Third Chapter: Calamity of the Beasts

The moon hung still high in the night sky as Xing left the cave in search of prey, blood lust oozing out of him, his plans were to exterminate everything that stood in his way while honing and tuning his energy to the unknown unique traits of Devourer, killing two birds with one stone.

Truth be told, Xing was endlessly reckless fusing with a beast he did not know all there was to know about, mistakes in cultivation often happen due to such reckless choices off the top of one's head, usually rearing their ugly head much later and in a spectacularly bad way.

Even more so, Xing conducted the ritual of bonding on a wide awake and live beast, one in top physical and mental condition at that… such a thing was a great taboo, it often brought about a mental affect that was quite nasty, presumably brutality and loss of mental facilities and intelligence.

Xing strode his way through the thin forest, nothing on his mind but slaughter, soon, he found his heart's wish and a huge lion appeared in front of his eyes.

The class two beast glared back at Xing, intrigued by the bloodlust the little guy was emitting it did not feel oppressed even a little in front of such a weak looking human.

A cold fog escaped the mouth of the lion, its bluish eyes gleamed with ice cold killing intent, one which usually sent chills down the spines of most of its opponents.

"A frost lion, two stars" the memory floated in Xing's head.

For former members of a sect or clan like him the beasts commonly found in this kind of wasteland were all too familiar, they were the possessions of their seniors wealthy classmates, to be envied and obsessed upon.

An orb of force appeared in Xing's hand, his energy not yet converted any to conform to "Devourer" and so could not create anything more fine and exact, yet with his new found strength even a rigid construct such as this will do.

A chilling roar sounded as the frost lion opened his huge maws and unleashed a subzero breathe at Xing, intending to freeze and slow him down.

A moment later a different and deafening roar appeared as Xing himself released a savage call for battle, his hand pushed the force orb outwards to hit the thick foggy breath and it in turn exploded, clouding the view.

The frost lion couldn’t see a thing, but at some point excruciating pain assailed his mind and body, it fell miserably and cried with pain, its side spewing horrifying amounts of blood, on the ground by it its flesh was sprawled in disarray, unattached to its body.

Another mighty explosion went off on its body again, another orb of force landing on its now messed up body, it roared with pain, anger and fear.

Another explosion destroyed its body further, and another even stronger one ensued, it lost consciousness after a few, not long after it died.

Xing could be seen covered with blood from head to toe, dragging away the lower half of the corpse of the lion which he separated with force orbs.

The same night Xing did not find any more strong opponents, yet much of the ground around the area was painted red as lions and wolfs, starless and one stared, found their end in a brutal manner in his hands.

A carnivore's mountain of flesh replaced the previous fruit mountains Xing was fond of making, as it kept accumulating and growing his, bloodlust could not be satiated and only skyrocketed.

For the beasts, that night could be called "The night of horrors" or "The night the devil awoke and dragged our kin to hell", terror was stricken deep into their hearts, although they were not all that intelligent, their intelligence exceeded that of dogs and cats and so they did have some sort of understanding of the situation.

In the heat of the morning that arrived Xing was found deep inside a damp cave, munching on cool bluish meat, one which was once the frost lion.

"Ox…" Xing murmured as he ate, clouded with thoughts of revenge gone out of control.

Though his blood lust only grew, he did felt quite satisfied with killing so many lions and wolves, yet there was a single ox that hounded him together with that bunch at that time, made him run in fear… and he did not kill any ox yet.

In the mornings Xing would eat the flesh of the frost lion, cultivate and sleept.

In the night Xing would go out and search for Ox, not finding much of anything at all actually, the creatures in the area already learnt their lesson and left the area his territory, probably naming it something along the lines of "The forbidden zone" or "Devil's Hell Gates".

As time went on more and more of Xing's energy was conforming to Devourer's unique properties, if not for it being invisible its color and feel would greatly darken.

With the change Xing started to feel a decrease in raw strength of his energy, yet it started to immediately bite in into his prey and rage inside their internal organs, it seems what it lacked in explosive might it made up for with ferociousness and cruelty.

Half of the corpse of the frost lion still remained in place, out on the open it was a monument to his great strength and savageness, he often stopped by at the carcass he left, it held up surprisingly well to rot and heat due to it being of high quality and more importantly being almost ice cold.

Xing looked at the corpse one night, a savage look appeared on his face as a despicable idea appeared in his head.

The following day a few mountains of flesh were excavated out from the caves, put around the main corpse of the lion in disarray.

Such a thick smell of blood and gore filled the area that even Xing was a bit reluctant to stay, yet he resisted and remained.

Xing was the spider sitting in wait on its trap, waiting for prey to appear, the silent hunter.

An Ox appeared two days later, then another one, they began to crowd the area around in the distance, looking from afar, judging the situation.

On the night of that day the moon was full, and a rank two Ox, blood red and huge, appeared.

Xing looked at all the Ox, his killing intent boiled, yet he stayed still, in his heart he cursed them, "Hesitant Ox" he named them, just as he called the lions "Foolish Lion" in his heart.

When it happened it happened all at once, all the Ox in the open began rushing at the sea of flesh, Xing simply opened his eyes, a devilish smile on his lips.

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A series of explorations sounded as the Ox reached the corpses, his net was triggered and the many small orbs of force he left scattered under the corpses were triggered, sending flesh, ripe and flesh together without distinction into the air, decimating the first charging wave of the Ox, which was about half.

The rest that hung back in the shadows turned tail immediately, but for some it was already too late.

Xing leapt out like a fanatical demon, his hand covered with invisible force, whenever he reached an ox he punched or delivered a palm strike, crippling it.

While he gave up on about half, which run the other way he was going, his real prey was the slowest of them all, and he reached the huge crimson ox with haste.

"EAT!" Xing screamed with glee and excitement, all he could think about was devouring that two star beast, he grew more excited as his energy bore into the Ox with a devastating punch, followed by a well-placed palm strike to the temple, which followed with a few more savage and reckless attacks that finally brought down the ox to a fall.

When he landed off the back of the falling crimson giant, one of the Ox rammed into him, sending him spinning into the horn of another one, which speared him in the gut.

He almost fell to be stampeded upon by all the fleeing ox.

A deep anger exploded from him as he ripped off the head of one of the starless Ox, delivering an intense blow to the crimson one by his side out of spite, causing so much internal bleeding that it was sure to die. And then he simply left, feeling disarrayed.

At some point he found some cave to hide in.

"Damn it" Xing held his head with both his hands, an invisible energy preventing his guts from spewing out and slowly healing him up… he felt as if going through a panic attack coupled with an asthma attack, the pain that his fleshly wound caused did not help, his mind was crumbling.

"What… am I doing?" Xing asked himself, confused, many memories flashed by as his past life and the life of the current body appeared, he felt that he may be dying and his two lives were flashing appearing before him.

"Who am I?" Finally asking the right question, a tremor went through him, his soul trembled and his mind rumbled, a strong force clearing the fog clouding his mind.

Everything became clear in a flash, everything became so crystal clear and solid that it was almost too… real.

He was Xing Ying!

A chill went through his body as all the killing intent he amassed suddenly turned inwardly, shooting in and to Devourer, the spirit nibbling on his soul, clutching it greedily.

"Despicable thing!" Xing called inwardly, his energy slamming into the spirit like a high tide and bound it up, suppressing with all his might as it trashed around till it separated from his soul.

An ancient symbol of the rite appeared on the spider as Xing chanted the rite of binding again, sealing it tightly, sealing Devourer to his will, a tool for him to use and not the other way around, what was before a two way street became a single pass.

Devourer let out a deeply disturbing shriek as it tried to resist, ultimately, it turned out to be a creature of the soul, a highly rare and unique type of beast that had a connection to the mind… a truly destructive skill, and highly dangerous to integrate with as it had all the right tools to fight back.

Devourer closed its eyes as its Spirit body was bound completely, asleep, not willing to consciously submit.

Once done Xing felt more familiar and aware of his integrated spirit, understanding one of its mysterious properties.

Devourer had energy with an ability to affect the soul and exert killing intent, affecting its prey and pulling at its strings.

For half a month Xing remained in the cave, most of the time he was fainted, the other he spent in healing up, when he finally crawled out of the cave he felt a new man, carrying a cold calm which could be wielded with care instead of madness.

In that time Xing exhausted and replenished a lot of energy resulting in all of it converting to the property of Devourer.

Xing opened his palm and circulated his cultivation technique, Invisible force, many strands appeared and formed a thin spider net, which slowly changed into a long line, a blade. Certainly, he now had immense control on his energy, which leapt up from the start line of the third level all the way to the middle of the same level.

The energy blade thinned out and concentrated into a needle like form, which was thrown at a wolf lying in wait, piercing its head and causing it to howl in maddened pain for a moment before dying out of fright, killing intent had poured into it and stopped its heart.

He named the wolfs "Cunning Wolf" for ganging up on him last time, and lying in wait this time to attack him.

"In terms of power… Instead of the glass cannon that I was, all attack and no skill, I wanted to become more of a jack of all trades of a mage… Yet somehow I feel I changed jobs into a rouge or an assassin… seems like in the future ill be a pretty stealthy and dark mage" He talked to himself, contemplating.

"I'm all alone out here, the beast ruling this area should be a third level averagely, and soon I'll be able to break it in half with ease… I must find a way out of this wasteland, there is no way all these beasts are staying here without leaving without a barrier of some sort, and I don’t think I can destroy what a couple hundred beasts cant." The thoughts continued to swarm in his mind.

"I'll have to wait till they bring over some corpses to feed the beasts, there is bound to be a yearly competition each year in all the sects and clans, often blood debts are settled there and "accidental" deaths are bountiful… at most I'll have to wait eleven months." Xing was already full blown talking to himself without care.

"First goal then, reaching the forth level of Hallowed Husk." He declared to himself.

"Second goal, slaying the beast ruling this whole area." He continued to plan.

"Third goal…" a dangerous light flared up in Xing's eyes.

"Integrate the beast ruling this whole wasteland as my second spirit!" he decided.

Pure insanity, integrating with more than one spirit before the seventh level of Hallowed Husk was taboo, severe rebound promised. Xing did not care.

Soon, the terror will return to the wasteland and peace will turn into unrest and fear.