Second Chapter: Farming A Devourer

Xing sat quietly inside the damp cave, a small mountain of fruit to his side, amassed to satisfy convenience and sloth.

Large droplets of sweat covered his body as he circulated his inner latent energy, stimulating his young body to grow and strengthen to a higher degree.

Deep inside, Xing could feel his bonded Spirit, the Horned Boar that the previous owner of the body integrated with, the Spirit was constantly flickering as if it was a wick, trying to attract Xing's latent energy to it, yet he did not allow it to do so.

The Horned Boar was a normal ranked beast with a strength of two stars, it was slow and not at all intelligent however it had immense defense and explosive strength.

The act of cultivation had two parts: One was to draw the latent energy along the body, strengthening it plainly. 

The other was letting the energy absorb the properties of the integrated spirit and change its properties to become more unique.

The reason that the force orb that Xing could create was so explosively strong was not only because his increase in strength but also because of the unique property of explosive strength that the Horned Boar had, in turn he had to fork over agility and fluidity, to the point of it becoming a rigid technique similar to an explosive mine instead of a grenade.

In his past life Xing used to play an awful lot of role playing games, to such a significant degree that in his eyes it was at least a quarter of his life, in said games he was most likely to be a sort of Mage, one who liked variety and versatility above raw power, and so he disapproved of his current spirit.

Xing will no longer allow his energy to tread the path of the Horned Boar, and so restricted it away from the spirit. With that out of the way he could think of the future.

Xing began to think about his cultivation technique as he cultivated using it.

Invisible force is a basic cultivation technique which doubles as an attack methods, named so as it provided little distinction to its users, leaving the body looking underdeveloped regardless of how much might the person cultivated, hence he wielded an invisible amount of force. 

Another reason was the invisible nature of its energy, a thing that required quite a bit of skill to pull off with energy used via other cultivation techniques.

This kind of cultivation technique was one Xing very much liked, it allowed for him to conceal his trump cards which he very much liked, and while it was a known as the lowest level cultivation technique he did not know the reason, for now it will do him nicely.

With the influence of the Horned Boar halted, Xing began contemplating how to enhance himself using other spirits, questioning which type would suit him well.

The world is grand and diverse, Xing already knew of a thousand different variations of beasts off the top of his head, all low-graded however, as he did not face or hear too much of the true monsters of the world.

Thoughts began to weave into options and quickly memories and plans condensed fully.

Xing remembered how when he was young he used to live in a farm, how he raised and bred chickens and cows, as well as horses.

In the act of breeding it was important to look out for traits that each animal had and mix and match accordingly, with the goal of creating the best offspring possible, it took a lot of time.

In this world, Xing found through his memories, starless beasts multiplied at the same rate as normal animals, yet beasts that were ranked with stars reproduced at a much lower rate, in addition to that infighting further dwindled them significantly.

Perhaps, he could breed himself a strong beast, but that's too far off for the moment.

"What a hustle" Xing grunted as he contemplated breeding, getting even more depressed as he checked on his progress, it's already been a few hours but he could only faintly feel a small improvement, though he did understand that his current pace was much faster than the old one the body had.

He could only go on to theorizing that the process his body went through due to soul extermination arts must have caused some sort of change in the body.

A thin membrane of force existed on Xing's body as he cultivated, invisible to most. The membrane was something that wasn't there before the reincarnation, yet it was of no mysterious nature, in his memory he knew of it already.

Indicating that his body was nearing the peak of the second level of "Hallowed Husk" and closing in on the third level. That was the meaning of achieving that membrane. Yet he would have to train for quite a few more days to truly reach the threshold.

Time went on and soon thin tendrils of smoke began to rise up from the surface of his body, a buzzing constantly remained in his mind.

At first Xing suspected this indicated progress. That opinion soon changed as he opened his eyes to consume a fruit or two... In front of his eyes appeared a cloud of insects hovering above his mountain of fruit, the same mountain which was now teeming with rot and insects.

A grim look of annoyance appeared on his face as Xing stretched out his hand and condensed an orb of force. Sending it to the mountain.

A deafening explosion sounded as pieces of overly ripe fruit flew everywhere, covering the walls of the cave, and Xing's body, with foul smelling mush.

Rage filled his heart, the membrane on his body fizzled and his eyes almost shot death rays upon the insects which survived, memories of terribly hot summers and annoying insects buzzing all around him flooded and his hatred intensified towards the flies and mosquitoes that flew around him as if taunting him over and over again.

In his fit of rage Xing released energy left and right in hopes of slaying the clouds of insects that tormented him so, however to no avail.

Finally he looked at still staggering amounts remained with scorn in his eyes, they remained plentiful while as his energy reserves did not, he was drained.

Resentfully he left the cave, vowing to make those insects the subjects of his bitter revenge, he left in searches of a water source to clean up.

"Despicable insects, they reproduce so numerously and quickly, I bet they planted eggs in those fruits beforehand... filthy things, I might have ate them… die, die painfully in my stomach" With no one to talk to he just blurted the lines to himself

.

An idea blossomed in his head suddenly, a type of enlightenment that is brought on by sheer luck and cannot be sought.

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"Reproduce numerously, rapidly... countless variations… easily cultivated en masse" He murmured.

Having found a small river he submerged himself in the stream, his thoughts submerged on other matters, concentrating on the insects.

When he came out clean, a plan already existed in him.

Xing returned to cave, yet the flies already left, the foul smell remained and so he himself left in fear of it attracting some dark and powerful beast.

Finding a new cave, Xing again collected numerous fruits, piling them in a mountain inside it.

Knowing that without sufficient heat the fruits will take a long time to ripen he sent along the walls of the cave his newly refreshed energy, heating the cave as if he was cultivating in it, doing so required much less energy than cultivation itself.

Upon seeing some larva eating their way out of some fruit, Xing quickly unleashed an orb of energy to the wall of the cave, sealing the majority of the insects inside.

With the greenhouse ready Xing went off to search along the other caves in the area, those that were empty he filled with fruit and sealed.

In the caves that weren't empty Xing found colonies of large ants, rodents and most notably and to his great pleasure spiders, the natural enemies of flying insects. Those caves he left alone and marked for future visit.

Luckily Xing was clean of blood by that point, or else he would surely meet dangerous beasts on numerous occasions, only due to luck he did not.

It's been three days since he arrived at his body and awoke at the wasteland, finally he felt accomplished somewhat.

On the morning of the fourth day to his arrival Xing heard strong buzzing sounds from a few of the caves, traveling to the spider cave he captured some spiders the size of a human palm, naming them Myriad Palm Spiders, as they all looked somewhat different in terms of coloring. He delivered them into the caves as he unsealed them slightly, only to seal the caves again to keep all the prey inside.

Xing chose to refrain from the ants as they were a colony type beast, one needs a high cultivation base to effectively integrate with them. Otherwise integrating with just one ant, not able to show off the main strength of an ant being a part of a colony, that won't be any good.

The rodents he refrained from as they had a much smaller rate of birth, hence will take much more time to affect, and regardless he did not wish to integrate with something filthier than a boar

.

It didn't take long, a few hours later the sound of buzzing in a few of the caves already lessened significantly.

In the end of the day Xing was faced with five spiders which were the strongest of the lot, each had a different look.

One of the spider was on the smaller side, giving off a blue metallic like luster, three of the bunch were albino who were bigger than the average by a third and had a ring of golden hairs on their heads, as if to act as a crown, the last one was average sized yet was jet black and had notable spikes around its body.

Time went by, more and more caves were filled with flies and consumed by the five spiders, in the end though the three white spiders proved inferior and so Xing found his strongest male and female spiders, the blue metallic like spider and the black spike spider

On his tenth day from awakening he threw the two inside a cave and entered inside himself, sealing it.

What followed was a long period of cultivation in which Xing exerted outwards the most energy he could at a sustainable pace, to feed an nourish the spiders as much as he could, he even went as far as bringing along the corpses of the ants and rodents he killed since, along with a starless lion beast he found dead, they all went into the cave.

Soon... Ten thousand eggs appeared inside the cave, a surprisingly large amount even for an arachnid.

When they hatched a great battle began to unfold, all the ten thousand spiders began to eat away at their brothers and sisters, as if crazed for food the winner consumed the loser at an astonishing rate, and as they ate they grew and changed.

Xing looked in awe at the sight of the tiny battlefield, he sat in front like a god watching over on his subjects and with from time to time would point on one spider or another, sending strands of energy to the small spider to save it from a tough spot, not wanting to lose a good possibility due to chance.

The arachnid battlefield compressed further and further, groups of certain types of spiders stuck out as more interesting, and as they grew trough the battle some began to show abilities of beasts who reached the starless stage should have, such as spewing clouds of poisonous poison or high speed regeneration, some were even able to turn others into stone with a bite… Xing began to worry he was growing little monsters that will bring about his own end.

The battlefield reached a critical point as less than a hundred spiders remained, all unique and ferocious, they were now all fully equal to the weakest type of starless beasts, yet with their size they still did not pose a threat to Xing, who readied an orb of force just in case.

At a certain point ten to twenty spiders remained, one arachnid suddenly rose to prominence, after consuming hundreds or maybe thousands of his kin his form grew to twice the regular palm size and he began rapidly changing!

Xing looked over as the spider began destroying the competition with ease, the body of the spider cracking and breaking, thin hard flakes of its black exterior actually fell off.

The arachnid stood singularly in the cave, his body deep dark crimson under the previously fallen outer shell, thin silver lines adorned its sleek body. Silently it proceeded to its parents which were high up on the webs weaved along the cave walls. Xing watched as it butchered them as well and devoured their felled carcasses on the ground.

Xing watched as the arachnid finished to devour its parents, when it finished spikes erupted from its body and his body increased in size yet became slender.

Thus the spider was named "Devourer Of Kin" as Xing's newest creation, estimated to stand at the middle to high one star beast ranking.

Energy strands shot off out of Xing's body, constricting Devourer, an ancient rite started, recited out of memory from his body, what ensued was very mysterious and odd, great interference prevented from Xing to perceive almost anything till he fell into a deep sleep.

When he woke up it was at midnight, the moon floated tall in the sky outside the dark cave, Destroyer the arachnid had lone past disappeared into Xing's body and became a spirit under his command, and without permission it even devoured the spirit of the Horned Boar bit by bit.

A deep chuckle could be heard from the Cave as a cold terrifying look appeared on the face of young Xing, a ferocious aura flooded outwards from his body as killing intent boiled out from him, he had just integrated with a strong spirit and to his notice broke through into the third level of "Hallowed Husk", revenge was imminent.

Lions, Wolves and Ox from now on will face their greatest calamity in the wasteland of corpses since the birth of the place.