The awakening of Lux had changed the dynamic of the courtyard, but Airan’s internal discipline refused to plateau.
Exactly one month after the hound’s transformation settled and his own fire-essence consumption concluded, Airan finally crossed a new threshold in his training: he began body cultivation.
Unlike wealthy young masters who bathed in rare medicinal soups or used thousand-year beast blood to forge their flesh, Airan’s method matched his harsh, economical reality.
He treated his own physical body like a pill cauldron, using controlled, low-grade fire essence and the intense thermal friction of forging-grade heat to bake and harden his skin and meridians from the inside out.
Combined with the micro-control required to draft dozens of low-grade talismans—which provided a steady stream of extra copper coins and served as instantaneous combat insurance that drained minimal Qi to activate—his overall combat capability grew silently by leaps and bounds.
Life in Zone C also expanded slightly out of necessity.
Airan began taking Lux out for rare, isolated walks deep into the rugged mountain ranges bordering the region.
Over the past three years, the hound had grown into a massive, imposing beast standing a full seven feet tall at the shoulder.
The supernatural mutation of his fur was striking: a thick, blindingly white coat tipped with brilliant, glowing red embers at every end. This chapter was taken from novelping dot com without permission.
Whenever Airan needed to travel across rough terrain without drawing the attention of passing caravans or patrols, he simply mounted Lux’s broad back, the beast carrying him swiftly and silently through the wilderness.
It was during one of these routine excursions, while Airan was tossing a heavy iron weight for Lux to chase near a secluded mountain stream, that the atmosphere shifted.
Lux suddenly froze, dropping low to the ground.
A fine mist of fresh blood hung faintly in the mountain air.
Airan stopped, narrowing his eyes.
”What is it?” Airan asked quietly.
Through the psychic spiritual contract binding them—forged not out of fear or a desire to control the beast, but purely so Airan could translate the hound’s complex barks into clear intent—Lux sent a sharp mental impression: Sensing iron and copper.
The smell of fresh human blood carried downstream.
Moving with cautious stealth, Airan and Lux tracked the scent to the winding riverbank.
half-submerged in the shallow reeds lay a young woman.
Her clothes were torn, bearing deep, jagged lacerations across her torso and limbs. New chapters come out on novelping.com first.
Even in unconsciousness, her body radiated the dense, pressurized aura of a 5th Level Qi Condensation cultivator—a full stage higher than Airan.
Airan didn’t hesitate.
In the ruthless wilderness, leaving a high-level cultivator to die in a beast-infested mountain range was an invitation for trouble, but leaving her entirely unattended wasn’t his style either.
Kneeling beside her, Airan quickly retrieved a standard low-grade hemostatic pill from his storage pouch, crushing it gently between his fingers before pressing it past her lips.
To stabilize her rapidly fading internal system, he also fed her a mild energy-replenishment pill, channeling a tiny thread of his own neutral Qi to help her body absorb the medicine and stanch the bleeding.
With the girl unconscious and too heavy to carry on foot through the jagged terrain, Airan signaled Lux.
Hoisting the wounded cultivator carefully into his arms, Airan mounted the seven-foot red-tipped hound, and the two vanished back into the mountain mist toward the quiet safety of Zone C.
Author’s Note: Thanks for reading Chapter 16!
Airan’s journey from a penniless herb collector to a spirit distiller starts here.