The announcement echoed through the clan, even down into the stone of the catacombs. A Youth Hunting Competition in the Blackwood Forest. Three days to gather spirit beast cores, with the top hunters earning the right to represent the clan in the Azure Sky Tournament. It was a call to glory for the young disciples.
For Lin Feng, it was a call to feed.
The forest, a dense, ancient sprawl at the foot of the mountain, was a place of life, death, and potent energy. Beasts died there every day. Their Death Qi would be fresh, wild. And their bodies… their bodies could be useful.
He moved at dawn, a grey smear in the mist. His four skeletons followed, flitting between trees like bone-white ghosts. They carried no gear, made no sound. They were his knives.
From a high ridge, he watched the clan disciples enter the forest in boisterous groups. Lin Tao led the largest—five disciples who laughed too loudly and swaggered with borrowed confidence. They moved like they owned the woods, scaring off game and bullying smaller groups out of productive areas. Lin Feng watched Lin Tao's bright, arrogant Qi signature from afar, his face a mask of stone.
He turned away. He was not here for him. Not yet.
His target was a spirit beast, something that could add to his strength. His Death Sense, sharper now, tingled toward a patch of deep shadow in a rocky gully. A cold, predatory echo slept there.
A Shadow Panther. A beast of the early Foundation Establishment stage, known for melting into darkness. Its core would be valuable. Its bones would be strong.
"Ambush," he commanded his squad.
Skeleton #2, the archer, climbed a tall pine, its decayed bow nocked. #3 and #4, the swordsman and shield bearer, took positions behind thick oaks. #1, his vanguard, stayed at his side. They waited.
The panther emerged at dusk, a liquid movement of indigo fur and eyes like chips of yellow quartz. It was bigger than Lin Feng had guessed, its muscles coiled under its pelt, its spiritual pressure a low hum that set his teeth on edge.
He gave the signal.
The archer skeleton loosed its arrow. It was a perfect Eagle-Eye shot, silent and true. It struck the panther's flank.
And shattered.
The panther's hide was like ironwood. The beast roared, a sound of ripping canvas, and its head swiveled, those quartz eyes locking onto the skeleton in the tree.
It moved. Not with speed, but with a terrifying, instantaneous blur. It was up the tree in two leaps.
"Archer, fall back!" Lin Feng mind-shouted.
It was too late. The panther's paw, tipped with shadows sharp as blades, swiped. The skeleton raised its bow to block.
Bones exploded.
The skull, the ribcage, the spine—they disintegrated into a cloud of splintered white. The rusted bow clattered down through the branches.
The blue thread in Lin Feng's mind connecting him to Skeleton #2 snapped. A sharp, psychic sting flared behind his eyes, followed by a hollow void. He hadn't realized he'd felt its constant, silent presence until it was gone.
Rage and cold calculation warred. "Engage!" he roared.
The swordsman and shield bearer charged from the trees. The panther dropped from the pine, landing amidst them. It was a whirlwind of shadow and claw. The Turtle Shell Defense held for one blow—the shield skeleton skidded back, its shield now sporting three deep gouges. The Swift River Sword Technique was a flurry of strikes, but they only scored superficial lines on the beast's hide.
It was too strong. Too fast.
Lin Feng's vanguard, #1, charged in with its rusted sword. The panther focused on this new threat. It swiped. #1 ducked with a move from the Rust-Sword Form, but the follow-up blow caught it across the chest. Bones cracked. It fell back, damaged.
This was failing. They would all be shattered.
The panther lunged for the crippled vanguard, its maw opening wide for the killing bite.
Lin Feng did the only thing he could. He ran forward, not away. He drew on every drop of Death Qi in his core, channelling it into his right hand. He didn't have a technique. He had will. As the panther's head dipped, he slammed his palm, blazing with cold, necrotic energy, directly into its yellow eye.
The beast shrieked. The energy wasn't enough to kill it, but it was agony. It recoiled, blinded on one side, thrashing.
The shield skeleton slammed its bulk into the beast's side, knocking it off balance. The swordsman skeleton drove its broken blade into the soft spot under the panther's jaw, pushing up with all its strength.
The Shadow Panther shuddered. A final, wet gasp. It fell.
A torrent of energy, hot and violent and final, burst from the dying beast. Lin Feng's System flared.
[Battle Absorption: Active.]
[Death Qi +45.]
[Cultivation Breakthrough: Qi Condensation (Death-Aspected), Stage 2.]
Power, cold and vast, flooded his meridians. The world sharpened further. The shadows in the gully seemed to bend toward him. He felt stronger, denser.
He stood over the massive corpse, panting. His vanguard was trying to stand, its ribcage fractured. His swordsman was pulling its blade free. His shield bearer stood guard, its shield arm hanging lower.
And his archer was gone. Just fragments in the pine needles.
A cost.
"You will not be wasted," Lin Feng told the dead panther. He placed both hands on its still-warm head. He pushed his newly expanded reservoir of Death Qi into the beast, not to mend, but to claim. To reforge.
The flesh receded, decayed in fast-forward. The magnificent fur fell away in clumps. What rose from the forest floor was a creature of nightmare—the panther's skeleton, larger and more terrible than in life, its bones the color of stained iron. Shadowy tendrils, like living smoke, coiled in its empty eye sockets and around its skeletal limbs. It stood, silent and obedient.
[Undead Minion Created: Shadow Panther Skeleton.]
[Beast Technique Analyzed: 'Cloak of Shadows.' Allows brief invisibility in darkness.]
[New Command Category: Mount/Beast.]
He had his first non-human soldier. A scout. A mount. A killer.
He climbed onto its back of bone. It felt no warmth, but it was solid. Unshakeable. He sent the panther into the trees, his three remaining skeletons loping behind. He had a new power. And he knew where to point it.
Through the panther's enhanced senses, he found Lin Tao's group easily. They were by a stream, laughing. They had a few small beast cores. And they had cornered a single disciple from a minor branch family—a tall, serious-looking boy named Han Wei. Han Wei held a prized Moon-Tusk Boar core. Lin Tao wanted it.
"Give it here, branch trash," one lackey sneered. "Your line doesn't need the points."
"I killed it fairly," Han Wei said, his voice steady but his Qi flickering with tension.
Lin Tao didn't bother with words. He raised his bow. The arrow he nocked had a subtle, sickly green sheen on its tip. Poison.
"Last chance."
Han Wei hesitated, his knuckles white around the core.
Lin Tao fired.
The arrow took Han Wei in the side, just below his ribs. He cried out, stumbling back against a tree, his face draining of color. Not just pain. The poison. His Qi flared wildly, then began to gutter.
"Idiot," Lin Tao sighed, as if disappointed. "He must have tripped. Into a venomous thorn patch, perhaps. A tragic accident. Retrieve the core. We move."
They took the core from Han Wei's weakening grip and left him there, slumped against the roots, his breath coming in ragged, wet hitches. They walked away without a backward glance.
Lin Feng watched from the shadows atop his panther. A life, extinguished for points. For convenience. Just as his had been extinguished for power.
The moral calculus was simple. Saving Han Wei was a risk. The boy would see him, see his skeletons. He could expose everything.
Leaving him was safe. It was what a ghost would do.
Lin Feng looked at his shattered vanguard, at the empty space where his archer had been. He looked at Han Wei's ashen, dying face.
"No," he said to the dark.
He acted fast. He sent his three skeletons crashing through the undergrowth fifty yards away, making enough noise for a whole pack of beasts.
Lin Tao's group, ever cautious with their own skins, immediately turned toward the noise, weapons raised, hurrying to investigate.
Lin Feng urged the panther forward. It leapt down from the rocks, landing silently beside Han Wei. The boy's eyes were glazed, but they focused on the skeletal beast, widening in pure, uncomprehending terror.
"Silence," Lin Feng said, dismounting. "Or you die here."
He hauled the taller boy up, draping him over the panther's bony back. It was awkward, but the undead beast bore the weight without complaint. With a thought, Lin Feng commanded his skeletons to disengage and scatter, returning to the catacomb.
He and his macabre caravan melted into the deepest part of the forest, away from the hunting grounds, back toward the mountain, toward his tomb.
Han Wei moaned, the poison wrestling with his life force. He was a witness now. A complication.
But as Lin Feng guided the shadow-panther through the black woods, a cold conviction settled in him. He had saved a life tonight, even as he commanded the dead. He had lost a soldier, and gained a beast. The balance sheet of his new existence was written in blood and bone, and he was only beginning to learn how to read it.
The boy on the panther's back coughed, a bubble of dark blood at his lips. He was alive. For now.
That, Lin Feng decided, would have to be enough.