With a nimble turn in the rain, the gray wolf shot forward. The next second, its body was like an arrow loosed from a bowstring, cutting through the raindrops as it rapidly gave chase in a certain direction through the forest.
Soon, as he ran, he found Feng Si’s scent growing stronger. A vicious glint flashed in the depths of Feng Kai’s lake-blue eyes.
’This low-level female sister sure knows how to cause trouble.’
’Running away in a dark, rainy forest... It’d be perfectly normal for a female to get a little hurt, wouldn’t it?’
A dark thought flashed through his mind. Feng Kai searched for her in the night rain, risking being struck by lightning. The rain soaked his fur, his once glossy gray coat now a limp, matted mess.
The search filled him with rage.
He thought angrily, ’When I find Feng Si, the first thing I’ll do is teach her a lesson out here in the deserted forest.’
’Otherwise, where am I supposed to vent all this frustration?’
’Besides, she’s a low-level female, destined to become one of the hidden mates for the powerful. She can’t be relied upon in the future.’
’All I need is my sister Feng Lian.’
With these thoughts in mind, Feng Kai came to a part of the forest where the trees grew even taller.
On this rainy night, countless drops of water trickled through the leaves and onto the ground, forming shallow puddles. Broad, brownish-yellow leaves on the forest floor cupped the rainwater, creating a scene as tranquil and soothing as a sleep-inducing soundscape.
The moment Feng Kai stepped into the undergrowth, a terrifying aura shot up from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. His instinct for danger rooted him to the spot, and an unprecedented dread seized his heart!
Danger!
Do not enter!
’I’ll die.’
The tall wolf froze, swallowing hard. He subconsciously held his breath.
Male beasts all mark their territory, and the more powerful the male beast, the more arrogant and unrestrained they are.
It felt like a gaze of piercing needles, as if even the raindrops were coated in a lethal poison that would kill on contact. In an instant, the overwhelming sense of danger flooded his entire body.
Just standing on the fringes of this aura, where its presence was weakest, was enough to make him break out in a cold sweat.
Feng Kai was no fool. He knew that a male beast exuding such a terrifying aura had to be a Special-level Male Beast, one of those who stood at the very pinnacle of the continent.
His raised gray tail drooped, pressing tightly between his hind legs. Tucking his tail, the gray wolf began to back away with painstaking slowness.
The moment he was free of the terrifying aura, he let out a frightened whimper. Forgetting all about his plan to punish Feng Si, he turned and fled without a second glance.
Meanwhile, not far ahead of where Feng Kai had been.
Feng Si had no idea how long or how far she had walked. She didn’t even notice when the sound of the rain by her ears had vanished. A bolt of lightning flashed overhead, but the clap of thunder never reached her.
She was surrounded by massive trees, so large it would take more than a dozen people to link arms around their trunks. Their colossal shadows loomed in the rainy night, and their leaves swayed in the dark wind, like giant beasts of the forest coming to life, transforming into flesh-eating monsters.
Feng Si felt dizzy and unsteady, her vision a complete blur. Her body was chilled to the bone, yet her head was burning up, and a scalding heat was building in her lower abdomen.
’So hot... So cold...’
The sensations of hot and cold warred within her. One moment, she was in an ice cavern; the next, she was standing in the heart of a volcano at high noon.
Feng Si’s mind gradually succumbed to delirium. Relying on pure instinct, she stumbled forward. A heady, fiery scent radiated from her body, aggressively piercing the curtain of rain and dispersing into the air.
It drifted to a distant mountain peak.
A flash of lightning streaked across the sky.
At the peak of the mountain, hot springs of all sizes sent steam into the rain. The largest and deepest of them was the size of a lake, its shores lined with massive boulders. The water was as clear and pale as green jade.
An immense black shadow rested on the bottom. Its form, textured like overlapping plates of black armor, was a darkness so absolute it seemed capable of devouring all things—an inky void that even lightning could not penetrate.
Suddenly, a gleam of gold appeared within the pitch-blackness.
And what a pair of eyes they were.
Gold is the brightest, most passionate of colors, but these crystalline pupils held not a single trace of emotion. There was only an icy, murderous intent and the immense, oppressive presence inherent to a cold-blooded creature.
SPLASH—
The colossal black behemoth—like a python, yet not a snake—erupted from the surface. Water cascaded down its armored scales, returning to the pool. It held its upper body erect in the lake-sized hot spring, its coiled lower half still occupying the entire floor of the lake.
Chi Jie, who had been soaking in the hot spring, felt a flicker of surprise in his perpetually cold eyes.
As a natural-born apex predator, Chi Jie took a tentative sniff of the rain-filled air. He keenly detected something amiss, and for a beat, his breathing faltered.
It was the scent of pheromones, released by a female in heat. Depending on the female’s grade, it was potent enough to drive male beasts of corresponding power levels into an uncontrollable frenzy.
Before he could make his next move, the taut threads of reason in Chi Jie’s mind—the mind of a Special-level beast—were silently snipped, one by one, by the scent in the air.
HISS—
’Dammit.’
Without warning, his mental Original Value skyrocketed. At this critical juncture, Chi Jie lost control, allowing his beastly instincts to take over. His serpentine body slithered out of the warm lake, crushing the rocks on the shore, which crumbled and plunged into the water.
He shot off in one direction. What little reason he had left spiraled out of control as his primal nature took complete hold, and he tore through the rain-soaked forest at incredible speed.
PATTER PATTER
The dense raindrops beat a unique rhythm against the leaves, but Feng Si heard nothing. The only sound in the otherwise silent forest was the gasping from her own heaving chest.
Her mind had become a hot, glutinous paste. Feng Si finally collapsed. Her legs, after running for so long in the dark, could no longer support her. They buckled, and she pitched forward.
In a flash of lightning, a patch of thorns on the ground was starkly illuminated. The finger-long spikes, washed clean by the rain, gleamed with a lethal light.
In her last second of consciousness, Feng Si thought.
’I’m going to die.’
’Other people transmigrate to marry some tall, rich, handsome guy. I’m so pathetic. My first day here is going to end with me falling to my death.’
Just as Feng Si’s face was about to hit the ground, a pair of hands shot out of the darkness, catching her and pulling her into a broad, cool embrace that seemed to dispel the very heat from her bones.
But—
It wasn’t enough!
Feng Si had a dream.
In her dream, she was in a vast expanse of warm water where countless tangled knots of seaweed floated. They were snarled into masses, the color of withered decay, of plant life at its very end.
’How can there be such lifeless weeds in this wonderfully comfortable water?’
’I won’t allow it.’
The moment the thought formed in Feng Si’s mind, countless turquoise threads, fine as hair, spread through the endless water and forcibly untangled the seaweed.
Throughout the night, in this vast, boundless underwater world, the seaweed was transformed. It now swayed gently in clusters, a vibrant, life-filled green, radiating an aura of pure bliss.
The rain had stopped. The morning light dyed the sky a bright, clear blue. The hot spring steamed, shrouding the surrounding area in a light mist.
On a flat, clean slab of white rock, the scene was dreamlike and illusory.
Exhausted from the night, Feng Si was jolted awake by a sharp pain. She opened her eyes to the sight of a pale, muscular chest, its muscles defined by sleek, graceful lines.
Wait—
’What’s going on?’