First came the innocent changes. The rabbit’s brown fur turned a lighter shade, and for a brief moment, all three moons were reflected in his eyes. It would have been a magical sight if the poor bastard wasn’t foaming from the mouth, his eyes bloodshot. Like a rabid dog, Guan Yu lunged at Jun, who quickly dodged out of the way.

“He’s gone rogue! Mayday!”

Seeing how Jun was too slippery for him, the rabbit instead targeted the fence. He valiantly charged towards it like a soaring arrow, and the full-body collision wasn’t a pretty sight, but Guan Yu was unfazed by things like physical pain. After all, he was a warrior. Like a ferocious beast, he reared up and started assaulting the fence with his…lower body?

“What the fuck?”

Jun only realised what was happening seconds later, but that was enough time for the scene to be viciously burned into his mind for years to come. There he was, the brave rabbit named after a great general, just fucking the fence.

Cold sweat ran down Jun’s back. What if it had been him who consumed this weird sludge? The consequences would be too disastrous to even think of.

“At least I know it works, even if it has dubious side effects…”

The rabbit’s raging libido raged on for hours on end, and at the end of the day, every inanimate object had gotten “attacked.” It would have been fine if this was a one-time occurrence, but the next day, Jun failed again. And then again, and again, for several days in a row. For the rabbit, it was the wildest journey of his life, deserving to be titled “Guan Yu’s Bizarre Adventure.” But, that tale was for another time.

The pill-making was eating a hole in his wallet, but every day, Jun persisted on making more and more pills. Now, with just the measly business he had in the disciple’s quarters, he would’ve long run out of money, but they had recently expanded and gone sect-wide. Wang Lei was now the proud owner of “Best Formations LLC,” unofficially named and structured by Jun.

The way it worked was simple—the charismatic disciple would hang around the Hall of Formations all day and scout potential new workers, who somehow always managed to be women. Truly wonderful how life works. Then, they would establish several “branch offices” throughout the sect and engage local disciples with active marketing tactics—which somehow also managed to be women.

‘If it ain't broke, don’t fix it.’

Any lesser formations would be offloaded to disciples, and any formations beyond them would be secretly forwarded to love-smitten seniors, who would happily help their junior sisters. At this point, Jun didn’t even have to work himself. Wang Lei operated the whole thing, and the big boss received the profits. The costs were still high as they were expanding, but it was enough to fuel the dog’s pill-making dao.

Of course, there were a myriad of problems—namely, the Hall of Formations was a massive monopoly, and the only way to compete was to undercut the prices until even Jun started to feel sick. Then there was Wang Lei himself, who’s massive ego was expanding more and more. If the brat dared to rebel, Jun would release a whole litany of scrolls detailing his exploits with several junior sisters. There were also problems with jealous disciples, formation shops, and other copycats, but all in all, they were doing well.

By the end of the week, Guan Yu’s fur had turned completely white. There was now always a strange glint in his eyes, like he was constantly seeking someone out. Chen Hao had gone to various people to figure out what was wrong with the rabbit, and the conclusion was that the rabbit was showing faint signs of awakening. It was still not enough to unlock ancestral memories or the technique on his own, but Jun spent spare moments trying to teach Guan Yu how to cook pills. It didn’t go well.

Finally, on one particular day, Jun opened the pill furnace, expecting another failure, but what appeared was instead a round, purple pill, covered in concentric black circles. It was identical to the drawing in the book, but despite that, he was wary about eating it outright. What if it was a super-mega aphrodisiac?

So, it was once again devoured by the rabbit, who was already raring to go and “spar” with the furnace. The effects were much more exaggerated this time. Guan Yu stood on both his feet as a spark ignited in his eyes—the first trace of intelligence, perhaps. His body began to be illuminated with a silvery glow, which turned into a billowing fog that slowly rolled across the ground in an ethereal manner. Instead of the three moons, now, only the Moon of Beginnings glowed in his eyes.

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“What are you staring at? Kowtow nine times and thank your master,” Jun snorted, looking satisfied at his creation.

It might have been his imagination, but he could have sworn that the rabbit sneered at him when he said those words. Then, the bastard went back to playing dumb, innocently hopping around the pill room, sniffing the furnace and the various ingredients here.

“Fine. Whatever. Be that way. I don’t care.” Jun said, huffing and puffing and turning away. Then, he thought the best of it and pulled out two bamboo slips.

“I don’t know if you’re intelligent, but you definitely can’t read, so here you go.”

He unrolled the bamboo slips and appreciatively looked at something that had taken him days on end to make. On one scroll, Jun had very intricately detailed the process of making pills by using images of herbs and tools and how a rabbit might properly use them. He included the most basic pill recipes, as well as the Pill of Awakening, just in case Guan Yu decided to ever leave on his own journey. The second scroll had an image of a transparent rabbit, overlayed by a thick network of meridians. Places where qi circulation began were coloured in bright silver.

“Why am I doing this? I don’t know. Maybe I just want to see another animal succeed. Regardless, you’ll be learning this whenever I’m refining pills.”

Guan Yu’s tale would continue whenever Jun wasn’t watching thanks to this scroll, but for now, the dog was only interested in the Pill of Awakening. It took several more attempts and even more failures, but eventually, he had another pill in his hands, identical to the one the rabbit had consumed. Instead of devouring it outright, he waited for the moment Chen Hao left the house and brought Guan Yu to Li Xia. When he was finally all alone, Jun stared at the pill with barely contained excitement.

And then, he swallowed it. He felt it going down his throat, at first slightly warm, and then increasingly more scorching. When it reached his stomach, a burst of energy, almost like an explosion, shook every organ in his body. Like a thunderous drum, his heart started working overtime, pumping more and more and more blood. When he closed his eyes, he could see a radiant sunset washing over continents, bathing them all in the last sparks of light. Even though the terrain constantly blurred past, his distance to the sun never changed. He couldn’t catch it quite yet.

His flesh saturated with energy until it could hold no more, and then his bones took over the duty, cracking and reforming, announcing the presence of a new stage. He was warm. Comfortable. Like being born again, he basked in the heat, drawing it closer and closer until he was surrounded by a cocoon of flames. Closing his eyes, he began drifting to sleep, softly snoring, breathing in the fire with each breath.

When he woke up again, the warmth did not leave him. Instead, it coiled around his body, setting his fur aflame with a glorious golden fire. Full of wonder, Jun waved his paw in front of him, admiring the arc of flame that followed.

Pulling out the hand mirror, it immediately clouded and cracked, but in the broken shards, he could see himself standing taller than ever, wearing a coat of sun’s flame. Instinctually, he willed it to stop, and it obeyed his order. His fur had never looked better than now. Majestic and regal, it put even the most polished gold to shame.

“I truly am the Dog Emperor,” he said, and even his barks sounded clearer. There was an added element of authority to his voice.

Jun spent the next hour examining the changes, and then another just playing around with the flame. He would have to test its effectiveness in combat, but he had the feeling he could now face a few of the butcher’s moves directly.

An entire day later, when Jun popped in to check on Chen Hao, the boy gasped in surprise.

“What happened to you? You look bigger now. And your fur is so shiny,” he asked, picking up Jun with ease.

“My Heavenly Dog Body has awoken. I know, I know. No need to act surprised. You do not need to bow or worship me like a king. Well, only a little bit.”

“First it’s Yun Yun, then it’s you. We need to get you to Li Xia.”

Yun Yun was the demeaning nickname they gave to the grand general rabbit, but that wasn’t important. Instead, Jun tried to escape the boy’s iron grip, only to fail time and time again.

“Anyone but her. Please. My dignity.”

A not-so-quick visit to Li Xia confirmed that Jun also had begun to awaken his bloodline, becoming closer and closer to his mythical ancestor. Of course, the pair had no clue how both the rabbit and the dog had done that, so they once again attributed it to their previous tenant. In their minds, he had gone from being considered talented to a frightening genius just in a month’s time. First, the evil plants. Then this. How amazing.

Somehow, he managed to escape the devil's den, but his previous majestic look was gone—his fur was washed and trimmed too neatly, and now he looked too fluffy to be a threat to anyone.

‘Sacrifices one must make for the sake of the greater good,’ he sighed, continuing on waddling along the street. Catching a ray of sunshine, he hummed a catchy song, hopping along the rhythm.

Following this, Jun and everyone around him settled into a steady rhythm, going about their daily lives without interruption.

In the blink of an eye, four months passed.