The first thing Gluttonfang felt was wetness. Cold. Familiar. As if the lake itself remembered him and was hugging his many-furred body like an old friend.
He opened his dozen eyes, slowly adjusting to the murky underwater gloom. For a brief moment, he thought he was still in the strange illusion-realm inside the shell, the one where dreams whispered and time lost meaning. But then his stomach grumbled in the real way, his lungs yearned for fresh air, and he knew: he was back.
Back in the lake.
The same one he'd cannonballed into years ago, belly first, like a fool. Back then he'd laughed as he sank, until he found the spiral shell resting at the bottom—and touched it.
And everything changed.
This time, the shell still lay there. Perfect. Mysterious. Waiting.
Gluttonfang narrowed his eyes, his breath bubbling up in thick gurgles. Carefully, he reached out one massive paw and tapped the shell.
Nothing happened.
No suckage. No weird pulling sensation. No dream-voices whispering prophecies about his gut size.
He tapped it again.
Still nothing.
"Huh," he mumbled underwater. "Outta juice?"
Then he stuffed the shell in his ring with a wide grin on his face.
He swam up, bubbles fizzing behind him.
The surface air hit him like a slap—crisp, fresh, too clean.
He squinted at the forest canopy around the lake. Things felt... different. The trees had aged. Some had fallen. The colors were wrong. The energy in the air, the subtle qi vibrations—it was off.
He stretched his limbs, now stronger, bulkier than before. His body had changed in that world. Grown. Matured. But now, his mind? It was a mess.
He reached out with his senses.
Nothing.
No faint boar-snorts. No snickering from the twins. No heavy breathing from Biggut. No rumbling snores from Tuskin.
He frowned.
"Did they leave the forest? Did they die? What happened here while I was gone??"
His paws carried him before his brain caught up. Each step heavy, kicking up leaves that hadn't been disturbed in years. The forest remembered him. But the scent trails of his brothers? Gone.
The place where they once lived—his boar brothers and himself—was a ruin.
Crooked berry stains had long dried into crusty scars on the ground. Shards of old clay mugs and hollowed-out gourds lay half-buried in dust. Their favorite lounging log was rotten, crumbled into mulch.
He stood there, heart thudding.
Abandoned.
"No... no, no, no..."
He searched the perimeter. Dug through the old drinking stash pit. Empty.
Seven years. He'd been gone for seven whole years.
Panic clawed at his chest.
Next stop: the Steel Jaw Hippo.
He sprinted through the forest—roots cracking beneath his claws, bushes flattening in his wake—until he reached the hippo's lair.
But there was no hippo.
Only destruction.
Scorch marks, gouged boulders, blood stains half-washed by time. A fight had happened here. A big one.
He sniffed. Recognized the faint scent of Steel Jaw's blood... and others he didn't know.
His heart sank further.
Kong's territory? Same deal. Trees were torn in half. Stone slabs shattered. The scent of violence long faded but undeniable.
Skyrazor?
She never had a permanent place. A true assassin, always perching, never nesting. But she, too, was gone. Her presence, once sharp and ever-watchful, was missing from the skies.
He stood alone in the center of the Verdant Wilds.
Surrounded by ghosts.
His lips parted, a soft growl escaping.
"What... the actual... gut-rumbling HELL is going on?!"
Shit was going down the drain.
And Gluttonfang had no idea where to even begin.
When Gluttonfang was in deep thought, the sorrow in his chest stewing into a slow, venomous rage, something stirred in the distance. He paused mid-step, pupils tightening. A presence had entered the Verdant Wilds.
No, not one—two.
He sniffed the air, let his eyes close for just a moment.
A human. No, *humans*. His fur bristled.
"What is he doing here?" he growled, as the first aura made itself clear. The man's scent and spiritual pressure were all too familiar.
**Elder Sun Jin.**
But there was another. One he didn't recognize.
"Who's the guy with him though...?" he muttered, his voice laced with suspicion.
He didn't bother hiding his presence. Every muscle in his legs tensed before he launched himself forward with such speed that the air howled in his wake.
---
**Two Years Ago – Elder Sun Jin's Perspective**
Sun Jin had just come out of seclusion, veins flushed with a new technique of his own making. Though his skin still bore the creases of age, his cultivation had taken a leap—he now stood at the very edge of Core Emergence's late stage.
With renewed strength, the first place he visited was the Verdant Wilds. It had been his habit, after all. He'd return there from time to time, to study the beasts, learn from the forest, and more importantly—to find that damned talking wolf.
But the wolf was nowhere to be seen.
He searched every ravine, every valley, even the hidden spots only he and the wolf knew about. Nothing.
When he returned to the Nail Strom Sect and reported the beast's disappearance, most elders were overjoyed. The walking anomaly was finally gone. They toasted their tea cups and shared smug glances.
Zaruk, the sect leader, said nothing. He merely nodded as if surprised, though Sun Jin knew better. The man was never surprised.
But what truly worried Sun Jin was not the wolf's absence. It was what the sect did *after*.
In a closed-door elder meeting, they put forth a motion—claim the Verdant Wilds for the sect.
Most agreed. The land was fertile, rich in spiritual essence, brimming with beasts and rare herbs.
Only Sun Jin objected.
"Going against the will of that wolf will bring us ruin," he had warned. "We have seen a fraction of what he can do."
But his voice was the only dissent.
The sect did not attack immediately. No, they disguised it in the form of an *event*.
A cultivation competition. A great hunt.
They called it the **Hill Hunt**.
All inner disciples, core disciples, and even some outer disciples were allowed to participate. The rules were simple: kill any beast in the Verdant Wilds, harvest their cores and parts, and the one with the most valuable loot would be rewarded.
Spiritual points, resources, even manual access to high-grade techniques—rewards were rich.
It was a blood harvest in disguise.
The forest trembled as disciples flooded in. The skies howled as beasts cried out in resistance.
Three of the most powerful beasts—Steel Jaw Hippo, Bronze Kong, and the hawk Skyrazor—mounted a counterattack. They fought savagely, their roars echoing across the entire beast territory.
Sun Jin never forgot that week. It was carnage.
They killed *hundreds* of disciples. Core disciples fell, inner sect elites died screaming. But numbers... numbers were the sect's strength.
The beasts lost.
Some of the remaining beasts fled, running deeper into the Foggy Lands. Verdant Wilds, after all, was only the border. The true Beast Territories stretched far beyond—into the deeper wildernesses that no human dared tread without careful planning.
Some beasts became slaves, forcefully subdued into contracts. Others were cut down as trophies.
It was a hollow victory.
The damage was far greater than expected. Too many disciples died, and retaliation from beasts in nearby zones became frequent. The Nail Strom Sect's reputation took a hit, though they tried to spin it as a glorious conquest.
Even then, they did not fully occupy the Wilds. They feared the beasts in the deeper wilderness would retaliate.
So, they took a different approach.
They began isolating the area.
Grand formations were set up on the borders of the Verdant Wilds. Protective, suppressive, and binding arrays meant to cut the Wilds from the rest of the beast territory. Over the next two years, slowly but surely, these wards began to solidify.
And they did not act alone.
They merged hands with a neighboring sect—**Spirit Ascendence Sect**. In exchange for help and shared spiritual engineering, they divided the Wilds between themselves: half to Nail Strom, half to Spirit Ascendence.
It was a slow bleed of territory, resources, and life.
Now, two years after the initial conquest, Sun Jin returned again—this time not alone. Walking beside him was Wao Long, a robed elder from Spirit Ascendence Sect, clad in pale green silk and silver-capped boots. A jade fan hung from his hip, untouched.
They came to inspect the final stage of the formation arrays, to finalize the start of the construction phase. Once complete, the Verdant Wilds would be sealed off from the deeper beast territories, fully domesticated for human cultivation and resource harvesting.
Back to the present:
Elder Sun Jin's feet stepped onto the familiar soil of the Verdant Wilds with the cautious grace of a seasoned cultivator. His robes fluttered with each step, his senses attuned to every shift in air, every whisper of the wind. Beside him, Elder Wao Long of the Spirit Ascendence Sect fanned himself lazily, looking unimpressed by the ancient forest.
But something felt different. The trees seemed to sway with unnatural eagerness. The ground pulsed with restrained anticipation. The air tasted old and sweet, like a smile stretched too wide.
Sun Jin paused.
"…It's vibrant," he murmured, his eyes narrowing.
Wao Long raised an eyebrow. "What?"
Before Sun Jin could reply, he felt it—a presence, no, a storm. A roaring, sprinting storm of raw beastial force. An aura burst forth in the distance, charging toward them at such speed that the wind screamed with pressure, sending a concussive ripple through the trees.
"Do you feel it?" Wao Long asked, immediately gripping the ornate fan that hung at the back of his belt. He opened it with a snap, the lazy demeanor vanishing from his face.
"I do," Sun Jin replied, furrowing his brow. A faint vein surfaced between his eyebrows, tension rippling in his shoulders.
Wao Long looked over with concern. "And?"
Sun Jin stared into the direction of the incoming aura. "Maybe… I know who it is. But something's off. This aura—it's wilder. Heavier. As if the beast I knew evolved into something… else."
"You better explain before I punch the answers out of you," Wao Long muttered.
But before another word could pass, the aura slammed into the clearing.
A blur. A crack of the earth. A feral howl in the air.
Then he landed.
A wolf—no, a titan in the shape of a wolf—stood before them. Towering at five meters, his presence bent the air. He stood upright on two legs, his muscled frame crackling with green lightning. Dozens of closed eyes marked his limbs and sides, but the only two open ones stared directly at them—glowing with venomous disgust.
His many mouths curved in disdain. One on his left shoulder snorted. The central mouth on his face grinned.
"How dare you ste—" Wao Long began.
But the wolf raised a paw, and the sheer pressure of it shut him up mid-sentence.
"Elder Sun Jin," the wolf said. "I remember telling you never to step foot in the Verdant Wilds again. And if I remember correctly… I'm never wrong. Did you suffer some memory loss after the beating I gave you?"
The grin widened.
Wao Long blinked. "Beating? What beating? What is he talking about?"
"Shut it, Wao Long," Sun Jin snapped, not looking at him. "This doesn't concern you or your sect."
"How dare you talk to me like that? Wasn't it your sect that came begging to us for help in setting up formations?" Wao Long growled.
The wolf's ears perked. His head tilted.
"…Formations?" he asked, voice low.
"Yeah. What, you don't even know about the isolation formations? You beasts are really as stupid as they say—"
"Isolation… Formations… Help…" the wolf repeated the words slowly, almost tenderly.
Then, his voice dropped to a still calmness, the kind that comes before a hurricane.
"Let me ask a question," he said. "Did either of you launch an attack on the Verdant Wilds while I was gone?"
Wao Long crossed his arms, unaware of the danger. "Hey, we just helped them with the formations. They were the ones who launched some event in the name of 'training disciples.' Called it the 'Hill Hunt' or something. They went wild in the Wilds. Killed and tamed beasts, harvested cores, all that mess. Honestly, not my business."
The silence that followed felt like the world holding its breath.
Gluttonfang didn't speak.
Didn't blink.
Didn't move.
He simply stared at them, every part of him radiating pressure. His claws twitched. His tails lashed behind him. The many eyes on his body began to blink open one by one, revealing the madness and fury hiding beneath the surface.
Sun Jin stepped back.
"Wao Long…" he said quietly.
"Yeah?"
"You just dug a grave. Not just for yourself… but for both of our sects."