While the princess was confronting the prince, the white wolf was moving around the mansion with a focused, predatory intensity. He was doing nothing overtly suspicious, but anyone who happened to meet his gaze felt a chilling premonition, as though the reaper himself were silently watching them. For hours, the wolf moved stealthily through the shifting crowds until he stopped abruptly at a basement door.
He quickly hid himself on top of the wide door casing. With his relatively small size, it was almost impossible to spot him when anyone entered. The basement was currently being used for weapon storage and had only been left open due to the chaotic war preparations. There simply wasn't enough manpower to guard a simple storage basement that held standard armaments useless to high-level cultivators. The wolf sat perched on the casing, looking down into the darkness with a demonic glint in his yellow eyes.
An hour went by with no one entering the storage basement. Just as the wolf was about to give up and move to another location, a chubby, middle-aged man in black robes walked through the threshold. The wolf, his claws already itching for slaughter, leaped off the casing and landed squarely on the man's back. His sharp claws pierced deep into the man's shoulder blades, causing him to shriek in sudden pain. The wolf had rehearsed this exact attack in his head countless times and knew he had only one real chance. He swiftly brought his open jaws down onto the man's thick neck and bit down with all his might, his sharp canines tearing the carotid artery to shreds.
The man began wildly grabbing at the wolf, desperately trying to pull him away as fresh, hot blood poured directly into the beast's mouth. To ensure the man passed out quickly, the wolf aggressively sucked and swallowed the blood, his throat bobbing up and down. This man was a cultivator in the sixth stage of the first realm of cultivation, making his takedown incredibly difficult for the young wolf. The man kicked the ground and jumped high into the air—a athletic feat no one would expect from a person of his size. He then fell backward hard to the stone floor, squashing the wolf violently between his heavy body and the ground.
The impact created the sickening sound of breaking bones. The wolf let out a muffled snarl of intense pain but absolutely refused to let go of the man's neck. In a fit of burning anger, the wolf bit down even harder and continued to drain the blood from him. The two rolled around frantically on the floor for a few minutes before the cultivator finally passed out from blood loss.
The wolf wanted him alive for what he planned to do next. He tried to stand but fell back to the ground as a sharp agony shot through his broken ribs. Instead, he crawled to the heavy door and pushed it shut. The door automatically locked upon closing, ensuring anyone trying to enter from the outside would need a specific key. He then crawled back to the unconscious man, who had only a few minutes left to live due to his high cultivation resisting the trauma.
The wolf placed his front paws heavily on the man's chest and began circulating his hidden cultivation technique. For a few agonizing seconds, nothing happened. Then, a thick red energy began visibly leaving the man's body and flowing into the wolf. Instantly, the wolf felt his wounds begin to mend, with his broken bones snapping back into place. His internal injuries healed rapidly. The energy then moved into his source core before disappearing entirely, like smoke on a windy day. The wolf didn't mind this loss, as his analytical mind knew this would happen due to his low level of talent. When the white wolf had painstakingly created his cultivation technique, he had made sure to tackle his biggest genetic problem of all: his abysmal innate talent. Despite possessing an unparalleled, pristine technique that many would kill to obtain, the path ahead would have remained treacherous. His natural progress would have been frozen at a pitifully infantile level, unable to ascend further, rendering his blood-soaked struggles a mere exercise in utter futility.
When the red life energy stopped flowing out of the man, the wolf did not stop circulating his technique. The man had already lost half his body weight, but the wolf continued the process, his cold, yellow eyes remaining fixed on his prey. Soon, a pure white energy flowed from the shriveled man and entered the wolf's body. This time, the wolf felt his cultivation level rapidly rising. It broke through from the first stage of the first realm of cultivation all the way to the sixth stage in one single go, a miracle for the ages.
The wolf knew all too well that traditional cultivation takes time, a luxury his heart of vengeance would never permit. What if he slowly cultivated over centuries, only to find that his mortal enemies were long dead of old age or had reached even greater heights beyond his reach? His enemies wouldn't pause their own cultivation and wait for him to catch up. The solution was simple: the wolf saw that since talent could be stolen, cultivation could be stolen as well. It was this insurmountable hurdle that had compelled the beast to exhaust his peerless, god-like mental faculties, demanding an entire epoch of mental torment to finally forge a technique before he could even attempt to grasp the reins of his own destiny.