The servant quarters of the Lin Clan compound had always been a place of squalor, but Feng Chen's "home" existed in a category of degradation all its own.
The woodshed leaned against the outer wall like a drunk clinging to a lamppost, its roof patched with rotting thatch that let the rain through in a dozen places. It was less a dwelling and more a statement—a physical manifestation of how little the clan valued those who served them.
Feng Chen pushed open the door.
The hinges, rusted beyond repair, released a shriek that echoed through the pre-dawn darkness. He stepped inside, and his eyes—sharper now, capable of perceiving details that would have been invisible to him mere hours ago—catalogued the destruction with clinical precision.
His bedroll had been shredded. The coarse fabric lay in strips across the dirt floor, mixed with the straw stuffing that had provided minimal insulation against the winter cold. His spare robe—the only other garment he owned—had been thrown into the corner and urinated on, the acrid stench still fresh.
But it was the small wooden box that drew his attention.
It lay smashed near the doorway, its contents scattered. A carved jade pendant—cracked now, nearly in half—that his father had given him on his eighth birthday. A letter, written in his mother's elegant hand, the ink now blurred and illegible where muddy boots had trampled it.
Three months ago, this sight would have broken him.
He would have fallen to his knees. Would have gathered the fragments with trembling hands and wept over these last remnants of a life before the fall. Would have cradled the shattered pendant and cursed the heavens for their cruelty.
Now, Feng Chen felt nothing.
No—that wasn't quite accurate. He felt something, but it was not grief. It was clarity. A cold, crystalline understanding that settled over his thoughts like frost.
The Lin Clan was not merely a prison. It was a death trap, and every moment he remained within its walls was an invitation for his enemies to finish what they had started. His uncle would not tolerate the existence of a crippled nephew who knew the truth of his theft. Feng Tian would not allow a servant who had once been his superior to draw breath.
The only question was when they would move, not if.
Feng Chen stepped over the destroyed mementos without looking back.
From beneath a loose floorboard—one of the few hiding places the ransackers had missed—he retrieved a rusted hunting knife, its edge chipped but serviceable, and a water skin made of cracked leather. He tucked both into his belt, then paused at the threshold of the shed.
Behind him lay the corpse of Feng Chen, the humiliated genius, the discarded nephew, the beaten dog.
Ahead lay the Hundred Beast Forest.
He chose ahead.
---
The forest began where civilization ended.
There was no gradual transition, no gentle slope from manicured gardens to wild undergrowth. The Lin Clan compound simply *stopped*, and beyond its walls the Hundred Beast Forest rose like a green and malevolent wall. Ancient pines that had stood for millennia reached toward the sky with branches thick as a man's torso. The undergrowth was a tangled mass of thorns and creeping vines that seemed to writhe in the pre-dawn gloom.
Feng Chen stood at the forest's edge as the first rays of sunlight broke over the eastern mountains.
The air here was different. Thicker. It carried scents that made his newly refined senses tingle with warning—the musk of predators, the copper tang of old blood, and underneath it all a pervasive energy that seemed to hum just below the threshold of hearing.
Monster Qi.
The spiritual energy of beasts that had cultivated their own savage paths to power, beasts that had grown strong enough to threaten even Inner Disciples. The Lin Clan's disciples ventured into the outer reaches of the forest in groups, armed and wary. Those who entered alone were considered suicidal.
Servants who entered at all were writing their own death certificates.
Feng Chen took his first step into the shadows.
And the Myriad-Dao Divine Crucible *awakened*.
The sensation was immediate and overwhelming. His vision fractured, then reformed into something utterly alien. The world became layers—reality stacked upon reality, each one revealing truths that mortal eyes were never meant to perceive.
The first layer was mundane sight: trees, undergrowth, the play of light and shadow.
The second layer was *heat*. Every living thing blazed with its own thermal signature. He saw the cool blue of the earth, the warm amber of the tree trunks still holding the previous day's sunlight, and scattered throughout the forest like embers in darkness—
*Life*.
Small pinpricks of yellow-white heat that marked rabbits in their burrows, birds in their nests, insects crawling through the leaf litter. But there were larger signatures too. A cluster of orange-red shapes twenty meters to his left that pulsed with aggressive vitality—wolves, perhaps, or something worse.
The third layer was the one that made his breath catch.
Spiritual energy.
It manifested as colored mist, invisible to normal sight but blazing clear to the Crucible's analytical vision. The forest floor was crisscrossed with threads of pale green Qi emanating from herbs and fungi. Some were so faint they were barely visible—worthless weeds with no medicinal value. But others *shone*, their spiritual signatures bright enough to cast ghostly light on the surrounding vegetation.
His gaze locked onto one such signature ten paces ahead.
**[ TARGET IDENTIFIED: DEAD-LEAF GRASS ]**
**[ GRADE: TRASH ]**
**[ PROPERTIES: MINIMAL BLOOD CIRCULATION ENHANCEMENT. TOXIC IF CONSUMED RAW. STANDARD USE: LIVESTOCK FEED ]**
The words appeared directly in his vision, overlaid on reality like celestial scripture written in crimson light. The Dead-Leaf Grass itself was utterly unremarkable—a cluster of brown, withered-looking leaves that would be indistinguishable from the forest detritus to anyone without spiritual sight.
Feng Chen approached and knelt beside it.
The moment his fingers touched the plant, the Crucible *pulled*.
There was no other word for it. The grass didn't simply enter his hand or disappear from the physical world. It was *devoured*, yanked into some impossible space that existed between his Sea of Consciousness and the material realm. He felt it pass through his meridians like a cool stream of water, sensed it arriving at the center of his being where the three-legged cauldron waited.
The black fire ignited.
Even with his eyes closed, Feng Chen could *see* what was happening. The Dead-Leaf Grass floated in the void of his Sea of Consciousness, and the Crucible's flames rose to meet it. But these were not the destructive flames of a forge or a funeral pyre. These flames were *surgical*, burning away with perfect precision.
The dirt clinging to the roots—gone, reduced to ash.
The toxic compounds within the leaves—extracted and annihilated.
The fundamental structure of the plant itself—*refined*, compressed, its essence distilled down to the purest possible form.
The process took perhaps three heartbeats. When it finished, the Dead-Leaf Grass was gone, and in its place—
**[ REFINEMENT COMPLETE ]**
**[ TRASH-GRADE DEAD-LEAF GRASS → PERFECT GRADE BLOOD-QI PILL ]**
**[ PURITY: 100% ]**
**[ EFFECT: SOLIDIFIES BODY TEMPERING FOUNDATION. INCREASES BLOOD VITALITY BY 15%. NO MEDICINAL RESISTANCE. ]**
A pearl materialized in Feng Chen's palm.
It was the size of a thumbnail, perfectly spherical, and its surface gleamed with an inner light that cycled through shades of deep crimson and amber. The scent that rose from it was *intoxicating*—not perfume or incense, but something far more primal. It smelled like life itself concentrated into physical form. Like the first breath of spring after a killing winter. Like vitality so pure and potent that his body *demanded* he consume it.
His mouth watered. His heartbeat accelerated. Every cell in his newly refined body screamed with hunger.
Feng Chen placed the pill on his tongue.
It dissolved instantly, transforming into liquid warmth that flowed down his throat and exploded into his meridians. The effect was immediate and profound. He felt the energy suffuse his body, felt it seep into his bones and muscles and organs, reinforcing structures that the Crucible had rebuilt. His Body Tempering Layer 3 foundation, which had felt solid enough after the transformation in the Sacrificial Pit, now locked into place like steel bars sliding home in an impregnable fortress.
This was not just strength. This was *perfection* of foundation, a level of purity that normal cultivators achieved only after decades of careful cultivation and expensive elixirs.
**[ FOUNDATION SOLIDIFIED ]**
**[ BODY TEMPERING LAYER 3: PEAK CONDITION ]**
Feng Chen opened his eyes and rose to his feet.
The forest no longer felt threatening. It felt like a hunting ground, and he was the apex predator.
---
The Iron-Hide Boar announced its presence with a sound like an avalanche.
Feng Chen had been moving deeper into the forest for perhaps an hour when the Crucible's vision flared with warning. A massive heat signature materialized in his awareness—no longer a distant dot but a blazing sun of aggressive vitality charging through the undergrowth directly toward him.
**[ RANK 1 SPIRIT BEAST DETECTED: IRON-HIDE BOAR ]**
**[ THREAT LEVEL: EXTREME (FOR BODY TEMPERING CULTIVATORS) ]**
**[ STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS: SCANNING... ]**
The boar burst through a wall of ferns like a battering ram made of meat and fury.
It was *massive*. The size of a small carriage, easily weighing half a ton, with muscles that rippled beneath hide that gleamed like polished metal in the dappled sunlight. Its tusks were the length of short swords, jagged and stained with old blood. Eyes like burning coals fixed on Feng Chen with single-minded hatred.
A normal servant would have died of fear before the beast even reached them. A normal Body Tempering cultivator would have run, because Iron-Hide Boars were known to shrug off spears and arrows, to gore disciples and feast on their entrails.
Feng Chen stood perfectly still.
The Crucible's analysis completed in the space between heartbeats.
His vision shifted, zooming in on the charging beast with impossible clarity. The Iron-Hide—which was indeed as tough as low-grade spiritual metal—covered the boar like armor. But the Crucible saw through it, saw the flow of blood and Qi beneath the surface, saw the way energy moved through the creature's body in predictable patterns.
And there, at the junction where the beast's throat met its chest, there was a *flicker*. A point where the hide thinned microscopically, where the spiritual energy eddied instead of flowing smoothly. A structural weakness invisible to the naked eye.
**[ VULNERABILITY IDENTIFIED ]**
**[ RECOMMENDED ACTION: OVERWHELMING FORCE TO CRITICAL POINT ]**
The boar was five meters away. Four. Three.
Feng Chen's body moved.
The Immemorial Dragon-Elephant Art, which had been circulating gently through his meridians since his awakening, *roared* to life. He felt his muscles coil like steel cables under extreme tension. Felt spiritual energy flood into his flesh with enough force to make his skin flush red. Felt something ancient and primal stir in the depths of his refined body—the shadow of the Art's namesake beasts, the dragon's ferocity and the elephant's unstoppable strength.
His fist drew back.
The air around it began to *compress*, creating a visible distortion like heat waves rising from sun-baked stone.
The boar's tusk reached for his chest.
Feng Chen stepped inside its guard and *struck*.
The sound was apocalyptic.
His fist met the boar's throat at the exact point the Crucible had identified, and the resulting impact produced a thunderclap that stripped leaves from the trees in a ten-meter radius. The shockwave radiated outward in a visible ring of displaced air, sending birds screaming into the sky and small animals fleeing in terror.
The Iron-Hide Boar's charge *stopped*.
Not gradually. Not with a stumble or a skid. It stopped as though it had run into an invisible wall, its half-ton bulk arrested in an instant by the force of Feng Chen's blow. For one frozen moment, beast and boy stood locked together—fist pressed against throat, eyes meeting eyes.
Then the boar's throat *exploded*.
Feng Chen's fist punched through the Iron-Hide as though it were wet paper, drove through muscle and cartilage and bone, and emerged from the other side in a spray of blood and shattered vertebrae. The beast's eyes went wide, shock and pain and animal incomprehension flooding its dying gaze.
It collapsed like a felled tree, its massive body hitting the forest floor with an impact that shook the earth.
Feng Chen stood over the corpse, his fist still extended, blood dripping from his knuckles in a steady crimson stream. He was breathing hard—not from exhaustion but from the sheer *rush* of it, the primal satisfaction of a predator's successful hunt.
He withdrew his arm from the boar's ruined throat and wiped the blood on the beast's hide.
**[ SPIRIT BEAST SLAIN ]**
**[ INITIATING EXTRACTION ]**
He placed his palm flat against the boar's flank.
The Crucible *drilled*.
Feng Chen felt it extend from his Sea of Consciousness like an invisible tendril, felt it pierce through the boar's corpse and seek the core of its being. Spirit beasts, unlike mindless animals, cultivated their own crude form of internal energy. That energy concentrated in their blood, their bones, their very essence—and the Crucible wanted it.
The extraction took perhaps ten seconds. From the boar's body, a sphere of crimson light began to emerge, pulled through the flesh by forces that defied physical law. It was the size of a fist, and it pulsed with concentrated vitality that made the Dead-Leaf Grass look like a guttering candle compared to the sun.
The sphere disappeared into Feng Chen's palm, and information flooded his mind.
**[ BEAST BLOOD ESSENCE COLLECTED: IRON-HIDE BOAR ]**
**[ PROGRESS: 1/100 ]**
**[ PHYSIQUE AWAKENING: 1% COMPLETE ]**
**[ INITIATING INTEGRATION ]**
The energy exploded through his meridians like liquid lightning.
Feng Chen gasped, his back arching as the essence integrated into his refined body. He felt his muscles swell with new strength, felt his bones become denser, felt his skin take on a faint metallic sheen that would fade in moments but left permanent changes in its wake. The sensation was similar to the Crucible's initial reforging but more *focused*—this was not rebuilding his foundation but *enhancing* it, adding new layers of power.
His Body Tempering Layer 3 cultivation, which had just reached peak condition, shattered its own limits.
**[ BREAKTHROUGH ACHIEVED ]**
**[ BODY TEMPERING LAYER 4 ]**
The power settled like sediment in a shaken bottle, and Feng Chen found himself on his knees beside the boar's corpse, panting and drenched in sweat despite the morning cold. His entire body thrummed with vitality. He could feel the difference between Layer 3 and Layer 4—not just a quantitative increase in strength but a *qualitative* leap. His flesh was denser now, more resistant to damage. His striking power had increased by at least fifty percent.
He was still weak by the standards of the cultivation world. Still an ant compared to his uncle or the clan's true powerhouses.
But he was no longer *helpless*.
Feng Chen pushed himself to his feet and became aware of a presence in his awareness.
The Crucible's vision was still active, still showing him the layered reality of the forest. And there, high in the canopy above him, was a heat signature that did not belong to any beast. Too controlled. Too deliberately suppressed.
Someone was watching.
His gaze snapped upward.
Twenty meters above the forest floor, perched on a branch as casually as if she were sitting in a palace garden, was a woman.
She wore white silk robes that seemed to glow against the green shadows of the canopy, embroidered with patterns of falling snow and winter plum blossoms. Her hair was bound in an elegant style with silver ornaments, and her face—young, perhaps seventeen or eighteen—held the kind of otherworldly beauty that spoke of high cultivation and superior bloodlines.
But it was her *aura* that caught Feng Chen's attention.
Even suppressed, even muted to avoid alerting the forest's predators, her spiritual energy radiated cold like the depths of winter. A moon-like presence that made the surrounding air feel heavy with frost.
Their eyes met.
The woman's expression was one of carefully controlled shock. Her gaze moved from Feng Chen's blood-stained fist to the boar's corpse to the devastation of the surrounding forest, and he could practically see her mind working to reconcile what she was seeing with what should have been possible.
A servant. In trash-grade robes. Who had just killed a Rank 1 Spirit Beast with a single blow that produced a sonic boom.
For a long moment, neither moved.
Then Feng Chen did something that would have been unthinkable three months ago, something that violated every rule of conduct between servant and superior, between the weak and the strong.
He did not bow.
He did not cup his fists in respect.
He simply wiped the remaining blood from his knuckles on the dead boar's hide and met her gaze with absolute, unwavering equality.
The woman's eyes widened fractionally—the only sign of her surprise—and one perfect eyebrow arched in a gesture that was equal parts amusement and affront.
"Interesting," she said, her voice carrying effortlessly from canopy to forest floor, clear and cold as a winter stream.
Feng Chen smiled. It was not a friendly expression.
The silence stretched between them, heavy with unspoken challenge.
---
**[ Sovereign Status ]**
**Host:** Feng Chen
**Realm:** Body Tempering (Layer 4)
**Physique Progress:** 1/100 (Blood of Iron-Hide Boar absorbed)
**Refined Items:** 1x Perfect Blood-Qi Pill (Consumed)
**Technique Mastery:** Immemorial Dragon-Elephant Art (1% - Strength of 1 Junior Elephant)
**Current Observation:** Unknown High-Level Human detected (Hostility: Neutral)
**Directive:** "Hunt. Devour. Ascend."