I remained hidden in the branches for a few minutes, still alert, until my breathing started to settle.
Three spiritual stones sat in my palm. Their essence flowing into my meridians. All three were draining at once, yet the emptiness inside my meridians barely eased.
This was the first time I had ever used spiritual stones to recover during a fight. Even before obtaining the Frost Soul Constitution, I had never been pushed this far.
Then I looked down at the bites across my forearm. The flesh around them had already darkened, a dull tingling spreading beneath the skin.
The poison from the centipedes had already started taking effect, but being at the Qi Condensation Realm it was still manageable.
What lingered instead was the anger in my blood.
"Tch."
(Where the hell am I supposed to find them now? Those bastards are probably laughing somewhere.).
I exhaled slowly, forcing it down.
(Wait…) Something felt off.
Then it hit me. The crawling of the Dark Centipede had stopped.
The realization landed instantly. The forest around me had fallen silent.
My body reacted before I fully processed it. I extended my senses outward carefully, tracing the familiar pressure of a large spiritual beast's essence signature through the terrain.
The signature was still there… but it felt like it was moving away from me, and then it was gone.
"Mmm…?"
I didn't let the thought settle and dropped from the tree immediately.
The ground at the base was marked in every direction.
The centipede's legs had pressed deep into the soil, leaving distinct impact points that spread outward through the grove like a mapped record of its movement.
I crouched beside the nearest set and studied it. The deeper pressure in certain prints showed the direction it had been moving.
But the trail actually led away from the cave entrance…
"Why didn't it return to its nest?..." My eyes narrowed slightly, "why is it moving in the opposite direction?"
Normally, I should've ignored it. Left it alone and focused on recovery. That would've been the rational choice in a situation like this.
But a king-level beast doesn't leave an active prey for no reason. Not unless it's forced. Or something more important draws it away.
"...is this Chen Wu's doing?"
...…..
Meanwhile, Chen Wu stood atop a large boulder. The ground ahead was flat and open, covered in short grass. The manual rested open in his hand, his eyes shifting between the page and the distant figures.
From this far away, the details were unclear, but their presence was unmistakable. Two creatures moved through the field with an unhurried pace.
One was very small compared to the other, and the larger one was in another class entirely.
It was bigger than the trees. Its body stretched long and wide, carried low to the ground on legs too short for its mass.
Across its back and along its shoulders, clusters of crystalline growth caught the faint light overhead and reflected it
Wei Peng said it quietly. "The crystals."
Chen Wu and the group stood watching the scene. Then he turned toward the golden screen that had appeared at the edge of his vision.
The system opened.
═══════════════════════════
BEAST IDENTIFICATION
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Name: Crimson Hoof Antler
Rank: Beast King
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Chen Wu looked up from the screen.
"Crimson Hoof Antler king," he said.
The silence that followed lasted several seconds.
Hou Zi was the first to break it. "A king-level beast." His gaze shifted to Chen Wu. "That is a king-level beast." His voice carried a clear note of surprise.
"We can see that," Wei Peng replied.
"You don't understand," Hou Zi said sharply. "A king has the strength of a Golden Core cultivator. We… no, we can't fight this thing."
Nobody argued with the arithmetic. A group of Foundation Establishment cultivators against a king. This was nothing but a foregone conclusion.
Chen Wu closed the manual. "The small one next to it is its offspring, and I believe I have an idea how to get the crystals."
All eyes went to him, ears waiting to hear his plan.
He continued. "We don't need to fight it directly." He paused, "just drive it toward the forest line. A king-level beast in open ground is one thing, but in dense terrain it loses control over its size and movement."
"And how are we going to—" Hou Zi started.
Chen Wu cut him off instantly. "We will attack the offspring. The mother will try to save it and like that both will enter the forest."
The group looked at each other.
"And the crystals?" Su Ling asked without any hesitation.
"When it's inside, the nearby trees will be used as cover. The plan is to drop from the top branches directly onto its body and extract the crystalline growths from its upper surface."
Another silence.
Hou Zi exhaled through his nose. "There's always a way."
No one objected.
After further discussion, they moved into formation, going wider to stay at the edge of the creature's attention.
The Crimson Hoof Antler king continued through the open ground, the offspring moving beside it.
Neither of them showed any sign of having registered the twelve cultivators quietly positioning themselves around the field.
On the Su Ling's side. She stopped at the distance she had calculated, and fixed her eyes on the offspring.
The needles shot out. Compressed threads of spiritual essence crossed the distance between her and the young beast in the span of a single breath.
They struck the joint between the neck and shoulder.
The offspring cried out, and the king halted. Its head rose and turned, the sheer mass behind the movement making it feel slow.
Its eyes found Su Ling in the field below, but before it could even move toward her another disciple struck from the opposite side.
A blade technique that sent a compressed arc of spiritual essence across the ground and caught the young beast across the flank.
Another sharp cry rang out, and the king immediately turned toward the new direction.
Then another attack came from the left.
The King immediately shifted toward it, placing itself between the strike and the offspring.
But before it could settle again, another attack came from farther ahead, forcing it to move once more.
Little by little, the massive creature was being pushed toward the forest line.
The offspring stayed ahead of it, pressed close against the larger body, and the two of them crossed the open ground together in that gradual, enormous way.
The disciples who had attacked quickly fell back. Their faces were pale, yet not one of them broke the rotation Chen Wu had described.
When the king reached the first line of trees, its head swept across the canopy, assessing the change in terrain.
And then it continued forward, because the offspring had already fled deeper into the forest while the pressure from the disciples still came from behind.
Chen Wu's group followed after it.