two worked in silence for a long time, meticulously wrapping the damaged wings and chests of the injured raptors.
Once the last bandage was secured, Su Wudeng stared at the blood-stained feathers with a profoundly heavy heart. “They want out,” she murmured. “They would rather fracture their own bones against the iron and die than endure another day inside a cage.”
Fei Yuanlin’s shoulders slumped, a deep sorrow clouding her features. “But why? Is it truly just because their flight feathers were clipped? Their wings will regenerate eventually given enough time.”
“Unless…” A sudden, chilling realization hit her, and her expression shifted dramatically. “Unless they’ve convinced themselves that they will never be allowed to leave these cages again.”
Su Wudeng turned her head sharply to look at her. “Are you saying this is an absolute strike for freedom?”
“Yes,” Fei Yuanlin nodded, her voice soft. “I remember reviewing the behavioral logs in my family’s archives. It noted that certain apex aerial lineages possess an instinctual, uncompromising yearning for the sky. For those species, long-term imprisonment is a torment far worse than death.”
They were creatures engineered purely for the horizon. If the day arrived where they could no longer spread their wings and conquer the upper thermals, their existence became an unendurable torture. If forced to endure that captivity day after day, their psychology would collapse into an irreversible, catatonic depression, ultimately manifesting as violent self-mutilation.
A profound shock traveled through Su Wudeng’s mind. “An absolute psychological collapse…”
She reached out, her slender fingers gripping the metal bars of the nearest enclosure as she whispered, “I understand now.”
“In that case… let’s smash the cages!”
Fei Yuanlin blinked, completely derailed by the statement. “Wait… open the enclosures and let them roam free inside the room? What if they just choose to hurl themselves against the concrete walls instead?”
Though the holding bay was spacious, to an apex predator built for the open atmosphere, it was still nothing more than a slightly larger box. If they were truly drowning in an absolute despair, there was zero guarantee they wouldn’t choose to shatter their skulls against the bulkheads. And a collision with solid steel would be infinitely more fatal than hitting wire mesh.
Su Wudeng stared down at the sedated predators, a sharp, unyielding spark returning to her eyes. “Which is why we aren’t just opening the doors. We are going to stage a performance.”
“Now that we’ve diagnosed the root cause of their self-destruction, we must administer the absolute correct psychological remedy. We need to physically demonstrate to them that hope still exists.”
Fei Yuanlin looked utterly bewildered. A performance? Their mental states were completely fractured; what kind of theoretical stage play could possibly rekindle a predator’s will to live?
Though deeply skeptical, she chose to trust her manager’s instincts implicitly, silently assisting Su Wudeng as they hauled the heavy, unconscious raptors out of their metal cells and arranged them across the padded floor mats.
Once the animals were positioned, Su Wudeng donned a set of heavy, reinforced handling gear. Even in their weakened, post-sedative states, handling apex raptors remained an incredibly dangerous operation.
A few hours bled away. The core members of the relocation team gathered outside the reinforced viewing portal of the holding bay, peering inside with intense curiosity.
To minimize the risk of over-stimulating the recovering predators, Su Wudeng had barred anyone from entering the room, bringing along only Qingqing to serve as an absolute physical deterrent.
The onlookers outside whispered anxiously. “Manager Su’s protective gear looks a bit too lightweight for a room like that. Is she truly safe trapped inside with that many aggressive predators?”
“Seriously. Those birds are suffering from extreme psychological trauma…”
“If it were up to me, you couldn’t pay me enough credits to step through that seal. What exactly is her objective here?”
“Is she planning to talk them down?”
“…How could a conversation possibly fix core trauma? The Saker Falcon has been channeling her aura through that room for hours, and the metrics haven’t shifted a millimeter.”
“Those corporate poachers deserve to be jettisoned into a star for what they did.”
“Wait… look at Qingqing’s shoulder. Is that a Northern Long-tailed Tit? How did that little cotton ball manage to slip inside the room?”
“Yeah, the manager explicitly requested her presence, claiming she might serve as an operational catalyst.”
“A catalyst? That tiny thing?”
The crowd was completely out of ideas. What hidden strategy was Manager Su preparing to unleash?
Suddenly, the dynamic inside the holding bay shifted.
The chemical sedatives began to naturally flush from the raptors’ bloodstreams, and the birds slowly blinked their eyes open. The Snowy Owl’s apex metabolism cleared the toxins first.
The majestic bird shook its head, its liquid-black eyes focusing on its surroundings. It immediately realized it was no longer confined within the narrow, suffocating geometry of its metal cage, but was resting on a wide, spacious floor. It froze, looking completely disoriented.
The other raptors gradually regained consciousness as well, experiencing the exact same wave of profound bewilderment. Their instinctual response upon awakening had been to immediately re-engage their violent strike against the iron wire, but the sudden absence of the bars left their brains completely short-circuiting. What were they supposed to hurl themselves against if the cells were gone?
Before they could process the geographical shift, their senses picked up an uninvited shape in the room—the human.
Right under the intense, suspicious glares of the apex predators, the human spoke, her voice echoing clearly through the holding bay:
“I promised you… I am taking you away from that hellhole permanently!”
She marched directly up to the empty titanium enclosure that had previously held the Snowy Owl, hoisted a massive iron sledgehammer over her shoulder, and brought it down with absolute, destructive force!
CLANG!
A deafening, metallic roar reverberated through the chamber as the solid iron impact shattered the primary structural columns of the cage.
Su Wudeng pointed at the twisted metal. “This cell belonged to the Snowy Owl!”
The raptors flinched violently at the noise, their feathers bristling, but the Snowy Owl’s gaze locked onto the shattered frame, its eyes filling with a profound, unadulterated shock.
Su Wudeng wasn’t done. She swung the sledgehammer repeatedly, her breathing turning ragged as she violently battered the structure until the titanium enclosure was reduced to a heap of completely unrecognizable scrap metal.
Wiping the sweat from her brow, she marched to the adjacent unit. “This cell belonged to the Golden Eagle!”
CRACK!
“This cell belonged to the Swift Falcon!”
CLANG!
“This cell belonged to…”
A continuous, thunderous rhythm of destruction filled the interior of the bay as one oppressive metal monument after another was systematically reduced to dust under her hands.
She wasn’t merely destroying physical metal; she was publicly, violently executing the literal manifestation of their trauma right before their eyes.
The raptors watched in absolute fascination as the cages that had symbolized their eternal imprisonment, the structures that had hollowed out their souls for months, were shattered into worthless garbage that could never hold them again.
The dark despair clouding their liquid-black eyes began to dissolve, replaced by a sudden, electric spike of adrenaline. Their primitive hearts began to pound with a frantic, joyful intensity.
Suddenly, the Golden Eagle threw its head back, letting out a sharp, piercing shriek.
Screeech!
The Swift Falcon echoed the call.
Screeech!
Within seconds, the entire room erupted into a deafening, chaotic chorus of predatory cries. Several of the lighter raptors began hopping frantically on the spot, their wings flapping as if actively commanding Su Wudeng to strike harder! To obliterate every last scrap of the iron!
Screeech!
The glorious, wild shrieks completely drowned out the heavy thuds of the sledgehammer.
Inside the bay, the animals were celebrating an absolute liberation. Outside the viewing portal, the onlookers had fallen into an absolute, breathless silence.
Every single retention team member was thoroughly shaken by the display, watching the broken, suicidal raptors transform into a vibrant, fierce force of nature before their eyes.
“They… they’re back?!”
“A few minutes ago, they were throwing themselves into oblivion. Now… look at that fire in their eyes! They want to live!”
“Witnessing the literal destruction of the walls that broke them… I don’t know about the birds, but my entire body is covered in goosebumps right now.”
“This is incredibly therapeutic! It’s brilliant! She didn’t just smash the titanium; she completely pulverized the cages anchoring their depression!”
“Manager Su… how does her brain formulate these solutions? It’s completely beyond my comprehension.”
“Seriously. If it had been up to any of our professional breeders, we would have spent months administering chemical suppressants and running subtle behavioral therapy—and neither method would have yielded a fraction of the breakthrough she just achieved in five minutes.”
“Face your absolute worst terror and violently obliterate it—that is the methodology of our Manager Su!”
With the final enclosure reduced to scrap, there was no longer a single structural barrier left to symbolize their captivity.
Su Wudeng lowered the sledgehammer, her hands entirely numb from the intense vibrations of the iron. Though her lungs were burning and she was panting heavily for air, her heart was filled with a profound relief. The psychological gamble had paid off!
The magnificent predators had completely ceased their self-mutilation vectors. Even when left entirely unrestricted within the concrete room, not a single bird displayed a desire to hurl itself against the bulkheads.
She wiped her brow and stepped through the pneumatic seal of the bay. The moment the doors slid open, Fei Yuanlin rushed forward, giving her an enthusiastic thumbs-up. “Manager, you are an absolute legend!”
“That performance was the most badass thing I’ve ever seen in my life!”
She had prided herself on her family’s generations of avian experience, yet a radical, visceral breakthrough of this caliber was something she never could have engineered. Manager Su had gone straight to the root of the trauma, instantly re-igniting their primal hope for freedom.
They were no longer actively trying to die.
“Don’t celebrate just yet. This is merely the introductory phase,” Su Wudeng said, casting a protective look through the glass at the resting raptors. She let out a soft sigh. “The core driver behind their suicidal behavior wasn’t just the physical cages; it’s highly probable they are suffering from severe, clinical cabin-fever depression.”
“Their psychological architecture is incredibly fragile right now, which makes them vulnerable to sudden relapses of extreme ideation. The sledgehammer performance was a violent shock to their systems—a localized adrenaline surge designed to instantly arrest their self-harming behavior.”
“But if we fail to systematically repair the underlying neural depression, their internal trauma will inevitably fester over the long term.”
Physical lacerations could be mended with a standard medical kit in a week, but mending a fractured mind was the single most complex challenge in biological science. It was an invisible, untouchable parasite, yet its capacity to corrode an organism’s physical health was absolute. If a mental illness was permitted to degrade past a certain baseline, it would manifest as physical pathology, at which point a cure became virtually impossible.
Hearing her diagnosis, Fei Yuanlin’s face fell. “Then what’s our next operational vector?”
She felt entirely out of her depth. In all her years of managing her family’s flocks, she had never encountered a bird suffering from clinical depression. The Northern Long-tailed Tits her family bred were naturally cheerful, energetic, and overwhelmingly affectionate. Simply spending an hour playing with them or tossing them a laser pointer was enough to elevate their mood to absolute bliss. Tossing them a premium seed mixture made them feel as though they had ascended to the apex of their existence, driving them to perform intricate, joyful aerial dances for their handlers.
In comparison, the dark, complex trauma locked inside these broken predators was an equation she didn’t know how to balance.
Su Wudeng looked down at the tiny white cotton ball resting on Fei Yuanlin’s shoulder, a knowing smile touching her lips. “The counter-measure is already inside the room. We utilize the ‘Cotton Ball Therapy’!”
“Cotton Ball Therapy?” Fei Yuanlin repeated, blinking. She knew how to comfort an anxious hound, but how was a tiny tit supposed to treat clinical depression?
“Exactly,” Su Wudeng explained. “It aligns perfectly with your own observations. The Northern Long-tailed Tit possesses an exceptionally gentle, lively, and unbothered temperament. Furthermore, its physical scale is entirely non-threatening; it carries zero predatory weight, which means it won’t trigger the defensive aggression or territory responses of the larger raptors.”
“By forcing them to share the same spatial environment, the tiny birds’ natural, baseline joy might gradually bleed into the raptors’ consciousness.”
“Wait… that’s the whole plan?” Fei Yuanlin asked, looking thoroughly skeptical. “You literally mean we just let them eat, sleep, and lounge in the same room?”
“But the little tits are completely uneducated… they don’t possess training in emotional therapy or containment…”
The logic felt absurdly loose. A deep, systemic psychological illness that had driven apex predators to slice open their own wings… and the proposed medical remedy was simply letting them eat snacks and hang out with a bunch of hyperactive cotton balls?
It sounded like a children’s bedtime fable.
Regrettably, the physical exertion of the sledgehammer had left Manager Su entirely too exhausted to deliver an in-depth lecture on behavioral psychology. She merely offered a tired smile. “Let nature take its course. Give it a try.”
Fei Yuanlin watched her manager trudge toward the crew quarters, then turned her head back to look through the glass. Her family’s companion bird, Que Ling, had landed cautiously on Qingqing’s massive shoulder, not daring to advance a single millimeter toward the cluster of silent, scarred predators resting on the floor mats.
Is a breakthrough like that truly possible with just a tiny bird?
Patriarch Fei stepped up beside her, gently patting her shoulder. “Don’t overthink the science, girl. Since the manager has spoken, we execute the protocol!”
“Don’t stop at Que Ling. Order the handlers to release the rest of our juvenile tits into the bay as well. Qingqing will anchor the room and ensure the predators maintain their manners.”
If there was even a micro-percentage chance of saving these magnificent creatures from their internal darkness, she was fully prepared to exhaust every option available to their house. The raptors had bled enough.
From that hour forward, the Northern Long-tailed Tits and the apex birds of prey were integrated into a shared habitat, with Qingqing serving as the permanent, absolute peacekeeper of the room.
Fei Yuanlin took her supervisory duties incredibly seriously, checking the viewing portal multiple times a day to monitor their spatial interactions.
A few days cleared orbit. Standing outside the reinforced door once more, she peered at the feed with a lingering trace of anxiety. “It’s been nearly a week. The behavioral charts haven’t registered a significant shift, have they?”
“Our fleet enters warp transit tomorrow, and we touch down on the home world coordinates by evening. Shifting them to an entirely new planetary environment might trigger a massive spike in environmental stress.”
Fei Yuanlin had spent her off-hours absorbing every scrap of avian psychology text she could pull from the Starnet. The more data she consumed, the more precarious the raptors’ stability appeared.
For instance, at this exact moment, the Snowy Owl was anchored silently in the furthest corner of the bay. While its physical posture appeared entirely stable, its expression was hollow. It was staring at the room as if it were a ghost, completely detached from the environment, displaying zero emotional fluctuation.
It was a state of pure emotional numbness—a highly volatile diagnostic marker.
Meanwhile, in the center of the room, Que Ling and her siblings were having the absolute time of their lives. They had systematically decided to utilize the immense, terrifying Saker Falcon as a glorified playground structure, frantically fluttering from her left shoulder to her right wing-joint, loudly chirping at Qingqing to flare her feathers so they could utilize her plumage as a launching ramp for higher glides.
Fei Yuanlin’s mouth twitched. “…”
You little idiots really have zero survival instincts.
That was a Saker Falcon! The literal Sovereign of the Sky, an apex predator capable of vaporizing titanium alloy armor with a single lightning discharge!
She watched the interaction with her heart hammering against her ribs, terrified Qingqing would lose patience. Yet, the monstrous falcon displayed zero irritation. In fact, her tolerance levels appeared entirely identical to how she managed her own biological chicks, her vast golden eyes radiating a soft, deeply protective indulgence.
Truly remarkable. The birds are showing more cooperative diplomacy than their owners ever did.
The three juvenile tits leading the charge were Que Ling, Que Yu, and Que Yue. The latter two were recent fledglings from her family’s latest breeding cycle; their frames were tiny, and they were at that specific, hyperactive age where everything was a toy.
Right then, Que Yue completely botched an aerodynamic bank, her tiny wings losing traction as she tumbled directly toward the dark corner where the Snowy Owl was brooding.
Seeing the tiny white ball hurtling straight toward the silent predator, the owl’s eyes dilated slightly, its primary talons flexing as its defensive reflexes engaged.
“Get out of there!” Fei Yuanlin gasped out loud, her hand hitting the glass. If the little bird triggered the Snowy Owl’s lethal hunting instincts, she would be reduced to feathers in a microsecond.
Over the past week, the little tits had made multiple clumsy attempts to establish physical proximity with the Snowy Owl, only to be met with immediate, hostile wing-flaps that drove them away. If Qingqing hadn’t intervened with her massive bulk to mediate the boundaries, a casualty would have already occurred.
Que Yue flapped her tiny wings frantically, struggling against her momentum for several seconds before finally stabilizing her flight profile. Fei Yuanlin let out a ragged breath of relief.
However, to her absolute horror, instead of banking hard to return to Qingqing’s safe zone, the hyperactive fledgling tilted her head, her watery black eyes locking onto the Snowy Owl before she eagerly accelerated, diving right back toward the predator’s position!
Fei Yuanlin’s brain short-circuited. “…”
You are actively committing suicide!
She braced herself, expecting Qingqing to flash across the room to intercept the fledgling in the next millisecond, but the sequence that unfolded next left her entirely paralyzed against the glass—
In her simple, tiny fledgling mind, Que Yue merely felt that she had finally encountered the single most magnificent entity in the entire universe, and she was absolutely determined to secure his friendship!
This massive white bird was stunningly beautiful. His feathers were as white as winter snow, and his posture was so cold and dignified—he looked exactly like the legendary, all-powerful sky warrior she hallucinated about becoming when she grew up!
One more try!
Invite the big pretty bird to play with me!
She drifted closer with immense care, her tiny wings buzzing as she lined up a landing vector right on the Snowy Owl’s broad shoulder.
During her previous attempts, the moment her shadow crossed his perimeter, the owl would aggressively buffet her away with his massive wings. If he launched another strike this time… she calculated her options. Which direction should she roll to execute a faster evasion?
She zoomed in, deciding to approach from his left blind spot. Her reasoning was simple—
Wait!
Que Yue suddenly realized she had crossed the danger threshold and was resting just millimeters away from his neck, yet the massive wing-strike hadn’t materialized!
Processing the lack of hostility, her tiny wings gave a joyful shudder, and she cleanly, safely dropped her plump weight right onto the Snowy Owl’s feather-sheathed shoulder.
“Chirp! Chirp!” she sang out, her little heart overflowing with happiness.
The Snowy Owl tilted his head a fraction of a degree, his immense yellow eyes tracking the tiny, fluffy ball resting on his frame, his internal matrices drowning in profound confusion. Why was this microscopic organism radiating this much explosive joy simply because it managed to land on my shoulder?
When the creature rested on the Saker Falcon’s frame earlier, it hadn’t displayed a fraction of this level of fanatical validation, had it?
Pondering this variable, the owl subconsciously squared his shoulders, lifting his chest to adopt an even taller, more imposing posture.
Suddenly, his entire massive frame went completely rigid. He slowly, carefully rotated his neck, his gaze locking onto the fledgling’s movements.
The tiny creature was actively preening his neck feathers!
In avian biology, allgrooming was an absolute behavioral marker reserved exclusively for bonded life-partners or direct blood relatives. It was the highest physical manifestation of absolute trust, intimacy, and unconditional love.
The Snowy Owl’s cognitive systems completely broke down.
Our relationship has definitely not cleared the benchmark for allgrooming, has it?
But… if I deploy a kinetic strike to remove her from my shoulder, my mass will inevitably break her fragile bones, won’t it?
She is so absurdly small… she clearly lacks the intelligence to comprehend territory mechanics…
Perhaps… she is merely imitating a behavioral script she witnessed elsewhere…?
Outside the portal, Fei Yuanlin felt as though she was about to faint from the sheer shock.
She frantically spun away from the glass, her voice echoing down the corridor in a high-pitched panic: “Manager! Manager Su! Emergency! Something impossible just happened! The Snowy Owl and Que Yue… they’re… they’re…”
“Just get down here right now!”
The acoustic insulation of the holding bay was top-tier, ensuring the Snowy Owl remained entirely oblivious to Fei Yuanlin’s mental breakdown outside. He was still locked in an intense internal debate, trying to calculate how to gently nudge the fledgling away without triggering a defensive panic.
But Que Yue was already swimming in absolute bliss. In her simple mind, this magnificent sky warrior had officially accepted her into his flock! He was actually permitting her to groom his royal feathers!
Overflowing with affection, she let out another sharp, ecstatic chirp, and then gently flared her left wing-joint.
She was presenting her own flank, inviting her giant new best friend to return the groom!
Snowy Owl: “…”
Is there a fundamental structural defect inside this fledgling’s brain…
Her physical mass was microscopic—chubby, soft, and completely round, looking exactly like a miniature snowball. Her wings were absurdly underdeveloped, her body covered in short, velvet-soft baby plumage. The feathers protecting her under-wing joints were even softer, and because they were fresh down from her recent molt, they were a pristine, immaculate white.
The Snowy Owl suddenly realized that the fledgling had just exposed the single most vulnerable, defenseless part of her biological body directly to his lethal beak.
She had handed him her life, without a single shred of reservation or doubt.
She… trusts me completely?
Hearing Fei Yuanlin’s frantic shrieks, Su Wudeng came rushing down the corridor at a fast sprint.
The moment her eyes cleared the viewing portal, she froze, entirely stunned by the visual data.
The usually cold, unapproachable, and fiercely majestic Snowy Owl had slowly, incredibly gently lowered his massive head. He was utilizing the razor-sharp, lethal tip of his black beak to meticulously, softly comb through Que Yue’s tiny under-wing down.
His movements were agonizingly slow, infinitely tender, and laced with a strange, hesitant reverence.
Su Wudeng’s eyes sparkled. “!!!”
The Cotton Ball Therapy worked!
Fei Yuanlin struggled to contain her explosive excitement, dropping her voice to a frantic whisper. “Manager! Does this imply the Snowy Owl has officially integrated Que Yue into his bond matrix?”
“Holy Christ, I actually didn’t believe the science would hold!”
“They are literally best friends now…”
She frantically rubbed her eyes, half-convinced she was experiencing a stress-induced hallucination, but the beautiful scene inside the bay remained entirely unchanged.
It was real.
Su Wudeng hadn’t anticipated the Snowy Owl’s psychological walls would fracture this early in the cycle, but it was an exceptional tactical development. “Excellent. Then we initialize Phase Two immediately.”
“Phase Two?” Fei Yuanlin stared at her in shock. “Manager, you already have the secondary parameters mapped out?!”
In other words, the manager had absolute, unwavering certainty that this psychological treatment would succeed from the very beginning?
She had even prepared the follow-up module!
“Of course,” Su Wudeng replied, a look of profound satisfaction smoothing her features as she smiled at the beasts through the glass. “Let’s go to the galley and prepare a premium celebration banquet for the entire room!”
Fei Yuanlin blinked. So… Phase Two is just feeding them a massive dinner?
…I don’t comprehend the psychological mechanics, but I will execute the orders!
The moment the two girls stepped through the pneumatic seal carrying massive trays of high-grade biological food, the majority of the avian companions proactively hopped toward them. Over the past week, they had become completely familiarized with these two human shapes, recognizing them as the benevolent entities who materialized premium, delicious nourishment every few hours.
Not a single raptor displayed an aggressive reflex toward them. After all, even a wild animal could differentiate between a hostile warden and a permanent, high-tier meal ticket.
To put it plainly: these humans represented a stable, lifetime source of luxury catering!
Several of the smaller bird species eagerly fluttered toward Su Wudeng’s shoulders, chirping excitedly as they tried to peek into the containers to see what rare delicacies had been prepared for the current shift.
The most aggressively enthusiastic feeders were, naturally, the little tits. Their metabolic output from running around the room all day was massive, leaving them perpetually starved. The various apex raptors maintained a more dignified distance; though they didn’t proactively beg for the food, they never rejected the platters when placed before them.
After all, the flavor profile of the spiritual-flora-enriched meat was something their palates had never encountered, and the volume was infinite! And a predator required a full stomach before it possessed the excess energy required to maintain an angry disposition.
Once the little tits had eaten their fill, they instinctively congregated across the artificial branch structures installed along the bulkheads. They lined up in a neat, orderly row like a sequence of fat white snowballs, happily puffing out their chest feathers and grooming one another’s crowns.
Having finished his own meal, the Snowy Owl couldn’t resist casting his gaze toward the branches, his frozen heart slightly melting at the sheer, unbothered cuteness of the display.
His yellow eyes instantly singled out the specific fledgling he had shared an allgrooming protocol with that morning. It appeared she had finished her feeding cycle a bit late; by the time she fluttered up to the artificial branch to rest, the premium center positions were already occupied, leaving her with nothing but the outermost edge. The tip of the branch was swaying slightly under her weight, but the hyperactive little tit appeared to find the kinetic instability incredibly entertaining, chirping happily as she balanced.
Right then, Su Wudeng caught Que Yue’s eye from across the room, offering a subtle, deliberate wink.
The clever little fledgling caught the operational signal instantly. It was time to activate the ‘Falling Leaf’ game!
The game involved intentionally dropping from a high branch, letting her body go limp so Qingqing could swoop across the floor to catch her mid-air, before launching into a high-speed joyride around the ceiling generators.
Que Yue intentionally let her balance slip, her tiny body rolling off the edge of the branch as she plummeted toward the floor.
The Snowy Owl’s internal sensors instantly red-lined at the sight. His massive wings flared instinctively, his muscles contracting as he prepared to launch himself across the room to intercept her fall.
However, his cognitive reflexes completely bypassed a critical structural variable—his primary flight feathers had been clipped to the bone weeks ago. The moment his wings beat the air, they generated nothing but a weak, pathetic pocket of lift, leaving him entirely earth-bound on the floor mats!
Right at the critical threshold of the drop, a magnificent black shadow sliced through the air. Qingqing arrived with absolute aerodynamic precision, her heavy talons smoothly scooping the falling fledgling out of the air before transitioning into a graceful, sweeping climb toward the ceiling.
The Snowy Owl froze, his chest heaving as he tracked their flight. He heard Que Yue’s sharp, ecstatic chirps echoing through the rafters. The pure, unadulterated thrill of high-speed aerial transit seemed to have completely erased whatever minor panic she had felt during the drop.
Yes, the owl thought, his yellow eyes tracking the Saker Falcon’s powerful wing-beats. To command the currents, to glide through the infinite sky… that is the single most beautiful thing in existence.
He could see that Qingqing’s wing matrices were immensely powerful, robust, and flawless—looking exactly like… his own used to look before the nets descended.
Without his sensors detecting her approach, Su Wudeng had quietly walked up to his side.
She kept her gaze locked on Qingqing’s elegant flight profile above, but her voice drifted down to his ears, soft and conversational: “Tell me… do you still desire to conquer the sky again?”
The Snowy Owl stiffened, a profound silence settling into his consciousness for a long, agonizing interlude. The question dragged his mind back through a lifetime of memories—the infinite blue horizons of his youth, the agonizing snap of the poachers’ nets, the dark, suffocating despair of the iron cages. He had assumed his connection to the sky was permanently severed. He had assumed this human was merely another warden.
But he turned his massive head, and the girl was still standing there, looking at him with absolute, gentle patience.
A strange, unfamiliar realization penetrated his mind. Perhaps… this human and the monsters in the woods truly belong to two entirely different species.
If I choose to trust the world one last time…
When he finally spoke, his telepathic voice was incredibly hoarse, vibrating with the cracked cadence of an entity that hadn’t communicated across lifetimes: “Is it… truly possible for me?”
To fly again, just like the Saker Falcon.
To return to the infinite, borderless sanctuary that birthed my lineage.
To one day scoop Que Yue onto my own broad shoulders, showing her exactly what the authentic, uncorrupted sky looks like.
No… to achieve a happiness that far eclipses anything I have ever known.
Then, the human’s response crystalized within his soul, absolute and unyielding:
“Of course it is.”
The Snowy Owl closed his eyes as the vow washed over his consciousness, his spirit anchored by the absolute, unshakeable certainty in her voice.
