Its world was one of darkness. Slime, algae, the rare burst of light when potential prey breached the forest’s blanket. The towering monoliths of bark kept a respectful distance from its home. The flavors of reality were thick here. The rich broth which permeated this space nourished it. What others called impurities, it called delightful seasonings. Even the Great Beasts could only tolerate a certain level of taste before it soured their tongues, burnt their throats, withered their veins.

Weaklings, the lot of them. Suitable only to serve as more mundane resources for when even the broth was insufficient to sustain it.

It had been long. Very, very long since it had last feasted upon anything of physical substance. The tiny things and the plant things and the things caught between animal and plant, bacteria and slime, these were unappealing to it. It would starve in body, though not in energy, for another few centuries before it would even begin to consider something other than a larger meal.

Then one had presented itself. Pitiful in flavor, for the most part. With a very odd, stinging spice left behind in its home even after the opportunity passed. That stinging spice had so caught it off guard that it had hesitated. Though the meal was meager, and seemingly the blandest thing it had ever considered eating, it was still able to sate the bodily needs for another millennia.

But it had hesitated. Now it was left with the stinging, which was fading much too slowly for its preference. When had flavor ever been abhorrent to it? It hadn’t, not before. Not until now. This flavor was definitely not bland, but it was also not good. Its body began to ache here, burn there, twitch uncontrollably in yet another spot.

The stinging flavors were not singular, but multitude. A veritable cornucopia of spices.

It hated them all. The damage it wrought upon him was tolerable, but it had accelerated his need. Centuries now became months. It would need to hunt, or consume the tiny things for a time. Even that would only give it a few additional days or weeks though.

Hunting was the only logical choice. The waters continued to sting. Perhaps leaving them for the time it took to hunt would give them a chance to return to their normal state.

A thin, bony appendage reached out through his blanket of darkness. A seal both against the light and also, laughably, against him. The slow Qi of the ancient trees could not hope to resist his departure. Much as if it had merely been mundane leaf litter, it parted the barrio and reached from the comforting warm and viscous world into one of cool air, dryness, and a lack of noticeable fluid drag.

The lack of fluid drag was particularly irksome. It was getting so close to grasping at a Dao, one which revolved around this. Just another reason why the unusual, bland yet spicy prey, was hated by it. Maybe it would have grasped that missing bit and broken through into the next stage of its life before being interrupted, otherwise.

A second limb followed the first, both digging into the layer of plant detritus covering the otherwise soft clay bank. A third, breached, then its head and the start of its body, followed by the fourth, the fifth and sixth and the last of it. The world was bright, far too bright. And cold. Every one of these excursions a new birth into an unpleasant and harsh reality.

The oxygen was far too rich, burning its gills, drying them. It always felt somewhat giddy for a time as that intense burst of oxygen flooded his generally sluggish blood. The joints of its carapace stretched and flexed. Before a hunt, it needed to ensure everything would work as expected. It hadn’t barely moved in several thousand years, after all.

Mandibles, nearly forgotten, clacked sharply. It was time to hunt. It was time to… to… it couldn’t quite remember what. What was it doing? Had it always had horns growing inside of its body? How fascinating, the horns were growing before its very Sense. The growth patterns were so… so… fluid. Giddiness that went beyond over-oxygenation flooded it. It trained all of its attention upon the fluidic growth moving through his body.

A small instinct spoke to him. Parasite. Sickness.

It was beyond such things. These were the whispers of uncertainty. The Dao was pouring itself through its body, it could taste it. It tasted like… bacon. It was not entirely certain what bacon was, but it was certain that it tasted as such.

Or perhaps it was the thing its mandibles crunched that tasted like this ‘bacon’? How odd that it was eating, it didn’t recall eating. It appeared similar to one of its legs. Had it found a cousin of its own to consume?

The Dao beckoned. It flowed. It swirled. Delicately dancing throughout its blood, singing to its nervous system. Eating me. Parasite. Death.

What foolish thoughts it had. Truly this ‘air’ was far too rich in unnecessary elements and devoid of the delicious flavors of its pool. It was driving him to temporary madness. Once it complete perceiving this example of the Dao within itself it would do that thing… that it… was doing.

Doing…

Eating me.

Eating? Right, hadn’t it been hungry?

Parasite! Death!

It was no parasite! It did not attach itself to some other creature. It hunted.

Yes. Yes, it was hunting. Hunting! If it had been a parasite, it would limit itself to the surface of some large Beast, eating but a pittance of it. That or it would live within its body, multiplying and seeking to spread itself with the death of its host. Instead it consumed, from the outside in, every last little bite.

It hunted. An ambush hunter, now emerged by necessity!

And oh how pretty the little trees which grew from it were! It was a pretty hunter. More pretty than any other.

PARASITE! FUNGUS!

Oh. Oh, now it saw. Rather, it saw not, for the parasitic mycelium reached its brain, having located the main nervous system and grown rapidly along it. The erupting spore bodies all along the spinal cord burst out from the soft joint tissues, avoiding the harder carapace sections which armored it, denoting the linear march to victory over its hapless host.

--

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

A certain Squirrel watched the fat, cow sized Armadilidium Vulgare – the common pillbug – as it emerged from the disgusting pool. He’d honestly never gone this close to the pool itself. The warning of the Greater Beast which had told him of this place had been taken to heart. Never, ever, go into the pool.

Which had never been an issue since the water smelled horrid and because it was a terrible place for him to cultivate. The ‘natural’ Formation, which he’d long suspected was created and later abandoned by some Beast, possibly the one who’d first told him of it, gathered and separated Qi. At a very specific location directly above the pool, nearly to the top of the canopy, there was a nexus of pure Mundane Qi.

It was insignificant compared to the vast amount of high impurity energy which gathered with the pool as the focal point, yet for a human Cultivator, pure Qi was a supreme luxury. It had allowed him to advance himself at a tremendous rate. It was a similar inclination which had lead him to suggest bringing Terra here. Whether it benefited her significantly or not, he could utilize that pure Qi to build a true cultivation base into this weak Beast body. The legends that spoke of the rare, powerful Beast learning to shift into human form, to assume human cultivation methods drove him on.

That he’d served the subject of such a legend within a now long gone Sect had only given him the confidence that it was possible. That man had started his life as a minor squirrel Beast and somehow grown to the heights of a Great Beast, before assuming human form.

He’d learned his Master’s Dao. He’d even managed to reach the first stage of true Immortality. The same Dao had allowed him to bond with this squirrel, the very same who’s body he now possessed. That bond the only thing which allowed his heavily damaged Soul to survive the death of his body. Now he’d managed to nearly complete the healing process.

His cultivation though, he’d been totally unable to restart. Every attempt cooked his furry little body within seconds. It simply would not tolerate either his method or perhaps any human method. Unfortunately his Fused Core was still there. Fractured, reformed, scarred, yes. But human. It would take Qi. Time. Patience. All of these and more. Resources the value of which could raise or raze whole kingdoms. He’d marked their locations. He’d made the deals, brokering trades and alliances, starting wars in secret and dealing in information, all to gather together all the necessary promises.

All in vain if he could not even take the first few steps. Steps, much like that pillbug. The girl was asleep. The Pill, presumably, aware of the approaching danger. Ah, yes, there, though carefully restricted so as to avoid damaging himself, his Spiritual Sense could pick up the almost ever present manipulations of the environmental Qi.

He himself had been trying almost nonstop since observing the Pill’s deft weavings of the very world around them to accomplish even a flicker of the same. At best he could move small objects. Once, he made a dry pine needle warm. He’d been trying to set it alight, but warm was the best he’d done. What he’d received for the effort was a nosebleed and blindness in one eye for half an hour before the natural healing effects of his Immortality repaired the damage.

Here though the Pill, a baby of a Nascent Soul, moved the world around it in subtle, yet absolute ways which made him shudder with fear. It was this more than anything which halted his goal of extracting it and consuming it himself. Even if he hadn’t grown attached to the girl as his student, which he felt no shame in admitting he had, the prospect of wrestling Wills with that monstrous thing inside her was not one he favored.

This pillbug, though a common type of species, was no foe he could take on. It was about to step into the equivalent of the Internal Realm. For Beasts, he was not sure how equivalent each stage was. Each had described their steps in such vague and unique ways that he was not at all sure that Beasts cultivated even similar methods to each other at all. He’d also not encountered any squirrels who’d grown beyond Minor Beasts since his Master had disappeared eons ago.

Hmm. Assuming whatever strange things the Pill was doing succeeded in saving their shared student, he would have to lecture her about all the stages of cultivation after she awoke. Her path would likely diverge from the typical, but knowing the paradigm would help her to understand the steps she’d go through. Her body was almost entirely harmonized already with her cultivation despite having yet to form a true Dantian. The amount of Qi she could bring to command even at this low stage easily rivaled the more common Nascent Soul Cultivators. He sensed that her Will was growing at an absurd rate as well.

Then there was the whole ‘Body Cultivation’ that she claimed the Pill spoke of. Those who called themselves Body Cultivators did things like consumed poisons, ate raw Beast flesh, bathed in caustic baths and practically inhaled Alchemical ‘elixirs’ more than air itself. They were massive resource sinks that often became horrible addicts or died in some ill-conceived bath. Those who didn’t bring the wrath of a Greater Beast down upon themselves and those around them.

What power they obtained without walking through a path of true cultivation was of little consolation. None, to his knowledge, ever touched upon Immortality. The few he’d known who reached Nascent Soul found themselves crippled, or later their Soul Cores unable to fuse with their bodies. Spiritual Cultivation created an anchor between the physical and the ethereal. A bridge to the eventual merging of Soul and Body.

Yet he could not deny the physical prowess of his student was easily multiple cultivation realms above normal.

It still wouldn’t protect her from the nigh unstoppable Beast which was now becoming accustomed to the shift from the aquatic to the open air. The mandibles clacked with such force that high above he could feel the vibration through where his paws touched the sturdy trunk. His claws dug a little deeper as he tensed. If he had to, he could provide some distraction. Perhaps give the Pill some time to do whatever it was doing. Wake the girl up? The pillbug Beast was moving slowly now. Its species was not a predator so much as a grazer. He had not doubt though its power was such that it would easily pursue and catch this prey.

It lifted a foreleg as if to take a forward step.

Then it bit into its own leg with a loud crunch.

He nearly fell from the tree in shock. Just what was happening? Was this the Pill’s doing? An illusion? Such a thing would not survive the first moment of pain, yet the Beast continued consuming the now severed leg with apparent happiness. The two antennae waggled in a calm manner, no longer fixated forward towards the sleeping girl. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

It lurched forward a step, his tiny heart racing as the danger swiftly returned. Then it relaxed again, continuing to eat the remains of the leg. Another lurch, then a halt. An antenna was pulled down and calmly severed, the remaining half waggling happily along with its complete brethren. Something was happening though… the Pill had been moving minute amounts of Qi that seemed familiar, yet he couldn’t quite be sure of why. Those motes of Qi had been gathering along the soft tissues of the pillbug, clearly unnoticed, or deemed unworthy of attention.

Near the center of the Beast’s back, a section of the armored, layered carapace, tilted and lifted a little as something emerged.

A mushroom.

Horror truly dawned upon him as he watched fruiting bodies of a myriad of fungi rise from every joint, the ends of the severed antenna and leg, the eyes, even the mouth parts of the Beast. It continued to lurch drunkenly and munch, now on the second antenna, then the other foreleg. Its face was now partially wresting on the ground while its legs drunkenly waved.

Then the corpse, for that is what it was, if not in the very moment, but rather as a promise. That corpse shuddered and was still.

For a long time, he watched. Waited to see if something would happen. The fungal growth continued a little. Threads of mycelia were visible here and there, though little beyond the fruiting bodies was initial evident. Qi begin to draw out of the now dead Beast. For half a day he watched in morbid fascination and mute terror as not only the body of a nigh Great Beast, but the disturbingly forgettable fungi that felled it, broke down into Qi, pulling into the girl’s body.

He felt no change in her cultivation. The Qi which was drawn in was the most incredibly tainted Qi he’d ever sensed outside of an outright Demon. The Beast itself was practically a Demon itself. One of the Rot. A Beast of Death. Corruption which was tolerated because they contained it, allowed the other Beasts to free themselves of it. One of the few that could survive on truly concentrated impurities, while most Beasts benefited only from relatively small amounts of impurities. Drastic compared to humans, but compared to the Corrupted?

Long before the girl awoke and complained of hunger, the cow sized Beast and all evidence of its passing was gone.

So too was the pool pure and crystal clear.