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Xiao Feng’s lithe form glided across the landscape, his heart hammering in his chest as he galloped away from the site of carnage with every ounce of strength he could muster. A base survival instinct kept a grief he did not fully comprehend yet from overwhelming him, from turning back and leaping into the fray.

Never before had he come across a cultivation as vast as the sun and never again did he hoped to, as time blurred away with the environment.

He ran and ran until his breath rasped, his chest heaved and his limbs burned from the exertion, both uncaring and incapable of keeping track of the time that had passed. The sounds of battle, of the clash between darkness and earth, had faded from his ears, that terrible creature’s Qi no longer perceivable by his senses.

He stood before the mouth of a murky cave, not knowing how he had gotten there. His keen senses told him that the cave was empty, but that did not mean it was abandoned. Still, as he curled his form to look behind him, to the path he had taken to get there, a shudder ran across the length of his body as he remembered the visceral terror the lone spiritual beast had carved upon his soul.

Without hesitating any further, he stepped inside the cave. What little light flowed into the tunnel tapered off a little past the entrance, the lip of the rock jutting out from above to act like a natural, jagged awning.

Darkness once again enveloped him, but this time his piercing ruby-red eyes could see clearly through it. There was more to darkness than the absence of light, a concept onto itself. He could tell, because it felt cool and refreshing upon his skin and moreover, it resonated with his own limited reserves of Darkness Qi.

But in that moment, having pushed himself beyond his limits to flee while being consumed by terror and grief, there was little he had the energy besides curling up into a ball near the back wall of the shallow chamber.

Before he knew it, sleep took a hold over him.

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It was the metallic tang of fresh, qi-rich blood that Xiao Feng awoke to, the sound of crunching bone and tearing flesh ringing out in the air in a savage symphony.

Panic flooded his Xiao Feng’s heart as the events of the past day flitted in his mind, reminding him that he no longer travelled amongst his kind, that he was on his own and that a terrifying predator unlike anything he had seen before lingered in a forest they had traversed before.

Only one memory kept panic from consuming him, the fact that the mouth of the cave had been too diminutive for the massive elephantine spiritual beast to follow him in. As his senses focused, he realized that there were not one, but two beast cores within the small chamber, both somehow not having detected his presence.

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One beast core was weak and growing weaker by the second, as numerous cracks spiderwebbed across its surface through which Qi was diffused in the atmosphere. With every passing moment, the Qi leakage intensified and Xiao Feng would be surprised if the beast core lasted more than the next few minutes.

The other beast core was half-spent but whole and recovering at a pace that felt rapid, almost like a cultivation session. But beasts did not cultivate, for they had no need to cultivate. Their core would draw from the ambient Qi and strengthen them both internally and externally, as sure as their lungs would draw breath.

Xiao Feng was not surprised to see the hefty form of a four-legged spiritual beast digging into the flesh of a lithe, slender beast, its elongated neck, double-jointed limbs and oval pupils speaking of a creature evolved for mobility and speed over endurance and deadliness.

He was no stranger to either of the spiritual beasts, both the predator and its glassy-eyed prey. His gaze focused on the larger, fur cloaked beast, its stout form rippling with dense musculature as it craned its neck to feast on the lithe spiritual beast’s qi-rich flesh. Its beady eyes matched the hue of its fur, an ash gray that was distinctive without being particularly eye-catching.

Before him was a predator and its core was denser than his own, even when it was half full. The beast was older than him, having lived longer in the wilds, yet it was not the elephantine spiritual beast, not a creature he had no hope of besting.

He had run from the elephantine spiritual beast, but he would not run from the ash-hued beast. For he was an Umbral Fang and besides that hulking monstrosity of a beast, they were the predators in this land.

The layer of darkness Qi ensconcing his form explained why he hadn’t been detected. Despite his exhaustion, the fear and the terror, it appeared that the habit his pack had ingrained in him through habit had stuck.

Had it been any other element, anything but darkness, Xiao Feng would have been ripped apart in his sleep. But Darkness Qi possessed a curious property, one that let him shroud his own beast core along with his form.

Nestling himself in the back of the cave likely had saved his life, for Darkness Qi would have done nothing if the ash furred beast had bumped into his physical form.

He had run once. He would not do so again.

The ash-furred beast had its back towards him, an observation Xiao Feng intended to exploit.

Instead of inching closer for the kill, he blurred forward. Darkness Qi muffled the sounds of his footfall, but it was only a matter of seconds before the predator caught onto his presence. His claws swiped forth twice in quick succession, one from his right then left, severing the soft flesh in the diamond-shaped area that made up the back of its hindlimbs’s knee.

The ash-furred beast’s hindlimbs buckled as he moved past them, leaping for its visage as a pained growl escaped its throat only to sputter out as two wickedly sharp canines dug into it.

A swipe of his claw blinded the ash-furred beast in its left eye, making it clear that he had caught the larger creature completely off guard.

The beast’s dying struggles, as it thrashed about wildly and unleashed spikes of ice across the cavern floor in an attempt to gouge him, earned him more than a few long but shallow wounds. Ultimately though, given his proximity to the creature, the element of surprise with which he had struck and having blinded it in one eye, the ash-furred beast could not impale him with a decisive strike without impaling itself with its own element.

As the ash-furred beast crumpled, Xiao Feng once again found himself alone.