The forest had grown quieter.
It wasn't silence—not truly—but the kind of hush that settled when something hidden took notice. The kind that filled the air between heartbeats when a predator draws near. Li Yao noticed it in the absence of birdsong. In the stillness of deer tracks left undisturbed for days. In the way squirrels no longer descended from the canopy, their usual thieving curiosity replaced with watchful dread.
Even the wind had changed—thin, sharp-edged, and uncertain.
But he had no time to ponder omens.
Because for the first time in his life, he was close to something real.
Every morning before the sun crested the hills, he woke with his breath already heavy and his limbs vibrating with tension. Not the tension of fatigue, but of readiness—a strange, simmering pressure that coiled through his body like a bowstring drawn taut. The qi within him no longer slipped through his grasp like mist. It obeyed now, just barely, curling into his dantian with each inhale, running along his veins in trembling loops.
The Stone Root Method—his own crude creation—had taken root.
And it was working.
On the fifteenth day since his initial breakthrough, Li Yao carried a boulder nearly half his body weight to the top of a rain-slick hill and didn't stop once to rest. On the sixteenth, he shattered that same stone with a palm strike so fierce that the ground echoed, his knuckles raw but his bones uncracked. On the seventeenth, he leapt the full length of the river stepping path—stone to stone—without falling, lungs burning but steady, his senses sharpening with every movement.
By the eighteenth day, even the wind against his skin felt different. It didn't sting. It measured him.
That evening, as twilight spilled gold between the pine needles and turned the mountains into silhouettes against a dying sky, he knelt beneath the crooked old pine behind his hut. Chest bare, hair tied back, feet planted into the earth like nails, he inhaled and held it.
And something inside him moved.
Not pain. Not resistance.
But release.
Like a gate swinging open—not all at once, not loud, but sure.
His dantian pulsed, and qi flowed out—not in tendrils or wisps, but in a rush, like water through old stone channels finally cleared. It spread through his body in warm spirals, settling in muscle, bone, tendon, and marrow.
No great bell tolled in the heavens. No thunder split the sky. But Li Yao's breath shuddered from his lungs, and he opened his eyes with the certainty of a man reborn.
He rose.
Flexed his hand.
Struck toward the empty air with a short, sharp movement.
And the air bent.
Only slightly. Only for a moment.
But it did.
First Stage: Body Refining Realm.
He had reached it.
Without a master. Without a spirit root. Without a single pill or stone.
Just pain, and will, and days of grinding effort while the world watched with indifference.
He left the village the next morning not to chop wood, not to gather herbs, and not to hunt—but to train.
His body needed to be tested. Stressed. Pushed to the edge of breaking. And he knew just the place.
Beyond the second ridge, where the treeline thinned and the moss grew thick and wet beneath the pine needles, there was an old grove known as the Hollow Root Glade. The elder woodcutters avoided it—not out of superstition, but out of a subtle unease they could never quite name.
The trees there grew wrong—tall and twisted, with black-veined bark and needles that whispered in a wind that never touched the rest of the forest. When cut, they bled sap that stank of sulphur and iron.
More importantly, the qi in that place was denser.
Fouled, yes. Rotten in some subtle way. But present. And Li Yao was long past being choosy.
He reached the glade by midday, breath calm, the Stone Root circulation flowing evenly through his limbs. He dropped into a low stance and began.
He ran drills until his legs quivered—low, sweeping motions that shifted weight from heel to toe, each step rooted like a hammer fall. He lifted fallen trunks, pushed boulders up slope grades, slammed his fists against the stubborn bark of the tainted pines until his knuckles bled anew. He moved without pause, breath flowing with the rhythm of his strikes, drawing qi not just from the air, but from within his own aching flesh.
Hours passed.
The light began to dim.
And then the forest shifted.
Not with wind.
Not with bird or branch.
But with intent.
Li Yao froze, body taut. His instincts, dulled by nothing, rang like a bell struck too hard.
A rustle.
A soft scrape.
Then—a growl.
Low. Wet. Hungry.
A shadow burst from the underbrush with no warning—black-furred and silver-striped, its eyes gleaming with a sickly crimson glow. Its claws dug furrows into the earth as it bounded forward, mouth open to reveal jagged fangs dripping with foam.
A Shadowmaw Lynx.
Li Yao's blood ran cold.
This was no ordinary forest creature. No starving predator driven by hunger.
It was a low-tier Spirit Beast—feral, unnatural, qi-warped.
And it had no business being this close to human borders.
He barely dodged the first pounce, throwing himself into a roll that tore his shoulder against the gravel. The lynx hit the ground with a snarl, spun mid-air, and launched again. Claws raked across Li Yao's arm as he ducked under the strike, feeling skin split and warm blood run.
Too fast.
He had never fought something like this. It moved with purpose and speed. Its killing intent pressed on him like a weight.
But Li Yao didn't back down.
He breathed in sharply, pulled qi from his core, and let it flow into his arms. The pain dulled. His senses sharpened. When the lynx lunged again, he struck into it—fist crashing into the beast's shoulder with enough force to twist its body sideways.
It howled and spun, but Li Yao was already moving.
He slid under its counterattack, swept its legs with a vicious low kick, and leapt onto its back before it could recover. His arm locked around its throat.
And he poured everything into his grip.
The beast thrashed. Claws raked his thigh, tore his sleeve, drew more blood. But he held on, grimacing, every muscle screaming, every drop of qi burning through him like fire beneath the skin.
And then—slowly—the lynx went still.
Its last breath rasped from its throat, its limbs twitched once, then fell slack.
Li Yao released his grip slowly, rising to his knees, his arms trembling with effort and blood dripping from his thigh and forearm. The air around him was thick with the metallic tang of blood, the sharp musk of predator-sweat, and something else—faint, but unmistakable.
Qi.
The beast still radiated it, even in death.
He stared down at the creature's twisted form—muscles still taut beneath its bristled hide, fangs bared even in rigor. The strange silver streaks along its spine shimmered faintly in the twilight. Despite the violence, despite the pain, he felt no triumph. Only… confirmation.
He was no longer helpless.
But more than that—the corpse before him was valuable.
Spirit beasts weren't just dangerous.
They were useful.
This one, while still only a low-tier creature, had clearly formed a beast core—a small, embryonic bead of qi essence cultivated in its body over years of spiritual growth and instinctual practice. Cultivators used these cores in hundreds of ways: ground into powders for tempering the flesh, melted into brews to restore spiritual energy, infused into pills, or even embedded into weapons.
And that was only the beginning.
Its blood could be used to strengthen the bones of martial artists. Its claws might be refined into talismans. Its hide—though torn—still bore natural resistance to qi-based force, and could be stitched into light armour or gauntlets. Even the beast's bone marrow could be simmered into decoctions known to aid Body Refining cultivators.
To a sect disciple, it might be a minor gain.
To someone like Li Yao, it was a treasure trove.
He knelt again, placing a hand on the lynx's chest. The body was cooling fast. He would need to act quickly if he wanted to extract the core. He'd only read about the process, never performed it. It involved using a focused pulse of qi to locate the swirling energy at the heart of the beast's system—just behind the sternum in most felines—and guiding it out before the body's natural decay scattered it.
He had no tools. No teacher.
Just instinct. Just determination.
Still, he closed his eyes, breathing in slowly.
He'd come out here to test his body. To train.
But the world was offering something more. A chance to harvest what he had earned.
He could not waste it.
And as he prepared himself for the delicate task ahead, one thought settled into the back of his mind with quiet certainty:
This should not have been here.