The ground beneath their feet changed texture as they descended into the hollow. Not a tremor, but a shift in the air itself, a dense, watchful stillness that raised the hair on Yan Shen's arms. Instinct moved ahead of thought.
Somewhere in the dark beneath the stone, something opened its eyes.
Ji Suyin was a step behind him, her sword low and ready. They moved without haste, not from fear, but from understanding. Crossing into that den would change the day. There would be no retreat, only conclusion.
Three paces from the cave mouth, the sound came.
One heavy, deliberate hoof strike on rock.
Then it stepped into the light.
It didn't charge. It walked.
Yan Shen's eyes cataloged it instantly. Shoulders broader than any beast they'd killed, swollen not with fat but with power compressed beneath hide that seemed to thrum. It stood tilted forward on hind legs, a grotesque imitation of a man's posture. There was no grace, only a terrible, accumulated might.
Its mouth opened.
"Y...ouuh..."
The word was a mangled, guttural thing forced through a throat not meant for speech. But the meaning was clear.
It saw them.
It knew them.
And it would end them.
Then its Qi hit them.
It came like a physical tide,thick, oppressive, a weight that sought to press them into the earth. Beside him, he heard Ji Suyin's breath catch. Her knees locked. Her sword trembled in a hand that could no longer obey her.
Realm suppression. The absolute, crushing pressure of Middle Foundation Establishment,a realm this creature's kind was never meant to reach. Gorging on potent moonroot had shattered its racial limits, forging a foundation where none should exist.
Ji Suyin was only at Late Body Refinement. The gap between them was a canyon. Her Qi froze inside her. Her meridians locked. Her body was a prisoner to a will five times stronger than her own.
The pressure settled over Yan Shen too, a heavy cloak of intent.
And simply... stopped.
It pressed against his skin, but his body did not recognize it as a command. There was no internal struggle, no clash of energies. His bones, his blood, his very cells, treated the crushing spiritual force the way a mountain treats the wind: an external condition, not a penetrating truth.
This was not cultivation. This was anatomy. The lineage in his veins did not bow.
He saw Ji Suyin's wide, desperate eyes. Saw her fighting a battle she could not win, trapped in a prison of her own spirit.
Then the Boar Lord moved.
Not toward him.
Toward the helpless one.
Yan Shen moved.
There was no decision, no gathering of power. His body reacted before thought could form.
The ground beneath him compacted, then exploded outwards. He became a line, a trajectory. The air could not part fast enough; it shattered around him with a deafening
CRACK
a supersonic boom of displaced force that tore through the hollow.
The shockwave hit Ji Suyin first.
It wasn't the suppression, it was the pure, concussive force of Yan Shen's launch, the air itself turning into a wall. It lifted her off her feet and threw her sideways like a leaf. Her head snapped back. A hot, tearing pain lanced through both ears as her eardrums ruptured from the overpressure.
He didn't see her fall. His focus was absolute.
The Boar Lord's eyes widened. The intelligence within them registered surprise, then alarm.
Yan Shen's fist met its torso just below the ribs.
It did not feel like striking flesh. It felt like driving his hand through wet stone layered with leather. Hide gave, bone cracked, dense muscle parted. He felt the shock travel up his arm, a solid, satisfying jolt of finality.
The beast's massive frame folded around the point of impact. Its forward momentum died. It did not roar. It simply collapsed, a structure whose central pillar had been removed.
Silence, or what passed for it in Yan Shen's ringing ears.
The oppressive Qi vanished, snuffed out like a candle.
He turned.
Ji Suyin lay crumpled near a mossy stone. Blood, bright and fresh, was leaking steadily from both her ears, tracing dark lines down her neck and into her collar. Her eyes were open but unfocused, staring at nothing.
He was beside her in an instant. "Suyin."
No response. She couldn't hear him.
"Suyin." He gripped her shoulder.
Her eyelids fluttered. Her gaze swam, then found his face. Her lips moved, shaping a silent word. Confusion and pain swam in her eyes.
Her hand moved, shaking, unsteady, toward her spatial ring. Her fingers, slick with her own blood, brushed past unseen contents, then closed. She withdrew a small pill the color of aged gold and deep jade. It glowed faintly, pulsing with unstable, dense Qi.
Yan Shen recognized it instantly. Not a healing pill. A breakthrough pill. A treasure saved for her leap from Body Refinement into Qi Gathering.
She placed it on her tongue, swallowed, and her body seized.
The energy release was immediate and potent. The air around her vibrated. Her breathing, which had been shallow and ragged, began to deepen. The tremor in her hands stilled. The bleeding from her ears slowed, then clotted, the potent energy forcing her battered body to stabilize and repair the worst of the damage.
She was burning her future to survive the present, a future advancement, sacrificed to mend the damage he had inadvertently caused.
He watched, silent, as color slowly returned to her face. Her eyes cleared, gaining focus. She would live. She would recover.
He stood, the weight of the action settling on him. He had saved her from the Boar Lord's killing blow.
But the cost was very high..
Her breakthrough pill...
The den's interior was larger than it seemed from outside. The air smelled of damp stone, old blood, and a cloying, sweet decay. At the rear of the cavern, past scattered bones and gouges in the earth, he found the source.
A sunken pit in the floor, rich with dark soil. From it grew the moonroot. Dozens of thick, pale stalks, their broad leaves shimmering with a silver-green luminescence. Some plants were chewed to stumps. Others stood whole, blossoms glowing with such condensed spiritual energy they seemed like artifacts, not flora.
This was what had fed it. What had changed it. What had pushed a simple beast into Middle Foundation Establishment.
Yan Shen stood before the glowing plants, the silence of the cavern pressing in around him, a deafening silence...
The hunt was over.
The king was dead.
The throne was empty.
And the price was etched in blood and silence.