Xiao Long woke to the sound of shallow breathing.
Wei Chen lay beside him, chest barely rising, face pale as death. The wound had stopped bleeding—Xiao Long's desperate Qi transfer had seen to that—but the man was still dying. Slowly. Painfully.
And Xiao Long's body was screaming.
Hunger.
Not normal hunger. This was deeper. Primal. His Datian pulsed like a second heart, demanding fuel, demanding Qi, demanding something before it started consuming him from the inside.
He looked at Wei Chen.
If I stay here... I'll drain him.
The thought came cold and certain. His Void Physique didn't discriminate between enemies and allies. It consumed everything. Everyone. If he stayed beside a dying cultivator much longer...
Xiao Long grabbed the small knife Mei had packed for him—a kitchen knife, really, barely useful—and stumbled out of the hut.
---
The Bloodrock stretched before him, red and endless.
Xiao Long moved through the sparse trees, following instinct, following hunger. His crimson eyes flickered in and out of glow. His hands trembled.
Find something. Kill something. EAT something.
A rustle in the bushes.
Xiao Long froze. Climbed a tree. Silent. Waiting.
A Shadowfang Ravager emerged from the undergrowth—smaller than the one Wei Chen had killed, but still dangerous. It sniffed the air. Growled. Moved past his tree.
Xiao Long prepared to jump.
One beast. I can take one beast.
He leaped—
And froze mid-air.
Because below him, emerging from the shadows, was not one Shadowfang Ravager.
It was a pack.
Twenty of them. Maybe more. Moving through the trees like living darkness, their eyes glowing with hunger that matched his own.
Xiao Long landed on a branch, heart pounding.
I'm not surviving this.
He tried to use Void Step—the power that had let him slaughter twelve assassins. He reached for that space-between-spaces, that skipping sensation...
Nothing.
His Datian was empty. The pill's energy was gone. The assassins' Qi had been spent. He had nothing left.
Great. Just great.
The pack stopped.
Twenty heads turned.
Twenty pairs of glowing eyes fixed on him.
They see me.
Xiao Long dropped from the tree. No point hiding now. He landed in the center of the pack, kitchen knife raised, ready to die fighting.
The beasts moved.
Not charging—flowing. Surrounding him. Circling. Testing. Their hunger was a physical pressure in the air, a weight pressing down from all sides.
The first one lunged.
Xiao Long moved—not with Void Step, but with pure desperation. He slipped between two beasts, the space so tight his shoulders brushed their fur. The knife came up. Stabbed.
The blade sank into the beast's side—
And snapped.
The broken hilt stayed in Xiao Long's hand. The beast howled—not in pain, but in fury. Blood poured from the wound, but it wasn't deep enough. Not nearly deep enough.
Xiao Long stared at the broken knife.
"Mei," he whispered, "why would you give me a kitchen knife to protect myself here?"
A beast pounced from behind.
Xiao Long spun—no time to dodge, no time to think. His fist lashed out in pure desperation.
It connected with the beast's skull.
The creature flew.
Twenty feet. Through a tree. Into another tree. It crumpled and didn't move.
Xiao Long stared at his fist.
What.
Another beast lunged. His other hand shot out—caught it by the throat. Squeezed. The beast's neck crunched like twigs.
He threw the corpse at the pack.
They scattered. Regrouped. Stared at him with something new in their eyes.
Fear.
Xiao Long looked at his hands. They were covered in beast blood. They were also... different. Stronger. Denser. The Void Physique hadn't abandoned him—it had just needed fuel. And now, with every beast he killed, a trickle of their Qi flowed into him.
The hunger roared.
He stopped thinking.
---
Hours passed.
Xiao Long lost count of how many beasts fell. Ten. Twenty. Fifty. They kept coming—drawn by the blood, by the fighting, by something they couldn't resist. And he kept killing.
His body moved on instinct now. Void Step flickered in and out—not the teleportation of before, but a ghostly slipperiness that let him phase through attacks, through bodies, through space.
His fists shattered bones. His fingers tore throats. His crimson eyes burned brighter with every kill.
By evening, he stood atop a mountain of corpses.
Dozens of Shadowfang Ravagers lay piled around him. Some dead by his hands. Some trampled by their own pack in panic. Some simply... collapsed. Their Qi drained just by being near him.
The surviving beasts fled.
Not just from him—from the area. From the presence. Something primal in their blood screamed RUN and they listened.
Xiao Long stood alone on the pile of the dead.
His eyes blazed crimson.
His Datian screamed for more.
And then—
Crack.
Something shifted inside him. The accumulated Qi from dozens of beasts—raw, chaotic, undifferentiated—suddenly compressed. His Datian, that endless void, contracted like a dying star.
And then it expanded.
---
XIAO LONG'S BREAKTHROUGH: QI REFINING (EARLY)
The Void Physique doesn't follow normal cultivation rules. Normal cultivators spend years slowly accumulating Qi, carefully refining it, building their foundation brick by brick.
Xiao Long just absorbed the life force of fifty Shadowfang Ravagers in a single afternoon.
The breakthrough wasn't gentle. It was an explosion—a supernova of purple energy that blasted outward from his body, shaking the ground, cracking trees, sending the last fleeing beasts into absolute terror.
But when the explosion faded...
Before After
Qi Sensing (Peak) Qi Refining (Early)
Empty Datian Swirling vortex of purple Qi
Can't control Void Step Can almost control Void Step
Hunger constant Hunger manageable (for now)
Mortal body Cultivator's body
The purple Qi swirling around him wasn't normal. It wasn't the gold of the Xiao Clan or the red of fire cultivators or the blue of water artists. It was something else—primordial. Ancient. The color of the void between stars.
And it flowed into his meridians like water finding rivers.
---
Xiao Long stood amidst the carnage, breathing hard, feeling the new power thrumming through his veins.
He was exhausted. He was starving—still starving, always starving.
But he was alive.
He grabbed several pieces of the largest beasts—enough meat for days—and started walking back to the hut.
---
The hut looked exactly as he'd left it.
Smoke rose from the chimney. The smell of cooking meat drifted through the air. And standing at the fire, stirring a pot, was Wei Chen.
Xiao Long stopped.
Wei Chen turned. His color was good. His wound was gone. He moved without pain, without stiffness, like he'd never been stabbed through the chest at all.
"Young Master." Wei Chen smiled—a genuine smile, warm and grateful. "Dinner's almost ready."
Xiao Long's jaw dropped.
"How—"
"The tea." Wei Chen gestured toward a empty cup on the hut's small table. "I woke up dying. Couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. Then I saw that cup on the table—steaming hot, like someone just poured it. I drank it."
He shrugged.
"Worked perfectly. Whatever was in that tea... Master, you really are full of wonders."
Xiao Long stared at the cup.
The tea.
He hadn't made any tea. He'd been gone all day, killing beasts, nearly dying, breaking through.
But someone had been here.
Someone who could heal a dying man with a single cup.
Someone who appeared and disappeared at will.
Someone who had slammed Qi into Xiao Long's back and called him "kid" like they'd known him for centuries.
Old Man Yu.
Xiao Long set down his beast meat and walked to the table. He picked up the empty cup. Still warm. Still faintly glowing with residual Qi.
"I need to find him," Xiao Long murmured. "That old man... he knows what's happening to me."
Wei Chen raised an eyebrow. "Old man?"
Xiao Long didn't answer.
He just stared at the cup, at the tea leaves at the bottom, at the impossible healing that had happened while he was gone.
Outside, the Bloodrock wind howled.
Inside, Xiao Long made a decision.
He find Old Man Yu.
Get answers.
No matter what it takes.