Medicine Beast

Xu Yuan could clearly sense a terrifying giant beast up ahead, its bloody maw wide open as it waited silently for him.

Yet he couldn't suppress this "instinct." Like a bug, he kept wriggling toward that dangerous gaping maw.

The tempting fragrance grew stronger and stronger, and Xu Yuan drew closer and closer to the bloody maw.

Xu Yuan wanted to pinch himself hard, to snap out of this nightmare-like state, but he couldn't make his hands obey.

He wriggled out from a thicket of mixed woods like a bug, and a mountain appeared before him. The instinct inside him grew overwhelmingly strong!

A thought suddenly surfaced from deep within him: once he crossed that mountain, he'd be able to eat that delicious food!

Then Xu Yuan immediately realized: I'm practically delivering myself right to it as a tasty meal.

He couldn't hesitate any longer. Xu Yuan couldn't control his body, but he could control his Inner Fire.

"Whoosh..."

Sparks flew from Xu Yuan's seven orifices, quickly turning into roaring flames.

The fire scorched him. His tattered short coat soon crumbled into ash, and then his Inner Fire spread across his whole body. Xu Yuan swiftly became a man of flames!

When a Pill Cultivator spread Inner Fire over his entire body, it wouldn't burn him.

But now, Xu Yuan was setting himself on fire!

Even so, his body remained under the control of that "instinct," wriggling forward across the ground without pause.

Anyone who saw this scene would have found it horrifying.

Xu Yuan was in excruciating pain. He wanted to scream, but couldn't make a sound. His body was completely beyond his control.

His Inner Fire had already burned the skin across his whole body into a layer of charred black!

With a single thought, Xu Yuan could draw back his Inner Fire.

But he gritted his teeth and held on, enduring the terrible pain.

That "instinct" lay hidden within his body. Until the fire reached that layer, the instinct remained unaware.

He endured like this for quite a while, until at last the instinct began to notice.

Xu Yuan was crawling beneath an ancient pine. The heat of the flames warmed the whole tree, and a few large drops of pine resin dripped down.

The flames surged higher.

At last, under the excruciating pain, even the instinct couldn't hold out any longer and relinquished control of his body.

Xu Yuan withdrew his Inner Fire as fast as he could, then lay on the ground, breathing in shallow, drawn-out gasps. He didn't even dare to move his chest or belly much; the slightest movement brought a stabbing pain.

Now Xu Yuan was charred black all over, covered in cracks, with dark-red flesh visible beneath!

Only after a long while did Xu Yuan manage to gather a sliver of strength. Then he activated his fate.

He shed a thick, heavy layer of charred shell!

This shedding of skin hadn't been caused by uncanny corruption. He had simply used the power of his fate to slough off his burned skin.

So it brought no improvement to his body. Even the stubborn, ghostly-qi wound on his back remained entrenched.

This layer of "skin" had no special use, either. Still, Xu Yuan felt as if it had some kind of "connection" to him.

Xu Yuan dug a shallow hole and buried it.

After using his fate twice in quick succession, Xu Yuan felt a weakness that came from the very root of his life.

"I'll have to use it sparingly..."

Xu Yuan muttered to himself.

The fragrance kept drifting over the mountain, and Xu Yuan felt the "instinct" inside him stirring again.

But after being tempered by his Inner Fire, he could just barely suppress the urge.

Xu Yuan crouched low. Instead of fleeing at once, he charged up the mountain ahead as swiftly as a mountain leopard, then hid behind a few trees and peered down:

Xu Yuan had never planned to meet force with force. He knew full well how little strength he had. He wanted to see clearly who had used this method on him from behind the scenes.

At the very least, he had to know his enemy as well as himself.

What he saw was no surprise: it was Saint Aunt and her group.

A long bamboo pole had a wooden bowl hanging from it, with a handful of rice inside.

It was exactly like the one his stepmother had given him, except there was a little more rice in the bowl.

Putting rice in a wooden bowl seemed much the same as his stepmother having him put it in a tree hollow.

He wondered if that was a necessary condition for luring June Bugs.

Xu Yuan quietly withdrew, then slipped away unnoticed in another direction.

Lunch was ready at the riverside camp.

They had drawn water from the river and boiled it to cook the dried meat. They had also used the steam to soften the flatbread.

One of the workers had gone out of his way to pick some wild greens to curry favor with Saint Aunt. He'd put them in the meat broth and sprinkled in seasoning.

He filled a large bowl and brought it to Saint Aunt. "Saint Aunt, please enjoy your meal."

Saint Aunt ate it patiently, but there was still no movement in the surrounding mountains.

With a dark expression, Saint Aunt smashed the bowl. The dozen or so workers under Zhao Yong fell silent, terrified, unsure how they had displeased their goddess.

Saint Aunt strode up to the Literary Cultivator and said, "That thing must have escaped! Search the mountain at once!"

The Society had sent four people to deliver the bait. Their leader was a Pill Cultivator dressed like a traveling physician.

The Pill Cultivator nodded, his gaze sweeping over the workers. Suddenly, his eyes turned cold.

Saint Aunt said calmly, "Leave two for me."

The Literary Cultivator raised a hand, and a sheet of calligraphy lifted in the wind. Four large characters were written on it: "Unable to Move."

To their horror, the workers under Zhao Yong found that they really couldn't move!

The Pill Cultivator pulled a small gourd from the pouch slung over his shoulder and poured out some pills. He pried open their mouths and fed each one a pill.

He casually left two of them behind.

The two who hadn't been fed pills watched in even greater terror as their companions' bodies twisted and their bones warped after swallowing them!

Thick black fur sprouted over their bodies. Their hands and feet became claws, their jaws jutted forward, and four sharp canine fangs protruded from beneath their lips. Their ears grew backward and narrowed, with several long hairs sprouting from each tip.

They dropped to all fours like beasts, snarling and roaring without cease. Their eyes were blood-red, and all human emotion had vanished from them.

The Literary Cultivator put away the calligraphy. The Pill Cultivator swept a hand through the air. "Search the mountain!"

The eight monsters lowered their heads like obedient hounds and shot toward the surrounding mountains like arrows.

These beasts, transformed from humans, were called "medicine beasts." The eight were the lowest rank, Canine Demons. They were incredibly fast, had a powerful bite, and possessed keen hearing and smell.

The two workers left behind couldn't help feeling that perhaps they weren't all that "lucky" after all. Their fate might be even worse than their companions'.

A little under half an hour later, two Canine Demons dug up the charred skin Xu Yuan had buried.

Saint Aunt and the others gathered in a circle around the strange, human-shaped thing, their faces full of confusion. "What the hell is this?"

The Pill Cultivator studied the traces nearby. "That kid definitely came here. How did he resist the bait's fragrance at the last moment and slip off the hook?"

"This handful of Old Year Grain is extremely precious. The Society sent out twelve protectors, and seven died before they got their hands on it. There's no reason it shouldn't work."

"That kid... isn't ordinary." A trace of wariness rose in the Pill Cultivator's heart.

Saint Aunt gave a cold snort and said without hesitation, "Send the Canine Demons after him!"