1974 What Is The Bird?

Seeing the happy bird, Lin Mu couldn't help but feel pleased too.

It felt rather warm in his heart and even the Saintess couldn't help but smile under her veil. If one could see it right now, there was a high chance the entire forest would bloom in joy.

"I see, it's all good since it was your friend." Lin Mu said and returned the bird to Little Shrubby's head.

With the bird safe and healthy, Lin Mu could now move on to other questions.

Such as the fact that the bird was still unknown.

"Do you know what it is, Saintess?" Lin Mu asked, since he himself was unable to find a concrete answer.

"Hmm…" the Saintess narrowed her eyes and took a deeper look at the bird.

~shua~

Even her senses covered the tiny bird and looked deep into its bloodline trying to find what it was. 

As the Saintess of the Serpent Moon Sect and the Serpent Empress, she knew a lot about beasts and finding out their bloodlines was as easy as breathing for her.

The Saintess then closed her eyes and searched deep within the bloodline of the bird.

There she saw a muddied pool of blood which seemed to be stagnant.

The Saintess gazed at this muddied pool of blood and her own bloodline commanded it to move.

~HONG~

The stagnant pool of muddied blood stirred and started to churn. A few seconds later, it started to separate out into separate sections, each having a different density and color tone.

Some parts were light while some were dark.

Some looked like healthy blood while some looked like clotted old blood.

It was easy to tell that the healthy blood was the main bloodline of the bird, while the others were impurities in its bloodline that had come to be due to the mixing of bloodlines.

This was a normal thing for most beasts, and the majority of them had the same state of bloodlines. Very rarely would one have a proper bloodline, and even then, there was a high chance they would have impurities in them.

The difference between an active bloodline and an inactive one was merely the amount of impurities that were present in them.

These impurities came from the weaker or incompatible bloodlines that were mixed in millenniums ago. This was normal as most beasts interbred and came from a long, long line of ancestors and founders.

The environment they lived in, the cultivation base they had, and what they consumed would also affect their bloodlines, eventually leading to the changes in the bloodline.

Even if two beasts of the same species had the same bloodline, it wasn't exactly a 100% match.

After all, the two beasts would certainly have variations on how they lived and how they grew. This would cause minute changes in their bloodline that would change its makeup.

Some changes could be bad, while some could be good. 

One could obviously provide better conditions, good nutrients, and resources, along with a suitable environment to have the most favorable effects on the bloodline.

But despite that, there could still be some natural mutations that could happen.

These could also be good and bad, with their probability being random. They further affected the bloodline, and could even change it entirely.

This was the case for beasts with a singular bloodlines.

Then there were unique cases, like Little Shrubby, where they did have multiple bloodlines, but all of them were pure. With few impurities.

When something like this happened, a cumulative change would happen, and the bloodlines could even merge to create a beast like Little Shrubby.

But having Seven Bloodlines like Little Shrubby was a very rare case.

And even that had not exactly been a natural thing, but had been done through the interference of Lin Mu.

The same was the case for the Yin Yang Twin Serpents. Lin Mu's infusion of Beast Qi had changed the fate of the egg that was to become either a Black Water Snake or a Fire Fang Snake.

The Saintess observed the bloodlines of the tiny bird and saw that Lin Mu's original guess that it was a Snow Stream Sparrow was correct.

'Its main bloodline is certainly that. But… the impurities have mutated it to become smaller.' The Saintess understood. 'It also seems like they are the reason why it managed to survive this long. The mutation made it smaller, but also improved its natural vitality and healing, allowing it to survive blood loss for that long.' She analyzed.

There were often cases like this, where a beast would gain an advantage while also having a disadvantage.

In the case of the tiny Snow Stream Sparrow, it became smaller in size as a trade off for having better vitality. Where most Dao Shell Realm beasts would have died within hours, it had managed to withstand the Vein Snapper Venom for two days.

It was certainly shocking on some level and showed that while the bird had become weaker, it still had potential in it.

~shua~

Having confirmed all this, the Saintess stopped influencing the bloodline pool which quickly became muddied again. She then withdrew her senses and opened her eyes.

"It is just as you said, a Snow Stream Sparrow. But it has also mutated to become smaller along with a few changes to its physical characteristics." The Saintess confirmed.

"Huh… so I was right." Lin Mu didn't expect that. "Is the reason why it managed to survive this long the same mutation?" He asked.

"Indeed. It has better vitality than most beasts at the Immortal Ascension realm. While it isn't that strong physically, it still has a high survival rate." The Saintess answered.

She then went on to explain more in detail about how the bloodlines worked and the impurities that were causing this change in the Tiny Snow Stream Sparrow.

Since Lin Mu already knew decently about bloodlines, it didn't take him long to understand the rest too.

And when he did, an idea came to his mind.

"Should I… try to use Beast Qi on it too?"