ARK SPIRIT

The silver gray beast core rested quietly in Hao Nhien’s palm, yet the light within it never truly stopped moving. Thin strands of radiance curled around one another in small spirals, gathering and dispersing like miniature storms sealed inside a world no larger than his fist.

Simply holding it, Hao Nhien could feel a faint chill at his fingertips.

He studied the beast core for a long time. A trace of hesitation passed through his eyes.

This was not merely the core of a third rank demonic beast.

It belonged to the Gray Shadow Wolf King.

An existence that had stood at the highest position within its entire population, awakened a powerful wind affinity, and learned to use that talent in ways far beyond ordinary beasts of the same rank. More importantly, when a powerful lifeform died, its beast core did not necessarily retain only spiritual qi and elemental affinity.

From the fluctuations he had encountered in objects carrying traces of the Divine Soul, Hao Nhien had learned one thing: anything deeply connected to a powerful being could preserve fragments of its former owner.

Instinct.

Ferocity.

Emotions strong enough to leave an imprint.

Even broken fragments of sensation too incomplete to truly be called memories.

To an ordinary Qi Condensation cultivator, such traces would usually amount to little more than chaotic residual fluctuations within the core, difficult to perceive clearly. Hao Nhien, however, cultivated the Soul Art. His Divine Soul was far more sensitive, which meant that when his spiritual awareness touched the core, he could reach deeper layers of those lingering imprints.

That was an opportunity.

It was also a danger.

If the Divine Soul imprint of the Gray Shadow Wolf King remained strong enough, Hao Nhien would not merely be observing it. The emotions, instincts, and fragments of intent left behind could also travel through that contact and affect his own Divine Soul in return.

His fingers tightened slightly around the core.

The opportunity before him was enormous.

So was the risk.

The battle between the two Beast Kings had shown him a doorway. The Gray Shadow Wolf King had not simply been faster than its opponent. The way it angled its body, shifted direction, and slipped past attacks stronger than itself followed a logic of its own.

The beast core in his hand might preserve the deepest trace of that method.

Hao Nhien drew a slow breath and straightened his posture.

“All right.”

His gaze settled on the silver currents inside the core.

“Show me what you left behind.”

A thread of spiritual awareness extended from within his body, passed through his palm, and touched the outer layer of the beast core.

Hao Nhien did not rush deeper.

He only made contact.

At first, nothing happened.

Then the core trembled faintly.

A sudden chill traveled back through his fingertips.

Hao Nhien’s Divine Soul shook.

The Cave Dwelling was still before his eyes, yet within his perception, everything seemed to dim beneath a veil of darkness. The sound of his own breathing grew distant, and even the sensation in his hand became indistinct.

Then the wind appeared.

Not real wind.

A sensation transmitted directly into his awareness.

At first there was only a single current. Then it split into hundreds, then thousands, twisting through one another until Hao Nhien felt as though he were standing in an ocean without water.

Only wind.

Black wind.

Silver wind.

Cold currents crossed like blades, spiraled together, dispersed, then immediately formed again somewhere else. There was no sky, no earth, and no clear direction. Woven through those movements were countless fragments of emotion.

Ferocity.

Bloodlust.

Vigilance.

The urge to pursue prey.

The pride accumulated through long years of standing above the entire pack.

And beneath all of that was one emotion so intense that it nearly overwhelmed the rest.

Loss.

Rage.

The need to pursue something to the very end.

Hao Nhien immediately thought of the silver-furred Gray Shadow Wolf that had died beneath the Tieu Dao Sword.

But he could not be certain.

What reached him was not a complete memory. There was no clear image of the silver wolf, no relationship, no identity being revealed to him. It was only an emotional scar left deep within the core, strong enough to be felt but too incomplete to explain its own origin.

A wave of savage instinct suddenly surged toward him.

For an instant, Hao Nhien felt as though his own teeth were sinking into the throat of prey, hot blood filling his mouth. The sensation was so vivid that his jaw in the outside world tightened involuntarily.

He immediately understood the danger.

He was no longer simply observing a beast core.

His spiritual awareness was in direct contact with the Divine Soul imprint left behind by a Beast King.

If he sank too deeply into those sensations, he could begin mistaking them for his own emotions. It might not kill him outright, but his Divine Soul could still be injured. Worse, the beast’s ferocity and hunting instincts might leave lingering effects, throwing his mind into chaos for a long time.

Hao Nhien did not go any deeper.

But he did not withdraw either.

He held onto a single point of clarity within his Sea of Consciousness.

His years of cultivating the Soul Art, together with the tempering he had already endured, had made his Divine Soul more stable than that of others at the same cultivation level. Even so, he had no intention of using that stability to forcibly crush the imprints before him.

He had only just learned how the Gray Shadow Wolf King fought.

It did not oppose a stronger force when there was no need to.

Another wave of rage swept toward him.

Hao Nhien did not try to drive it away. He recognized that the emotion was not his own, kept his awareness separate from it, and allowed it to slide past.

Two layers of killing intent twisted together and pulled his perception toward another direction. This time, Hao Nhien drew his spiritual awareness inward slightly and followed a weaker region of fluctuation beside them.

Do not resist.

Do not shatter it.

Simply avoid the strongest part.

After a while, he realized he was using the very thing he had learned from the Gray Shadow Wolf King to deal with the imprint it had left behind.

The corner of Hao Nhien’s mouth moved faintly.

But the thought had barely appeared when another wave of predatory instinct swept over him.

This time, he nearly followed it.

For a brief instant, pursuing, tearing apart, and killing prey felt like the most natural thing in the world.

Hao Nhien immediately thought of Tieu Lan.

Not some grand image.

Not a solemn promise.

Just the familiar sight of her standing beside him, one hand gripping the edge of his robe, and the look she always gave him whenever she realized he was about to do something dangerous again.

This text was taken from NovelPhoenix. Help the author by reading the original version there.

That was enough.

It reminded Hao Nhien who he was.

The awareness being pulled off course quickly stabilized.

He had no idea how much time had passed outside.

From his perspective, the chaotic currents of wind seemed endless.

Yet the longer he maintained his clarity, the more he began to notice something else.

Not every movement within the beast core was chaotic.

Deep beneath the ferocity, killing intent, and fragmented emotions lay a rhythm far more stable than the rest.

No rage.

No desire to hunt.

Only movement.

Hao Nhien carefully guided his spiritual awareness closer.

The silver currents in his perception became clearer. They never followed a fixed path. When one struck an obstacle, it divided. When two met, they could spiral around each other before separating again at completely different angles.

Sometimes they accelerated.

Sometimes they dispersed.

Sometimes most of their movement vanished simply because the angle of contact changed slightly.

Hao Nhien gradually forgot the chaotic emotions around him.

His attention settled entirely on the logic of those movements.

Speed was not simply about generating more force to drive the body forward. If the body met a current of air head on, much of that force became resistance. Change the angle, and the resistance dropped, while part of the flow could instead become assistance.

Change the area of contact, and the result changed.

Change the angle, and the direction of force changed.

The same current of air could hinder movement or contribute to it, depending entirely on how the body received it.

Basic knowledge from Hao Nhien’s former world surfaced in his mind.

Drag.

Flow.

Angle of contact.

Vortices.

Pressure differences.

In the past, he had understood those concepts intellectually.

Now he was experiencing them through the traces left by a creature that had lived with the wind for nearly its entire life.

The two kinds of understanding began to overlap.

Not by force.

Not by copying the Gray Shadow Wolf King’s wind affinity.

But by using knowledge he already possessed to understand why the movements he had witnessed were effective.

Hao Nhien remembered the days spent practicing footwork in the forest.

The times he had trained beneath flowing water.

The moment he had used Lam Phong’s shield to launch himself close to the ground.

The instant the Gray Shadow Wolf King slipped past the Python King’s strike.

The way its claws had bitten into the earth at an angle before each change in direction.

Experiences that had once seemed disconnected gradually began to form a line.

He did not suddenly understand everything.

But at least he now knew what he was looking for.

Time passed slowly.

For the next three days, Hao Nhien spent most of his time inside the Cave Dwelling.

He did not maintain deep contact with the beast core continuously. Whenever his Divine Soul began to feel strained or the savage imprints became too pronounced, he immediately withdrew his spiritual awareness, regulated his breathing, and rested before trying again.

Most of the core’s light remained intact.

Hao Nhien himself had not become noticeably stronger.

His cultivation was still at the eighth layer of Qi Condensation.

But the way he perceived movement had begun to change.

Inside the Cave Dwelling, he repeatedly practiced walking and turning, adjusting the angle of his feet, the position of his shoulders, his center of gravity, and the rhythm of his true qi. Movements that had once required the smallest pause before changing direction now began to connect more naturally.

The improvement was subtle.

Without careful attention, it might have been difficult to notice at all.

But Hao Nhien knew it was real.

On the third day, he stored the beast core and left the Cosmic Ark.

The stone cave outside remained dark and cold.

Wind rose from the gorge below while another current slid down from the high cliff. The two met near the cave entrance, causing dry leaves on the ground to spiral left before being pushed backward again.

Hao Nhien stood still and watched for a while.

Then he stepped outside.

He chose a section of cliff that was not too high for his first test.

At first, the result was almost no different from before.

Hao Nhien still had to use true qi. He still needed cracks in the rock for footholds, and his body had certainly not become lighter simply because he had understood a few principles about wind.

But when a current rose from below, he no longer instinctively fought against it.

His shoulder tilted.

His hips turned.

His foot changed angle against the rock.

Most of the gust slid past his body instead of striking his chest directly.

He needed slightly less strength to maintain his balance.

Hao Nhien continued climbing.

A crosswind suddenly swept across the cliff.

This time, he deliberately avoided holding himself rigid. His body yielded slightly with the current, and his right foot shifted to another foothold. Only when the gust weakened did he use true qi to push himself upward.

He gained less than a full step.

Still, Hao Nhien stopped.

His eyes brightened.

It worked.

The wind was not lifting him.

He was simply wasting less force while moving through it.

Hao Nhien tried several more times. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes he chose the wrong angle and had to grab a crack in the cliff in a hurry. Once, he misjudged the direction of a gust and slid nearly a zhang before managing to stop himself.

After a while, he paused on a rocky ledge.

It was not enough.

The wind here changed constantly, but it was too difficult to feel clearly through the body. He understood the basic principle, yet turning it into a combat instinct was still far beyond him.

His gaze shifted toward the foot of the mountain.

A cold stream rushed through narrow gaps between rocks.

The water struck stone, split to either side, met again behind the obstacle, and formed small vortices. In narrow sections, the current visibly accelerated. Where the channel widened, it slowed again.

Hao Nhien watched for a long time.

“Water flows too.”

His eyes narrowed slightly.

“If what I need to learn is how a current of force acts on the body, water may be easier to feel than wind.”

He did not treat the thought as a conclusion.

It was only a hypothesis.

There was only one way to know whether it was right.

Try it.

Before long, Hao Nhien reached the stream. He removed his outer robe, kept only a thin pair of trousers, and stepped into the water.

The cold immediately cut across his skin.

Hao Nhien sucked in a sharp breath.

“This water has no mercy at all.”

He kept going.

When the current reached nearly to his waist, Hao Nhien chose a relatively even section of riverbed and lowered himself.

The force of the water was far clearer than the wind.

It pressed against his chest, slid along his waist, curled around his thighs, and tugged hard at his calves. A small change in posture immediately altered the sensation.

Hao Nhien activated Clear Observation.

His awareness turned inward.

He did not search for anything outside his body. Instead, he focused on where the water met his skin, which muscles tightened without need, which joints were carrying pressure, and where his center of gravity was being pulled.

The first time he tilted his shoulder to let the current slide past, the pressure on his upper body decreased, but his feet were positioned poorly.

The water immediately dragged him sideways.

Hao Nhien lost his balance, rolled once, and struck his shoulder against a small rock.

He surfaced and spat out a mouthful of water, his expression darkening.

“No idea how profound this wind insight will become, but apparently the first step is drinking stream water.”

Then he returned to the same position.

The second time, Hao Nhien did not rush to resist the current.

He rotated his forearm slightly.

Drew his elbow closer to his body.

Relaxed his shoulder.

The pressure of the water immediately decreased.

He opened his arm a little.

The current caught his forearm and pulled his entire body sideways.

Hao Nhien paused.

Then tried again.

A different angle.

A different result.

He began changing small details one by one: the direction of his hands, the curve of his back, the position of his knees, the way his feet gripped the rocks, the tension in his abdomen, and the timing of each shift in balance.

Sometimes the current tilted him sideways.

Sometimes an eddy pulled one leg out from under him.

Once, just as he thought he had caught the proper rhythm, a current burst from a gap behind him and shoved his face straight into the water.

But the more Hao Nhien experimented, the clearer one thing became.

Avoiding all force was not necessarily better.

If he completely evaded the current, there was nothing left to borrow.

Receive too much, and he would be swept away.

Receive too little, and he would merely be struggling to remain still.

The important things were angle and timing.

He had to know which part of the force should be avoided, which part could be accepted, and which part could be turned into his own movement.

Clear Observation helped Hao Nhien notice details he had never paid attention to before. Sometimes his shoulder remained tense for no reason. Sometimes his right leg fought against the current when simply repositioning his foot would have been enough.

Some of his true qi was being wasted not because his cultivation method was weak, but because his body was fighting the surrounding force unnecessarily.

He began correcting those habits little by little.

His shoulders relaxed.

His waist shifted before his legs exerted force.

His hand opened when he wanted to catch the current, then drew back when he wanted to reduce resistance.

When an eddy appeared beside his waist, he did not try to remain rigid. He let his body turn with part of it, then used a foot against a crack in the rock to escape the strongest pull.

Again and again.

Mistake after mistake.

The chaos gradually began to reveal a pattern.

After a while, Hao Nhien removed his foot from its anchor point.

The current immediately carried him downstream.

Instead of fighting directly against it, he angled his body with the flow, pulled his elbows inward, and turned his hips.

His speed increased.

Just as he was about to strike a rock ahead, Hao Nhien opened his left arm to catch a diagonal current while lightly touching the edge of the stone with his right foot.

His body changed direction.

It was not graceful.

Nor was it astonishingly fast.

But he avoided the rock without having to stop himself with a powerful kick.

Hao Nhien laughed.

“This is the right direction.”

He continued experimenting.

Sometimes he let the current carry him.

Sometimes he used a foothold to slow down.

Sometimes he tried to move sideways across the flow and was dragged back, surfacing afterward in a fit of coughing.

Yet his failures were becoming less meaningless.

Each time he fell, he knew why.

Hao Nhien tried holding position in a stronger stretch of current.

Body angle alone was not enough.

He immediately found a crack beneath his feet, set the tip of one foot into it, then adjusted his posture so the currents from either side did not press him in the same direction.

The amount of true qi he needed dropped noticeably.

He held the position for several breaths before a stronger surge finally broke his balance.

Hao Nhien surfaced again.

This time he was not annoyed.

His smile only widened.

No miracle had occurred.

No silver wind surrounded his body.

Nothing new had formed within his Divine Soul.

It was simply an understanding slowly becoming a skill.

At last, Hao Nhien allowed the stream to carry him farther downstream.

He did not resist.

His body remained slightly angled, while his hands adjusted continuously to changes in the current. When the water pushed left, he did not always need to drag himself right. Sometimes it was better to yield for half a beat, then borrow another current ahead to change direction.

A boulder appeared.

He slipped around it.

A narrow gap opened ahead.

Hao Nhien drew in his shoulders, twisted his body, and slid through with barely any room to spare.

A current suddenly surged upward from below.

This time, he was ready.

The moment his foot touched a submerged stone, Hao Nhien did not kick directly against the water. He angled his body with the flow, waited for the current rising from the gap below to lift him, then released true qi through his leg in the same instant.

Three forces joined together.

His leg.

His true qi.

The current.

Hao Nhien broke through the surface and rose several zhang before landing on a rock near the bank.

Water scattered everywhere.

His hair was soaked.

His thin clothing clung to his body.

There was nothing remotely dignified about his appearance.

Yet Hao Nhien stood there laughing for a long time.

Not because he had created some divine ability.

Not because he had fully comprehended Wind Intent.

He had simply confirmed that the path he was following was real.

What he had learned from the Gray Shadow Wolf King did not apply only to wind.

The principle ran slightly deeper than that.

It was about recognizing the flow of force, avoiding the part that did not need to be opposed, and borrowing the part that could be used.

Hao Nhien looked down at the stream rushing between the rocks below.

“Wind…”

He smiled faintly.

“I’m beginning to understand you.”

Not completely.

Perhaps not even a tiny fraction.

But at least he had seen the doorway.

Hao Nhien rested for several breaths, then jumped back into the stream.

Before long, laughter echoed between the cliffs.

“If I can’t win, I run!”

“If I can’t run, I slide!”

A crosscurrent struck him before he had even finished speaking, nearly sending his head into a rock. Hao Nhien twisted aside just in time and laughed even harder.

“If sliding doesn’t work, I squeeze through the cracks!”

His laughter followed the water between the two cliff walls, light and full of excitement.

It was no longer the laughter of someone who had merely survived a deadly pursuit.

It was the laughter of someone who had just found a new path.