Hanxi meditated for hours at the neutral point, and for the first time since absorbing the fang, the energies didn't fight. They didn't merge either—they just... coexisted. It was like standing on the border between summer and winter, neither hot nor cold, just perfectly temperate.
When he opened his eyes, the moon had risen full and bright. The camp was quiet, most people asleep. Only the guards on watch prowled the perimeter.
Hanxi stood, stretched, and was about to return to his tent when a scent hit him.
Prey.
The thought came unbidden, alien. He shook his head, trying to clear it, but the scent was undeniable. Something small and warm was nearby. Running. Afraid.
His body moved before his mind caught up. One moment he was standing at the meditation spot, the next he was twenty paces away, crouched low, moving silently through the grass.
Wait. What am I doing?
But his body didn't stop. His enhanced senses—a gift from the wolf fang—tracked the scent, the sound of tiny heartbeats, the warmth of blood beneath fur.
Rabbits. A family of them, huddled in a burrow beneath a tree root.
Hanxi stared at them, transfixed. Part of him was horrified. Part of him was calculating which one to grab first, whether to go for the mother or the young, how to block the escape routes.
No. No, I'm not an animal. I'm human. I'm Wāng Hanxi.
He backed away slowly, his hands shaking. Sweat beaded on his forehead despite the cool night air.
"Losing control already?" Wei Feng's voice made him spin around. The guard captain stood leaning against a tree, watching him. "That was fast. Usually takes at least a week before the beast instincts surface while awake."
"I almost—"
"Hunted? Yes. You did." Wei Feng's tone was clinical. "The wolf fang didn't just give you cultivation energy, kid. It gave you instincts. Memories. Fragments of the beast's nature." He gestured at the rabbit burrow. "Every predator knows how to hunt. Now, so do you."
"I don't want this."
"Too late. The question isn't whether you want it. The question is whether you can control it." Wei Feng moved closer. "Listen carefully. You're going to have these episodes more often as the lunar energy integrates. When the moon is full, it'll be worse. You need to find an outlet—something to satisfy the instinct without losing yourself."
"Like what?"
"Hunting. Real hunting. Channel it into something productive." Wei Feng pulled out a small knife and tossed it to Hanxi. "Tomorrow night, you and I are going spirit beast hunting. There's always predators prowling near trade routes. We'll kill two birds with one stone—satisfy your instincts and make the road safer."
"I'm not a killer."
"Yes, you are. You're a cultivator. Killing is part of the job." Wei Feng's expression softened slightly. "But there's a difference between being a killer and being a murderer. One serves a purpose. The other just creates corpses. You get to choose which one you become."
Wei Feng started walking back to camp, then paused. "And Hanxi? When you fall asleep tonight, you're going to dream. You're going to dream you're running through a forest as a wolf, hunting, killing, feeding. It's going to feel real. It's going to feel good. When you wake up, you're going to be terrified of what you enjoyed."
"How do you know?"
"Because I watched it happen to dozens of soldiers." Wei Feng's voice was heavy with old grief. "Most of them couldn't handle it. They either went mad or begged to be executed. But a few—the strong ones—they learned to accept both sides. Human and beast. Warrior and hunter. Those were the ones who survived."
"What happened to them?"
"The Cultivation Council killed them anyway." Wei Feng disappeared into the shadows. "Sleep if you can, kid. Tomorrow, the real training begins."
Hanxi didn't want to sleep. But exhaustion from the day's travel and the strain of meditation finally dragged him down into darkness.
And then he was running.
Four legs instead of two. Muscles coiling and releasing with perfect efficiency. The world rendered in shades of silver and gray, scents painted in colors that had no human names. The forest was alive, singing with a thousand heartbeats, and he was the apex predator moving through it like a ghost.
There—a deer, grazing. Young, weak, isolated from the herd.
He didn't think. Didn't plan. The pack moved as one—and yes, there were others. Massive shapes of silver fur and glowing eyes. His brothers. His sisters. His family.
They herded the deer toward a cliff. It bolted, panicked, beautiful in its terror. The chase was ecstasy. The wind in his fur, the ground flying beneath his paws, the unified purpose of the pack working toward a single goal.
The deer fell. Not by his jaws—he wasn't lead. But he'd played his part, and now the pack would share the kill.
The taste of hot blood. The satisfaction of hunger sated. The warmth of pack-mates pressed close under the watching moon.
This was belonging. This was purpose. This was home.
And then he was Hanxi again, standing in the dream forest on two legs, watching the wolves feast.
The alpha raised its massive head, and Hanxi saw the missing fang—the gap where his gift had come from.
The wolf's eyes glowed silver with intelligence that was far more than animal.
You carry pack-brother's essence, a voice said directly into Hanxi's mind. Not words, but meaning. You run with us now. Hunt with us. Dream with us.
"I'm not a wolf," Hanxi said.
No. You are more. The alpha stood, towering over him. You are bridge. Sun and moon. Human and beast. Cultivator and predator. You walk between worlds.
"I didn't ask for this."
No one asks for destiny. But it comes anyway. The alpha moved closer. You absorbed pack-brother's essence. His memories. His instincts. His strength. In our culture, this makes you pack. But it also makes you prey.
"What does that mean?"
You must prove worthy of the gift. Pass the trials. Show you deserve the power. The alpha's teeth gleamed in the moonlight. Or we reclaim it. We hunt you. We kill you. We take back what you were given.
"This is insane."
This is nature. The alpha's voice held neither malice nor mercy. The strong survive. The weak feed the strong. You are currently weak, moon-child. But you have potential. The pack watches. The pack tests. The pack decides.
The dream began to fragment, reality bleeding through.
Three trials await you, the alpha's voice echoed as everything dissolved. First: Prove you can hunt. Second: Prove you can protect. Third: Prove you understand sacrifice. Fail any trial, and we come for you.
The hunt has begun, moon-child.
Run well.
Hanxi woke standing outside his tent, fifty paces from the camp, barefoot and shivering in the pre-dawn cold.
He had no memory of leaving his bedroll. No memory of walking out here.
His hands were dirty, nails caked with soil as if he'd been digging. And there, in a neat line at his feet, were three dead rabbits. Their necks broken cleanly, professionally.
"Oh no," he whispered. "Oh no no no."
"Good hunting." Wei Feng appeared beside him, moving with the silence of a much higher-level cultivator. "Clean kills. Efficient. The wolf approves."
"I don't remember doing this."
"You were sleepwalking. Or sleep-hunting, technically." Wei Feng picked up one of the rabbits, examining it. "These will make a good breakfast. The cook will appreciate fresh meat."
"I killed them in my sleep?!"
"Your body did what needed to be done. Your conscious mind just wasn't invited to the party." Wei Feng looked at him seriously. "This is going to keep happening, Hanxi. The beast instincts are integrating. You need to either accept it and learn control, or reject it and lose the power. There's no middle ground."
"What if I hurt someone?"
"You won't. Predators don't attack pack members." Wei Feng gestured back at the camp. "You consider these people your pack now—Yue Lian, her father, even grumpy Xiaohua. The instinct to protect will override the instinct to hunt. Probably."
"Probably?!"
"Ninety percent sure." Wei Feng shrugged. "Maybe eighty. Look, cultivation is dangerous. You know this. The difference is your danger is... unorthodox."
Hanxi stared at the dead rabbits, at his dirty hands, at the muddy footprints leading from his tent to this spot. Part of him was horrified.
But another part—a growing part that spoke in wolf-howls and ran under moonlight—felt satisfied. Competent. Strong.
I hunted successfully, that part purred. I provided for the pack. This is good.
"No," Hanxi said aloud. "This isn't good. This is terrifying."
"It's both," Wei Feng said. "Welcome to dual-path cultivation. Everything is contradictions from now on." He picked up the other rabbits. "Come on. Let's get these cleaned and cooked. Then we talk about your training schedule."
"What training?"
"You think I'm going to let you bumble around until you accidentally eat someone?" Wei Feng snorted. "Kid, you need structure. Discipline. And most importantly, you need to learn how to be a functional predator before you become a dangerous one."
As they walked back to camp, Hanxi felt eyes on him. He looked up to see Yue Lian watching from her tent flap, her expression unreadable in the dim pre-dawn light.
How much had she seen? How much did she suspect?
She caught his gaze and smiled—but it wasn't her usual bright, cheerful expression. This smile was thoughtful, analytical. The smile of someone piecing together a puzzle.
Xiaohua appeared behind her, whispered something in her ear. Yue Lian nodded slowly, never breaking eye contact with Hanxi.
Then she retreated into her tent, the flap closing behind her with a definitiveness that felt like a door shutting.
"She knows," Hanxi said.
"She suspects," Wei Feng corrected. "There's a difference. As long as you don't confirm anything, you have plausible deniability." He glanced back at the tent. "But yeah, that girl is smarter than she lets on. I've been saying it for months—Master Yue's daughter plays at being an airheaded merchant princess, but she's been watching everything with very sharp eyes."
"Why would she pretend to be naive?"
"Same reason you pretended to be a weak cultivator for seven years—survival. People underestimate what they think is harmless." Wei Feng dumped the rabbits by the cooking fire. "In the merchant world, being seen as foolish is sometimes the best protection. Nobody plots against an idiot."
"But she's not an idiot."
"No. She's not. Which means whatever she's planning by bringing you to the capital, it's more complicated than 'I need a bodyguard.'" Wei Feng pulled out his pipe again. "My advice? Figure out what she really wants before you arrive at the Yue Clan compound. Because once you're on their territory, you're going to be playing a game with rules you don't understand."
The camp began to stir as the sun rose. Guards changed shifts. Fires were rekindled. The smell of cooking rice and now rabbit stew filled the air.
Hanxi helped with the morning chores, trying to act normal, trying not to think about the fact that he'd killed and cleaned three animals in his sleep.
But when he closed his eyes, he could still feel it—the satisfaction of the hunt, the rightness of providing for the pack, the wolf's approval settling into his bones like warmth.
First trial complete, a voice whispered at the edge of his mind. You can hunt. Good. Now comes the harder test.
Can you protect?
Hanxi's eyes snapped open, scanning the forest around them with suddenly heightened senses.
Something was watching them. Something large, and hungry, and getting closer.
The second trial was about to begin.