Headscar savored the longhorned tough boar. He had always been especially fond of this kind of prey.
Before his family was wiped out, the coalition of male leopards had hunted Sa Mei Longhorned Tough Boars.
Tasting one brought back memories of the night his group was wiped out, whether Headscar wanted them or not.
Delicious.
Headscar bit off a mouthful of meat and looked up.
From where he was, he could see that the white behemoth was doomed.
Black Typhon had wrapped himself around the white behemoth from a blind spot, winding up its legs and belly bit by bit. At a glance, it looked as though a black shadow had risen from the ground out of nowhere and swallowed the white behemoth's body.
He tightened his muscles, then tightened them again. Birds had hollow bones, and their ability to withstand constriction was far inferior to that of creatures that lived on the ground.
Even in nature before the Earth Vein era, birds of prey had great difficulty dealing with constrictor snakes of comparable size. Even when hunting constrictors small enough to be prey, they sometimes came to grief.
That went doubly for a Typhon, a rainforest behemoth at the very pinnacle of the constrictor world.
Famu did not have to keep his muscles clenched for long before the white behemoth stopped moving. Every bone in its body had been crushed, and it was dead.
Its furnace core could no longer beat, and its Earth Vein Energy no longer fluctuated.
Famu dragged the corpse out and tore open its belly. He saw deathly pale flesh and deathly pale internal organs, and a foul stench hit him in the face. The membranes covering some of the organs were mottled with vivid colors.
It seemed the white behemoth had not been born in the brief span of a single dusk. Earth Vein Energy had corroded the old Crowned Heron to this extent, and sooner or later it would have lost control.
Famu looked around and decided this was not a suitable place to eat.
He clamped his jaws around the white behemoth and retraced his path.
With nothing to chase, he did not have to keep changing direction. Following the river, Famu soon arrived at the place where the old Crowned Heron had said the Earth Vein emerged.
The cavern was empty. The rock walls outside blocked the moonlight, leaving it pitch-black, but it was not all that dark to a Typhon. Famu even spotted a claw mark on a rock. There was white powder around its edges; it was very fresh, left only a short while ago.
Famu did not have to think to know the claw mark came from Ronan.
The young bird had flown into a rage because he could not find the Earth Vein. Famu could imagine him pacing back and forth in the cavern, beating his wings against the rocks, and finally leaving a claw mark in resentment before departing.
There could be no Earth Vein here. There was nothing at all, only an old Crowned Heron intent on serving as his food. Furnace-Core Creatures did not readily leave the Earth Veins they occupied, just as Colin and Dutt had fought over a shallow for years. Once you knew where an Earth Vein was, how could you leave it in an area so far away that it was beyond your control?
Even Typhons guarded their Earth Veins day and night, never letting such precious energy out of their sight.
If there was nothing near the Furnace-Core Crowned Heron's nest, that meant the Earth Vein that had baptized it had long since run dry.
But that was only Famu's guess. What truly made him realize the old Crowned Heron was deceiving him was its claim that it had been sheltering from the rain.
Proud birds of prey like Crowned Herons were in the habit of flying against torrential rain. They could not possibly shelter from it, much less go into a cavern to do so. That would be a disgrace to a Crowned Heron. They were a species that could not bear to have any other obstruction above their heads, and they always chose the highest treetops in the rainforest for their nests.
The old Crowned Heron had not expected Famu to know anything about their habits and had told a lie riddled with holes.
Famu dragged the white behemoth's corpse into the cavern.
"High concentration of Earth Vein Energy detected," the Scepter said.
"Looks like this was the culprit that made it lose control." Famu tore the furnace core out of the corpse. The deathly pale core had shriveled into a small lump of flesh, with green pus hanging from its edges. It did not look appetizing at all.
Famu ate it anyway. He was used to eating like this. As a human, he would have found it impossible to swallow, but as a Typhon, he found it a rare delicacy.
This was the furnace core of a level-four life-form. By the Scepter System's standards, Famu himself was now a level-four life-form. Level one consisted of the Savage Species commonly found in the rainforest. No matter how powerful a creature was, if it lacked a furnace core organ and intelligence, it was a Savage Species, rated as a level-one life-form. Though Famu thought that if a creature lacked a furnace core and intelligence, it could not be all that formidable anyway.
Level two consisted of Secondary Furnace-Core Creatures like Colin the Nightmare Leopard, Golden-Horn Dute, and Ronan the Crowned Heron.
Level three consisted of subadult super species, such as the first of his own kind Famu had encountered, a female Typhon nearing adulthood. Although she was not yet an adult and the furnace core inside her had not matured, she was already a terrifying predator that Secondary Furnace-Core Creatures like Dutt and Colin dared not provoke.
Level four was the stage Famu was at: a super species paired with a mature Child of the Earth Furnace Core, running roughshod through the rainforest. The Dead Sun Armor Famu had once hunted was a very typical level-four life-form.
Level five belonged to exceptionally dangerous Typhon lords and Dead Sun Armor lords. They had been in contact with Earth Vein Energy for decades, and their furnace cores had grown to an unimaginable degree. According to the Staff of Life's estimation, the furnace core of a level-five life-form had probably begun to differentiate itself, making individual adjustments to the original furnace core organ, such as an advanced Child of the Earth.
If Famu could turn Child of the Earth into a gravitational field that exerted force on the outside world and made him levitate, then he would be a Muerjia worthy of the name.
That was because this power, too, was an advancement of Child of the Earth.
"This furnace core has no flavor," Famu remarked.
This furnace core was far inferior to the Dead Sun Armor's, and he had not absorbed much Earth Vein Energy from it, either.
"Your Excellency, this creature's furnace core was ruined by an overload," the Scepter explained.
"Because it was scoured by a high concentration of Earth Vein Energy?"
"Yes."
"Where did it get such a high concentration of Earth Vein Energy?" Famu held the lump of deathly pale flesh in his jaws and searched through it from side to side. He had found it strange from the start: for a bird of prey with hollow bones, the old Crowned Heron had been unusually heavy.
Famu was looking for the reason.
The easiest way would have been to swallow the Crowned Heron whole and leave the rest to a Typhon's stomach. It would take care of everything.
Just then, a faint cyan glow pierced the darkness.
Famu froze for a moment and leaned closer to examine it. The cyan light came from the Crowned Heron's stomach. He tore the stomach open, and lumps of meat tumbled out, mixed with feathers that had not been fully digested. But none of that mattered. Famu stared intently at a crystal beneath the chunks of meat.
It could indeed be called a crystal. A cyan sheen rippled across its surface, as beautiful as colored glass reflecting the aurora.
"A Luminous Core?"