At the final instant before Shun's consciousness guttered out, a roar shook his soul—a roar not from his throat, but from something older and hungrier within.
Taotie—the ancient fiend-god from Huaxia myth, emblem of boundless greed and devouring—had stirred.
Thoom. Thoom. Thoom.
Drumbeats, unending—each strike heavier, closer.
The dying spark of Shun's life suddenly blazed.
On his left shoulder, the purple-beam wound that had erased flesh and was still spreading reversed—flesh knitted at impossible speed.
New skin wasn't normal skin at all—it came cloaked in austere, timeworn bronze-dragon scales, their edges carrying a muted, dark-golden sheen.
An ancient, imperious pressure—something primal from myth—erupted from Shun's slight frame and blew apart the death-aura the Mistborne Dragon King had cast over the basin.
"ROAR."
The sound didn't pass through air; it cracked heaven and earth from the floor of his spirit.
Within it coiled an authority that looked down on all things—and a hunger to swallow sky and earth both.
Shun's unfocused pupils shrank—then flared wide.
Deep inside his eyes, an alien light burned.
Gone were hesitation and strain. What remained was the cold of a being that saw ants—and the will to rule.
The Dragon King's rush hitched. In those colossal eyes, for the first time, disbelief—then fear—bloomed.
On a level of rank and law, something above it had stepped into the ring.
Shun rose, slow and weightless. The aura wreathing him was no longer mere Gourmet Cell energy. Dark-gold flame climbed his body—behind it, a vast, indistinct shadow took shape:
Dragon head. Hyena body. Eyes set deep beneath the arms. A maw like a bottomless pit.
The shape was savage and ancient: the Huaxia fiend-god of greed and devouring—Taotie.
Shun's Gourmet Cell Demon had awakened in extremis.
Its name: Qiongtie.
"Qiong" here meant the utmost—the consummate.
Not poverty, but a title of extremity: the power to devour all flavors under heaven until nothing remained.
It was Taotie's desire, ascended—hunger that would never be sated.
"Vermin. How dare you disturb my sleep?"
The voice—ice-cold, immeasurably lordly—detonated in the Dragon King's mind.
It seemed to come from the Nine Hells, freezing the soul. The titan's body shuddered; instinctive fear drowned its rage.
Qiongtie looked down through Shun's eyes—vertical pupils of dark gold—at the annihilating breath the Dragon King had nearly finished weaving.
It didn't bother to guard. The right hand—now plated in those antique bronze scales—lifted, fingers spread toward the onrushing cataclysm, and closed, almost lazily.
"Swallow Heaven… Devour Earth."
A power beyond words wrapped the Dragon King like a net.
Its full-force Mirage Breath didn't explode; it veered, unraveled, and streamed like a brilliant river straight into the gap between Qiongtie's fingers—devoured to the last mote.
Not just energy absorption—lawful plunder.
Horror hit the Dragon King. Its power wasn't all that was draining—its bond to the Source-Mist Mother Tree, its authority over the mist's rules, were being stripped and eaten.
It tried to break free—
but space itself congealed under that dark-gold flame. The higher being's hunger held it fast.
Qiongtie's golden eyes flickered—no satisfaction, merely a cool acknowledgment of acceptable flavor. Feeling the power flood inward, it rumbled like distant thunder:
"Mirage-fog essence… adequate. But you trespassed in my garden. Unforgivable."
"My garden"—it had already labeled Shun's body as its own dominion.
Before the echo died, Qiongtie vanished—and appeared above the Dragon King's crown.
One right fist dropped. No flourish—only the purest force, the kind that devours as it crushes.
The punch looked slow—yet time and distance locked. The Dragon King couldn't even think of evasion.
BOOM.
The devouring blow landed.
The monarch's mountain of a body sagged—as if its scaffolding had been pulled out—and collapsed. Life winked out at once, leaving behind a shell missing part of its essence.
Devouring isn't only of flesh. Mind, space, rights—all are food.
That is Qiongtie's nature.
It cast a cold glance over its prize, then at the seven-hued domain shuddering and collapsing now that its rule-weave was undone.
One lifted hand. Far above, on the crown of the Source-Mist Mother Tree, the Source-Mist Heart—the node from which the fog's origin pulsed—shivered free, parted the air, and fell into its palm.
Feeling the pure origin inside, Qiongtie seemed… satisfied enough.
The smothering dark-gold flames drew inward. The towering phantom receded, folding back into Shun's body.
Silence.
The gold drained from Shun's eyes; black returned. He drifted down—and the backlash of exhaustion nearly buckled his knees.
But he could feel it clearly now: a slumbering, ancient, domineering power coiled inside him—
and a will, greedy beyond limits, bound to his soul.
He looked at the prismatic Source-Mist Heart in his hand, then at the fog dissolving like breath on glass.
It was real. All of it.
His Gourmet Cell Demon had awakened.
Its name—Arvatos. (Insatiable Devourer to the Utmost)
—
(End of Chapter)
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