The Spirit Beast Trial had proven to be, just as Lin Feng had cynically anticipated, a glorified exercise in natural selection where the "less fit" served as entertainment or premature fertilizer. After the initial chaos at the entrance to the Umbral Range, and after his distant and sobering observation of the "Ice and Fire Goddess" Xiao Lan and her competent team, Lin Feng had returned to his own, far less glamorous survival strategy.
His "Scrap Hunter's Manual" was proving surprisingly effective. He avoided areas where Spiritual Qi fluctuated too violently—an unmistakable sign of powerful beasts or inner disciples hard at work—and concentrated on the forgotten edges of the forest, dense thickets, and the muddy banks of nearly dry streams. There, with the patience of a saint and the cunning of a starving fox, he stalked his prey: Blunt-Fanged Bamboo Rats, whose pelts were barely useful for mending robes; Crystal Caterpillars that, if disturbed, only knew how to shrink and tremble; and, his greatest achievement so far, a pair of Walking Mushrooms with mildly irritating spores, whose "cores" were more like small, fibrous tubers.
"Another day, another treasure for the collection of the 'King of Cultivation Beggars,'" he muttered to himself as he extracted the bean-sized core from a particularly slow Walking Mushroom with his shovel. "If I keep this up, by the end of the trial, I'll have enough to buy myself... perhaps a new boot. Just one."
The energy in his dantian remained a constant annoyance, a dull ache that sometimes sharpened into icy or feverish pangs, especially when he exerted himself physically or when his concentration wavered. He didn't understand it. He didn't control it. He only knew it was there, a strange, primordial presence that made him feel both more vulnerable and, in a disturbing way, more... alive, more aware of the razor's edge upon which his existence danced. His senses, however, remained sharpened by it, an advantage he had learned not to question.
It was this heightened perception that warned him of danger before his ears registered the footsteps. An out-of-place crunch of dry leaves, a sudden stillness in the forest insects' song, a fluctuation in the airflow. Lin Feng tensed, his hand instinctively gripping the handle of his shovel.
And then he saw them. Zhang Fu and Li Wei. They weren't alone. With them was a third outer disciple, one Lin Feng knew by sight: Wang "The Wall" Xiong, a burly and dim-witted youth, known for his brute strength and his dog-like loyalty to anyone who offered him a crumb of power or a chance to bully others. Zhang Fu's original trio had dwindled after the Spirit Beast Trial, but it seemed stupidity, like weeds, always found a way to regroup.
"I knew my luck couldn't last," Lin Feng thought bitterly. "It seems trash not only attracts flies but also vultures with delusions of being hawks."
"Did you see him, Li Wei?" Zhang Fu's voice, now harsher, with a tinge of resentment it hadn't held before, reached Lin Feng. "That slippery rat Feng. They say he survived the first day. Impossible! He's up to something. And that humiliation in the pen... No one mocks Zhang Fu and lives to tell the tale!"
There it was. The motivation. It wasn't just casual sadism anymore. It was wounded pride, the need to reassert his "dominance" after the dung debacle. And perhaps something more. Lin Feng vaguely recalled a story his father had told him, before the Demonic Plague, about a sect warehouse supervisor, a certain Zhang, who had been demoted and publicly punished for theft thanks to the relentless testimony of a then-respected deacon surnamed Feng. Could it be? An inherited family grudge, magnified by Zhang Fu's own pettiness? It was such a Xianxia possibility, so ridiculously cliché, it almost had to be true.
"We'll find him, Senior Brother Zhang," hissed Li Wei, his rat-like eyes gleaming. "And when we do, we'll make him pay not only for his insults but for his dog luck. And we'll take every core he's managed to get, no matter how pathetic!"
Wang Xiong merely grunted in agreement, slamming a fist into his other palm.
Lin Feng assessed the situation. Three against one. All of them at least in the second stage of Qi Condensation, while he was still stuck in the first, with that strange energy in his dantian being more of a painful, confusing burden than a weapon. His "victory" in the pen had been a mix of luck, their surprise, and perhaps a jolt of that same internal energy he didn't understand. Now they were forewarned, angrier, and there were more of them.
His first instinct, that of the survivor he had been for years, was to look for an escape route, however slim. He could already feel his muscles tensing, his mind calculating angles and distractions.
But then, just as he was about to turn and attempt a desperate dash into the densest undergrowth, a strange and powerful sensation gripped him. A sharp, stabbing pain in his chest, different from the one in his dantian, accompanied by a wave of confusion and an icy fury that didn't seem entirely his own. And in his mind, a silent voice, a visceral impulse that was almost a command: "Flee? Again? Before these... insects? Where is your pride? Fight! Feel the storm within you! Make them regret they were ever born!"
Lin Feng staggered, his hand clutching his chest. What the hell was this? That thing in his dantian? Or something else, something even deeper and more ancient awakening in response to his desperation and the direct threat? He couldn't control it, this surge of wounded pride and a primal need to crush those who threatened him. The pain in his dantian intensified, the dark energy swirling like a caged dragon, uncomfortable, furious, demanding release.
The thought of fleeing vanished, replaced by a cold, dangerous calm. His eyes, normally veiled by caution or sarcasm, now gleamed with a dark, penetrating light that seemed to absorb the scant forest light.
"It seems fate insists we have this conversation, Senior Brothers," Lin Feng said, stepping out from behind the tree, his voice surprisingly serene, though each word seemed to vibrate with contained tension. His shovel was still in his hand, but now, in the dim light, it looked less like a farmer's tool and more like the staff of a dark judge about to pass sentence.
Zhang Fu and his lackeys were startled to see him appear so suddenly, with that new, chilling aura. For an instant, the humiliation from the pen seemed to outweigh their thirst for revenge. But there were three of them, and he was still, in their eyes, the same old trash, just with a different attitude.
"So the rat finally comes out of its hole!" Zhang Fu sneered, trying to regain his arrogance and mask a sudden, inexplicable unease. "Ready to get what you deserve, eh, Feng?"
"'Deserving' is an interesting concept, Senior Brother Zhang," Lin Feng replied, his voice still calm, but with an echo that wasn't there before. "Often, it's received by those who least expect it, and in the most... unexpected ways." A faint smile, devoid of any warmth, curved his lips. It was a smile that promised nothing good.
That calm, that strange, almost predatory confidence, was the last straw for the bullies. "Get him!" Zhang Fu roared, lunging forward, closely followed by Li Wei and Wang Xiong, their movements clumsy but filled with a brute force that had crushed Lin Feng countless times before.
Lin Feng didn't wait. The impulse from that unknown force in his chest, that cold fury, moved him. He didn't think about techniques; there were none he knew. His body simply reacted, imbued by the erratic and painful energy from his dantian, which now seemed to sharpen his reflexes to an unnatural degree.
His figure flickered, moving with a speed and fluidity that shouldn't be possible for a cultivator at the first stage of Qi Condensation. He dodged Wang Xiong's clumsy charge by a seemingly impossible margin. The burly disciple, expecting resistance, crashed into the tree Lin Feng had been using for cover, letting out a grunt of pain and surprise as he hit his shoulder.
Li Wei, more cunning, tried to stab him in the flank with a rusty dagger he pulled from his boot. Lin Feng pivoted on his heels, his shovel, still held tightly, describing an unexpected and brutal arc. He didn't aim for the dagger, but directly at Li Wei's wrist. The impact of metal against bone was accompanied by a dry crack and a howl of pain. The dagger clattered to the ground.
"My 'Dao of the Shovel' has many applications, Senior Brother Li Wei," Lin Feng commented, his voice serene, but his eyes gleaming with a dark, dangerous light. "It's also useful for pruning particularly annoying and overgrown branches."
Zhang Fu, seeing his two companions neutralized or in trouble so quickly, felt a pang of genuine fear, an icy sensation he hadn't experienced since he was a small child and had gotten lost in the darkest part of the sect's forest. Was this the same Lin Feng they had tormented for years with impunity? But his wounded pride, and the shame of being bested by the sect's "trash," spurred him on.
"Don't get so full of yourself, you filthy waste!" he shouted, unleashing a flurry of blows imbued with his meager second-stage Qi, each intended to break bones.
Lin Feng didn't try to block them head-on. His body, though it felt strangely invigorated by the dark energy now flowing more freely through his meridians (or whatever that energy used as a conduit), couldn't withstand a direct, prolonged assault from a higher-realm cultivator. Instead, he danced. He moved erratically, unpredictably, sometimes with a fluidity that seemed unnatural, other times with a clumsiness that almost made him fall, but always, somehow, managing to dodge the brunt of Zhang Fu's blows. Each dodge was agony for his meridians, unaccustomed to such a flow of internal energy, the pain in his dantian a constant reminder of his fragility and the volatile nature of whatever was driving him.
But with each dodge, with each of Zhang Fu's failed blows, the bully's frustration and rage grew exponentially, while Lin Feng's calm, that cold, almost inhuman serenity, became more chilling. Zhang Fu began to pant, his movements becoming more desperate, more predictable.
At one point, blinded by fury and exhaustion, Zhang Fu lunged with an obvious opening in his guard, a fatal mistake his usual arrogance would have allowed him to avoid against a weaker opponent. Lin Feng didn't waste it. His movement was a blur. He didn't use the shovel this time. His fist, small and seemingly weak, shot out with a speed and precision that had nothing to do with his cultivation level. The blow, imbued with a concentrated speck of that dark, cold energy from his dantian, connected cleanly with Zhang Fu's chin.
There was a dull thud, and Zhang Fu's eyes rolled back. He crumpled like a sack of potatoes, completely unconscious before he hit the ground, a trickle of blood escaping his lips.
Lin Feng stood, panting slightly, not so much from physical exertion as from the strain of channeling and being driven by that unknown internal energy. The pain in his dantian was now a searing fire, but there was also a strange sense of... release. He looked at Li Wei, who was clutching his broken wrist with tears of pain and terror in his eyes, and at Wang Xiong, who had finally untangled himself from the tree and was staring at him with a mixture of stupor and a deer-in-headlights fear he had never before shown to anyone in the outer sector.
"Any other 'lessons in humility' you wish to impart, Senior Brothers?" Lin Feng asked, his voice soft, almost a whisper, but with an echo of icy power that made both survivors instinctively recoil, their faces ashen.
Li Wei shook his head frantically, his eyes darting in panic between Lin Feng and Zhang Fu's unconscious body. He helped a still dazed and trembling Wang Xiong to his feet. Without another word, and with a speed that belied their injuries or bulk, they grabbed their leader's inert body and fled the clearing as if King Yama himself were on their heels, not even daring to look back.
The few outer disciples who had witnessed the scene from a safe distance, drawn by the sounds of the fight, were absolutely petrified, their mouths agape in a silent 'O' of astonishment. Lin Feng, the sect's trash, everyone's punching bag, had just defeated three higher-level bullies, and with such apparent ease? They hadn't seen any noticeable Qi fluctuations from him, only a speed, precision, and coldness that made no sense. It was as if an ancient demon had possessed the weakest among them.
Lin Feng ignored them completely. He leaned on his shovel, feeling the aftershocks of the chaotic energy and the fight's exertion course through him, leaving him trembling yet strangely invigorated. He had won. He had unleashed a part of that internal fury that had been consuming him. But he also knew, with terrifying clarity, that this was only the beginning. The impulse from that energy in his dantian, that silent 'voice' demanding he fight, which had pushed him beyond his limits, was both a blessing and a curse of unknown proportions.
"The Spirit Beast Trial..." he whispered, looking towards the depths of the forest, where he knew far greater dangers lurked, where truly formidable beasts and perhaps even inner disciples with murderous intent roamed. A slow, dangerous smile, the same one that had appeared the previous night when the deacon announced the trial, curled his lips again. "It seems this 'fertilizer specialist' has just found a new, much more entertaining use for his shovel, after all."
And that use, he suspected with a shiver of both anticipation and dread, would involve digging some graves much, much larger than those for rabbits. The chaos within him had awakened, and it was hungry. And he, Lin Feng, was beginning to discover that, perhaps, just perhaps, so was he.