The invisible shield hovered silently two hundred meters above the evacuated city, giving a clear view of the deserted streets, circling military cordons, and the dark sewer grates below.
Ankit's divine sense swept through the underground network like an invisible tide.
He found it almost instantly.
Deep in a flooded main sewer tunnel, the beast coiled lazily in the filth, gnawing on a severed human hand with mechanical, crunching bites. Blood trailed in the murky water.
The scene was grotesque, but Ankit's expression didn't flicker—years of mental tempering and the Mortal Foundation Scripture had long since placed his emotions under iron control.
With a casual thought, space folded.
The massive creature vanished from the sewer and reappeared directly in front of the shield's platform—suspended in mid-air, dripping sewage and blood.
Inside the barrier, the air shifted.
Sanya yelped, stumbling back a step as the enormous beast materialized mere meters away. Her eyes went wide, heart pounding for a split second before her training kicked in—she steadied her breathing, then turned to glare at her brother.
"Brother! Warn me next time!" she hissed, though curiosity quickly overtook the anger.
Rudra showed no fear at all. He trotted forward, until he was almost touching the beast's scaled snout.
Ankit didn't stop him—the creature was completely locked in spatial bindings, every muscle frozen, unable even to twitch.
The beast thrashed internally, its multiple crimson eyes rolling in fury. It saw three warm, living meals floating before it—tender child, small canine, and the calm human at the center.
Savage hunger surged; it wanted to lunge, to tear, to devour. But its body refused to respond. Only its eyes moved, radiating pure bloodthirsty killing intent.
Ankit ignored the malice and began a thorough scan.
Ankit's divine sense delved deeper into the frozen beast, tracing the crude essence flows that pulsed through its serpentine body like rivers of raw, untamed power.
He had no preconceived framework for beast cultivation—only curiosity, sharpened by his perfected foundation. The energy wasn't refined like human essence flow; it was feral, instinct-driven, saturating muscles and scales in chaotic surges. Thick pathways ran along the spine and fins, widening at vital points, granting the creature its explosive speed and resilience.
Intrigued, he expanded his sense outward, sweeping the coastal waters 50 km away. There—coiled in a shallow ocean trench—another presence flickered, weaker but familiar. The same species: a juvenile beast, mutated from the common giant moray eel, though smaller at 12 meters, its scales less iridescent, its lures dimmer.
Space folded effortlessly. The second beast materialized beside the first, equally locked in stasis, its crimson eyes wide with primal confusion.
Now with both specimens side by side— the larger beast radiating denser essence, the smaller one more raw and unpolished—Ankit began a systematic comparison.
He probed the younger one first. Its instinct paths were simpler, narrower: essence drawn in through gills and wounds, hardening basic structures without much branching. Pure survival—bloodthirsty drives to hunt and flee, cunning enough for ambushes but no deeper layers.
Physical stats felt equivalent to a human Stage 1 Substage 2 cultivator: around 1-ton strength, defenses shrugging off conventional arms, bursts up to 400 km/h.
Shifting to the older beast, the differences sharpened. Pathways had widened, forked into secondary channels along the limbs and jaw, allowing for berserk surges and enhanced coordination. The essence was thicker, more saturated, pushing power to 5 tons, 700 km/h speeds, and defenses against early Magic Energy tech. Bloodlust was amplified, with grudge-holding instincts that bordered on primitive memory.
But was there more granularity? Ankit refined his scan, tracing transitional markers. Between these two, he sensed no distinct intermediate substages— the progression felt continuous, like a gradual thickening of paths from Substage 1 to 2. Yet hints emerged: faint midway thickenings in the older beast's spine suggested a potential Substage 3 ahead, where paths might stabilize fully, condensing toward a proto-core.
Sanya watched in fascination, her initial anger forgotten. "Brother, Why have you suddenly taken this beast? And they're the same kind? The small one looks... hungrier."
Ankit nodded absently, his mind mapping the feral system. "Just for research purpose. And these beasts are from same species. The ocean vents birthed them. This path is instinct-pure—no Energy refinement, just raw evolution through killing and absorption. Fascinating..., right?"
Rudra circled both, looking curiously at the frozen forms.
Ankit's exploration continued, unraveling the beasts' essence flows thread by thread.