Chương 29: Chapter 28

The Ironspike Boar released a deafening scream. One rear leg kicked uselessly against the ground. The other barely moved. Ling Tian's eyes sharpened. The strike had done serious damage. Probably spinal. Not enough to assume the fight was over. The boar twisted its head toward him with shocking speed. Ling Tian retreated another step just as one tusk swept through the space where his thigh had been. Even half-disabled, the beast remained dangerous. That corrected another assumption. Good.

Ling Tian would appreciate the lesson after it stopped trying to disembowel him. The boar heaved itself forward using its front legs. Its rear half dragged across the stone. Metallic bristles rose along its back. A spiritual pressure rolled outward. Ling Tian froze for half a heartbeat. There. That was new. The beast's Qi had been present from the beginning, but now the signature tightened abruptly around its hide and shoulders. Active response. Ling Tian backed away.

He had wondered whether Spirit Beasts could consciously use their internal energy. Question answered. The dark-gray fur along the boar's neck seemed to stiffen. Earth Qi gathered beneath the skin in a dense layer, not elegant or refined, but instinctive. Armor. Probably. Ling Tian adjusted his grip. The first strike had landed before that reinforcement fully concentrated. That might explain why it had penetrated as deeply as it did. The animal snarled and pulled itself forward again.

Ling Tian did not approach the head. He circled. Slowly. The boar tried to rotate with him using its front legs, but the damaged spine and useless hindquarters made the movement clumsy. Even so, its tusks covered a dangerous arc. Ling Tian watched carefully. This was no longer a contest of speed. It was positioning. The beast knew it was injured. That made it more dangerous, not less. Ling Tian kept outside the tusks and looked for another opening. The back was reinforced now. The skull was worse.

The ribs beneath the front shoulder seemed less heavily protected, but getting close enough to strike there meant entering the range of the head. Not ideal. The neck? Also armored. Ling Tian's eyes moved toward the damaged section behind the shoulders. The first strike had already compromised it. Better to continue attacking the known failure point than improvise a completely new experiment. He waited. The boar dragged itself another half-meter forward. Its head turned. Ling Tian shifted left. The tusks followed.

He shifted back. The animal corrected again. Its front legs were strong enough to keep the upper body mobile, but every rotation pulled painfully against the ruined rear half. Ling Tian could see the strain now. The breathing had changed. Harsh. Wet. One front hoof slipped. The beast's head dipped. Opening. Ling Tian moved. He closed the distance from the rear quarter, well outside the tusks, and raised the bronze weapon. The boar reacted faster than expected. Its torso twisted.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version. One metallic bristle tore across Ling Tian's sleeve. The fabric split instantly. Something sharp scraped his upper arm. Ling Tian recoiled. A thin line of blood appeared beneath the torn cloth. He stared at it for less than a second. The bristles were not decorative. Useful. Later. The boar tried to turn farther. It could not. Ling Tian reset his stance. Second strike. Same location.

This time the weapon landed slightly lower. The bronze scabbard drove into the damaged back with a dense crunch. The boar's front legs collapsed. Its head struck the stone. Ling Tian felt another violent recoil travel through his arms, but his structure remained intact. The beast convulsed once. Then again. Ling Tian moved backward immediately. He did not assume death because the target had stopped standing. That was how people became cautionary examples. The boar's chest still moved. Shallowly.

Its front hoof scraped once against the slate. Ling Tian waited. Ten seconds. The breathing weakened. Another ten. The spiritual pressure surrounding the hide began dispersing. That mattered more. The dense, instinctive reinforcement that had gathered around the animal lost cohesion, bleeding slowly back into the surrounding environment. Ling Tian kept the bronze weapon raised. A minute passed. No movement. He expanded perception carefully and examined the body. The biological signature remained. Fading.

The concentrated spiritual activity did not return. Ling Tian approached from behind. Slowly. He stopped well outside the tusks and struck one rear hoof with the tip of the bronze scabbard. Nothing. He moved closer. Tapped the flank. No response. Only then did Ling Tian lower the weapon. His breathing was much harder than he expected. Not from exhaustion alone. Adrenaline. His hands were trembling. Ling Tian looked at them. That was good. He had been afraid as he should have been.

The absence of panic during the fight did not mean the threat had been imaginary. He examined the shallow cut across his upper arm. The wound was narrow and already slowing. A bristle had barely touched him. Had the full ridge struck his torso during the charge, the result would have been considerably less educational and probably fatal. Ling Tian looked down at the enormous carcass. The first clear conclusion arrived. Spirit Beasts were not simply oversized animals.

The boar had used Qi instinctively to reinforce its body. Its movement had exceeded what its size suggested. Its hide was stronger than mundane tissue. And even after a strike powerful enough to cripple its spine, it had remained capable of fighting. That was important. The second conclusion was less comfortable. Ling Tian had killed it. He stood quietly for a moment. The previous month's training had involved dead trees, rocks, and imagined opponents. This was different. The Ironspike Boar had been alive.

Territorial. Dangerous. Now it was not. Ling Tian did not feel guilty in the way he might have expected. The animal had charged him. He had chosen to remain instead of retreating earlier, certainly, but by the final moment the fight had become real enough that hesitation would have been lethal. Still, satisfaction did not erase the weight of the result. His strength was no longer theoretical. It could kill things that ordinary people considered monsters.

Ling Tian rested one end of the bronze weapon against the ground. That deserved to go into the ledger. Not because the fact was impressive. Because capability changed risk. He could now make decisions that would have been impossible a month ago. Which meant he could also make much larger mistakes. The boar's corpse provided compelling visual evidence. Ling Tian exhaled slowly. Then the practical part of his mind resumed control. The fight had been loud. Very loud.

The first impact alone had echoed across the surrounding ridges, while the beast's screams had carried even farther. Ling Tian looked toward the ravines. His spiritual perception widened. Nothing immediate. That did not mean nothing had heard. Crimson Peak contained other Spirit Beasts. Some are definitely stronger. He had already detected enough unusual signatures during the past month to know the upper mountain did not belong to this boar alone. Remaining here indefinitely would be stupid.

His eyes dropped to the carcass. Unfortunately, several hundred kilograms of valuable meat had just become available. Ling Tian experienced a deeply inconvenient conflict between operational security and not wasting food. He crouched beside the boar. The size was absurd up close. Its shoulder stood nearly level with his chest even while lying on its side, and the dark hide beneath the coarse hair felt almost like thick leather. Ling Tian pressed one thumb against it. Dense. Much tougher than ordinary pig skin.

The metallic bristles were worse. He touched one cautiously near the base. Hard. Not literally iron. At least he did not think so. But rigid enough that using bare hands carelessly would be a poor decision. The body itself contained a faint residual spiritual signature. Ling Tian frowned. That was worth investigating. Later. Preferably somewhere without the smell of fresh blood announcing dinner to the entire mountain. He retrieved the small iron knife from his belt.

The tool had originally been meant for roots, rope, and ordinary food preparation. Today it was about to receive an aggressive expansion of responsibilities. Ling Tian selected a section beneath the belly where the hide appeared thinner. He cut. The knife barely entered. He increased pressure. The blade scraped uselessly along the skin. Ling Tian stopped. Of course. A Spirit Beast capable of surviving fights on the upper mountain had apparently not developed supermarket packaging for his convenience.

He looked at the bronze club. Then the knife. Then back at the boar. There were limits to diversification. He tried again, this time pressing the knife into the opening created where the first impact had torn skin near the back. Better. Once the edge passed beneath the hide, the tissue separated more easily. Ling Tian worked carefully. He did not attempt to channel Earth Qi directly into the cheap iron blade.

That interaction remained untested, and using unknown spiritual reinforcement on a tool beside his fingers felt like an unnecessary complication. Instead, he relied on strength. Slow pressure. Controlled cuts. The process was unpleasant. Hot blood coated his hands. The smell intensified. Ling Tian discovered that killing a large animal was considerably less tidy than action movies had suggested. Another useful correction. He prioritized what he could carry. Fat first. High-density energy.

Then the cleaner strips of muscle along the lower flank and rear quarter. He avoided the organs because he did not know which parts of a Spirit Beast were safe to eat. That question deserved research before experimentation. He also cut away several smaller sections of hide where the material had not been damaged. Potential value. Unknown. Take samples. Ask Auntie Mei indirectly if possible.

By the time Ling Tian had filled half the gathering sack, the weight would already have been ridiculous for the body he possessed a month ago. Now it remained manageable. He continued. Then his spiritual perception caught something unusual inside the carcass. Ling Tian stopped cutting. The signal was small. Dense. Not located in the Dantian. He shifted his awareness deeper into the torso. There. Near the center of the chest, behind thick muscle and bone, sat a compact concentration of Earth-aspected Qi.

Far denser than the surrounding tissue. Ling Tian stared at the body. A beast core? The original boy had heard the term. Most commoners in Hua City had. Spirit Beasts sometimes formed condensed cores that cultivators and alchemists valued for reasons Ling Tian did not properly understand. The memories were vague enough that he refused to assume every Spirit Beast possessed one. This one apparently possessed something. Ling Tian considered the time. Then the potential value. He sighed.

"Of course you put the expensive part behind the ribs." The boar remained unsympathetic. Ling Tian widened the existing cut and worked toward the chest. It took considerably longer than extracting the meat. The bones were dense enough that the iron knife accomplished almost nothing against them. Eventually Ling Tian used the end of the bronze scabbard as a lever, opening the damaged rib structure carefully rather than simply smashing everything apart. The compact Qi signal became clearer. He reached inside.

His fingers closed around something hard. Ling Tian pulled it free. A small brown object rested in his bloody palm. Roughly the size of the end joint of his thumb. It was not luminous. It did not hum dramatically. It looked almost disappointingly like a polished stone. Spiritual perception disagreed. Dense Metal Qi sat inside it in a compact, stable pattern unlike anything Ling Tian had handled before. He did not absorb it. That decision required no debate.

Unknown concentrated spiritual material extracted from an animal corpse did not belong inside his meridians. Ling Tian wrapped the core in a piece of clean cloth and placed it in an inner pocket. Research item. Potentially valuable. Definitely not food.