Li Wei's eyes hardened. Enough.
Bone dust and granite poured from his pouch in a torrent, more than he had ever drawn at once. The clearing dimmed as the cloud spread, swallowing the beast whole. Wasteful, almost a full pouch emptied in one strike, but nothing less would bring it down.
The creature thrashed, tail lashing, earth spikes tearing from the ground, but the mass closed in, layer on layer, until it sealed into a sphere. Li Wei clenched his fist and the pressure snapped shut.
The mass compacts. Bone sand and granite grains lock together until they behave like a single body. Pressure climbs fast because the volume has nowhere to go. Force chains form inside the packed grains and they channel load into the weakest points of the beast's stone shell, especially at gaps and edges.
The plates do not squeeze evenly. They buckle. Edges curl first because they carry the highest stress. Corners turn into hard wedges. Some wedges are driven inward and behave like short spikes. Others try to kick outward, but the packed shell contains them, so they shear and fold back.
Cracks race across the plates. You get spall on the inner faces where tension reflects off the stone. Flakes break free and become sharp shims that slide into soft gaps. The bad foreleg joint fails under combined shear and bending. The chest cavity loses shape as the ribs are forced out of plane. Air is driven out hard. Liquids move away from the high pressure zones and the whole mass slumps toward the center.
Li Wei does not hear a scream. He feels it as a change in vibration through the packed sand. A chaotic tremor while the plates buckle. Short, high pulses as fragments break and wedge. Then a long drop in frequency as the structure gives way and the mass goes slack.
When he releases, the outer layer relaxes. Slabs that had been held in tension slide off and fall in uneven sheets. The center does not move much. It has already been crushed.
The body sagged, its plating sliding away in slabs slick with blood.
Li Wei recalled the dust, steadying his breath. He did not trust stillness alone. One twitch could be enough to maim him. He materialised a dagger from his pouch, stepped to the beast's head, and drove the blade through its eye and deep into the brain. Only when the body slackened further, the last tremors gone, did he believe it finished.
He crouched and cut free the core, dull brown veined like granite, heavy with earth qi. Not fire, but another gain.
Li Wei returned to the cave at once, a flicker of annoyance in his chest. He had lingered too long in the clearing, too exposed. Noise and blood could only draw eyes, and the thought of disciples sweeping closer left him cold. Better to vanish before risk grew teeth.
Inside, he sent the small slave back out to strip the corpse. Piece by piece it returned, hauling bones until the floor held another neat row.
He sat in the dim chamber, the sandstone array flickering at his sides, the new core set with the others. The kill was a gain, the beast's bones heavy with qi. Yet the satisfaction soured. Still no fire beast. Still no path to Bone Fire.
Li Wei turned his focus to the storage pouch. The bone sand within had been made when he was weaker. Every grain carried the weight of a cultivator still at the early stage of Foundation Establishment. Now, with his frame hardened and his qi heavier, he suspected the bones he could produce would strike harder. Stronger bone meant stronger sand, and stronger sand meant sharper spikes, harder walls, deadlier storms.
He began the work. Sitting cross-legged, he forced qi into his fingertips until new bones pushed through, pale and hard. One by one he snapped them off and handed them to the taller slave. Its long, patient fingers set to cutting, grinding each piece down into sand-fine grains. The dust went back into the pouch, filling it with a new stock, heavier than before.
When the pouch was full again, he glanced at the wall. Three hundred and sixty-five notches marked the stone, each cut by the taller slave without fail. A full year had passed. He was in the second year now.
The days of the second year passed in silence. Li Wei stayed in the cave, conserving strength, avoiding risk.
When the cycles of cultivation slowed, he turned to the cauldron. His stock was limited, but not empty. He had brought a reserve of materials in his storage pouch, though nothing like the variety the sect's markets offered. The small slave added to it now and then, dragging back herbs from the scrub outside, most useless, a few holding faint traces of qi.
It was enough for practice. He refined in small batches, feeding the flame until it burned steady, masking smoke and heat with the vent system. He tested blends, ground what materials he had into crude mixes, and measured how far beast organs could stretch a reaction before it failed. A handful of times he drew out pills, rough-edged and unstable, nothing worth swallowing. Most of the work was failure scraped from the cauldron and written down in neat notes.
The work passed the time, but it galled him. His seniors had made the Reaping sound like a crucible, a battle for survival where only the ruthless endured. For him it had been little more than waiting. No constant threat, no desperate struggle. Just long days spent hidden, drawing qi with Desert Soul and scratching at the basics of alchemy. He wanted to sharpen his edge, but apart from gathering qi, there was little room to grow.
The cave was quiet. Li Wei sat cross-legged, bone sand pouch at his side, the faint flicker of the sandstone array steady on the floor. Days had blurred into weeks, his time split between the Desert Soul cycle, half-hearted trials in the cauldron, and long stretches of stillness. Nothing pressed him, nothing forced his hand. He waited, as always, for something to fall.
The sound came sudden, tearing through the still air. A crash, loud enough to shiver stone. Not the loudest he had heard, but heavy, solid, the kind that marked something stronger than the usual crippled prey. Dust curled into the sky, faint even from his cave.
The smaller slave, hidden at the treeline, sent back its impressions. The weight was heavy, even. No stagger in the steps. Heat pulsed faint through the ground, and thin smoke curled from the soil where it struck.
Li Wei stilled. None of the others had shown signs like this. If any beast was fire-aspected, this was it.
If he left the cave, it would notice him at once. The injured ones never had. This was different.
He rose. The risk was greater than before, but so was the chance. A fire core, and bones to match, might finally be within reach.
Li Wei left the cave at a steady pace, keeping low as he crossed the outcrop. The smoke was visible even here, drifting thin above the trees. The ground still carried that faint thrum of heat with every step the slave traced back to him.
He kept his distance at first, circling wide. Closer now, the weight of it pressed clearer through Bone Whisper heavy, controlled, no limp in its stride. Each feint angled his retreat toward the choke point he had prepared, letting the beast follow step by step onto his ground.
Then the head turned. The beast locked onto him at once, as if it had been waiting. Eyes burned hot through the haze, and the ground shivered under its claws.
Li Wei exhaled slowly. The injured ones never noticed him until his strikes fell. This one was whole, and it saw him.
Li Wei stayed among the pines, keeping the trunks between himself and the clearing. The beast had already turned toward him, eyes bright in the haze, but it did not move.
He drew bone sand from his pouch, binding it sharp with granite. A thought, and the first volley tore forward, spears of white cutting through the air.
The lizard hissed and answered at once. Flame belched from its jaws, a rolling sheet of heat that struck the sand mid-flight. The air cracked, bright sparks flaring as fragments fused to glass. Shards broke loose and punched into its own hide, drawing deep cuts across the shoulder. Smoke and blood mixed on its scales.
Li Wei felt his chest tighten, then ease. The beast could be hurt. Its fire had turned his sand against it. Confidence flared hot, pushing him to send another barrage.
The second volley crossed the clearing, sharper, denser. But this time no flame came. The beast twisted, body rolling low, tail lashing wide. Spikes shattered against its scales, others glanced off the ridges without piercing. The tail swept through a pine, splintering the trunk as if to mark the change.
Li Wei stilled. That trick would not work twice.
Li Wei's eyes narrowed. The beast had shifted at once, no hesitation. Not a dumb brute crashing against his sand — it had seen, learned, and changed in the space of a breath.
The lizard's chest swelled. For a heartbeat it only hissed, jaws stretching wide, then fire poured out. A stream thick and bright roared into the treeline, heat blasting through the pines. Bark split with sharp cracks, needles curled and blackened, trunks caught and burned.
Li Wei was already moving, rolling low into the undergrowth. The blast tore through where he had stood, the air searing even from the edge of it. Smoke rushed upward in thick coils. The ground beneath him trembled with the weight of the fire's sweep.
He drew sharp breath through his teeth. Strong. Smarter than the rest. This beast was fighting with its own purpose, not just lashing out.
Li Wei stepped out of the treeline, bone sand swirling in his grip. The beast waited in the clearing, low and still, smoke curling from its jaws. He raised his hand and drove a volley of spikes across the distance, hammering them at its face. Shards cracked against its snout, slicing grooves into the scaled hide.