Is It Really the Ferocious Beasts That Are Cruel?

The days passed in calm tranquility.

Almost every night, the Willow Deity's humanoid Law Body would appear. After eating, she would vanish directly. Hu Niu came by every few days, and she usually spent the night in Shi Yi's room.

Although Shi Yi was very unaccustomed to sleeping with other people and had grown used to sleeping alone over the years, Hu Niu was not someone who could be reasoned with. After filling her stomach, she would simply lie down on his bed.

As for that...

Shi Yi was helpless and had no way around it. He could neither hit her nor scold her. Sometimes, he wanted to make things a fait accompli, only to realize that he had not yet reached that age.

Willing, but powerless!

At nine years old, that would be breaking heavenly laws!

Just when Shi Yi thought his days would continue peacefully like this, Bei Village, several mountain ranges away from Stone Village, suddenly came into an irreconcilable conflict with Stone Village.

The cause was not complicated.

The children of Stone Village had been mischievous and secretly slipped out. Having undergone an Ancient Descendant's True Blood Baptism, their bones, muscles, and strength had increased greatly, and ordinary Prehistoric Ferocious Beasts were no match for them.

Unlike adults, children could not hold themselves back. After feeling their strength surge, they became incomparably eager to see the world beyond Stone Village and went out in groups to hunt Prehistoric Ferocious Beasts.

In this Great Wilderness, Prehistoric Ferocious Beasts were merely the lowest class of ferocious beasts. Compared with Desolate Variants, Ancient Descendants, and Pure-Blooded Ferocious Beasts, they were nothing more than food.

If things had gone smoothly, those children could have used humanity's favored, utterly un-Martial Virtue-like tactic of surrounding and ganging up on their prey to hunt a Prehistoric Ferocious Beast. At most, their parents would have hung them up and given them a beating, then warned them not to leave the village so casually.

But things in this world never went so smoothly.

Those Stone Village children happened to run into Bei Village's hunting party.

Perhaps fearing that Stone Village's next generation would grow up and threaten Bei Village, the leader of Bei Village's hunting party did not hesitate to shoot and kill those boys and girls, whose average age was not even ten.

Hu Niu spent all day clinging to Shi Yi, so she fortunately escaped disaster. But of the ten boys and girls who had secretly slipped out of Stone Village, three cold bodies were left forever in the dangerous depths of the Great Wilderness.

Fortunately, those boys and girls still remembered their parents' words: if they encountered danger outside, run immediately and never look back.

Relying on the strengthened bones, muscles, and strength granted by the Ancient Descendant's True Blood Baptism, the remaining seven boys and girls forced themselves to run back.

Because of this...

Stone Village and Bei Village became sworn enemies. Shi Yi did not stand by and watch. Stone Village had just given him their Ancestral Artifact; he had no face to stand aside, so naturally, he had to take action as well.

After personally using Kirin Steps to suppress and kill Bei Village's Desolate Variant-level sacrificial spirit, Bei Village was no match for Stone Village at all. The young and middle-aged men of Stone Village slaughtered the entire village.

Including the elderly, the weak, women, and children, more than a hundred bloody heads were piled up in Bei Village's ruined settlement. In ten years, only ten years, this village would be as though it had never existed.

It sounded somewhat cruel, but that was the cruelty of the Great Wilderness.

The strong lived. The weak died.

At the same time...

This cruel and bloody scene, especially this civil war and infighting among humans, as well as Stone Village's ruthless methods of sparing not even the elderly, weak, women, and children, caused Shi Yi to begin doubting himself.

Across the boundless Great Wilderness stretching billions of miles, were ferocious beasts truly the cruel ones?

As for that question...

Shi Yi had seriously considered it in his previous life on the Azure Blue Planet. Everyone said ghosts were terrifying, but when ghosts harmed people, it was often only for revenge.

Humans, however, could often kill another person with no connection to them whatsoever. And because of human intelligence, their cruel methods were far beyond anything ghosts could do to harm people.

Of course...

The Azure Blue Planet where Shi Yi had lived in his previous life had no ghosts. It was simply a technological universe. Yet in some ways, that was also tragic, because it meant those who died unjustly did not even have the chance to become ghosts and seek revenge.

Half a month later.

Boom!

In the deepest reaches of the Great Wilderness, who knew how far it was from the Vast Mountain Range where Stone Village stood, a sky-shaking blaze suddenly erupted across the vast heavens.

The flames burned with incomparable intensity. A bird's cry shook heaven and earth, echoing through the entire sky.

As the crimson blaze grew ever stronger, burning the heavens until they seemed about to collapse, the sky ceased to be blue. It transformed into a flaming hell filled with red clouds.

The Great Wilderness, spanning billions of miles, seemed to have abruptly risen by dozens of degrees. Heat waves rolled out, and even from an unknown distance away, one could still clearly feel the terrifying flames.

It was at that moment.

Shi Yi, seated atop the crown of the Willow Tree at the center of Stone Village, slowly opened his eyes. A massive Double Pupil appeared above Stone Village, instantly piercing through the thick clouds.

Though Shi Yi was often whipped by willow branches whenever he touched the Willow Deity's humanoid Law Body, leaving him in such pain that he crawled across the ground...

If he merely touched the Willow Deity's true Willow Tree body, sat cross-legged on its trunk, or sat cross-legged in its crown, she generally let him do as he pleased.

Cry!

Under Shi Yi's Double Pupil's gaze, a Little Red Bird streaked across the boundless sky. Its divine might was astonishing, and it was even faster than true lightning.

But the next second...

With a buzzing roar, a massive golden claw reached down from above the dense clouds, blotting out the sky as it grabbed at the Little Red Bird with unrivaled might.

Rip!

The Little Red Bird darted sideways and swiftly evaded it. That furry Golden Great Claw crushed an entire mountain range in one grasp, sending shattered rocks flying through the sky in a terrifying spectacle.

"That bird is quite formidable, but the being behind that golden claw is no simple creature either." Shi Yi narrowed his eyes, and the phantom Double Pupil manifested above Stone Village narrowed as well.

Boom!

The Golden Great Claw reached down once more with astonishing momentum, forcibly scattering the crimson flames. It was impossible to imagine just how enormous its true body was. A single golden claw rested above the clouds, meaning its body had to be at least ten thousand meters tall.

Cry!

The Little Red Bird flapped its wings, and the crimson flames surged once more. The crimson blaze that had been scattered reclaimed the sky, giving off the terrifying omen that the world was about to end.

Right then.

In the deepest reaches of the Great Wilderness, a fierce battle erupted, as though myth had descended upon the world. Every time that sky-covering Golden Great Claw fell, it shattered a mountain range.

The crimson Little Red Bird was no less formidable. A flap of its wings turned mountain ranges into magma. Crimson lava shot toward the heavens, like rivers of red linking heaven and earth.

And that was merely the aftermath. The true battle was still taking place in the heavens.

Shi Yi saw it clearly through his Double Pupils. The crimson bird was only palm-sized, its feathers bright red as though dripping with blood. Its aura was incomparably valiant as it plunged into the thick clouds, constantly clashing with the Golden Great Claw and the terrifying creature behind it.

"They are definitely Pure-Blooded Ferocious Beasts, and mature ones at that. Clearly, these two Pure-Blooded Ferocious Beasts stand at the pinnacle of the Great Wilderness, even the entire Wild Domain."

Shi Yi's tone was extremely certain. At the same time, the world-destroying power in the heavens stirred a different feeling within him, an indescribable and peculiar feeling.

After Stone Village had destroyed Bei Village, Shi Yi had constantly been questioning his life, feeling that he had done something wrong.

But now, he only wanted to become stronger. He could feel the blood within his body boiling without end.

On the Azure Blue Planet.

A man's romance was guns, cars, and cannons. That was speed and passion.

In this barbaric world.

A man's romance was power, the power to control the destruction of heaven and earth.

At this moment.

Only one sentence could describe Shi Yi's heart.

With sun and moon in hand, plucking stars from the sky—none in this world can compare to me!

As he thought of this.

Shi Yi's fists clenched unconsciously, his heart filled with a thirst for power.