I am an insignificant caterpillar. From the beginning of my crawling, this old walnut tree has been my world. The bark is as rough as sand, and the green leaves that grow out of it are like soft cotton cloth. Above that is the sky, which is clear and blue. I spend my days here, eating the sweet bark and drinking the fresh dew. My life is like a carefree pastoral poem.
However, that day, the sun was shining brightly, and I was admiring the play of clouds through the gap. Suddenly, the branch where I was was vibrating significantly. I closed my eyes tightly, hoping that all this would pass quickly. However, the tremors intensified and my heart condensed into hail. Then, I felt myself moving at high speed, as if being lifted into the air by a huge force.
When I slowly opened my eyes, I found that I was already between the misty clouds. The golden-winged roc, which I had looked down upon indifferently, was waving its wings like a mighty sky warrior. It is so huge and majestic, and its golden feathers shine brilliantly in the sun. Its claws were so sharp that it uprooted me and other branches with one claw. The densely packed and crooked branches were tightly grasped by it, and I was forced to be trapped among them.
My heart beat rapidly, I felt innocent and terrified, and the clear sky in front of me turned into an unknown journey for me. I saw the clouds getting closer and closer to me, and the blue sky retreating quickly above my head. At that moment, I seemed to touch the stars and lose myself. The initial fear turned into a trembling expectation of the unknown. I was taken into the sky. After that, only Dapeng and Feng knew where I would go.
I have never experienced such a life. My life was as stable as a stone. But now, I am living in the shaky sky under the giant claws of the roc. The world is no longer fixed, only constantly shaking. Time seems to have lost its rhythm. My back feels the chill for the first time in my career.
The speed of the roc's flight made me fear time. Every beat of its wings counted down to my unknown fate. The wind whizzed past us, like an irresistible sharp blade, instantly cutting the skyline. The sharp wind blade swept across my fragile body, causing my skin to split into countless fragments.
I clung to the few remaining branches, hoping to find a little comfort. However, I found that I had nowhere to escape. The branches were jagged and intertwined, but they could not provide me with shelter from the wind and rain. I curled up at the heart of the branches, my body trembling slightly, and the wind around me was like a mocker, sneering and passing me arrogantly.
The existence of warm sunshine, flowers and thorns has become a distant memory, replaced by endless nausea and incomparable drifting feeling. I am like a messy fallen leaf, forgotten by the colorful world, floating alone in the ocean below. I closed my eyes, a worm meditating in the boundless darkness, feeling that my life or death was uncertain, as if the whole world was about to crush me. I couldn't help but think of the familiar walnut woods. Are they also praying for me, or have they already forgotten me, a little bug in the grass?
Time passed quietly in my feeble struggle, and it seemed to be endless. Suddenly, a loud bang pierced my remaining peace. It was human desecration of life, the most cruel sound of a shotgun in nature. It wasn't until this moment that I realized that Dapeng was sometimes afraid. Under that strong body, there was also a fear of the unknown hidden.
As if Dapeng had been stung by a wasp, his stiff body instantly let go of the branch in his claws. I felt weightless, as if I was falling off a cliff, and the branches and I were falling from the sky together. I watched the golden-winged roc getting farther and farther away, and he walked away. He escaped with his life under the shotgun. But tears flowed down my face with the wind. They were my nostalgia for the old life and my weakness for the current situation.
I clung to the branch but couldn't stop myself from falling. I felt the wind whistling in my ears, and the world was reflected in front of my eyes at an alarming speed. I closed my eyes and tried my best to feel this last moment of freedom, but freedom had never seemed so scary.
I don't know what will happen next. My fate seems to be on one end of the scale, floating and missing. All I have left is the fear of the unknown and my persistence in life. I have escaped from the claws of the Dapeng, but I have to welcome the embrace of the ground. I kept praying, hoping that a miracle would happen, that my story could continue, that I could return to that familiar walnut tree again.
The branches and I hit the rocks all over the place. At that moment, I felt like I was broken into countless pieces. The violent impact directly penetrated my body. My whole body seemed to be pierced by countless needles, and the severe pain spread to every corner of my body. My internal organs seemed to be tightly grasped by a huge hand, stirring, pulling, and tearing. I could even hear the sound of soft bones breaking.
My stomach had been tortured by the whirlpool in flight, and at this moment the dizziness was replaced by a flood of pain. I opened my eyes, but my vision was blurry, as if shrouded in thick fog. The shocking pain made me want to give up consciousness and fall into the abyss of darkness.
The pain spread throughout my body, like millions of ants crawling and chewing inside my body. The piercing pain made it almost impossible to breathe. The cold air scraped across my body like a razor, leaving bloody streaks. My skin was covered in purple bruises and broken wounds, and every breath was an agonizing ordeal.
I could only endure the pain, close my eyes, longing to be surrounded by this darkness, hoping to calm the panic in my heart and relieve the huge pain in my body. At that moment, I felt weak as never before. I felt that I might never be able to stand up from the pain. I felt that this might be the end of life, the end of a little caterpillar. However, the power of life told me that I could not. I give up so easily, I want to persist, I want to live!
In the midst of extreme pain, I suddenly smelled a sweet scent. The sweetness seemed to have some kind of magic power, and I couldn't help but open my eyes. My vision gradually became clearer as I recovered, and I saw that I was sitting on a hard seed, and there was another similar seed next to me.
I slowly turned my head and looked around, and found that the place I was in was a large semicircular pit. The walls of the pit were extremely smooth, like a huge mirror, with no gaps to climb. I know that this may be my prison for the rest of my life. No matter how hard I struggle, I will never be able to escape from this abyss of despair.
However, no matter how many difficulties and despair lie ahead, I cannot forget my most primitive desire to survive. I looked at the two seeds beside me. The special sweetness was like a gift from heaven, comforting my aching heart. I started to eat a seed under me, and the sweet taste filled my mouth, like a delicacy among insects.
I don't want my life to disappear like this. If there is really no way to escape, then I will be a ghost who is full to death. I kept chewing, but the seed was so hard that I couldn't bite it off. I was helpless and had no choice but to swallow it in one bite. The sweetness spread as I swallowed it, as if it was awakening every cell in my life.
However, the reality in front of me is still cruel. I sit in the pit and observe the sky. The boundless blue may never be a realm that I can reach from this moment on. So I told myself that even if I am in a dark place, I must keep the light in my heart, because only then can I find hope and the possibility of getting out of the predicament.
The calm just now was shattered in an instant, and the pain in my internal organs erupted like a volcano. The seed I just swallowed seemed to sprout stubbornly in my stomach, and a small life took root and sprouted in my body. It took root silently, absorbed my nutrients, and became the most dazzling foreign object in my body.
The tearing pain gradually took over all my feelings, and it ruthlessly expanded to every cell, like needles, shuttling crazily in my constantly beating blood vessels. My blood was boiling like boiling water, as if a force was erupting inside my body, trying to tear me apart.
The raging pain made me feel a strange experience that I had never had before. I looked at my body and saw that white blood (caterpillars have no hemoglobin, so the blood is white) had flowed out along the cracks, and crystal clear tears were shining in the sunlight. It flickered down, reflecting my helplessness and despair. I felt more and more dizzy, the world around me seemed to be spinning, I couldn't control myself, my vision became blurred, and everything seemed to be moving away from me.
The pain continued to intensify, as if there were countless little people beating my body with hammers. That tearing feeling devastated me, and my consciousness began to blur. I felt like I was disappearing little by little, like a kite with its string broken, letting the wind carry it to the unknown sky. The world slowly disappears before my eyes, everything falls into darkness
, only the pain echoed in my heart. I closed my eyes and let the power swallow me up. Finally, I fainted in the lonely pit.
When I woke up again, an unprecedented power surged through my body, like an undercurrent roaring in the deep ocean. I feel like I am no longer the powerless caterpillar. I seem to have experienced a strange transformation, taking off my old body and taking on a new life, and my blood has become hot.
I felt that my body seemed to have grown a lot bigger, and I had a lot of strength that I had never had before. However, the rich power guides me and makes me want to fall asleep. I looked around, and it was still the familiar semicircular pit, without any change.
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