Headscar shook the dust from his fur and looked around.
He had slept well.
The trees beside the mountain path were silent, and old Colin's gamey scent had long since vanished from the air.
The old fellow had actually slipped away.
For Headscar, that was a stroke of good fortune worth a rumble or two in his throat.
Having the Horned Giant Rhino's protein-rich remains all to himself was wonderful, but more importantly, there was no longer anyone who could shake his place in this territory.
Headscar suddenly understood the White-Faced Monkeys.
When Headscar first set foot in the Black Swamp's territory, those tree-dwellers had bared their teeth and hurled branches at him, not because they were fierce, but because the troop was afraid.
A Nightmare Leopard had sharper teeth and swifter claws, and Headscar's presence would affect the troop's usefulness to Black Typhon.
Just like Headscar and Colin now.
If Colin stayed—a mountain Nightmare Leopard with both intelligence and a massive physique, who even talked with Black Typhon—what value would a little cat with an old scar like him have left?
Headscar shook his head, walked out of the woods, and crossed the cracked mudbed.
At the center of the fissure, Black Typhon lay coiled motionlessly at the mouth of the dried-up fault, like an ancient hill cast from black iron.
Black Typhon had grown more dangerous, and an icy, savage aura filled the air.
Even though Headscar was accustomed to the bloodshed of Blackwater Swamp, he still stopped, the stiff fur on his back standing on end.
He dared not disturb him and instead began patrolling the quiet foothills.
He patrolled back and forth for over a hundred li along the winding mountain path. The mountain forest was deathly silent.
Under the Horned Giant Rhino Family and old Colin's exploitation, the ecological niches at an altitude of a thousand meters had been squeezed dry. Apart from tiny lizards darting through gaps between the boulders, Headscar saw no trace of any medium or large predators.
There were signs of large prey in the dense forest below a thousand meters, but they were scarce.
Headscar familiarized himself with the mountain forest, returning to feed near the shallows when he grew hungry. He would secure the land where Famu dwelled himself.
He was accustomed to Black Typhon's long periods of sleep.
But in his memory, the master of Blackwater Swamp had rarely lain asleep for so long on broad, exposed shallows.
After finishing the Horned Giant Rhino, he went to the shallows again.
Black Typhon's face had visibly changed. To Headscar, it no longer looked much like a snake's, but he couldn't say what creature it did resemble.
As Black Typhon slept, the bones throughout his body gave off faint, rapid metallic clicking sounds.
The bones of his face had hardened, and the scales had almost fused with them. A layer of black scales covered the ghastly white facial bones. Hardened bone extended along his snout to either side of his eye sockets, rising in an interlocking pattern. The whole thing had a metallic blue-black sheen, looking at first glance like an iron mask bristling with spikes.
Deep in his consciousness, Famu was using Child of the Earth for fine manipulation.
Hundreds of micron-sized holes had been bored into the hardened bone on either side of his snout, and a mesh of tactile nerve endings threaded through their depths.
This was a physical sensory system built specifically for his head. His snout transmitted vibrations, accurately relaying feedback from each bite and confirming whether his teeth had pierced his prey's skin. This was important: it would let Famu avoid an opponent's hard osteoderms and bony spinal protrusions in close combat, and strike straight at a vulnerable spot.
Famu had modeled this sensory network on a formidable predator.
A Carcharodontosaurid, the Ceralian Neovenator.
The snouts of these carcharodontosaurs were covered in a mesh-like sensory system. A Neovenator could keenly sense the force and power behind each bite, allowing it to find its prey's weak points and bite down.
The facial bones had thickened, leaving room for more muscle. This had also caused the scales on his head to grow almost into the hardened bone, forming a bony surface like an iron mask that provided excellent protection for Famu's head and eyes.
His wounds had all healed, and his body as a whole had been adjusted.
The new Tile-Like Composite Scales fitted snugly over his armored muscles, leaving not the slightest weakness.
The only problem was that Famu had drained the Earth Vein Energy here, and Child of the Earth could no longer provide him with precise control.
The Furnace Core still wasn't satisfied.
Famu wasn't satisfied either.
Typhon was the overlord of the rainforest, but there was no such thing as perfection in biology. What Famu was doing was gradually making himself perfect, a long process that would become addictive to him.
It would be even better if he could grow arms.
Deep in his consciousness lay Famu's first blueprint for Typhon's Dragonization Modification.
It was a serpent-bodied dragon, armored from head to tail and savage of face.
Of course, "dragons" didn't exist in the world. This was a creature Famu had devised by combining the strengths of reptiles. After all, dinosaurs, the only creatures that could serve as a biological reference, really couldn't provide a direction for modifying Typhon.
First, he needed arms. They needed to be similar to human arms, flexible enough to grasp things and use tools. The part of his body from which the two arms grew would be considered the main trunk.
He would keep the serpent body. Famu valued its flexibility, and the ability to constrict was often what allowed snakes in nature to challenge creatures above their level.
There would be no conventional legs, though.
The serpent body perfectly replaced the function of legs. Extending the trunk near the tail, building a pelvis, and creating two legs would be utterly superfluous and serve no clear purpose. Those two pairs of legs would not only hamper the serpent body's flexibility and affect Famu's way of slithering on land, but also easily become vulnerable points for enemies to attack.
At the shoulder blades of the serpent-bodied dragon, Famu thoughtfully provided room for further development.
If he became highly adapted to aquatic life by then, those spots could serve as fins or flippers. If he grew into some strange Earth Vein creature, they could serve as attack organs or sensory organs.
In any case, what Famu desired most now was arms.
For a human to lose both hands was tantamount to losing the right to use tools.
Unfortunately, even Child of the Earth couldn't grow arms. Famu had eaten the Furnace Core, devoured the Horned Giant Rhino Family, and drawn on Earth Vein Energy, yet even with all three approaches, he couldn't use Child of the Earth to grow arms out of thin air on some part of his trunk.
A long time later, Famu awakened from deep hibernation.
He felt thirsty, but the shallows had completely dried up, and all the uneaten Horned Giant Rhino carcasses had rotted, giving off an astonishing stench.
Because of Famu's presence, no scavenger dared enter this territory, leaving the carcasses to rot and stink.
It was a stench even Famu found hard to withstand.
In the heat, vast quantities of fat and entrails had turned into green, fatty pus. Flies covered the stiff osteoderms in dense swarms, and fat maggots tumbled in clumps from the Horned Giant Rhinos' shattered eye sockets.
Black Typhon slowly swayed his body, his massive bulk carving a deep furrow in the sand.
Famu left the stinking killing ground.
His wounds had healed completely, and the burns would no longer hinder his movements.
But before taking up his spear and returning to the deep waters of the Mara River, he needed more cards to play.
There were too many taboos deep in the rainforest. The ten-meter-class giant crocodile that could shoot fire from its back was no accident; it was a tyrant that had mastered Earth Vein Energy. Famu needed food and Furnace Cores, but he refused to act rashly.
He needed information. He needed to find out the true nature of that underwater berserk species.
The dark shape wound around, avoiding the dried-up animal trail along the river, and plunged straight into the distant tangle of thick fog and dense forest.
Famu decided to find Xing Rui.