Chen Xi blinked.
"What? That's—" She shook her head, frowning. "That doesn't make sense. It's supposed to be there right now. It doesn't leave until later, I've watched it. Every day, same routine."
Xu Kai's gaze drifted toward the forest stretching endlessly before them. Dense. Impenetrable. Massive.
'This just got complicated.'
Their entire strategy had depended on the wolf being in its den when they arrived. Hide in the treeline, wait for the perfect moment, then strike before the beast could mount a proper defense. Clean. Efficient. Minimal risk.
Now? Everything had changed.
"Maybe this day is just different," Xu Kai said slowly, more to himself than to her. "It probably left earlier than usual. Something might have spooked it, or it might have found better hunting grounds nearby."
Chen Xi's frown deepened.
"But it's never done that before."
"Animals aren't machines, Xi. They don't follow schedules perfectly."
She opened her mouth to argue, then closed it again. Her shoulders slumped slightly.
"So... what do we do now?"
Xu Kai let out a quiet sigh.
'Searching the forest.'
Of course. The one thing he'd wanted to avoid. The one approach that felt like trying to find a single needle in a field of haystacks. Back on Earth, wandering through miles of wilderness looking for a specific animal would have been laughable. Even now, with cultivation sharpening his senses far beyond human limits, Lud Forest remained vast enough to make such a search daunting.
But avoiding it wasn't an option anymore.
If the wolf wasn't here, they had to find it.
The sooner they located the beast, the sooner they could deal with it and return home.
He glanced at Chen Xi, who was watching him with that particular expression she wore when she was trying to read his thoughts. Her head was tilted slightly, eyes narrowed, lips pressed together.
"We search for it," he said finally. "It probably isn't far from here."
"So... we're just going to wander until we find it?" She didn't sound enthusiastic about the prospect.
"No. I'm not planning on searching the entire forest, that's impossible. We'll only cover the areas close to the den, within a reasonable distance." He paused, noticing that she had already begun drifting away from him. "And don't stray too far."
"I know, I know."
Chen Xi waved dismissively over her shoulder, already skipping ahead a few steps. She crouched beside a cluster of bushes, peering intently at something hidden beneath the leaves.
Xu Kai watched her, waiting.
After several seconds, she straightened up, her expression one of profound disappointment.
"...It's just a rock."
He couldn't help it, a faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
"Then keep looking."
"Maybe the wolf turned into a rock," she suggested thoughtfully, staring at the offending stone as if it might transform at any moment.
Xu Kai's smile vanished.
"Oh, heavens. Wolves don't turn into rocks, Xi."
Chen Xi considered this for a moment, her brow furrowing in genuine contemplation.
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"...That's a fair point."
She resumed walking, though Xu Kai noticed that she continued eyeing particularly large stones with undisguised suspicion, as if one of them might suddenly sprout fur and teeth.
He followed silently, his senses spread wide, alert for any sign of their quarry.
The forest remained peaceful.
Too peaceful, perhaps.
Through his perception, he could sense scattered beasts moving through the deeper woods, small prey animals, mostly. Nothing large enough to threaten them. No scent of fresh blood hung in the air. No claw marks scarred the bark of nearby trees. Only the whispering wind threading through the leaves and the soft crunch of their footsteps against the forest floor accompanied them.
Chen Xi hummed softly as she walked, a tuneless melody that seemed to irritate her as much as it pleased her, because she kept stopping and starting again, trying different notes.
Xu Kai let her have her distraction.
They had time.
The wolf couldn't have gone far.
'Could it?'
Xu Kai and Chen Xi had made remarkable progress through the forest. Remarkable, that is, if one measured progress by the distance covered rather than the objectives achieved.
Xu Kai had guided them along a careful path, weaving between the territories of spirit beasts with the precision of a man who had no interest in unnecessary complications. Every growl in the distance, every rustle of leaves that hinted at something larger than a rabbit, he steered them clear. He wasn't here for side quests. He wasn't here for experience points or rare materials. He was here for one thing only: the wolf.
Unfortunately, Chen Xi appeared to have missed that memo entirely.
"Master, is that beast strong?" she'd asked for the third time that morning, pointing at a bear-like creature that had been peacefully minding its own business.
"Master, why are we avoiding them?" she'd whined when he'd pulled her away from a pack of glowing-eyed foxes.
"Master, this beast is annoying, let me set it ablaze!"
Xu Kai had lost count of her suggestions somewhere around the tenth attempt. Or perhaps the fifteenth. He'd stopped counting deliberately, it was better for his sanity that way.
Keeping Chen Xi in check had become the most exhausting task he'd ever undertaken. More exhausting than his past like days of work. More exhausting than the learning materials that humbled him. At least those challenges had been predictable. Chen Xi was anything but that.
'What does she do when she's alone?' he wondered, not for the first time. 'Does she just... set everything on fire?'
He shuddered at the thought. He honestly pitied anyone or anything that crossed her path when he wasn't there to rein her in.
"Master, I don't think we're going to make any progress this way."
Chen Xi's voice drifted down from above. She sat perched on a thick branch of an ancient oak, legs swinging, her robes catching the dappled sunlight filtering through the canopy.
Xu Kai looked up at her, then sighed. She was right. They had searched a substantial portion of the forest, hours of walking, hours of evading threats, hours of nothing. No wolf. No tracks. No sign that the beast had ever existed in this area.
Earlier, to make things more efficient, Xu Kai had sent the Driftlight Pupil in another direction. The eye hovered somewhere to the east now, patrolling a separate quadrant of the forest while he and Chen Xi searched the west. It required minimal qi to maintain, and he'd only connected a partial conscience to it, enough to alert him if it found something, but not enough to distract him from his own search.
So far, it had found nothing.
'Looks like we'll have to try again tomorrow.'
He opened his mouth to suggest they call it a day—
"Wow! Master, look!"
Chen Xi's sudden exclamation cut through his thoughts. She was pointing excitedly at something to his left, her entire body leaning forward with barely contained energy.
Xu Kai turned his gaze toward where she pointed. Trees. Undergrowth. Shadows. Nothing out of the ordinary.
He raised an eyebrow.
"What?"
"That!" Chen Xi insisted, still pointing with the fervor of a child who had spotted something shiny.
He squinted. Still nothing.
Whatever Chen Xi had seen, it was clearly only visible from her elevated vantage point. From ground level, the view was blocked by layers of foliage and trunks too thick to see through. And with the Driftlight Pupil elsewhere, he couldn't use it to peer through the obstruction.
"Xi, I can't see what you're pointing—"
Before he could finish, Chen Xi launched herself from the branch.
She descended in a blur, robes snapping in the wind, and landed with a soft thud on the forest floor. The impact barely registered, she was already sprinting toward whatever had caught her attention.
"Master, let's go!"
"Xi, don't—!" The words died in his throat. She was already far ahead, weaving through trees with an agility that made pursuit difficult. The girl moved like she was born in these woods, dodging roots and branches as if they weren't there.
Xu Kai sighed. He'd learned that chasing her was pointless. Instead, he walked. It was the only way to maintain some semblance of dignity.
By the time he caught up, Chen Xi had stopped. She stood frozen in a small clearing, her gaze fixed on something ahead.
Xu Kai followed her line of sight and spotted it immediately: a bird. A parrot, to be precise. But not just any parrot, a Horned Parrot.
The creature stood on a lower branch of a gnarled tree, its feathers a vibrant mix of emerald and gold. A single horn protruded from its forehead, curving backward in a spiral that caught the light. Its eyes were sharp, intelligent, and unnervingly human-like as it stared back at Chen Xi.
Early stage spirit beast. Comparable to an early Foundation Establishment cultivator. Nothing dangerous, but not something to be trifled with either.
Xu Kai approached quietly, coming to stand beside his disciple.
"A parrot?" he whispered, keeping his voice low. "Why did you run to it?"
"Master, it's a Horned Parrot," Chen Xi replied, as if that explained everything.
"I know."
"Ah. Okay."
"Why?" Xu Kai pressed.
Chen Xi glanced at him with an expression that suggested he was being deliberately obtuse.
"You know they can talk, right?"
"I know."
"What if we ask it about the wolf?"