The devastation from Ryven's battle with the Iron Mountain Bear had created an unintended consequence—every remaining Feral Beast in the region had fled his presence, leaving him with a distinct lack of combat opponents. The crater where his final attack had landed still smoldered with residual spatial distortions, creating a permanent scar in Tianxing's landscape that would serve as a warning to any creature capable of understanding what it meant.
"Well, that's inconvenient," Ryven muttered, surveying the empty forest around his former hunting ground. His spatial storage ring contained enough resources to fuel several more breakthrough sessions, but he needed combat experience to properly develop his battle instincts and intent mastery. Fighting opponents who fled at his approach wouldn't provide the kind of pressure necessary for continued growth.
The solution was obvious, if dramatically more dangerous. He needed to venture deeper into Tianxing's wilderness, where Spirit Beasts—creatures equivalent to Fusion Realm cultivators—made their territories. These weren't the instinct-driven predators he'd been facing; Spirit Beasts possessed genuine intelligence, sophisticated hunting strategies, and spiritual abilities that could challenge even experienced cultivators.
More importantly, they wouldn't be intimidated by displays of power that sent lesser creatures fleeing.
As Ryven trekked deeper into the uncharted regions beyond his family's territorial boundaries, he marveled at how Tianxing's ecosystem had evolved to accommodate beings of immense power. The trees grew larger and more resilient, their bark infused with spiritual energy that allowed them to survive the casual destruction caused by high-level beast conflicts. The very ground beneath his feet felt more solid, compressed by eons of tremendous forces until it could withstand impacts that would shatter Earth's bedrock.
It was a necessary adaptation. On a planet where advanced cultivators and their beast equivalents regularly engaged in combat, the environment itself needed to be nearly indestructible to maintain any semblance of stability.
His first encounter with a genuine Spirit Beast came at the edge of a crystalline canyon whose walls glowed with stored spiritual energy. The Void Step Panther that materialized from thin air behind him represented everything dangerous about intelligent opponents—it had been tracking him for miles, analyzing his movement patterns and energy signature before choosing the optimal moment to strike.
The creature's ability to manipulate space allowed it to attack from angles that shouldn't have existed, its claws emerging from dimensional rifts that bypassed conventional defenses. Where Feral Beasts relied on raw physicality, this opponent fought with tactical sophistication that matched Ryven's own enhanced battle intelligence.
"Now this is more like it," Ryven said, drawing the Void Eclipse Sword as spatial distortions erupted around him. The panther's attacks were coming from multiple dimensions simultaneously, creating a three-dimensional chess game where position and timing mattered more than simple power.
For the first time since developing his dual intents, Ryven found himself genuinely challenged. The panther's space manipulation was instinctive and refined through decades of hunting, while his own space intent was powerful but newly developed. The battle became a masterclass in spatial combat techniques, with both combatants using dimensional rifts, teleportation effects, and reality distortions to gain tactical advantages.
But it was exactly this level of pressure that allowed Ryven's abilities to truly shine. Under the stress of genuine life-or-death combat, his battle intelligence reached new heights of clarity. He began to see patterns in the panther's attacks, recognize the subtle energy fluctuations that preceded each dimensional shift, and predict where the next assault would emerge.
More importantly, the constant switching between his sword and space intents under combat pressure began to feel more natural. What had initially been clumsy transitions between different conceptual frameworks gradually became fluid exchanges that enhanced both intents simultaneously.
When inspiration struck, it came with the clarity of perfect understanding. Instead of viewing sword intent and space intent as separate abilities to be used in sequence, Ryven suddenly grasped how they could be combined into something entirely new. His next attack wasn't just a sword stroke enhanced by space intent—it was a fusion of both concepts that created effects neither could achieve alone.
The technique he spontaneously developed didn't have a name, but its results were unmistakable. His sword cut through space itself, creating a dimensional severing that bypassed the panther's spatial defenses entirely. The creature's look of confusion as its primary ability simply stopped working was almost comical, right up until Ryven's follow-up attack ended the battle permanently.
"Intent fusion," he breathed, staring at his blade in amazement. "I can actually combine different types of intent to create hybrid effects. The possibilities are..."
His contemplation was interrupted by another spiritual signature approaching his position—this one radiating even more power than the defeated panther. Word was apparently spreading through the Spirit Beast community that something dangerous had entered their territory, and they were responding with increasing force.
Over the following hours, Ryven faced a succession of increasingly powerful opponents, each battle pushing his newfound intent fusion abilities to new levels of sophistication. A Crystal Wing Eagle that attacked from impossible aerial angles taught him how to apply space-sword fusion to projectile techniques, creating attacks that could strike targets regardless of distance or obstacles.
A Magma Shell Tortoise with defenses that had withstood decades of spiritual beast conflicts forced him to develop penetration techniques that operated on conceptual rather than physical principles. His fused intents didn't just cut through the creature's hardened shell—they cut through the very idea of impenetrable defense, making the tortoise's greatest strength irrelevant.
But it was his encounter with a peak-level Spirit Beast that truly demonstrated how far his abilities had evolved. The Thunder Mane Stallion that challenged him in a lightning-scarred valley possessed power that approached the boundary between Fusion and Soul Realm equivalency. Its attacks carried enough force to level entire city districts, while its speed created sonic booms that shattered the crystalline formations dotting the battlefield.
For the first time since arriving on Tianxing, Ryven faced an opponent that forced him to fight with genuine seriousness. This wasn't a training exercise or a test of new techniques—this was a battle between apex predators where the loser wouldn't survive to learn from their mistakes.
The stallion's opening assault demonstrated exactly why Spirit Beasts were considered equivalents to human Fusion Realm cultivators. Lightning erupted from its mane in patterns too complex for normal perception to track, while its hooves struck the ground with enough force to create localized earthquakes. The sound of its galloping charge was like continuous thunder, and when it roared, the spiritual pressure was strong enough to make Ryven's bones ache.
But pressure was exactly what Ryven's abilities thrived under. His dual intents, now functioning as a unified hybrid rather than separate techniques, responded to the threat with precision that surprised even him. His sword strokes created dimensional cuts that intercepted the stallion's lightning attacks, while his movement techniques utilized space folding to maintain optimal positioning despite the creature's tremendous speed.
The battle became a showcase of town-level destruction as both combatants unleashed their full power. Ryven's serious attacks carved canyon-deep furrows in Tianxing's reinforced landscape, while the stallion's lightning strikes turned sand into glass and stone into plasma. The ongoing combat created a localized storm system as spiritual energy discharged into the atmosphere, and the sound of their clashes could be heard for dozens of miles in every direction.
On Earth, this level of destruction would have been catastrophic. Entire metropolitan areas would have been reduced to rubble within minutes, and the environmental damage would have persisted for decades. But Tianxing's massive scale—one hundred times larger than Earth—meant that even battles of this magnitude barely registered as minor disturbances in the planet's overall ecosystem.
When Ryven finally achieved victory, it was through a technique that represented the perfect fusion of his dual intents. His sword stroke didn't just cut through space—it cut through the conceptual framework that defined the stallion's existence as an entity separate from the spatial dimensions around it. The attack bypassed every defense the creature possessed by redefining the very nature of what it meant to be a distinct being rather than part of the universal continuum.
The resulting explosion of released spiritual energy created a mushroom cloud that rose several miles into Tianxing's atmosphere, while the crater left behind would probably be visible from orbit. More concerning was the realization that he was rapidly approaching power levels that could affect planetary-scale systems if used carelessly.
"I really need to research intent fusion theory," Ryven muttered, carefully extracting the stallion's enormous beast core while surveying the devastation his victory had caused. "This kind of power development without proper theoretical foundation is going to cause problems eventually."
As he stored his valuable prize and examined his remaining time allocation, Ryven realized he still had four full days before he needed to return to the family portal. The Thunder Mane Stallion's beast core pulsed with enough power to fuel significant advancement, but more importantly, he had developed a technique combination that he hadn't yet tested to its full potential.
"Heaven's Opening combined with space-sword fusion intent," he mused, feeling the theoretical framework crystallizing in his mind. The Nine Heaven Sword Arts' first form was already devastatingly effective, but when enhanced by his dual intent fusion, it might reach power levels that could challenge even Soul Realm equivalents.
The thought was both exciting and sobering. Soul Beasts—creatures equivalent to Soul Realm cultivators—possessed power that operated on fundamentally different principles than what he'd faced so far. Where Spirit Beasts relied primarily on enhanced physicality and basic spiritual techniques, Soul Beasts had developed genuine spiritual consciousness that allowed for reality manipulation on conceptual levels.
"If my calculations are correct," Ryven continued, analyzing his recent combat performance, "this technique combination might actually let me hold my own against a beginner Soul Beast. Not win necessarily, but at least survive long enough to escape if things go badly."
It was a hypothesis worth testing, though he'd need to be extremely careful about opponent selection. The difference between early Soul Realm and peak Soul Realm was enormous—facing the wrong opponent could result in instant death regardless of his theoretical capabilities.
Over the next several hours, Ryven continued exploring deeper into Tianxing's wilderness, seeking opponents that would push his newly developed abilities to their absolute limits. The landscape gradually changed as he moved further from civilized territories, becoming more alien and hostile with each mile. The spiritual energy density increased noticeably, creating atmospheric effects that would have been impossible on Earth.
His enhanced perception detected multiple powerful signatures in the distance—some Spirit Beasts that no longer posed significant threats, but also stronger presences that radiated the kind of spiritual pressure associated with genuine Soul Realm power. These were the apex predators of Tianxing's ecosystem, creatures that had survived and thrived in an environment where only the strongest could claim territory.
The question was whether he was ready to test himself against such opponents, or if his confidence was outpacing his actual capabilities. The power he'd developed was impressive, but Soul Realm represented a qualitative leap that couldn't be overcome through technique alone.
"Only one way to find out," Ryven decided, adjusting his course toward the nearest Soul Beast signature. His real cultivation journey was accelerating beyond even his wildest expectations, and each new challenge revealed capabilities he hadn't known he possessed.
But with great power came equally great risks. The strength he was developing could reshape his understanding of what human cultivation could achieve, but whether that transformation would prove sustainable or lead to dangerous overconfidence would depend entirely on how well he could balance ambition with wisdom.
Four days remained to explore these questions, and Ryven intended to make the most of every moment.