The giant beast's roar shook the entire forest.
Lin Yuan had no time to wonder why he had become a child.
A black wolf fully three meters tall emerged slowly from behind the bushes. Curved bone horns grew from its forehead, and its drool hissed as it corroded the grass beneath it. The red lights shining in the shadows were not a pack of wolves, but its six eyes, arranged like compound eyes.
The moment their eyes met, Lin Yuan's body moved before his mind did.
He threw himself sideways, rolling almost flat against the ground and behind a tree.
An instant later, a bone horn swept through the spot where he had stood. An ancient tree so wide it would have taken two people to encircle it crashed apart, and as its crown fell, the black wolf tore it into a cloud of splinters with one swipe.
Lin Yuan plunged into the dense forest without looking back.
This was not a question of courage. As he was now, he would not even make a meal for that thing.
Branches and leaves lashed his cheeks, and stones cut his bare feet. Yet his breathing remained steady, and his feet instinctively avoided the dead branches.
But the more this happened, the sharper the question became.
Who was he?
Only the name "Lin Yuan" remained in his mind. When he tried to remember anything before that, all he could see were broken images-a burning sun, an inverted royal court, ten golden halos fading out, and a serpent coiled in boundless darkness.
Some kind of power should have belonged to him.
Lin Yuan raised his right hand and pointed it at the pursuing black wolf. A name both strange and familiar rose naturally to his mind.
"Golden... Wild Boar."
Nothing happened.
There was no thunder, no giant beast. Only his voice, still unchanged by puberty, scattered in the wind.
But the black wolf had already caught up to him. A foul wind rushed at him, and Lin Yuan ducked sharply. Claws swept just over his head, cutting off several strands of black hair.
He grabbed a hanging vine and used his momentum to swing across a ravine. His young body unleashed strength far beyond his years, but the impact of landing still sent sharp pain through his ankle.
"Unsetting Sun."
There was no response.
"Thunder Lord of a Thousand Armies."
Still nothing.
With every name he spoke, it was as though a door deep in his heart was locked shut. Muffled roars came from behind the doors, but no power could cross their thresholds.
Lin Yuan did not know what those names represented.
But he knew they had once obeyed him.
And now, the one who could command them was dead.
A steep slope lay on the other side of the ravine. As he ran, Lin Yuan tore down two vines and kicked several sharp stones into the fallen leaves.
A few breaths later, the black wolf crashed through the bushes. The vines pulled taut around its forelegs, and its massive body lost balance and tumbled down the slope.
Lin Yuan did not stop to watch the result.
A trap like that could not kill it.
Sure enough, a furious roar soon rang out from below. The black wolf pushed against the ground with all four legs, forcing the sharp stones embedded in its flesh out. Dark green light gathered along its bone horns, and the surrounding wind began to spin as though drawn toward them.
A chill ran down Lin Yuan's spine.
He threw himself forward.
Crescent-shaped wind blades swept past him from behind, slicing through six large trees in succession. The final shockwave struck his shoulder and sent him flying.
Lin Yuan slammed into a rock face, and the metallic taste of blood welled up in his throat. A wound deep enough to expose bone had opened on his left shoulder, and blood quickly soaked through his clothes.
The pain brought more fragmented images flashing through his mind.
He seemed to have suffered similar wounds many times.
But back then, all it took was for the sun to rise, and his flesh would heal in platinum flames.
Lin Yuan looked down at his shoulder.
The wound was still bleeding.
There was no miracle, no immortal body.
There was only an unfamiliar power accumulated deep within his body. It had neither the majesty of thunder nor the scorching heat of the sun. It was closer to a pure torrent, so vast that it made his meridians ache, yet so scattered that he could not control it at all.
That was probably magic.
He did not know why he knew that word.
The black wolf leaped up from the bottom of the slope and landed heavily more than ten meters away. It did not attack at once, but paced slowly around its injured prey, a taunting, vicious light flickering in its six eyes.
Lin Yuan braced himself against the rock face and stood, but his right leg trembled slightly.
There was no way behind him.
Steep slopes flanked the rock face, and the black wolf blocked the only exit. A young body, magic out of control, powers that gave no response-no matter how he looked at it, this was a dead end.
Yet Lin Yuan felt little fear.
Anger was stronger.
Not at the black wolf, but at himself, who had nothing left and still instinctively waited for a miracle to descend.
"Since it's all gone..."
He took his hand away from his wound and assumed a fighting stance as though he had done it millions of times before.
"Then I'll use what's left."
The black wolf understood the challenge, and its six eyes narrowed at once.
Its bone horns glowed green again. It lowered its body, its four paws digging deep pits in the ground, then lunged at Lin Yuan amid a howling wind.
Fifteen meters.
Ten meters.
Five meters.
Before the claws landed, the wind pressure had already split Lin Yuan's skin. In the instant death closed in, the uncontrolled magic within him suddenly found its only outlet.
It was neither thunder nor flame.
The world in Lin Yuan's eyes suddenly changed.
Trees, rocks, and the giant beast lunging at him were all divided by countless intersecting black and silver lines. Those lines marked directions and measured the distance between every object.
He instinctively seized the line between himself and the black wolf.
Then he tore it apart.
The five meters between them vanished into thin air.
Lin Yuan still stood before the rock face, but his clenched fist was already pressed against the black wolf's forehead.