Chapter 8: The First Law of the Wild
The world was too loud.
The river's roar was not just sound; it was a chaotic, crashing Qi signature of tumbling rock and frantic water spirits. The forest was not silent; it was a whispering, watchful blanket of life-Qi, each plant humming with slow intent, each insect a pinprick of brief, sharp energy. The air was thick, not with cultivation waste, but with wild, untamed essence—clean, potent, and completely unrefined.
It was overwhelming. His senses, honed in the sect's structured, if toxic, environment, were being bombarded by raw nature.
He crouched in the shallows, shivering. The "spatial tribulation toxicity" was a deep ache in his bones, a feeling of being subtly out of phase with the world. The fragment was working to process it, but it was slow. This wasn't a single energy to be devoured; it was a fundamental wrongness in his placement in reality.
He needed shelter. Safety. A place to let the fragment work.
He staggered into the tree line, his waterlogged disciple trousers heavy on his legs. He moved away from the river, the roar softening to a background hum. The forest floor was a carpet of decaying leaves and soft moss. The silence here was deceptive, filled with the skittering of small lives.
He found a shallow depression under the roots of a massive, ancient cedar. It was dry, hidden, and the tree's own immense, patient life-energy created a bubble of relative calm. He crawled in, curling into a ball, and let the tremors take him.
For hours, he drifted in a half-sleep as the fragment labored. It didn't fight the spatial toxicity; it accommodated it. He felt his own spiritual signature, already an anomaly, stretch and warp, becoming more elastic, less bound by simple locality. It was a terrifying sensation, as if he might dissolve into the spaces between things. But the fragment's core—the devouring will—held him together, an anchor in the chaos.
By the time the first grey light of dawn filtered through the canopy, the worst had passed. The ache remained, a phantom limb of dislocation, but he could think. He could move.
SPATIAL TOXICITY: 67% ASSIMILATED. HOST SPATIAL AWARENESS ENHANCED. CULTIVATION BASE STABILIZING AT STAGE FIVE (FALTERING).
NEW DIRECTIVE: SECURE SUSTENANCE. BIOLOGICAL TRIBULATION SOURCES AVAILABLE: 100% PURE, 0% CURATED.
Sustenance. He was ravenously hungry, both in body and in spirit. His Qi reserves were depleted from the escape. He needed to eat. But here, there were no poison vents, no beast pits, no curated blooms. Here, the tribulation was life itself, red in tooth and claw.
He crept from his root-hole. His senses, still adjusting, scanned. He saw the Qi of a nearby berry bush—bright, simple, nourishing life-energy. He ate a handful. The berries were tart and filling. The energy they provided was a trickle, clean and bland. The fragment processed it without comment. It was fuel, not a feast.
Then he felt it. A hundred yards away, a sharper, hotter signature. Predatory intent. Hunger that mirrored his own.
He moved towards it, not with fear, but with a hunter's focus. He saw it through the undergrowth—a Spirit-Tusk Boar, a low-level beast the size of a pony. Its tusks gleamed with crude, metallic Qi. It was rooting for tubers, its small, intelligent eyes scanning. It was a creature of pure, simple tribulation: eat, grow, fight, die.
This was the test. The first law of the wild.
The boar sensed him. It turned, snorting, a plume of steam jetting from its nostrils. It saw not a cultivator, but a skinny, strange-smelling creature invading its territory. It lowered its head, tusks aimed, and charged.
No overseer to watch. No rules but survival.
Xiao Feng stood his ground. As the boar thundered towards him, he didn't try to summon a technique. He had none. He had only principle. The principle of consumption.
He waited until the last possible second, then sidestepped with the rat-agility in his limbs. He wasn't fast enough. A tusk grazed his thigh, opening a shallow gash. Pain, hot and bright. The boar's own violent, simple life-energy—its charging rage—brushed against him.
The fragment recognized it. TARGET: PRIMAL BEAST RAGE. LOW DENSITY.
As the boar skidded to a stop and wheeled, Xiao Feng didn't clutch his wound. He reached for it, physically and spiritually. He focused on the invading sensation—the boar's intent to gore, to kill. He didn't reject it. He invited it in. He opened his meridians at the point of contact and let the boar's own charging energy flow into the wound.
It was a reversal. Instead of an attack harming him, he used the point of contact as a conduit to feed.
The boar felt it. Its charge faltered. A fraction of its vitality, its fierce will to fight, was siphoned away, leaving it confused, momentarily weaker.
Xiao Feng's leg stopped bleeding. The pain transformed into a jolt of fierce, animal strength.
He pressed the advantage. He didn't fight the boar; he harassed it. He darted in, not to strike a killing blow, but to make contact—a slap on its flank, a kick against its shoulder. Each touch was a leeching siphon. He wasn't damaging its body; he was draining its spirit, its will, its very life-tribulation.
The boar grew sluggish. Its angry snorts became wheezes. Its glowing tusks dimmed. It was being eaten alive from the inside out, not by teeth, but by a silent, devouring absence.
Finally, the beast collapsed, not from blood loss, but from spiritual exhaustion. Its sides heaved. Its eyes, once fierce, were clouded with a profound, unnatural fatigue.
Xiao Feng stood over it. This was different from the rat in the chute. That had been a desperate counter-attack. This was a deliberate, calm harvesting. He placed a hand on the boar's heaving side.
He didn't just take the last of its energy. He took the pattern of it. The stubborn toughness of its hide, the brute force in its muscles, the simple, unyielding will to survive that had driven it for years in this forest. He consumed its entire life's tribulation—the struggle against hunger, cold, and rivals—in one long, cold draft.
The boar's body settled, then stilled. Its flesh remained, but it was just meat now. The essence was gone.
Xiao Feng straightened. His Qi reserves were half-refilled. His body felt denser, more resilient. His own will felt more stubborn, more porcine in its single-mindedness.
He had practiced his Dao. He had turned a predator into prey, and its life into his lesson.
He butchered the boar with a sharp stone, taking meat and the tusks. He made a small, smokeless fire in a pit using a spark of his lightning-tinged Qi and cooked the meat. It was tough and gamy, but it filled his stomach with real substance.
As he ate, he plotted. The sect would come. They would track the spatial rift's endpoint. He had a day, maybe two.
He needed to move. He needed to get lost. And he needed to grow stronger, faster than he ever had in the sect. The wild was a harsher, purer teacher. Here, tribulation wasn't a curated hazard; it was the weather. It was the law.
He finished eating, packed the remaining meat, and shouldered the tusks. He looked up at the canopy, judging the sun's direction. He knew nothing of this land, but his internal map, born of the fragment, now held a new, faint layer—a sense of spiritual gradients. He could feel places where the natural Qi was thicker, wilder, more dangerous. Places of power. Places of greater tribulation.
He would not run from them. He would run towards them.
He set off downstream, keeping the river to his left as a guide. He moved with a new caution, his senses stretched wide. He was no longer just a fugitive. He was an invasive species. A new kind of predator in an ancient forest.
By midday, he found the first sign he was not alone in the wilderness.
A cleared path. Not an animal trail, but a footpath worn by boots. And beside it, stuck to a thorn bush, a shred of dark blue cloth. Not sect robes. Coarser. He picked it up. It smelled of sweat, earth, and a faint, coppery tang of blood.
Mortals. Or low-level, rogue cultivators.
He faded into the trees, becoming a shadow. He followed the path, moving parallel to it, silent as the forest itself.
The path led to a scene of recent carnage.
A campsite, now destroyed. A cart lay on its side, one wheel shattered. Supplies were scattered. And there were bodies. Three men in rough, dark blue tunics, their throats cut with clean, efficient strokes. Not a beast attack. This was murder.
The copper smell of blood was fresh, less than an hour old. The Qi in the air was a fading discord—simple mortal fear, sharp violence, and… something else. A cold, metallic aftertaste. A cultivator's energy, but thin, practiced in stealth, not power.
Bandits. Or assassins.
Xiao Feng searched the bodies with clinical detachment. He found a few copper coins, a small, crude knife, and on the leader, a leather tube. Inside was a vellum map. It showed this stretch of forest, the river, and to the east, marked with a small, crude fortress icon, the words: "Ironwood Outpost. Mercenary Guild. No Questions."
A destination. A den of wolves.
He also found tracks leading away from the camp—four sets of booted feet, moving quickly east, towards the outpost. They'd left in a hurry, likely with whatever they'd stolen.
He looked at the dead men. Their life-tribulation was over. Their story ended here, in fear and violence. He felt no pity. Only a cold assessment. This was the second law of the wild: predators prey on the weak.
He was weak in numbers. But he was a different kind of predator.
He looked east, towards the bandits' trail, then at the map in his hand. The Ironwood Outpost. A place of no questions. A place where a strange, hungry boy with no past could disappear. A place undoubtedly full of violence, greed, and fresh, steaming tribulations for the taking.
A grim purpose settled on him. He would follow the hunters. He would find their den.
And he would see if the wolves of the wild were ready for a creature that didn't just kill for food or gold.
But killed to learn. To consume.
He folded the map, tucked it away with the crude knife, and melted back into the forest, following the trail of the killers. His hunger, momentarily sated by boar meat, now rose again, sharper and more specific.
He had tasted beast-rage and spatial chaos.
Now, he wanted to taste the tribulation of human malice.