The weight of the beast awakening pill in Airan’s palm felt cold, but the decision behind it burned with deliberate purpose.
Before him, curled tightly in the corner of the quiet courtyard, was Lux.
The hound had been his silent companion through the bitter isolation of Zone C, possessing a pure white coat since birth.
But raw potential meant nothing without a spark to unlock it.
Airan did not rush straight into the ritual.
Operating with his usual meticulous caution, he knew his own cultivation foundation—focused on refining the fire root among his five elements into a stable internal flame—could be leveraged.
For an entire week after acquiring the pill, Airan quietly consumed concentrated fire essence, conditioning his internal pathways and packing his Dantian with dense, scorching thermal energy.
When the week of personal preparation ended, he spent three full days in deep meditation, resting his mind and circulating that refined fire essence through his meridians until his internal energy hummed with synchronized power.
He was ready to transfer that elemental resonance to Lux, priming the hound’s bloodline to grasp the fire element during its evolution.
Before sealing himself in the courtyard, Airan took one final precaution.
He purchased a one-month fasting pill from Max.
As the middleman had grimly warned, beast awakenings were notoriously unpredictable; once channeled, the process could take days or even weeks, and breaking concentration halfway meant catastrophic failure and certain death for the animal.
With the pill swallowed to stave off hunger and fatigue, Airan placed the awakening pill before the hound and pressed his palms forward, initiating the transfer. This chapter was copied from novelping dot com without permission.
Lux slipped into a deep, unconscious slumber almost instantly.
Within hours, the hound’s body began to jerk violently, vibrating as though struck by invisible bolts of lightning.
For the first two days, Airan remained locked in a motionless posture, pouring a steady stream of spiritual energy and his refined fire essence into the beast.
Moving even an inch meant severing the elemental link, which would instantly backlash and kill the dog.
As his own Dantian began to run dry from the continuous drain, Airan maintained his endurance by swallowing small sips of his medium-grade spirit wine, letting the pure, toxin-free alcohol instantly replenish his spiritual energy without breaking his posture.
On the fifth day, the process took a terrifying turn.
The intense heat and spiritual friction baked Lux’s exterior until the hound’s entire body hardened into a pitch-black, charred block resembling a lump of coal.
Panic threatened to spike in Airan’s chest, but he forced his breathing to remain steady, continuing to funnel energy into the silent, blackened form.
Then, at dusk, the dynamics shifted abruptly.
Deep from within the blackened shell, cracking sounds echoed out as the outer layer began to shed in heavy, brittle flakes.
Accompanying the cracks were muffled, agonizing whimpers—Lux was enduring an intense wave of pain as his meridians were forcibly shattered and reconstructed.
For three agonizing days, the shedding continued.
The courtyard smelled of burnt hair and old ash as Lux writhed and cried out in raw torment, tearing away the dead shell of his old biology.
Finally, on the eighth night since the awakening began, the shedding ceased.
With a violent shudder, Lux forced his legs straight and unsteadily stood up.
The tremors racking his frame carried a new, vibrating weight—a terrifying surge of raw, untamed power.
The transformation was absolute.
The dog that had been born with pure white fur now stood as a 1st Qi cultivator, its coat bearing a striking, supernatural mutation: every single white hair was tipped with a brilliant, glowing red hue at the ends, radiating a faint, residual heat that melted the frost off the courtyard stones beneath his paws.
Author’s Note: Thanks for reading Chapter 14!
Airan’s journey from a penniless herb collector to a spirit distiller starts here.