For the next three days.
Aside from his daily hunting and meals, Chen Guan lay in the side room, trying to sense the qi described in the manual.
But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't find it.
Then, on the afternoon of the fourth day.
After another fruitless attempt at cultivation.
Chen Guan knew something was wrong with him.
"I've been looking for four days, and I still can't sense qi.
Could it be that my mind isn't calm?"
Chen Guan frowned and glanced at his chubby body.
"Or is it that this Black Bear body of mine is different from a human's, so the method doesn't work?
After all, the manual has all these strange diagrams of the upper, middle, and lower dantians.
Their shapes and sizes are all about the same as a human's.
Nothing like a gigantic Black Bear's."
As Chen Guan thought it over, he felt it was probably the latter.
His younger sister, Xiao Qing, might have been a "ghost cultivator," which gave her the innate boost of a "nine-grade Yin Attribute" spiritual root.
She also came with an "upper dantian."
So.
After studying the manual for two days, she had sensed the legendary qi and sped up her breathing exercises.
She was now a "ghost cultivator" at the Refining Essence into Qi stage.
According to the book, the initial stage of Refining Essence into Qi was relatively easy to enter.
As long as an ordinary person had a clear mind and a spiritual root, it usually took only two or three days.
Though at first, all they could do was breathe in and out spiritual energy, gaining only a slight increase in lifespan.
But once they crossed that threshold, they had crossed it.
There was no mysterious "initial stage" that could keep them stuck forever.
So Chen Guan, who still couldn't cultivate qi, figured the problem had to lie in his "physical form."
"I wonder if Demon Cultivators have a way to cultivate."
Seeing that he couldn't cultivate using human techniques, Chen Guan thought of the demonic path.
As for this manual of human cultivation, he still needed to memorize it.
That way, if he was a "human" in his next life, it would come in handy.
Huff, huff—
After thinking it through, Chen Guan stopped dwelling on it and went back to training his body.
This "inherited talent" was extremely practical.
As long as he trained, it steadily increased.
Over the past few days, aside from trying to sense qi, Chen Guan hadn't neglected his inherited training either.
"If I can't train this, I'll train that!"
Chen Guan knew exactly what needed to be done first.
"Can a living person really die of holding in a piss?"
Three more days passed.
In the forest.
Chen Guan stood beside a hard granite boulder and swung his broad bear paw at it with all his might.
Boom, boom—
Each strike made the stone ring with a dull thud.
Now and then, the edge of the boulder cracked beneath his paw, sending small stones bouncing off to the side.
Chen Guan's strikes even incorporated techniques that resembled kickboxing.
From a distance, it was a bizarre sight: a massive bear circling a boulder and pummeling it like a boxer.
[Proficiency +1]
Before long, a notification appeared.
[Bear-Type Strength: 335/1000]
Seeing his proficiency rise again, Chen Guan lowered his aching hands and rubbed them together to ease the pain.
"I've got about 1,400 pounds of strength now.
Back when I ran for an hour or two, I only gained one proficiency point.
But now, when I pound a boulder, I can gain a point in less than an hour.
Looks like techniques and moves that help me exert my strength make a big difference to how fast my proficiency rises."
Chen Guan had found a few new tricks for training his talent.
Though it was a bit hard on his paws.
Now.
Even the slightest clench of his fists sent needle-like pain through his muscles.
His skin was damaged, too.
But the skin that grew back was even tougher.
"I was supposed to be training my boxing, but somehow I've ended up with iron bear paws."
Chen Guan shook his head, feeling that things hadn't gone as planned.
Still, if it helped him improve, it was a good thing.
So, after resting for a moment.
Chen Guan started kicking the boulder.
Boom, boom—
As Chen Guan began another round of training.
The sound of his blows against the stone echoed through the nearby woods again.
"Wooo~"
Before long, wolf-like beasts came scampering out of the forest. They crouched at a distance, too scared to come closer, and watched the "Forest King" pummel the boulder.
Though they were frightened, they didn't leave.
Because every time the Forest King finished pounding the boulder, he went hunting.
All they had to do was follow him, and they'd get fresh leftovers.
Without realizing it, Chen Guan's stone-pounding during training had become a "gongbeat" calling them over for dinner.
"Come on, my little ones! Let's go eat!"
A while later.
After seeing his proficiency increase again, Chen Guan led the dozen or so beasts to forage in a nearby stretch of woods.
He had always liked taking this pack of underlings along.
Because if he failed to catch any prey that day, his little underlings would become "portable rations that followed him around."
They'd not only bare their hearts to him, but warm his belly, too.
The more "trusted underlings" like that, the better.
"I'm running low on underlings now. Time to build the pack back up."
As he searched for prey, Chen Guan glanced back at his well-behaved underlings.
There were only fifteen left.
Ten days ago, Chen Guan had thirty-five underlings.
Fourteen beasts had fled after realizing the Forest King might use them as emergency rations.
The other six had become his true confidants, sharing life and death with him.
Meanwhile.
As Chen Guan foraged.
Hooow—
A low tiger growl suddenly sounded from somewhere ahead.
It was about a mile away.
"Wooo, wooo~"
The little food-babies following Chen Guan heard the tiger's growl and scattered in an instant, abandoning their big brother.
The low-frequency vibrations of a tiger's roar filled other animals with an indescribable sense of dread.
"Cowards."
As a Black Bear, Chen Guan instinctively wasn't afraid of a tiger's roar. Instead, he found it funny.
"One roar, and you're scared witless. No wonder you follow me around begging for food."
Thinking this, Chen Guan looked toward where the tiger's roar had come from.
"People always say the tiger is king of the beasts."
Chen Guan flexed his bear paw, feeling the surging strength within it.
"Today, I'm the king of the forest, and I'm having tiger-bone liquor.
Let's see if I can talk things over with the tiger and get it to let me break off a few bones."
As he thought it over.
Chen Guan strode toward the tiger's roar.
But as he walked.
He also heard distinct human voices coming from the direction of the tiger.
"Grandpa..."
"Someone, help..."
One voice was old, the other a child's. They sounded as if they were calling from a confined space.
It seemed the two of them had been cornered by the tiger and were hiding in some narrow crevice in the mountain.
Perhaps because they were both "human," and because he wanted tiger-bone liquor, Chen Guan dropped onto all fours and raced toward them, hoping to get there before the tiger squeezed into the crevice.
A little farther off, in roughly the opposite direction.
Three hundred meters from the tiger's location.
Rustle, rustle—
After Constable Yan and several Knight-Errants emerged from a thicket of shoulder-high bushes, they too faintly heard the cries of an old man and a child.
The background noise, wind, humidity, and low volume of the human voices kept them from carrying far.
But as martial artists, the group had unusually sharp hearing.
"Someone's calling for help?"
One Knight-Errant cocked his head to listen.
"The sound is..." Another Knight-Errant, whose ears were rather large, listened closely. "It's... to the east!"
"Move!" Once Constable Yan confirmed the direction, he called out to the others.
"Forget the bear demon! Hurry! Saving people comes first!"
With that, they said no more. They drew their blades, slung their bows, and hurried due east.
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