Possession

His right hand was the first to stop obeying him.

Helian Yuan was clearly holding the short spear in his left hand, yet his right hand rose on its own, its five fingers spread as it reached for the Tiger Pattern Secret Canon at his chest. The movement was slow, even somewhat stiff, but it was not his doing.

He clamped his left hand around his right wrist.

His hands strained against each other in front of his chest.

There was no one else in the cave, yet Helian Yuan heard a tiger's roar roll through the depths of his skull. The cave walls, the moonlight and the short spear all blurred under the roar, and a strange will surged in through his right arm. It was like a beast so badly wounded that only its skeleton remained, yet still fighting for one last mouthful of meat.

Helian Yuan's right knee hit the ground.

He immediately braced his left foot against a crack in the rock, keeping his other leg from bending too.

The will had no language. It forced a single meaning into him-move aside.

Give it the body.

Helian Yuan bit the tip of his tongue, and the taste of blood spread through his mouth. He stared at his left hand, tightening its fingers one by one.

The left hand was his.

The foot braced against the crack was his.

Even the pain of his teeth biting through his tongue was his.

His right hand suddenly broke free, its nails clawing at his throat. Helian Yuan lowered his head and slammed it into his own wrist, pinning the hand to the ground and holding it down with his knee.

Strange memories poured in at that moment.

They were not a complete account of the past, but sharp fragments.

A giant black tiger ran across a snowy landscape, the treetops beneath its feet as low as grass; a metal cage rose from the darkness, old blood clotted on its iron bars; many tiger-type magical beasts were kept separately, iron collars around their necks and chains dragging across the stone floor with a steady clanking.

Outside the cage, someone turned the pages of a document.

A pen paused over an iron tag.

The black tiger stood in the deepest part of the cage. It did not batter the bars, only rested its forepaws on them and looked through the gaps at the person making the record.

Helian Yuan's gaze was drawn to those eyes.

His right arm seized the chance to turn over and grab him by the neck.

His breath was cut off at once.

The will pressed up his arm toward his shoulder and neck, beginning to take his breath, his eyes and his tongue. Helian Yuan saw the corners of his own mouth slowly pull upward, revealing an expression that was not his at all.

A complete possession did not require persuasion.

The original owner only had to let go once.

Helian Yuan did not try to pry the hand from his neck.

He threw himself forward, trapping his right hand between his chest and the stone floor. His left hand found the short spear, and he slammed its butt hard into the wound on his right arm.

The first blow made his vision go white with pain.

The second reopened the wound.

The third made the blue-black markings flare.

Tiger Shadow pressing down on his consciousness abruptly faltered.

Helian Yuan finally drew half a breath. He swallowed it down, neither shouting nor cursing, and simply repeated one utterly simple thing in his mind.

Today, he had killed a level-two Ironback Wolf.

The wolf had gone around the pit.

He had hooked the wooden wedge free, used a rolling rock to make the wolf turn its head, then driven the short spear up through its lower jaw.

The memory was small, so small that it carried no weight compared with a Saint-level giant tiger. Yet every detail was his: the chill of the rain, the pain of the cord cutting into the top of his foot, the mud splashing into his eyes when the wolf lunged, and the jolt of the spear tip striking bone.

The strange will tried to crush the memory.

Helian Yuan then recalled where the hunting shelter leaked, the Greystone Town butcher's missing front tooth, and the hole burned through page nineteen of the secret canon. He seized hold of these trivial, impoverished, utterly unremarkable things one by one.

That was him.

Not the black tiger in the cage, nor the Saint-level magical beast on the cliff.

"Get out."

The words squeezed out of his constricted throat, so hoarse they were almost inaudible.

The black tiger's will pressed down again.

But another force within Helian Yuan woke first.

It was not battle Qi.

Nor was it the strength he had cultivated in his muscles and bones.

That force lay hidden in his blood. In the past, it had been as faint as an old mark that could not be wiped away, but now the Saint-level tiger blood and the possession had driven it to its limit at the same time. The blue-black markings drew inward along his right arm toward his chest, like a door instinctively closing and trapping the intruder in the gap.

For the first time, the black tiger's will hesitated.

It probably had not expected the bloodline of a body that could not even undergo beast transformation to reject it.

Helian Yuan seized that instant, gritted his teeth, and pried his right arm out from beneath his chest bit by bit.

One finger.

Two.

All five fingers came loose.

He pushed himself up and slammed his right fist hard into his own chest.

He was not trying to hurt the remnant soul.

He was telling this body who was exerting the force.

"Mine."

His fist came down a second time.

"The hand is mine."

A third time.

"So is my life."

The blue-black markings abruptly tightened.

A tiger's roar, extremely brief, rang out in the cave. The sound was no longer grand; instead, it was as though an iron door had cut it short. The enormous thing bearing down on Helian Yuan's consciousness broke apart.

First, one eye vanished.

Then the claws, the teeth, and the wind of its running.

In the end, even the incomplete self called "Old Mo" shattered into fragments that could not be put back together. Only the smell of blood, the faint sounds of moving prey, one corner of the metal cage, and a beast's instinct for judging distance sank deep into his bloodline.

No voice spoke again.

No second will continued the struggle.

Helian Yuan lay on the ground for a long time before rolling over and sitting up.

His right hand obeyed him again.

He raised it, clenched it, opened it, then touched the short spear, the secret canon and his Adam's apple in turn with his fingertips. Every sensation was clear.

The moonlight had moved into the cave.

Yet the shadow behind him had not narrowed with the changing light.

A dark shape slowly rose behind his shoulder, its back appearing first, followed by a lowered head. Its outline was still indistinct, but it was already recognizable as a tiger.

Helian Yuan did not move immediately.

Tiger Shadow did not move either.

He raised his left hand.

Tiger Shadow raised its left forepaw in response.

He switched to his right hand.

Tiger Shadow was a fraction slow, but still raised its right paw after him.

Helian Yuan stared at it until his arm ached, then lowered it.

It was not Old Mo.

Old Mo had already shattered.

This shadow might contain Saint-level tiger blood, fragments of a remnant soul, and the Helian Clan's nearly extinguished bloodline, but it had no words of its own, much less any right to make decisions for him.

The sound of loose stones rolling came from outside the cave.

Helian Yuan immediately grabbed his short spear and pressed himself against the cave wall. He waited for more than ten breaths, but saw only a night mouse dart through a crack in the rocks.

Tiger Shadow, however, had turned toward the mouse first.

Helian Yuan's gaze sharpened.

He had not heard the night mouse's footsteps.

The shadow had.

Or rather, the beast's senses that had sunk into his blood had heard them for him.

He wrapped the black bone fragment up again and left the cave that same night. He could not return to Greystone Town, at least not now. The markings on his right arm had not faded, and he could not rein in Tiger Shadow. Any experienced hunter might notice something was wrong.

Helian Yuan followed the stream upstream and chose an abandoned hunting shelter to stay in. Only when dawn was near did he lean against the door and close his eyes.

The metal cage appeared in his dream again.

This time, there was no complete black tiger, nor any human voice.

There was only a pen moving across paper and a chain being dragged into the distance. Helian Yuan tried to see the writing on the iron tag clearly, but the scene shattered at the crucial moment.

When he woke with a start, his right hand was gripping the doorframe tightly.

Five shallow marks had been left in the wood.

Tiger Shadow on the ground was already lying down, as though it had never stood.

Helian Yuan pulled his fingers out of the marks in the wood and said quietly, "First, learn to rein it in."

Tiger Shadow's tail swayed gently.