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I hate the cold.
The thought crystallized in my mind with perfect clarity, cutting through the fog of semi-consciousness like a blade through still water. It wasn't a complaint born of mere discomfort—no, this was something far more fundamental, something etched into the very essence of whatever I had become.
The cold was death.
My body understood this truth before my reawakening consciousness could fully process it. Every fiber of my being screamed against the frigid morning air that seeped through the gaps in the rotting log where I had taken shelter. The temperature had dropped precipitously during the night, and now my muscles responded with maddening sluggishness, each attempt at movement requiring conscious effort that would have been unnecessary just hours ago when the jungle still retained the warmth of yesterday's sun.
Move, I commanded myself. You need to move.
But my body—this strange, elongated body that I was still learning to inhabit—refused to cooperate with any urgency. The cold had sunk its claws deep into my flesh, slowing my metabolism to a crawl, making even the simple act of shifting my coils feel like pushing through hardening clay.
I extended my tongue, the motion reflexive now after what I estimated to be roughly three months in this form. The forked appendage flickered outward, tasting the air with a precision that still occasionally startled me despite the time that had passed. Information flooded my senses—chemical signatures that my brain automatically translated into something resembling understanding.
Moisture. Decay. The sharp tang of fungal spores drifting from the log's interior. The fading scent trail of a small mammal that had passed by sometime during the night, perhaps four or five hours ago judging by the degradation of the chemical markers.
No immediate threats.
I allowed myself a moment of stillness, conserving what little energy my cold-slowed body could spare, and turned my attention inward.
Three months. Ninety-seven days, to be more precise. That was how long I had existed in this world—this impossible world that I had once believed to be nothing more than fiction, entertainment consumed during lazy afternoons in a life that now felt more like a fading dream than reality.
Douluo Dalu. Soul Land.
A world where humans cultivated their souls, bonded with spirit rings harvested from slain soul beasts, and ascended through ranks of power that defied everything my previous existence had taught me about the nature of reality. A world of Spirit Masters, of ancient clans, of gods who walked among mortals and beasts who could live for tens of thousands of years.
And I, Drake Morrison—former accountant, former human, former believer in a rational universe—had somehow been deposited into this world not as a Spirit Master with infinite potential, not as a protagonist blessed by fate and destiny, but as a snake.
A snake.
The cosmic irony was not lost on me. In my previous life, I had harbored a quiet fascination with serpents—their efficiency, their patience, their reputation as cold-blooded killers. I had watched documentaries, read articles, even considered purchasing one as a pet before my apartment's lease agreement had forbidden such things.
Be careful what you wish for, as the saying went. The universe apparently had a sense of humor, albeit a twisted one.
I flexed my muscles experimentally, testing the extent of the cold's grip on my body. The response was marginally better than my first attempt—the shelter of the rotting log had provided some insulation, and my scales, dark as midnight with an almost imperceptible pattern of deeper black running along my length, had retained enough heat to keep me functional, if barely.
Time to find warmth.
The thought drove me forward, and I began the laborious process of extracting myself from the log's interior. My body measured approximately three feet in length now—significantly larger than when I had first hatched from my egg, confused and disoriented and convinced that I was experiencing the most vivid fever dream of my life. The growth was encouraging. In this world, size often correlated with power for soul beasts, and power meant survival.
The jungle that surrounded my temporary shelter revealed itself in fragments as I emerged into the pre-dawn gloom. My eyes, adapted to function in far lower light than human vision ever could, processed the scene with an efficiency that I had come to appreciate.
First, the canopy—a dense ceiling of interwoven branches and broad leaves that blocked nearly all direct sunlight from reaching the forest floor. Even now, in the early morning hours, I could detect the faint thermal differentials between the gaps in the foliage, my heat-sensing pits providing a secondary layer of visual information that overlaid my standard vision like a thermal imaging camera.
The jungle was not quiet. That was one of the first lessons I had learned upon awakening in this body. Human hearing was woefully inadequate for processing the true cacophony of a living forest. But my senses operated on different principles entirely. I could feel the vibrations of movement through the ground—the skittering of insects, the heavier footfalls of larger creatures moving through the underbrush, the subtle tremors of birds taking flight from distant branches. Each vibration told a story, painted a picture of the jungle's inhabitants going about their morning routines.
A colony of what I had mentally classified as "jungle beetles" was active roughly fifty feet to my east, their combined movement creating a steady background hum of micro-tremors. Larger signatures indicated the presence of at least three or four medium-sized soul beasts in my general vicinity, though none close enough to warrant immediate concern.
I tasted the air again, this time with more deliberate focus. My Jacobson's organ—the specialized sensory structure that processed the chemical information gathered by my tongue—worked with remarkable efficiency, breaking down the complex mixture of scents into discrete categories.
Plant matter. Rotting vegetation. The distant musk of what I believed to be a deer-like creature, possibly one of the common herbivorous soul beasts that populated the jungle's lower danger zones. The sharper, more acrid scent of a predator's marking, at least a day old and therefore not an immediate threat.
And beneath it all, the ever-present humidity that clung to everything, making the air thick and heavy with moisture.
This jungle—I still didn't know its official name, or even what region of the Douluo Continent it occupied—was a far cry from any forest I had encountered in my previous life. The trees here were massive, ancient things with trunks wider than automobiles and bark that ranged from deep crimson to pale silver depending on the species. Bioluminescent fungi dotted the undergrowth, providing patches of soft blue and green light that supplemented the weak illumination filtering through the canopy. Strange flowers with petals that seemed to shift color as you watched bloomed in impossible shades, and the very air carried a weight to it, a pressure that I had come to associate with the ambient spirit energy that permeated this world.
Everything here was more. More vibrant. More dangerous. More alive.
I had hated it at first. Those initial days after my awakening had been a nightmare of confusion and terror, my human mind struggling to reconcile itself with a body that operated on fundamentally different principles. The lack of limbs. The absence of external ears. The way my vision processed movement before form, the peripheral blur that my brain gradually learned to interpret. The constant, gnawing hunger that drove me to hunt insects and small creatures that I would have recoiled from in my previous existence.
But hatred was inefficient. It clouded judgment, wasted energy, accomplished nothing productive. So I had adapted, as I had always adapted throughout my life. I learned to move with my new body rather than against it, to embrace the unique advantages of serpentine existence rather than mourn the capabilities I had lost.
And slowly, reluctantly, I had begun to appreciate certain aspects of this new existence.
The focus, for instance. Human consciousness was a chaotic thing, constantly distracted by a thousand competing thoughts and stimuli. But the serpentine mind was different—simpler in some ways, more streamlined. When I hunted, there was only the hunt. When I rested, there was only rest. The mental noise that had plagued my previous life, the anxiety and overthinking and endless internal commentary, had faded to a manageable murmur.
Whether this was a result of my physical transformation or simply a psychological adaptation to my circumstances, I couldn't say. But I was grateful for it nonetheless.
The first rays of genuine sunlight began to penetrate the canopy as I made my way toward a rocky outcropping I had identified during previous explorations. The stone would absorb heat from the sun, providing a basking spot where I could raise my body temperature to functional levels. It was a calculated risk—exposure meant vulnerability—but the alternative was spending hours in sub-optimal condition, unable to hunt or flee effectively should danger present itself.
Survival in this world was a constant equation of risk versus reward, and I had become adept at performing the necessary calculations.
As I moved, I reviewed what I knew of my situation, organizing the information with the methodical precision that had served me well in my previous career.
First, the setting. Based on the ambient spirit energy levels, the variety of soul beasts I had observed, and certain geographical features that occasionally aligned with descriptions from the source material, I believed myself to be somewhere in the vast wilderness regions that separated the major human territories. Not one of the famous danger zones—the Star Dou Forest or the Sunset Forest or any of the other locations that featured prominently in the narrative I remembered—but perhaps a tributary region, a lesser jungle that fed into one of those greater ecosystems.
This was, on balance, probably ideal. The famous locations would attract attention—Spirit Masters on hunting expeditions, powerful soul beasts defending their territories, and most importantly, the protagonists and their associates whose stories would reshape the entire continent. I wanted no part of that attention. The further I stayed from the main plotline, the safer I would be.
Second, my own nature. I was a soul beast—that much was self-evident. But the specifics of my species remained frustratingly unclear. I possessed characteristics common to several serpentine soul beast types mentioned in the lore I remembered, but matched none of them precisely. My scales were darker than any snake I had observed in this world, with that subtle pattern of even deeper black that seemed to shift when viewed from certain angles. My heat-sensing pits were more developed than those I had noted on other serpents. And there was something else, something I had discovered during my first successful hunt roughly two months ago, something that had changed everything.
My innate ability.
Every soul beast possessed some form of innate talent, an intrinsic power that set them apart from ordinary animals and allowed them to accumulate soul power over time. For most beasts, these abilities were relatively straightforward—enhanced strength, elemental affinities, regenerative capabilities, that sort of thing.
Mine was different.
I had discovered it by accident, during a desperate hunt when starvation had finally overcome caution. My prey had been a mouse-like creature, barely three inches long, with fur that shimmered with a faint inner light—a young soul beast, perhaps ten years of age, insignificant in the grand hierarchy of this world. I had struck, my fangs piercing its body with the speed and precision that I was still learning to control, and felt the life drain from its tiny form.
But that wasn't all I felt.
Something else had transferred during that kill—a warmth that had nothing to do with consumed calories, an energy that seemed to settle into my very core. It had taken me several days and two more successful hunts to understand what was happening.
I was absorbing their soul age.
Not their experience, not their memories, not even their spirit power in any directly quantifiable sense. But the accumulated temporal essence of their existence, the years they had spent cultivating their souls in this spirit-rich world, was being drawn into my own body and added to my total.
It was, I had realized with a chill that had nothing to do with temperature, an ability perfectly suited for long-term cultivation. An ability that rewarded patience and calculated predation. An ability that, if developed properly, could potentially allow me to accumulate tens of thousands of years of soul age without actually living that long.
An ability that would make me an extremely attractive target for any Spirit Master seeking a particularly potent spirit ring.
Hence my policy of avoiding attention at all costs.
I reached the rocky outcropping just as the sun crested the highest trees, its warmth beginning to filter down through the gaps in the canopy in distinct beams of golden light. The stone was exactly as I remembered it—a flat, elevated surface roughly eight feet long and three feet wide, tilted at an angle that would maximize sun exposure during the morning hours. Already, I could feel the slight temperature differential between the air and the rock's surface, the stored heat from previous days seeping upward.
I ascended the stone with careful movements, my scales gripping the rough surface with practiced ease, and arranged my body in a loose coil that would expose maximum surface area to the sunlight. The warmth was immediate and intoxicating, flooding my cold-slowed muscles with renewed energy, accelerating my metabolism toward normal operational parameters.
For a long moment, I simply basked, allowing the heat to do its work. This was another lesson I had learned—the importance of patience, of allowing processes to complete before taking action. Human impetuousness had no place in a serpent's existence.
As my body temperature rose, my senses sharpened proportionally. The vibrations from the jungle floor became more distinct, separating into individual signatures that I could track and analyze. The chemical information from my tongue-flicks grew more nuanced, revealing layers of scent data that had been imperceptible in my cold-dulled state.
The jungle was waking up around me, and I watched with predatory attention.
There—approximately eighty feet to my northwest, a signature that warranted closer analysis. A ground-dwelling creature, judging by the vibration pattern. Medium-sized, perhaps the mass of a large rabbit. Its movements were cautious but unhurried, suggesting it had not detected my presence.
I tasted the air, seeking chemical confirmation. Yes—the scent was distinctive, a musky odor underlaid with something faintly sweet. I had encountered this species before, though I had not yet attempted to hunt one.
Analyze before action, I reminded myself. Knowledge is the foundation of successful predation.
I closed my eyes—a gesture that meant nothing in terms of actual vision but helped me focus my other senses—and began to construct a mental profile of the potential prey.
Species Identification: Based on scent profile and movement patterns, likely a Dusk Rabbit, a common herbivorous soul beast found throughout forested regions of the continent. Distinctive features included oversized hind legs adapted for rapid escape, large ears capable of detecting approaching predators at significant distances, and a fur coloration that shifted between brown and gray to match ambient lighting conditions.
Estimated Soul Age: Difficult to determine precisely without direct observation, but the creature's size and the confidence of its movements suggested a specimen of at least thirty to forty years. A mature individual, but not an elder. Reasonable prey for a beast of my current development.
Known Behaviors: Dusk Rabbits were primarily crepuscular, most active during dawn and dusk when their adaptive camouflage was most effective. They were herbivores, feeding on low-growing plants and fallen fruits. Their primary defense mechanism was detection and flight—those large ears and powerful legs made them exceptionally difficult to catch once alerted.
Vulnerabilities: The very adaptations that made them effective at detecting predators also created certain blind spots. Their ears were optimized for airborne sounds—the approach of diving birds, the rustle of stalking mammals, the crack of breaking twigs. They were far less attuned to vibrations traveling through the ground, and virtually incapable of detecting the chemical traces that a serpentine predator left in its wake.
Moreover, their oversized ears required significant blood flow, making them a potential target. A strike to the ear region would not only cause severe pain and disorientation but would also trigger significant blood loss.
Hunting Strategy: Ground-level approach, utilizing natural cover. Minimize movement during approach to avoid visual detection—Dusk Rabbits had excellent peripheral vision but struggled to identify stationary objects. Final approach should coincide with the rabbit's feeding, when its head would be down and its attention focused on food sources. Strike should target the neck or head for immediate incapacitation, preventing any opportunity for the escape response.
I opened my eyes, satisfied with my analysis. The sun had risen further during my deliberation, and my body had reached something approaching optimal operating temperature. My muscles felt fluid, responsive, ready.
But not yet.
I remained on the stone, watching and waiting. The Dusk Rabbit continued its foraging, unaware of the attention it had attracted. Occasionally, it would pause and lift its head, those massive ears rotating to scan for threats. Each time, I remained perfectly still, a dark shape against the darker stone, invisible to its prey-focused perception.
Patience. The hunter who struck too early missed their opportunity. The hunter who waited too long lost their window. The art was in finding the precise moment when all factors aligned.
My mind wandered, as it often did during these quiet intervals, to thoughts of my previous existence. Drake Morrison. Thirty-four years old at the time of… whatever had brought me here. Senior accountant at a mid-sized financial firm, respected for my attention to detail and ability to remain calm under pressure. Single, by choice rather than circumstance. A life of comfortable routine, of predictable patterns, of safety.
I didn't miss it.
The realization had surprised me at first. Surely I should mourn the loss of everything I had known—friends, family, career, the countless small pleasures of human existence. But the grief had never materialized. Instead, I found myself experiencing something closer to… relief.
My previous life had been a cage of my own construction. I had built walls of routine and expectation around myself, convinced that safety and stability were the highest virtues. I had avoided risk, shunned adventure, dismissed possibility. And in doing so, I had created an existence that was comfortable but hollow, secure but stagnant.
This world was dangerous. Every moment carried the potential for violent death. There were no guarantees, no safety nets, no comfortable routines to fall back upon. And yet, for the first time in as long as I could remember, I felt genuinely alive.
Perhaps there was something to be said for existential threat as a cure for existential malaise.
Of course, I had no intention of dying. The same calculating nature that had made me an effective accountant now manifested as survival instinct, driving me to analyze threats, identify opportunities, and position myself for long-term success. I would not throw away this second chance through recklessness or sentimentality.
And that meant, above all else, staying out of the main storyline.
I knew too much—that was both my greatest advantage and my greatest liability. The plot of Douluo Dalu was etched into my memory with disturbing clarity, from the early academy arcs through the continental wars to the eventual divine ascension of the protagonist. I knew who would rise and who would fall, which powers would be gained and which prices would be paid.
This knowledge was invaluable for navigation and survival. But it was also dangerous, because knowledge of the future carried the temptation to act on it. To interfere. To nudge events in more favorable directions, either for personal benefit or from misguided altruism.
That temptation had to be resisted.
The plot, for all its trials and tribulations, led to a relatively favorable outcome. The protagonist succeeded, the villains were defeated, and the world, while changed, continued to exist. Any interference on my part risked destabilizing that outcome, potentially unleashing consequences that I could neither predict nor control.
Better to remain in the shadows. To accumulate power quietly, far from the centers of conflict. To let the heroes and villains play out their predetermined drama while I pursued my own goals of survival and growth.
It was a strategy that suited my nature perfectly. Cold. Calculating. Patient.
The Dusk Rabbit had moved closer during my contemplation, following a meandering path through the underbrush as it searched for food. The distance had closed to approximately fifty feet—still too far for a strike, but well within the range where I could begin my approach.
I slithered down from the sun-warmed stone, my movements fluid and nearly soundless. The warmth I had absorbed would sustain me through the hunt, powering muscles that were now operating at full efficiency. My scales, dark as shadow, blended seamlessly with the shaded undergrowth, breaking up my outline into an indistinct shape that would register only as background noise to the rabbit's visual processing.
The approach began.
I moved in a series of measured progressions, covering ground with deceptive speed while maintaining the appearance of stillness. My body flowed over obstacles rather than around them, conforming to the contours of roots and stones with serpentine grace. My tongue flickered constantly, tracking the rabbit's position by scent, building a three-dimensional map of the intervening terrain.
Thirty feet.
The rabbit paused, ears swiveling. I froze, becoming a length of dark wood, an oddly shaped root, a meaningless feature of the forest floor. The moment stretched, each second feeling like an eternity.
The rabbit resumed foraging. Its body language remained relaxed, unaware.
Twenty feet.
I could see it clearly now, my movement-sensitive vision providing a detailed image of my prey. The rabbit was larger than I had estimated—perhaps the size of a medium dog, with those distinctive oversized ears that twitched constantly as they sampled the air for sounds of danger. Its fur was currently a mottled gray-brown, matching the leaf litter it moved through with impressive accuracy.
A mature specimen. Forty years of soul age at minimum, possibly more.
The hunger stirred in my core, that strange, hollow sensation that was more than simple physical need. My innate ability, primed and ready, waiting for the opportunity to claim another increment of cultivation.
Fifteen feet.
The rabbit had found something—a patch of low-growing mushrooms that apparently held some appeal. Its head went down, nose twitching as it investigated the find. The ears, while still moving, were now oriented forward rather than maintaining their usual panoramic scan.
The window was opening.
Ten feet.
I coiled my body, gathering the stored energy in my muscles, preparing for the strike. My heat pits tracked the rabbit's body temperature, identifying the warmest regions—the head, the core, the major blood vessels. My tongue confirmed the position, cross-referencing scent data with visual information.
The rabbit shifted slightly, presenting its left flank.
Now.
I struck with every ounce of speed my warm-blooded muscles could generate, my body uncoiling like a released spring. The distance vanished in a fraction of a second, my fangs leading the way, aimed at the precise point where the rabbit's spine met its skull.
The rabbit's reflexes, honed by forty years of survival, triggered an explosive leap the instant my motion registered in its peripheral vision. But the reaction came a crucial fraction of a second too late.
My fangs sank home.
The rabbit's leap carried both of us several feet through the air, its powerful legs still firing even as my venom began flooding its system. We landed in a tangle of fur and scales, the rabbit thrashing wildly in a desperate attempt to dislodge me. Its hind legs kicked with bone-breaking force, but I had positioned myself along its back, outside the arc of its most powerful weapons.
I tightened my coils, constricting around its body even as my fangs remained embedded in its neck. The venom—I had discovered its properties through trial and error—was a potent neurotoxin that would paralyze voluntary muscle function within seconds.
The rabbit's struggles weakened. Its thrashing became sporadic, then ceased altogether. Its breathing continued—the venom affected voluntary muscles, not the autonomic systems—but it was now incapable of resistance.
I maintained my grip for another full minute, ensuring that the paralysis was complete before beginning to feed. There was no satisfaction in the kill, no thrill of victory. Only the cold acknowledgment of successful execution and the anticipation of what was to come.
As I began to consume my prey, the familiar warmth bloomed in my core. The rabbit's accumulated soul age—I could feel it now, a distinct quantity that my innate ability was drawing inward, separating from the physical matter I was ingesting. Forty-three years, my instincts informed me with strange precision. Forty-three years of existence in this spirit-rich world, of passive cultivation, of accumulated temporal essence.
It flowed into me, merging with my own developing soul, adding to the total I had been building since my first successful hunt.
I was now, by the measures of this world, approximately one hundred and twenty-seven years old. A mere infant by soul beast standards. Barely worth noticing, hardly worth hunting.
But I was growing.
Day by day, hunt by hunt, patient accumulation building toward something greater. In this world where Spirit Masters sought beasts of ten thousand years or more, where the truly powerful creatures had existed since before human civilization, one hundred and twenty-seven years was nothing.
Yet it was a foundation. A beginning. The first coils of a pattern that would, given sufficient time and careful execution, spiral upward toward heights I had only begun to imagine.
I hate the cold, I had thought this morning, and it was true.
But the cold was also my teacher. It had shown me the value of patience, the necessity of conservation, the art of waiting for the optimal moment. It had forced me to think like the creature I had become rather than the human I had been.
And as I finished my meal and felt the warmth spreading through my body—both the mundane warmth of consumed calories and the spiritual warmth of absorbed cultivation—I found myself grateful for the lessons.
This was my life now. This jungle, this body, this world of spirits and souls and endless possibility.
I intended to make the most of it.