Who's there?

"That must be it!"

"Or rather, it must be life essence!"

"Essence digested from the flesh and blood of demonic beasts."

Li Qingyue had an inkling.

A waste body could not cultivate because its Wheel of Life and Bitter Sea lay utterly dormant, like a severed chasm that could never be crossed.

Thus, no matter how much or how well she ate, even spirit fruits could not nourish her Wheel of Life and make it flourish.

They could only grant a momentary surge of vitality. Without a cultivation art to guide the excess essence, or physical training to temper her body, it would eventually dissipate.

Without nourishment from the divine power of a vigorous Wheel of Life, she naturally could not embark on cultivation.

Yet the Kunpeng Devouring method she visualized kept that excess life essence from dissipating.

It transformed into true qi she could command, circulating within her body.

It fell far short of the divine power of a Life Spring, but could still nourish her body.

Thud!

Li Qingyue rose, stamped one foot against the ground, and lunged forward.

She crossed more than ten meters in an instant.

Even the earth beneath her foot bore a deep footprint.

"My strength has increased quite a bit!"

"At least I'm half again as strong as an ordinary adult now!"

After quietly assessing herself, Li Qingyue stayed for several more days and finished the carcass of a Fierce Beast weighing three to four hundred jin.

Only then did she continue into the mountains, following those enormous footprints in search of dead Fierce Beasts.

Fortunately, winter was approaching, and those Fierce Beasts had all been quite powerful. Even after a month or several months, their flesh had not rotted.

Along the way, she did nothing but eat.

A year passed in the blink of an eye.

A figure leaped nimbly through a mountain ravine. With every step, the rocks beneath her feet shattered, and she shot forward like an arrow loosed from its bow.

Dozens of meters flashed past.

Her figure was not bulky, but slender and graceful, her chest gently rounded and her hips curving slightly outward.

Her curves made it clear at a glance that she was a girl.

"Sixteen now!"

Li Qingyue stopped halfway up a mountain and gazed toward the place she had left behind.

That was where her Older Brother's bones lay buried.

When her Older Brother had carried her away eight years ago, she had been barely over six, and had even been given the pet name Nannan.

Looking back now, it felt like only yesterday.

Over this past year and more, she had cautiously made her way through the mountains. Even with those enormous footprints guiding her, she had faced dozens of brushes with death.

But her ever-strengthening body had helped her escape them all.

Hum!

With a thought from Li Qingyue, the blood throughout her body surged wildly.

It faintly stirred currents of air that swirled around her like a fierce wind.

Her tattered clothes, barely enough to cover her, fluttered noisily in the gusts.

Suddenly, Li Qingyue picked up a pebble.

The next moment, she raised her hand and hurled it. The pebble shot out at tremendous speed, struck a nearby tree, and buried itself deep inside.

It nearly pierced straight through.

It was like a bullet.

"I wouldn't have dared imagine strength like this in my previous life!"

"Yet here, it's utterly commonplace, and I'm still unimaginably far from a cultivator."

She understood the gulf between herself and cultivators very well.

A cultivator could unleash more than a hundred thousand jin of force with a swing of one arm, while her throw carried, at most, a little over a thousand jin.

The sheer disparity defied imagination.

Or rather, without the divine power of the Wheel of Life and the tempering of the Bitter Sea, the true qi she gathered was inferior by far more than a single level.

The divine power of the Wheel of Life was exceedingly wondrous. It could turn into life essence or condense into divine patterns, which could be used to forge spiritual artifacts like divine iron and immortal gold.

It could even unleash mysterious spells.

True qi, however, was life essence obtained through devouring and digestion, and could only nourish her body.

Yet it had opened the door to cultivation for her.

It had opened a rugged path.

At least the true qi within her could now circulate throughout her entire body, constantly swirling like the vortex of Kunpeng Devouring.

Even more astonishing was her appetite. She could eat over a hundred jin of Fierce Beast flesh in a single meal.

A Striped Tiger the size of a calf was merely three days' food for her.

"But I seem to have reached my limit!"

"My true qi can't leave my body to form an attack!"

"I need to study this world's cultivation arts, ponder their profound principles, then use my evolution ability to evolve them and absorb whatever is useful to me."

That she had been able to contemplate Kunpeng Devouring and take this first step was also thanks to the memories of her previous life.

The theoretical concepts behind internal arts in martial arts worlds, especially the Northern Darkness Divine Art and Star Absorption Art.

Only with those theoretical concepts had she been able to use her evolution ability to visualize Kunpeng Devouring and draw upon the human body's instincts to create this imperfect devouring method.

Now, she naturally needed more scriptures, theories, and even miraculous places left behind by heaven and earth before she could carve out her own path, step by step.

Creating something from nothing was a feat only a god could accomplish.

Half a month later, on the outskirts of the Ten Thousand Mountains.

Roar!

An enormous roar shook the surrounding trees until they trembled.

It pierced the eardrums like thunder.

Yet Li Qingyue could still hear desperation in that roar, a fierce exterior masking weakness within.

She lightly pushed off with her toes. The rocks cracked beneath her, while her figure glided lightly away.

Over the past half month, aside from eating, she had constantly pondered the so-called arts of lightness.

But the true qi within her could not leave her body at all. After half a month of pondering, she had only discovered a few ways to apply her strength.

"Is that a Giant Elephant?"

Li Qingyue focused her gaze and made out the Fierce Beast from afar: a Giant Elephant covered in scales, its enormous body like a small mountain.

She had naturally seen such creatures before. They possessed boundless strength and charged through everything in their path; even ordinary small hills could not stop them.

Yet now it was roaring like a beast at the end of its rope. A flicker of wariness crossed Li Qingyue's cool eyes.

Then a man's shout reached her ears. "You three, attack its eyes!"

"You three, keep attacking its two broken legs and the wound on its chest!"

"The rest of you, give it everything you've got and keep it engaged. It can't hold out much longer!"

Hearing this, Li Qingyue hurried forward and gradually caught sight of more than a dozen dark figures surrounding the Giant Elephant, attacking relentlessly.

It was a party of thirteen, all dressed in coarse cloth, their bodies as sturdy as calves.

Spears, iron weapons, and bows and arrows hung at their sides, across their backs, or rested in their hands.

She recognized them at a glance as hunters from a mountain village.

It was just like the village where she and her Older Brother had once lived, and her Older Brother had been a powerful hunter.

She was naturally familiar with them.

In a world like this, even ordinary people could attain six or seven hundred jin of strength through persistent physical training.

This party of thirteen was no weak group either. Judging by the force with which they swung their weapons, each possessed at least five hundred jin of strength.

Li Qingyue did not approach. She hid behind a tree as thick as a person's waist, tugging at her tattered clothes to cover her exposed skin as she watched silently.

The thirteen were experienced and worked together exceptionally well.

The Fierce Beast must also have been severely wounded. In less than an hour, it lost all strength to resist.

It lay at death's door.

"Hahaha... good! This Savage Armored Elephant will feed the village for a month!"

Someone laughed aloud, his voice thick with delight.

Others laughed in agreement.

"Be careful. Don't let your guard down. It only got hurt because a big fellow passed through, and even then, it fought and survived this long."

"Our village only survived through good luck. Before the new year, the village thirty li away was stomped into a deep pit with one step."

"Over a hundred people, and not one survived!"

At those words, the entire group fell silent, a trace of lingering fear flashing in their eyes.

In mountain villages like these, survival itself depended on luck.

Of course, a big fellow passing through was also something that might happen only once in several decades.

As she listened to their voices, Li Qingyue's brow slowly relaxed. The strongest of the thirteen probably possessed around seven hundred jin of strength.

They posed no threat to her.

Moreover, perhaps because they lived in a mountain village and rarely had contact with the outside world, their voices, though coarse, carried a hint of simple sincerity.

Li Qingyue stretched out a foot and gently snapped a twig beneath it, then curled into a ball, hiding fearfully behind the tree.

She did not find it shameful. With a waste body, alone and without a single relative in the world, all she could do was find every possible way to survive.

The instant the twig snapped, a sharp shout rang out from the distance.

"Who!"

"Who's there!"