Blood sprayed across the leaves.

Li An stumbled back while clutching the stump where her arm had been.

"Who-?" Her eyes turned colder. She scanned the darkness, searching for any hint of her attacker. However, the night was impenetrable, and the shadows thick and foreboding.

She couldn't see the beast, but she could hear it. A bone-chilling growl. Sometimes it was a deep, primal roar, while others were sudden, jarring screeches, just like metal claws dragging across a chalkboard.

The worst was when they combined, an unholy symphony that seemed to crawl into her mind, scratching at the edges of sanity.

"Stay focused," she thought. Her breaths were steady despite the horrible pain.

Li An crouched low and pressed herself against the trunk of a tree, listening intently.

The growling grew louder... closer.

She launched herself to the side, narrowly avoiding a swipe of the beast's claws. She hit the ground and rolled, coming up in a crouch. Unfortunately, the growl followed her, sending chills down her spine.

Li An scrambled up a nearby tree. The branches above provided a brief respite and a way for her to have a large field of vision. She could feel its eyes on her, watching her every move.

"It's too dark, so I cannot see it." Li An gritted her teeth. "I need to know what I'm up against."

She took a deep breath and waited until the beast was directly below her, then threw herself from the tree. By rolling, she managed to avoid another deadly swipe, but the tree behind her was pulverised.

The moonlight peeked through that gap. As Li An landed, she caught her first glimpse of her enemy.

It was nothing like she had ever seen.

The beast was a giant black dog, at least 4 meters tall and 7 meters long. Its eyes were glowing red and devoid of pupils. However, the most horrifying part was its skin, which writhed and squirmed like tentacles moving beneath its flesh.

The creature lunged at her and its jaws snapped shut inches from her face. Li An twisted away and used her right leg to kick its nose with all her strength. Since the beast was not willing to back down, she left behind her white winter robes as a distraction.

The cloth was ripped to pieces under a single dog's bite, but it gave her enough time to roll away and put some distance between them. The growl deepened with an unnatural rage, and the screeches became more frequent.

However, before it could even counter-attack, Li An grabbed a sharp rock on the ground and threw it like a dagger at its eye. The rock struck true, hitting the beast and causing it to recoil with a snarl of confusion.

"This 'thing' is too tough! Even its eye defenses are too thick for me to break." Li An felt her heart sink.

She took advantage of the momentary distraction and ran away. The forest blurred around her as she sprinted towards where she came from.

"Shit." The blood loss was starting to take its toll, causing Li An to almost trip over a tree root. But she pushed on, knowing that the black dog would resume his hunt in a short while.

Even so, Li An underestimated how short a 'short while' would be. The faint growls of the creature soon echoed behind her, stronger than ever. She squeezed her eyes shut, calming herself.

"This doesn't make sense," she thought.

Her eyes darted towards the shadows of the forest. Usually, such beasts announced their presence with roars or other signs. Birds would take to the sky, animals would flee.

But there had been no such warning.

"And this mutt is not stealthy at all. His screeching and growling might have woken up every beast in the vicinity."

Li An ducked under a low-hanging branch, her heart pounding but her face impassive.

"It came from behind me..." She dodged to the side as a massive claw swiped through the air where her head had been a moment before. "I had surveyed the entire area, so I would have noticed such a powerful beast."

The ground beneath her feet was uneven, but she could not afford to trip. The small roots and stones were as dangerous as the abomination chasing her.

The red, pupilless eyes of the dog glowed eerily in the darkness. It lunged again, but Li An jumped to the side, avoiding being chewed to death.

"Why didn't I see it coming?" Li An thought about her actions previously. She had stopped now and then to scout the areas and study the reactions of the other creatures in the forest. "I was careful. Thorough. There was no way it could have ambushed me."

Skreeeee

She could feel the hot breath of the beast on her neck.

Li An darted between two trees, using their trunks to momentarily shield herself. However, the black dog was just too strong.

Snap!

The beast crashed through the undergrowth, obliterating the trees with its massive body. Li An received some cuts from the flying pieces of wood but ignored them; compared to her arm, the pain was too light to make a difference.

"It's at the ninth stage of the Spirit realm, but pretty dumb for a wild beast," she realized, her mind calculating the odds. "If it had any intelligence, I would be dead already. This thing should be far more dangerous than it is."

It was against the norms. The higher the cultivation realm of a beast, the smarter it should be.

Li An's eyes flickered with determination as she pushed herself to run faster. She could hear the black dog's claws tearing through the earth behind her.

"Think, Li An, think. Why couldn't I sense it earlier?"

The creature burst into her field of vision, illuminated by the slivers of moonlight piercing through the deep canopy. The mass of tentacles squirmed outside its skin, melding with the beast's own shifting flesh. The ground beneath its feet seemed to recoil, as if the earth itself sought to avoid the touch of such pure evil.

Li An turned to face it, and she felt like she could see glee in the gaze of the abomination

"There's something off about this. It's almost as if it was sent to ambush me specifically."

She dodged a giant paw attempting to smash her into meat paste. The rusty blades the dog called fingers whistled past her ear. The wind from the attack rustled her hair, but Li An didn't even flinch.

She remembered something.

"Weren't the carcasses in the blood pool... two months old?" A cold hand squeezed her heart. "That's around the time I killed You Meihong."

Li An understood there was only one possible answer. "The unknown cultivator knows about me, and they want me dead." She did not understand the method he or she used to gather information through You Meihong's eyes, but that was not important anymore.

Although the black dog was dumb and predictable, she would not last much longer if the chase continued like this.

"I need to risk it." Li An had a plan, but the chances of survival were around fifty fifty. It wasn't as if she had another choice, though.

As she dashed through the trees, she glanced over her shoulder, just in time to see the creature opening its mouth and jumping at her.

Li An managed to dodge the bite, but the beast's thick front legs swung around, catching her in the side.

"Argh."

Pain exploded through her ribs.

Li An was flung through the air, crashing into a large rock with a cracking sound. Her vision blurred and she coughed violently, blood slipping from her lips.

"Move, useless body," she urged herself. It took all she had to not faint. "Move or die here."

Each breath burned her insides, but Li An forced her organs to work with a bit of spiritual energy. The eight hundred hexanodes were useless against this dog, so there was no point in using them.

The abomination circled, a bit of green drool falling from its half-open mouth. It looked hungry. Li An wanted to use the spiritual bullet, her most powerful method, but the black dog gave her no time to focus.

However, even if she could throw one, it would only hasten her demise by draining her spiritual energy reserves. The gap between them was too big.

Li An staggered to her feet, her body trembling from the searing agony of her wounds. The black dog had also emerged from the darkness ahead, and it growled with a low, menacing rumble. Li An suddenly realized she had been thrown against a rock right next to the blood pool she had seen earlier.

A grim smile spread across her lips. "Perfect."

With a final burst of energy, Li An dove into the pool. The water was shockingly cold, wrapping around her like a shroud.

"This is troublesome." Her severed arm was throbbing painfully as blood flowed freely into the liquid, mingling with the already crimson water. She forced herself to swim downwards, every movement sending waves of agony through her broken ribs.

Li An heard the muffled splash of the black dog diving in after her. However, its swimming skills were sluggish at best. The beast's lack of intelligence was finally working in her favor.

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"Faster!" As she swam deeper, her lungs began burning for air.

The water grew darker, colder, and she strained to see through the blood-tainted murk. Then, she spotted it—a large, transparent, thin membrane at the bottom of the pool.

"Get... there..." Her vision began to darken at the edges. It would be ironic if she drowned to death after such a long life.

Li An reached out, and her fingers brushed against the membrane.

Gathering what little strength she had left, she pushed.

Plop

It felt like passing through a wall of gelatin. For some unknown reason, Li An found herself wondering if there was gelatin in this world.

And then, she was through.

The water cleared and she broke through to the other side, gasping for air. For a moment, she simply breathed.

"I never realized how sweet and precious air was. Asphyxiation just climbed my ranking of the best torture methods." Li An smiled without any worries. The black dog would arrive soon, but she had a surprise ready for him.

"I hope it likes fireworks."

She was in an underground tunnel hidden below the blood pool, a passage carved from solid rock. This was the only place from which the black dog could have come.

The tunnel was a colossal corridor with a radius of ten meters, so the beast fit perfectly inside. The walls rose and curled high above like the ribcage of a titanic skeleton. It was obvious that the passage had been there for a long time, since some jagged edges of the rocks were jutting out randomly from the floor and ceiling.

Occasionally, a distant drip of water echoed through the tunnel, amplified by the nothingness of the place.

"GGGRRR!"

The black dog was struggling against the membrane that could barely fit its size. With a violent surge, it burst through, falling heavily onto the rocky floor of the tunnel. Its eyes locked on the girl he wished to devour.

She stood there, a bloodied smile curling her lips.

Whatever was left of the creature's soul shuddered.

It was staring at her vacantly. No, not at her, but at the endless darkness behind her.

"..."

A shadow was smiling behind the girl.

Every single nerve in its body was sending warning signals to its brain.

That wasn't allowed. That was something that shouldn't be allowed to exist.

The black dog blinked and everything returned to normal. It was just a hallucination; there was no shadow in the darkness, just his prey.

"Grrr... yip?"

Li An opened her hand and the beast whimpered. She held a sphere, rotating with an almost hypnotic speed.

The beast's gaze flicked upwards, its eyes widening as it saw the row of shining golden hexagons embedded in the ceiling right above it.

"Hello...

... and goodbye."

That was the last thing it saw.

The sphere shot towards the hexanodes. There was a moment of stillness, and then...

BANG!

A massive explosion tore through the cavern. The ceiling collapsed in a cascade of rock and debris, burying the black dog beneath tons of stone.

The force of the blast also knocked Li An to the ground, with dust and rubble raining down around her.

"I broke at least one or two ribs." She lay there for some minutes, her chest heaving.

Slowly, she pushed herself up, wincing as she moved.

The tunnel was now sealed since the entrance was blocked by the collapsed ceiling. Li An knew she was locked inside an unknown and potentially dangerous cave, but it had been her only choice.

She leaned against the rocky wall.

"I was careless. My knowledge of the Cultivation World is still severely lacking." Li An let out a shaky breath. "I managed to escape this time, but I was lucky. It was more of an educated guess than anything else."

She had remembered the number of tracks around the edge of the pool. If the black dog wasn't killing to eat, then why did it need to enter the pool so frequently? The answer was clear now: there was a hidden passage leading to this cavern.

Li An pressed her hand against her empty left shoulder, gritting her teeth. Now that the adrenaline was gone, there was nothing to serve as an anesthetic for her wounds.

She focused her spiritual energy and formed a tight barrier around the injury to staunch the flow of blood. She knew it was risky—her reserves were low after the spiritual bullet—but she couldn't afford to fall unconscious here.

Although the pain was still horrible, Li An's face had regained a bit of color. Her theory was that spiritual energy was some sort of energy related to the Big Bang or the source of everything. This way, it could also be used to stimulate cell multiplication and cell growth, helping with grave wounds.

Of course, there were limits. The pure energy Li An had was not condensed enough to regrow limbs or anything even slightly similar.

"I need to find a way out of here," she thought. "There has to be an exit somewhere."

She pressed on through the tunnel. It looked the same in every direction, but there were many paths that led down the underground labyrinth. The system of tunnels seemed to be much larger than she thought.

After what felt like an eternity, she noticed a change. The main path began to slope upwards, and a faint light appeared ahead. Li An quickened her pace.

As she approached, she saw another membrane like the one in the entrance, this time in the ceiling. Light filtered through, illuminating the cave below. Li An stood beneath it, craning her neck to see the source of the light above.

"How do I reach it?" she wondered, frustration gnawing at her. There was no ladder, no handholds, and she was in no condition to carry huge rocks around with only one arm.

Her eyes studied the cave, searching for anything she could use. The walls were smooth, offering no solutions. The only objects in the cave were scattered rocks, none of which were suitable for climbing.

She clenched her teeth, trying to think. "There has to be a way."

Reaching inside her robes, her fingers brushed against something cold and metallic.

"I forgot I had this!" Li An pulled out a dagger, the same one she'd taken from one of the assassins who had tried to kill her. It wasn't very useful against the black dog, but here it could be life-changing. "I am glad I did not put it inside the bag."

She jabbed the dagger into the wall. The blade bit easily into the rock, giving her a solid grip. Li An tested it for a while and then started to climb.

Her arm muscles strained as she hauled herself up, the other shoulder hanging uselessly at her side.

The climb was brutal to say the least.

Her fingers ached, and her grip slipped now and then on the slick surface. But her eyes were unchanged, locked on the goal.

The rock was unforgiving, but so was she.

Each stab of the dagger into the wall was a step closer to the end. If she fell, it would be impossible to climb again.

She would die.

Sweat trickled down Li An's face, mingling with the dirt and grime. A voice was shouting in her heart—the voice of someone familiar, someone she hadn't seen for a very long time.

Fight.

The voice was deep and cold. There was no mercy or compassion in there, but Li An did not need either.

Her teeth clenched. She blocked out the fatigue, focusing on the rhythm of the dagger—thrust, pull, thrust, pull, thrust,...

Fight.

The last few meters were pure agony. Her arm felt like it was on fire. Her breaths were harsh and ragged, like an old woman on her last throes.

Is that as far as you can go?

Just as she was about to make the final push, her grip faltered and the dagger slipped slightly.

"Not..."

Li An braced herself against the wall, bending her knees, and with all the strength she had left, she pushed off, launching herself towards the membrane.

"...Yet!"

Her fingers stretched out, and she finally caught hold of it. Her body swung for a moment and then she was swallowed to the other side.

See, wasn't it easy?

Gasping for breath, she could see the blurry figure of a handsome man with pitch-black eyes staring at her with a smile. Without any doubts, an illusion of her mind.

"Shut up, old bastard."

She fainted.

· · ────── ·𖥸· ────── · ·

When Li An woke up, she was expecting another dark, oppressive cave. Perhaps even the forest outside if she was unlucky.

"So what the hell is this?"

Although she was out of the underground, there was no forest around her. Stone pillars rose from the marbled floor, etched with complex runes glowing faintly. There was no sky or walls, just white everywhere.

"Maybe 'what the heaven is this?' is more appropriate."

Scattered around the pillars were countless bottles and jars, each containing dozens and dozens of pills. Li An moved slowly among them, her fingers brushing the labels and inspecting their contents.

"Earth pill, High regeneration pill, Snow Origin pill,..." Li An had never even heard of more than ninety percent of them. However, she could guess what the High regeneration pill did.

She took five of them out in a hurry and swallowed them in a single gulp. A wave of warmth spread through her body.

Li An could feel the concentrated healing qi coursing through her veins, restoring her organs and bones to perfect condition. The sensation was almost intoxicating.

Minutes passed, each one feeling like an eternity.

She stared down at the empty sleeve of her robe and her heart sank. The pills' energy had dissipated, but the arm was still gone.

Li An frowned. "I have to fix this problem as soon as possible." Having only one arm was a grave weakness, one that made her vulnerable in a world where strength was everything. She couldn't afford this handicap, not with enemies lurking in every shadow.

"At least I managed to enter the inheritance grounds of the powerful cultivator from the ancient stories."

It was like stepping into a different world.

Li An was constantly enveloped in the thickest and purest spiritual energy she had ever felt. The air was shimmering with vibrant spiritual energy that formed a dense mist above the pillars. It was a holy ground for cultivation.

Her lips curled slightly in a satisfied smile, marveling at the sheer wealth of resources.

"Even breathing here is like consuming a Spirit pill," she thought. "With this kind of stable and tame pure energy, I can manufacture hexanodes like a factory."

And that was exactly what she intended to do after exploring the entire place.

Her gaze shifted to a large gravestone in the center. The stone was carved in a hurry, but the words were engraved deeply. She read the inscription.

"Here lies Xuan Yu, known as the Frigid Sword and the Saint of the Yu Clan. These pillars are my teachings, left for those who seek to follow the path of the sword. May you wield this knowledge for the right reasons."

Li An grinned. "Do not worry, I will make sure to wield it for my right reasons."

Her eyes flicked to two of the three pillars next to the gravestone.

Sword Art: "Snow Severance" - a sword art that allows the user to freeze anything close to their sword qi, be it material or spiritual energy.

Spiritual Energy Technique: "Eternal Flow" - a method to harness and control spiritual energy to a large degree, allowing for continuous, effortless cultivation and regeneration. It can guarantee even a 1-star talent to reach Essence Condensation.

Li An narrowed her eyes. Both of these gifts were far above the level of the cultivation sects in this region, but they were not that useful for her. Snow Severance was an excellent sword art, but Li An did not know how to use sword qi and she did not have a sword of her own.

As for Eternal Flow, it would be a god-like catch if she were using the standard cultivation system. But unfortunately, Li An was determined to create her own artificial hexagonal meridian system, which didn't require any spiritual energy techniques to cultivate.

"The term '1-star talent' is making me curious. It is clear that this dead cultivator was not from this region, and their methods of measuring talent are different."

Li An finally moved to the third pillar. This one had no sword art or spiritual energy technique, yet she found it to be the most precious.

This last message is for my inheritor. The world is larger than you think, and you should not stay on one of these unnamed islands to rot. Try to visit the mainland and join the Yu Clan as my successor; I am sure they will welcome you with open arms.

"I finally have a hint of where I am." Li An assumed she was on an island around the size of Australia, but it was hard to know when the sects were so excluded from each other.

The other question she had was why the unknown enemy didn't take all these treasures. Her brow furrowed as she considered the possibilities.

"They must have limitations," she thought. "Maybe they can only use tricks like the black dog, which is too large to pass through the membrane."

Li An shook her head and sat down in the middle of the chamber, surrounded by powerful pills that put Spirit pills to shame. "Time waits for no one."

She began to form hexanodes, drawing on the abundant pure spiritual energy from the Earth pills. The process, which normally took days, now seemed effortless. In just ten minutes, three perfect hexanodes floated before her. The energy seemed to follow her thoughts, as if designed to obey the inheritor.

"Thank you for the help, Xuan Yu. I will remember you for one hundred years as a token of gratitude." Li An's lips tightened into a thin line.

She didn't have a lot of time left. After the martial contest, the situation would become absolutely chaotic, and she wanted none of it. Additionally, Li An had no idea where the exit was.

"I cannot forget about the unknown party. They know about this tunnel and they know that I am here. There's no way they'll just let me go without a fight."

The truth was that she was surrounded on all sides, and that was her biggest problem. There was no solution to this problem except winning.

Li An sighed. "At the end of the day, every problem, every obstacle, every setback can be traced back to a single root cause."

Weakness.

Weakness is the fertile soil in which all manner of troubles grow. It is the shadow that darkens our path, the weight that drags us down.

If one is strong enough, problems are not problems. They are opportunities.

A good example would be the black dog. To Li An, it was a threat, a problem that brought danger to her life. But to her unknown enemy, it was a source of strength and opportunity. They could tame the beast to do their bidding, use its hide and bones to craft weapons and armor.

The black dog is unchanged; it is the strength of the hunter that turns danger into fortune.

"There is a lot to do."