A hunter's pragmatism was a cold, sharp thing. It had no room for sentiment or hesitation. The boy moved with this chilling efficiency, his eyes scanning the edge of the clearing. He spotted his subject in moments: a small, white rabbit, its nose twitching as it nibbled on a patch of clover. The capture was a blur of practiced motion, a testament to a life spent in the art of the pounce. The rabbit's frantic struggles in his grasp were a familiar sensation, one he'd felt a thousand times before. He was unmoved.
From his glowing sack, he retrieved one of the jade-green fruits. With a thumbnail, he scraped off a tiny, glistening shard and forced the rabbit's jaw open. The creature's terror was a distant, unimportant thing. He pushed the glowing morsel inside and stepped back, his eyes narrowed in detached observation.
For a moment, nothing. Then, a shudder wracked the rabbit's small frame. Its eyes, once black beads of innocence, bulged and began to glow with a malevolent green light. A series of sickening cracks echoed in the silent clearing as its bones elongated and twisted, breaking and resetting into a new, horrific form. Its muscles swelled unnaturally, tearing through the soft white fur. Two new, spindly legs erupted from its back, tipped with claws as sharp as obsidian needles. The soft fur sloughed off in patches, revealing a smooth, sickly grey skin beneath.
The rabbit's terrified squeak contorted into a high-pitched, mind-rending shriek that was no longer of the natural world. This was no rabbit. It was an abomination, a vessel of pure, untamed Qi driven to insanity. A Yaoguai. A monster born of his own caution.
As if in response, the hum of the great tree changed. The meditative drone deepened into a low, rumbling sound, like the mocking laughter of a subterranean god. The very air seemed to press down on him, whispering a chilling sentiment: You see all things as a resource, little mortal? Here, then, is a resource. One of your own making. Now, you will face it.
The newborn Yaoguai staggered to its six feet, its malformed body a parody of life. The bloodshot eyes, burning with the power of the jade-green fruit, locked onto its creator. A string of drool, glowing faintly, dripped from its fanged maw. The shriek subsided into a guttural snarl as it took its first, halting step toward him.
His plan had worked. He had his proof. The fruit was a source of unimaginable power. He had just never calculated the price of that knowledge.
The sack on his back, once a treasure, now felt like a curse. And the first consequence of that curse was gathering itself to charge. The boy's heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic drumbeat against the sudden silence. The monster launched itself forward, a grey blur of rage and corrupted energy.
He dodged, years of instinct screaming a warning that saved his life. The creature's claws gouged deep furrows in the earth where he had stood a second before. The speed was unnatural, terrifying. He tried to flee, to put distance between himself and his creation, but it was faster. Its next leap sent him sprawling, the impact knocking the air from his lungs. It was on him, a crushing weight of muscle and bone, its teeth inches from his throat. The foul stench of its breath, thick with the sick-sweet scent of corrupted Qi, washed over him.
This was it. The end. A truly ironic death—to be killed by the answer to his own question.
Then, through the fog of pain and terror, a single, desperate thought burned with the clarity of a lightning strike: fight fire with fire.
His hand, pinned but not immobile, scrambled for the sack on his shoulder. His fingers closed around the smooth, warm surface of a fruit. It was the ultimate gamble. The same power that had birthed this monster would either save him or shatter him from within. He didn't care. Better to die in a blaze of his own making than to be torn apart in this clearing.
He wrenched the fruit free, brought it to his mouth, and bit down.
A moment of absolute silence descended, the world holding its breath.
Then, his universe became pain.
It was not a slow burn, but an instantaneous, all-consuming inferno. He felt the blood in his veins turn to molten glass, his organs seized and twisted by an invisible, malevolent hand. This was not nourishment. This was a cataclysm, a wild flood of power that cared nothing for the vessel it filled. At the very edge of his consciousness, he heard it—the thin, sweet, seductive whisper of madness. He understood, in that moment of agony, why the rabbit had screamed. No mortal mind was meant to contain this raw, unfiltered chaos.
But he was not the rabbit. His soul was not a blank slate; it was a stone, hardened by years of solitude and a deep, simmering rage. He met the whisper of madness not with fear, but with the silent, defiant roar of his own hatred.
His vision bled to red. The crushing weight of the beast vanished, suddenly feeling trivial. With a surge of incomprehensible strength, he bellowed and threw the creature from his chest. As he staggered to his feet, the world snapped into an impossible, terrifying focus. He saw the intricate patterns on a beetle's wing thirty feet away. He felt the subtle shift of air currents around him. Time itself seemed to stretch, each moment an eternity to be observed. This was no enlightened breakthrough. This was the onset of Qi Deviation, a state of monstrous power born from a body and soul pushed beyond their absolute limits.
The Yaoguai, recovering, charged again. This time, the boy did not flinch.
He took a single step, and the world dissolved into a blur of motion. Before the monster could react, he was beside it. He raised his hand—it felt alien, a weapon belonging to another—and brought it down on the creature's skull. It was a simple, downward chop, yet it landed with the force of a landslide.
CRACK!
The sound was disgustingly final. The monster's head imploded, its body collapsing in a heap, its six legs twitching as the last vestiges of corrupted life fled. The green glow in its eyes flickered and died.
Silence returned to the clearing, heavier than before.
He stood over his kill, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He was alive. His rule—the survival of the strongest—had been brutally reaffirmed.
But as the molten torrent inside him began to cool, it left a permanent residue. His blood no longer burned, but it felt... different. Thicker. At the very core of his Dantian, where there had once been only a quiet emptiness, now lay a coiled serpent of cold, feral power, sleeping but ready to strike. He caught his reflection in a puddle of the creature's blood. The crimson rage had faded from his eyes, but a faint, luminous green ring now circled his pupils, a permanent stain on his soul.
He had won. The forest was still his. But in his one-sided war against the silent, watching tree, he had sacrificed a piece of himself for survival. He was no longer just a boy.
He was a vessel for a broken, savage power he did not understand. And his sack was full of a poison that tasted like ascension.