Testing His Claws

The third time Helian Yuan summoned the tiger shadow, he cracked a post of the hunting shelter.

It wasn't because he had used too much force, but because he had withdrawn it too late.

The instant the black shadow spread over his right arm, his five fingers were forced apart as though by the claw bones of a fierce beast, and the short spear nearly sprang from his grasp. He forced his hand shut, and the butt of the spear swept into the doorpost. The old wood cracked with a snap.

Helian Yuan immediately barked, "Withdraw."

The tiger shadow retreated from the back of his hand to the ground.

He leaned against the doorpost and counted his breaths.

One, two, three.

The wound on his right arm began to heat up.

By the fourth breath, the heat had turned into a prickling pain.

Helian Yuan carved a third short line beside the crack in the post.

The first time, he had maintained it for one breath; the second, two; and the third, barely three. Beyond three breaths, his movements would precede his thoughts, and the force would become difficult to control.

He stopped practicing.

A real ability couldn't be judged solely by whether he could use it; he also had to consider whether he could survive after using it.

Helian Yuan first ran a lap around the hunting shelter to make sure his legs hadn't gone weak. Then he hoisted a mountain rock weighing around a hundred jin onto his back and climbed to the top of the slope. His body was a little stronger than before his injury, with the clearest improvement in his balance. When he stepped across a slick stone surface, his feet instinctively avoided loose spots, as though a kind of experience that wasn't human had already fused into his muscles and bones.

But he still had no battle Qi.

The Qi circulation route in the secret canon wouldn't work in his body, and his chest and abdomen were empty. The tiger shadow gave him only brief bursts of power and sharper judgment; it couldn't let him cross the gap between levels for nothing.

That afternoon, he found a level-two Gray-Mane Boar downstream in the valley.

The Gray-Mane Boar was rooting through a patch of rotting roots. One of its left tusks was broken, but the stiff bristles on its back were intact. It weighed at least twice as much as the Ironback Wolf; even the hunting shelter's door might not withstand a head-on charge.

Helian Yuan didn't rush to attack.

He watched it for half an hour first.

Every so often, the Gray-Mane Boar went to the stream to drink. On its way back to its den, it always passed between two crooked trees. The ground was narrow there, with a slanted rock on the right and a shallow pit on the left.

Helian Yuan dug the pit half a foot deeper. He didn't plant any wooden stakes, but covered the bottom with wet mud. Then he tied a beast-sinew cord between the crooked trees, neither too high nor too low, and buried a few bone fragments behind it.

The trap couldn't kill a level-two Gray-Mane Boar.

Its only purpose was to slow the boar by half a step at one spot.

As the sun tilted westward, the Gray-Mane Boar returned along its usual path, just as expected. When it reached the crooked trees, it suddenly stopped and nudged the ground with its snout.

Helian Yuan hid behind the slanted rock, keeping even his breathing quiet.

The Gray-Mane Boar didn't step into the pit.

It raised its head and looked toward the slanted rock, then turned without warning and charged at Helian Yuan's hiding place.

Its four hooves tore up the soil, and its stiff bristles stood on end in the evening light.

Helian Yuan's heart sank.

It hadn't smelled him.

It had seen the freshly turned earth and deliberately gone around the trap to find the person lying in ambush.

He dropped his bow, raised his spear, and leaped sideways. The Gray-Mane Boar slammed into the slanted rock, which shook but didn't fall. It swung its head and turned faster than Helian Yuan had expected, its broken tusk grazing his side and cutting a long gash.

Helian Yuan retreated toward the two crooked trees.

The Gray-Mane Boar pursued him.

Its first step took it over the shallow pit.

Its second snapped the beast-sinew cord.

The cord pulled up the bone fragments, which clattered beneath the boar's belly. The Gray-Mane Boar instinctively tucked in its legs, and one of its hind hooves landed squarely in the mud-covered pit. Its body tilted left for an instant.

Helian Yuan didn't summon the shadow immediately.

He first thrust his short spear at the boar's neck.

The spearpoint struck the stiff bristles and slid aside. The Gray-Mane Boar shook its head wildly, and Helian Yuan used the force to retreat, the webbing between his thumb and forefinger already split by the impact.

He saw it clearly.

The stiff bristles could deflect the spearpoint, but as the boar regained its footing, it raised its right foreleg, exposing a patch of thin skin beneath it.

The Gray-Mane Boar pulled its hind leg free and charged again.

Helian Yuan stood his ground until it came within three steps.

"Come."

The black tiger shadow rose behind him and pressed into the short spear along his shoulder and arm. It wasn't as though a surge of brute force had appeared from nowhere; rather, it felt as if another set of shoulder blades were exerting force at the same time as his.

On the first breath, he sidestepped the boar's head.

On the second, the spearpoint grazed past its broken tusk and plunged into its right armpit.

On the third, instead of continuing to push, he gripped the shaft and pressed it down, letting the Gray-Mane Boar's own momentum tear the wound open.

"Withdraw!"

The tiger shadow abruptly retreated.

Helian Yuan released the short spear before his strength failed and rolled aside. The Gray-Mane Boar charged another seven or eight steps with the spear in it before crashing into a crooked tree. The trunk shook violently, and a few dead leaves fell.

The boar wasn't dead yet.

It turned its head, blood pouring from beneath its foreleg, its eyes completely red.

Helian Yuan had no spear at hand, only his hunting knife.

When the Gray-Mane Boar charged again, he didn't meet it head-on, but ran around the slanted rock. Each time the wounded boar turned, its right foreleg grew a little weaker. On the third circuit, it couldn't stop itself in time. Its shoulder struck the edge of the slanted rock, driving the short spear deeper.

Helian Yuan lunged forward, grabbed the butt of the spear, and used the slanted rock to brace its shaft.

The Gray-Mane Boar struggled a few times before finally collapsing.

Only his heavy breathing remained in the valley.

Helian Yuan sat in the mud and first looked at his own shadow.

The tiger shadow had settled back at his feet. It no longer moved on his behalf, nor did it make a sound. His right arm ached badly and the wound felt hot, but it was only the pain of overexertion.

He held up three fingers.

"Three breaths."

Three breaths could change the outcome of a single move, but they couldn't fight an entire battle for him.

That reassured him instead.

After processing the level-two Gray-Mane Boar, Helian Yuan separated the Magic Crystal Core, the hide, and the edible meat. When he returned to the hunting shelter, he didn't immediately practice with the shadow. Instead, he repaired the doorpost first, then filled in the pit trap, which had been knocked askew.

That night, he opened the Tiger Pattern Secret Canon. The book depicted the muscles and bones of a Tiger-Striped Warrior after beast transformation and stated that the stronger the bloodline, the more complete the transformation.

Helian Yuan felt his hand, which was still human in shape.

There was no shadow in the book.

So he wrote two words at the edge of a blank page: three breaths.

Below that, he added: can cover the arm, can enter the spear, cannot be maintained for long.

The ink was made from charcoal ash mixed with water, and the writing was faint.

He slept only twice that night, briefly each time. Whenever he woke, he first felt for the bone needle by the door, then checked whether the tiger shadow was still lying in its original position. When an ability had only just appeared, it was easiest to mistake a coincidence for something reliable. He would rather repeat the smallest checks than wait until he faced his next magical beast to discover that the rules had changed.

Early the next morning, Helian Yuan rolled up the level-two Gray-Mane Boar's hide and packed it on his back, along with the Ironback Wolf's Magic Crystal Core. He needed medicine, iron arrows, and a sturdier spearhead.

He also needed to see whether anyone beyond the mountains was already looking for what the black tiger had left behind.

Before leaving, he performed the simplest test once more.

Helian Yuan stood a bone needle on the threshold, turned his back to it, and walked five steps away. While the tiger shadow lay at his feet, he couldn't hear the needle fall; once the shadow rose along his shoulder, that faint sound seemed to come from right beside his ear. It brought him not only strength, but also the way a fierce beast paid attention to its surroundings.

That heightened perception came at a cost as well. Once the tiger shadow withdrew, the chirping of insects in the forest all crowded back in, making his temples throb. Helian Yuan added another line to the blank page: can detect things nearby, headache after withdrawal.

He didn't need an ability that sounded impressive. He needed to know when it would cause him to misjudge a situation.

Before leaving, he hid the black tiger bone beneath the hunting shelter's floor, taking only a small, inconspicuous fragment with him.

The three short lines on the doorpost stood out clearly in the morning light.

Helian Yuan lightly touched the tip of his knife to the spot for a fourth line, but didn't carve it.

Next time, he had to make sure the fourth breath wouldn't get him killed.