Legendary Beast Cultivator

The male and female Rank Three wolves stood shoulder to shoulder at the edge of the area. Their massive bodies flickered with intense, green beast essence, their fangs dripping with thick, viscous saliva that hissed faintly as it hit the damp grass.

The golden morning light pierced through the canopy, illuminating the silent, tense surroundings.

"Lin Yuan..." Chen Ming let out a dry, pathetic smile. "Can we pretend that stick never existed?"

The female wolf answered with a low, terrifying growl with an anger grin on its face.

"...I guess not," Chen Ming muttered under his breath, stepping back half a pace.

Lin Yuan’s cold, analysing gaze never left the two beasts. "They’re protecting each other. A mated pair."

Lian Nichang frowned, his hand trembling slightly beside his beast pouch. "So?"

"So separating them in open ground is nearly impossible," Lin Yuan grinned, stroking his chin. "And if we fight them head-on, their coordinated leaps will tear us into shreds."

High above, Qin Yuze sat still upon a thick oak branch, his arms crossed against his chest. He was calmly watching. He had no intention of intervening; he wanted to see if these brats had the strategies for true survival.

Lin Yuan slowly knelt, his fingers smearing against the moist ground, feeling the slight shaking of the earth.

"They’re territorial," Lin Yuan whispered, his voice steady and calm.

Chen Ming stuttered. "That’s... not exactly comforting, Lin Yuan."

"It is," Lin Yuan replied, his voice slowly booming across the area. "If they’re defending territory, they won’t chase us blindly if we retreat strategically. And more importantly... they’ll fall for a trap."

He gestured with his chin toward a narrow, jagged place formed by two towering, moss-covered boulders twenty meters behind them. "That passage is barely wide enough for a single wolf to squeeze through at a time."

"Oh.." Chen Ming snickered, nodding his head. "You want to split their coordination and trap them."

Lin Yuan nodded, a grim, merciless glint flashing out from his dark eyes. "Precisely. But we aren’t just driving them off. We’re ending them."

"Now!"

The three disciples moved at a time, obeying Lin Yuan’s command meticulously. The wolves took the bait, and with a guttural, furious roar, the male wolf lunged forward, his massive claws digging through the ground as the female followed right behind him to guard his flank.

Just as they reached the rocky path.

"Chen Ming!" Lin Yuan yelled.

"On it!" Chen Ming screamed, summoning his Wind-Falcon Essence.

An immediate gust of compressed wind erupted from his palms, blasting into the male wolf’s eyes!

The male beast bellowed in frustration, its vision momentarily obscured. The sudden delay caused the following female wolf to collide clumsily against the outer edge of the boulder, sticking her shoulders against the stone gap.

"Yahhh, we separated them!" Lian Nichang yelled, concentrating into his aperture. His silver Wolf Beast materialized with a ferocious growl, leaping straight into the gap to pin the trapped female wolf’s legs.

"Lin Yuan, the male wolf is coming through!" Chen Ming yelled, dodging sideways as the male wolf forced its body through the trap, snapping its jaws inches from Chen Ming’s throat.

Lin Yuan didn’t flinch. He didn’t step back. Instead, he concentrated his turtle beast essence into his bare hands, refining his skin as hard as an impenetrable steel.

As the male wolf lunged, opening its maw to tear Lin Yuan’s throat out, Lin Yuan stepped into the beast’s guard.

Lin Yuan’s left hand struck forward like an iron spear, thrusting straight into the wolf’s open mouth, forcefully pinning its upper jaw open while his fingers gouged into its soft palate!

The male wolf let out a muffled howl of shock, its eyes twitching as blood dripped over Lin Yuan’s knuckles.

"Die," Lin Yuan whispered, laughing hard.

With his right hand, Lin Yuan struck at the wolf’s windpipe with a brutal palm strike.

The wolf’s throat crushed instantly under the sheer impact. But Lin Yuan wasn’t finished. He grabbed the male wolf’s twitching snout with both hands, stomping his leg against its chest, and with a rumbling roar he twisted the wolf’s head backward at a brutal angle, the bone crunching sound echoed across the place.

The male wolf’s spine snapped with the loud crack. The fresh blood bursts out from its nostrils and ears, spraying across Lin Yuan’s face and robes in a warm, crimson bath. The massive beast went still, collapsing onto the ground.

Without taking a single second to smear the blood from his eyes, Lin Yuan pivoted around toward the trapped female wolf.

The female wolf, witnessing her mate’s brutal death, went insane with rage. She thrashed wildly in the stone gap, biting off part of her own shoulder skin just to squeeze free.

"Lin Yuan, look out!" Lian Nichang yelled as his own beast was tossed aside by the female’s desperate frenzy.

The female wolf leaped through the air, her claws stretched to shred Lin Yuan’s chest open.

Lin Yuan didn’t dodge. He sidestepped just enough for her claws to miss past himself harmlessly, then grabbed her silver-furred neck vehemently.

Lin Yuan slammed the female wolf’s head downward onto the sharp point of a broken stone pillar on the ground.

The jagged rock pierced cleanly through the female wolf’s eye and shattered out through the back of her skull. Brain matter, crushed white skull bones, and crimson blood burst across the mossy earth, painting the green ground in red streaks.

The female wolf’s body twitched twice before its legs straightened and went still.

Silence returned to the area. The stench of fresh blood lingered across the morning air.

Lin Yuan stood in the carnage, dripping with wolf blood, his breathing calm and steady. He wiped the streaks of blood from his cheek with the back of his hand.

Chen Ming dropped onto the ground, his face pale as he stared at the mangled corpses. "I... I never want to see another wolf again."

Lian Nichang gulped, his stomach churning at the sight of the shattered skulls. "I’ll... remind you of that later."

Lin Yuan crouched calmly beside the warm, ruined bodies. "Help me retrieve the beast cores before the smell attracts other beasts."

Lin Yuan sliced into the beasts’ chests, carving out two fist-sized, blue beast cores shimmering with rich Rank Three essence. He handed them to Lian Nichang, who carefully wrapped them in cloth and stored them into his pouch with trembling hands.

Qin Yuze landed silently from the tree branch. He looked down at the gruesome scene, then shifted his sharp gaze onto Lin Yuan.

"You didn’t win through sheer strength," Qin Yuze beamed, his voice devoid of pity. "You won through merciless observation and lethal intent."

He paused, a rare glint of respect flaring in his eyes. "The mountain rewards those who do not hesitate to butcher their prey."

****

Meanwhile... A few miles away... Xiao Lanxue, Ying Yue, and Yun He followed a stream through a dense patch of the forest.

Ying Yue suddenly stopped walking, her nose twitching as her Lightning Wolf let out a low, whimpering whine.

"Do you smell that?" Ying Yue whispered, her hand dropping to her side.

Yun He wrinkled her nose, her face turning pale. "It smells... like a rot."

Xiao Lanxue stepped ahead into the brush. The surrounding forest had grown deathly silent. She pushed aside a thick curtain of hanging vines, stepping into a small area.

The moment the three girls saw what lay inside, they froze in sheer, sickening fear.

Yun He instantly placed her hands over her mouth, gagging vehemently. "Oh my god..."

Scattered across the churned, bloody earth there were the mutilated remains of a few uncommon beasts.

Three wild rabbits had been torn apart; their torsos split wide open, their organs and purple intestines spilled across the ground. Two raccoons lay nearby, their heads crushed so brutally that their eyeballs had popped out, resting on the leaves.

Even worse, there was a group of forest bugs; their carapaces had been smashed open, splattering yellowish-green liquid flesh across the tree trunks and surrounding bushes.

The entire place looked like a butcher’s slaughterhouse. Yet, as Xiao Lanxue carefully inspected the mangled flesh, her face grew even paler.

Yun He swallowed hard, her voice trembling and stuttering. "What... What kind of monster did this? Why would anything kill like this and just leave the meat to rot?"

Ying Yue slowly crouched near the edge of the place, her eyes wide as she analysed the disturbed ground.

"Look at the tracks..." Ying Yue whispered, pointing a shaking finger. "There are dozens of claw marks... but... most of these tracks belong to the prey. Look at how deep they dug their claws into the mud... they were running for their lives."

She slowly looked up toward the northern ridge of Azure Mist Peak. "There’s only one set of tracks belonging to the attacker."

Xiao Lanxue’s expression turned cold. "A single beast slaughtered all of them?"

Shen Li Xiaoran landed beside them, stepping over a pool of dark blood and carefully analysed the tree trunks across the place.

The gouges were carved into the trunk, as if a mountain-sized predator had casually moved past them.

"This wasn’t hunting for hunger," Shen Li Xiaoran said, her eyes filled with disdain. "This was a mindless slaughter."

She looked up into the northern peak.

"Whatever passed through here... every single beast in this forest was desperately trying to escape from it. And whatever couldn’t run fast enough... was crushed without a second thought."