As the years passed, the white wolf and the young girl, Huang Biren, grew up together. Due to the wolf's masterful acting, the young girl came to see the beast as her absolute best friend. Whenever Huang Biren attended her daily academic lessons, the white wolf sat quietly by her feet, ever the loyal companion. Aided by his great intellect, the wolf was able to systematically learn about human society, their customs, culture, global geography, and various regional languages. He even quietly taught himself to read and write the human script.
As a high-ranking noble, the young girl was also required to master traditional disciplines such as horse riding, painting, archery, and calligraphy, all arts her parents believed would make her the perfect woman, just like her legendary older sister, Huang Shengyi. Huang Biren proved to be a true child prodigy, completely mastering all of these complex skills by the time she reached the age of twelve.
In terms of cultivation, she proved to be every bit as talented as her elder sister, if not better. Every night after her lessons concluded, she would sit cross-legged on her bed and cultivate using her family's signature technique, the Rumbling Tiger. Unearthed from the treacherous depths of a forbidden realm by the Huang patriarch himself, this art stood entirely unrivaled as the Tinding Kingdom's supreme power. It was explicitly because of this technique that the Huang clan had been able to rise and become the fifth ruling family, successfully overcoming the immense obstacles put in place by the four original ruling clans.
Whenever Huang Biren cultivated, the white wolf would observe her every movement and breath closely from the shadows, desperate to find a way to increase his own power. As the years went by, the wolf learned a great deal about the mechanics of human energy flow. However, after deeply studying the principles of the Rumbling Tiger technique, he concluded that demonic beasts simply could not cultivate human techniques; their pathways and physical structures were entirely too different.
Even with this logical knowledge, the wolf's desperate craving for power eventually led him to try cultivating the technique himself during the quiet hours of the night. The results were devastating. The white wolf spat up thick blood for days, his internal organs severely damaged by the incompatible energy. The only reason he survived the backlash was because a panicked Huang Biren desperately pleaded with her parents for an expensive, high-grade healing alchemy pill to save her beloved pet.
After that near-fatal incident, the wolf knew for certain that demonic beasts could not rely on human cultivation techniques. He had no choice but to cultivate as wild beasts do, by slowly and passively absorbing world qi into their bodies over long stretches of time. While this method would eventually increase their cultivation level, it was incredibly slow and could easily take tens of years to show any notable progress. For a demonic beast filled to the brim with burning vengeance and hatred, this stagnation was entirely unacceptable. The white wolf refused to give up on finding a better, swifter way to power.