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Translator: Tamon
When Xu Hei woke up, he felt his entire body in pain from all the wounds.
Two pigs tried gnawing on his scales, but all they did was make a grinding sound, giving up in the end and retreating to a corner.
“Ugh, it hurts!” Xu Hei spasmed from the agony.
Never in his conscious life had he suffered such heavy injuries. His body was close to giving its last breath, his meridians lay broken, and his demon core was no more.
It was a miracle he even woke up at all.
He strained to crawl to the side, away from the pigs.
“My demon core is gone.”
Xu Hei almost burst into tears. The source of his cultivation was gone.
But then he jerked. In the demon core’s place he now had a small black cauldron.
It was round, with eight legs, and covered in cryptic markings around the carving of a dragon circling it and eating its tail. The dragon looked so lifelike.
It was that Demon God Cauldron thing the youth spoke of.
[Why can I see through me?] He felt even weirder as this new sense extended ten meters around him even with his eyes closed.
It was like a bird’s-eye view, giving him omnipresence in this limited area.
“Weird.”
Xu Hei shook his muddled head. This wasn’t some dream but reality. The same way Chen Fan gazed at him, so too could he spy on others.
“Divine Sense?” A notion came to Xu Hei’s mind.
He had no clue how he developed a Divine Sense. The only ones he knew to have it were cultivators of legend.
Something else came to his mind.
It was the way of cycling True Qi. Every step was precise, getting an odd sense of familiarity from it.
“It’s that youth’s cultivation method!”
Xu Hei’s eyes lit up. While uncertain if it worked, he knew that it could heal him.
Xu Hei was a snake of action, doing whatever he set his mind to. He focused and followed the cultivation method.
Slowly, but surely, the world’s threads of Spiritual Energy drifted around him, entwining and becoming thicker as they entered his body.
It was the same process Chen Fan used to heal himself last night.
He felt tingling all over, soothing his pain. Xu Hei took a deep breath and followed the next step. Spiritual Energy entered his body, cycling through it and mending his flesh.
An incense stick’s worth of time later, Xu Hei opened his eyes and looked within.
“It’s healing me!” Xu Hei gasped, his heart racing.
Out in the wild, heavy wounds meant death. But now he had a healing cultivation method. The thought of getting a new life got him all excited.
He also had the nagging feeling that healing wasn’t its main focus, but increasing one’s cultivation.
By breathing in Qi, his Spiritual Energy grew and made him feel nimbler, just like when he ate some spiritual plant.
“That’s odd; why can I store Spiritual Energy when my demon core is broken?”
Xu Hei was puzzled why he now had a cauldron for demon core. Did it replace his core?
He wiggled to push the thing out, but it wouldn’t budge.
“Humanity truly embodies the spirit of all things, for even a random youth to be so incredible. I best stay away from them.” Xu Hei vowed to himself, rushing out of the pigpen.
But just as he was about to, one of the three remaining pigs caught his eye, no point stopping now—and gulped the fattest one before leaving.
He rushed through the wilderness and into the first cave he found to sleep.
…
Over the last three days, Xu Hei had been focused on that mystical cultivation method. He had long since healed and even got rid of many impurities, piled up high behind him. Oh, and he also shed his skin.
He was now certain. The cultivation method healed but also improved his body while cleansing his marrow.
His only complaint was shrinking down to just two meters.
“How am I supposed to swallow pigs now, when they’re as big as me?” Xu Hei whined.
A snake ate prey bigger than it, up to a point.
On the upside, he was much faster and stronger now. He could stretch many times his length and was quite nimble. That brought Xu Hei some comfort.
His recent brush with death warned him to stay away from human settlements and only hunt critters nearby.
One particular day, Xu Hei woke up finding new things in his mind.
The cultivation system!
Human cultivators went through the Qi Refining Stage, Foundation Establishment Stage, and Golden Core Stage.
Demons had complementary levels, Awareness Stage, Foundation Establishment Stage, and Demon Core Stage.
“I’m at the peak 1st layer of Awareness Stage, similar to a human at peak 1st layer of Qi Refining Stage.”
Xu Hei muttered to himself at this newfound knowledge out of the blue.
Ever since he gulped the human pill and Daoist, he’d always get flashes of knowledge now and then. [But this one feels like it came from that youth.]
He drew this conclusion due to the recent dreams and foreign memories he had about Chen Fan.
However, one thing still had him perplexed.
“I lost my demon core, just like a human lost his Dantian, the garbage they always speak of, so why can I still cultivate?”
Xu Hei looked within, at the Demon God Cauldron.
A hazy Spiritual Energy gathered within, the same Spiritual Energy he absorbed.
“It really replaced my demon core!”
Xu Hei was astounded, and no amount of thinking brought any kind of feasible explanation as to why. Not even the human memories.
Alas, this was not the time for deep thinking; something else, more pressing, required his attention. Hunger.
The cultivation method absorbed Spiritual Energy but it wasn’t enough to sustain himself. His body needed real food.
Cultivation didn’t replace a meal and had to go on the prowl.
Xu Hei dragged his smaller body outside and overlooked the village below. He shook his head and turned back, climbing higher up the mountain.
Humanity was too dangerous and he would rather starve than go for another pig.
Xu Hei spread his Divine Sense to scan for potential prey.
In the entire afternoon, he only got a bird egg, a squirrel, and a lynx to show for. He even chased a hare down the mountain.
It was more like a snack—a third of a fat, juicy pig.
Xu Hei needed bigger meals, not scraps. He needed to go big game hunting.
Taking another look at the foot of the mountain, he spotted a lush watermelon patch as far as the eye could see.
The farmhouse below was a far way from the nearest village.
Xu Hei saw something moving; a black boar went in and gorged on a watermelon.
It wasn’t that large, only a meter and a half—the perfect size to fill Xu Hei’s belly.
It put Xu Hei in a bind—the choice of hunting his very first large, wild game in his life as a snake.
“Will it be dangerous hunting boars?”
Xu Hei hesitated, wanting to avoid anything too large unless he was desperate. His growing appetite, however, put him in this situation. This was the only way to survive.
“Going with the cultivation system, I am at the peak 1st layer of Awareness Stage. The boar has yet to enter it, making it far weaker than me. Logically, I should trample it!”
Xu Hei’s mind was filled with thoughts. This was his greatest advantage compared to other beasts: a mind capable of conscious thought. He planned to make the most of it.
“Let’s take it slow, just in case.” Xu Hei’s mind was made to risk it big and hunt this boar.
He slithered to the edge of the watermelon patch and picked a rock with his tail.
He inched closer, with utmost caution, and picked rocks in his mouth on the way.
His strength was more than enough to finish a boar. He was once a Snake King who ate plenty of people for heaven’s sake, not to mention boars! But thinking back, he realized he was damn lucky.
Since he could think, he made sure to put caution first, second, and third. He was scared of pain.
The boar would react by stomping and using its tusks—scary, but not as scary as a human.
Ten meters from the boar, Xu Hei raised its neck and opened its mouth, focusing his Qi within his throat.
Pff!
The stone shot like a bullet, smashing the boar’s head.
It plopped down, stiff, and blood leaked from an indentation in its head.
Xu Hei cheered. He smashed its skull in one blow.
Coming closer, he raised the rock at his tail and kept slamming it down, pulverizing the boar’s head until it stopped bleeding and breathing.
Spitting out the last rock in his mouth, Xu Hei was relieved.
“It should be dead now, though it might twitch and come alive.”
Xu Hei didn’t feel particularly safe, so he broke its limbs and bones just in case it came alive.
Certain at last, he sized it up.
It was perfect for his size to swallow.
“They say boar meat is stringier than pig meat. I hope it lasts longer.”
Xu Hei opened its maw and gulped it down.
The rough fur and hard skin would take a long time to digest, keeping hunger at bay for that much longer.
Xu Hei started with the head and was soon left with just its hind hooves outside to devour.
As the boar entered his belly, he felt warm inside as the boar meat was digested and turned into energy that made him feel full at last.
As he finished swallowing it, Xu Hei gave a sudden cough and spitted out a crystal the size of an egg, a demon core.
“Is this the boar’s demon core?”
Xu Hei’s scales stood on end, his eyes big as saucers.
[How can wild animals have demon cores?]
Looking closer at the blood on the ground, Xu Hei’s mind finally came to the right conclusion: “It was a demon boar?!”
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