Super Zoo

The Grand Duke responded to the spiritual power once again. However, the "response" was far from as clear as that of the animals and lacked any substantive meaning. It was merely an instinctual acknowledgment, akin to a person hearing someone call their name and absentmindedly saying "oh".

Even the lowest intelligence fish or invertebrates such as earthworms communicated with spiritual power in a manner far more complex than the Grand Duke.

The Grand Duke before them did not seem to be "communicating" as much as it was similar to a person shouting into a valley and receiving some echoes in return.

But regardless of how weak the response was, any response was still a response. Spiritual power was not effective on all forms of "life" but was limited to animals. It had absolutely no effect on plants.

In other words, the Grand Duke had now evolved into an animal! Even though its intelligence and thinking capability were so weak they were almost nonexistent, far behind any known animal, and not even close to smart creatures like cats and dogs, it couldn't understand Suming's commands, nor could it possibly do any work according to Suming's will.

But since it had become an animal, it was no longer in a state of obliviousness, and there was the possibility of further evolution in the future.

Suming calmed his mind and pondered. The Grand Duke, as a life form, was already on the boundary between plants and animals. This particular Grand Duke had clearly lived for many years and could potentially evolve further, becoming either an animal or a plant.

Now that the Grand Duke could already be considered an "animal", spiritual power could assist its evolution. Suming scratched his head, looked at the large Grand Duke before him, and thought that if one day this creature, which had lived for at least a few hundred years, developed real intelligence and thinking capabilities, what kind of scene that would be.

Wouldn't it become a monster?

Suming squatted beside the Grand Duke and studied it with his spiritual power for a while. In the realm of spiritual power, the Grand Duke was like a newborn baby, utterly clueless but very vigorous, absorbing the spiritual power, akin to nutrients, that was invested in it.

"Spiritual power can indeed promote evolution!" Suming was slightly elated and quickly channeled more spiritual power into the Grand Duke's body.

What surprised Suming was that although the Grand Duke was still in the "infant" stage from an evolutionary perspective, it had a much bigger "appetite" than other high-intelligence animals. Suming used up almost seventy percent of his spiritual power, all of which was absorbed by the Grand Duke, and it still seemed unsatisfied.

With Suming's current level as an animal friend, seventy percent of his spiritual power would be enough to save a medium-sized animal that was severely injured and on the brink of death or substantially enhance the intelligence of an average animal to the point where it could barely communicate with humans.

Yet so much spiritual power infused into the Grand Duke had hardly changed it. It remained oblivious, with virtually no alteration.

Life forms like the Grand Duke had been around for tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years, known as living fossils. In the hierarchy of life, it could be considered very primitive, lacking even basic intelligence, but from another perspective, it could also be seen as a super life form with endless secrets, incomparable to ordinary animals or plants.

It seemed that to truly develop intelligence and communication in the Grand Duke would definitely not be a short-term achievement.

"Uh uh..."

The primitive man's voice came from the side. Suming looked up and saw two Diamond Parrots had perched on him at some point. One stood on top of the primitive man's head, mistaking his tangle of hair for a nest, while the other wobbled on his shoulder.

These parrots were fat and large, weighing several dozens of pounds each, which wasn't much for the primitive man with his terrifying strength. However, the man was severely injured, and with the disturbance from the parrots, the wounds began to break open again, eliciting a deep groan of pain.

The wild man, though primitive, had the highest intelligence among animals but the lowest among humans. If this had been in the past, he probably would have bashed the brains out of these two parrots by now. However, after spending a day together, he seemed to understand that these two fluffy fellows were Suming's subordinates—in other words, they were all family now. He didn't feel it was appropriate to hit or chase them away, so he could only emit threatening growls, looking at Suming and waiting for him to take charge.

"Get down, get down. If you're not busy, go help Haidong Qing hunt!" Suming mimicked a punching motion, pretending he was going to hit them. The two parrots immediately cowered, shrieking as they flew off the wild man and burrowed out of the cave to find their own food.

"See that? Next time they bully you, just scare them, but don't really hit them!"

As Suming instructed the wild man, he pushed Tai Sui back into the small pool again. The water soaked by Tai Sui had a very beneficial effect on the wild man's injury recovery. Now the most important thing was to let the wild man heal as quickly as possible.

"Ho ho!" The wild man, imitating Suming, waved his fist menacingly in the direction the parrots had flown off, letting out a roar and baring his full set of large teeth with a grin.

This fellow was naturally strong, and with his wild hair and long beard, he didn't need to try hard to look intimidating. Now, raising his fist to imitate Suming, he immediately seemed very fierce. The two Diamond Parrots had long since flown away, but his antics gave a few other animals quite the scare.

Huiya zipped half a meter back in an instant, baring his teeth and growling lowly at the wild man. The big baby-fish used all four limbs to twist and quickly hide behind a large rock without daring to show its head, while the golden silk monkey zipped behind Suming and peeked out from behind his leg with half of its tiny pale face, watchfully eyeing the wild man.

"Is it that scary?" Suming was taken aback. He raised his fist and let out a roar like he had done before, but this time the animals paid him no mind.

The wild man was also startled, then he opened and scratched his head with his clenched fist, and made a 'hehehe' silly laugh towards the animals around, seemingly with a bit of an apologetic air.

Suming, speechless, pointed to the pool and said to the wild man, "Keep soaking. Once your injuries are healed, I'll take you to the city."

...

Suming had disappeared again!

"Should we call the police?" Mrs. Tong was somewhat anxious as she spoke with Mr. Song, "He only asked for three days off, and including the weekend that's five days. Today is the seventh day. I went to Whisperwind Pavilion and didn't see him, and nobody in the zoo has seen him either. His car is still parked by the pavilion. Could something have happened?"

Mr. Song, however, was quite calm, saying, "It hasn't been forty-eight hours yet, a report wouldn't be accepted."

"This kid, always going off to the back mountain for no reason. In the wild, what if he encountered a wild animal or something? God forbid anything happens to him. Su is now the pillar of our zoo. If anything happens to him, the whole zoo will be in chaos!" Mrs. Tong murmured worriedly.

Though Mrs. Tong hadn't received any direct benefits from Suming, as an old employee of the zoo, she had watched Suming after he arrived make the zoo prosper day by day. Of course, she wished for Suming to be safe and sound.

Mr. Song, on the other hand, chuckled. If it had been any other employee missing for two days, he might have been even more anxious than Mrs. Tong. But Suming was a different case. After experiencing a series of incidents, Mr. Song had gradually become accustomed to Suming's occasional 'disappearances', which each time seemed to bring some surprise to everyone.

"Hey, you worry too much. I can't be sure about other places, but in the wild, I trust Su's abilities—he won't run into trouble. And even if he really did encounter something, didn't he take a hawk with him? Both the hawk and the wolf know the way; they'll come back to report if there's an issue," Mr. Song said.