Chapter 269 - Bloodlines and Endless Hunger

Chapter 269: Chapter 269 - Bloodlines and Endless Hunger

Lu Canghai remained silent for a while after mentioning the final three realms.

The memories seemed heavier than those of the Devas and Asuras.

Su Bai noticed the difference immediately.

When his master spoke about the Asuras, there had still been irritation in his voice, along with the faint exasperation of someone remembering enemies who had been troublesome but understandable.

That feeling was gone now.

Lu Canghai slowly rubbed the edge of his teacup.

"The last three were harder for us to deal with, but not necessarily because every creature among them was stronger."

Su Bai waited.

"We could understand the Devas even when their arrogance made you want to hit them, and the Asuras were not particularly difficult to figure out either."

A faint smile appeared on Lu Canghai’s face.

"If an Asura wanted your mountain, he would usually tell you before trying to take it."

Su Bai’s mouth twitched.

"At least they were considerate enough to announce the robbery."

Lu Canghai chuckled.

"That was about the extent of their consideration."

The brief amusement disappeared.

"The others were different. Their bodies were different, their methods were different, and even the way they became stronger did not resemble human cultivation closely enough for us to understand at first."

He looked toward the distant clouds beyond Clear Cloud Peak.

"The Animal Realm was the easiest among those three."

Su Bai raised an eyebrow.

Considering his master’s expression earlier, that was not particularly reassuring.

Lu Canghai seemed to notice.

"I said easiest. I did not say easy."

"That sounds more believable."

Lu Canghai ignored the comment and continued.

"The creatures that came from the Animal Realm were mostly spirit beasts and members of countless beast races. Some could speak. Some possessed intelligence comparable to humans, particularly those with old bloodlines, but many relied far more heavily on instinct than we did."

Unlike human cultivators, they rarely fought alone.

Lu Canghai remembered the first beast tide he had seen cross one of the passages. There had been no formation flags, shouted commands, or complicated signals between them.

They had simply moved together.

A howl from one beast had changed the direction of an entire group.

When one charged, those beside it already seemed to know where to move.

When one retreated, another took its place before the gap could be exploited.

"It was strange at first," Lu Canghai said. "Individually, many of them were easier to deceive than human cultivators. Put thirty of them together and suddenly trying to separate one from the pack became an excellent way to get surrounded."

Su Bai understood.

"They relied on instinct."

"Instinct and bloodline."

Lu Canghai nodded.

"That was the foundation of most of their cultivation, at least among the creatures we encountered. Humans care about Spirit Roots. Those beasts cared much more about what blood ran through them."

The purer and stronger the bloodline, the greater the potential.

A common spirit beast could spend centuries struggling to reach a height that a descendant of an ancient beast might approach naturally.

That difference became especially terrifying when the bloodline belonged to something truly exceptional.

Lu Canghai’s expression tightened.

"There were creatures with bloodlines they called Divine."

Su Bai immediately became more attentive.

"Dragons?"

"Among others."

Lu Canghai gave him a meaningful look.

"Do not imagine the little descendants people occasionally capture and call dragons because they have a few scales and horns."

Su Bai almost smiled.

Lu Canghai’s amusement faded.

"The ones that crossed during the Great Fissure were different."

He had only seen a few.

That had been enough.

One enormous creature carrying traces of a Dragon bloodline had torn through a fortified city before the defenders properly understood what was happening.

Another beast whose bloodline was said to descend from a Phoenix had turned half a battlefield into a sea of fire.

Neither had been what the Animal Realm considered the pinnacle of those lineages.

Lu Canghai had learned that much afterward.

Su Bai’s fingers stopped against his cup.

"A weaker descendant could do that?"

"Weak is a dangerous word when talking about those creatures."

Lu Canghai sighed.

"The important thing is that their cultivation did not work like ours. Bloodline determined far more than talent. It affected their bodies, instincts, abilities, and even what they could become."

That was enough for Su Bai to understand the general idea.

Human cultivators refined Qi through Spirit Roots, meridians, and Dantians.

The beasts had their own path.

Trying to judge one with human standards would only lead to mistakes.

Lu Canghai moved on.

"The Preta Realm was worse."

His voice changed again.

Su Bai noticed that the old man did not immediately continue.

"What were they like?"

Lu Canghai frowned as though deciding how to describe something unpleasant without making it sound more absurd than it really was.

"Ugly."

Su Bai was speechless.

Lu Canghai put down his cup.

"The beings from the Preta Realm were called Pretas. Humans who survived the Great Fissure began calling them Hungry Ghosts, and the name suited them well enough."

The first one Lu Canghai had seen had barely resembled something that should have been capable of standing.

Its limbs were long and thin. Its ribs pushed visibly beneath stretched skin. Its neck had looked too narrow to support its head, while its swollen abdomen hung grotesquely beneath an emaciated chest.

The mouth had been tiny, painfully tiny. Yet its eyes had contained a hunger so intense that Lu Canghai could still remember it decades later.

Su Bai’s brows drew together.

"A swollen stomach with a mouth that can barely eat?"

"That was common among them."

Lu Canghai nodded slowly.

"Their existence was built around hunger, but food was not always what they wanted."

Some craved flesh. Others desired blood. There were Pretas that sought spiritual energy, warmth, emotions, memories, or things the cultivators fighting them had not even understood.

Whatever the object of their hunger was, satisfying it never seemed to last.

Lu Canghai had watched one tear into the corpse of a spirit beast until nothing remained but bone.

Moments later, it had attacked the next living creature with even greater desperation.

"The more some of them consumed, the worse they became."

Su Bai’s expression grew thoughtful.

"That sounds less like hunger and more like a curse."

Lu Canghai leaned back.

"Perhaps it was. Perhaps that was simply what being a Preta meant. I never entered their realm, so I will not pretend to know."

That distinction mattered.

Everything Lu Canghai knew came from the creatures that had crossed, the battles he had survived, and fragments of explanation exchanged during the chaos.

He had no intention of turning incomplete memories into universal truths.

"What I do know," he continued, "is that the strongest among them were nothing like the mindless Hungry Ghosts people imagine."

Su Bai looked up.

"Some had intelligence?"

"Enough to develop techniques."

That was where the Pretas had become truly troublesome.

A mindless creature with endless hunger could still be killed.

A creature with endless hunger that had learned how to cultivate around that hunger was something else entirely.

"They did not all need to bite whatever they wanted."

Lu Canghai’s expression became grave.

"One of them appeared outside a city where we were reinforcing the local cultivators. It never entered the walls."

Su Bai remained silent.

"The thing opened its mouth from several miles away."

Lu Canghai looked down at his palm.

"At first, nothing happened."

The cultivators defending the city had assumed the attack failed.

A few breaths later, the spiritual energy around them began moving.

Qi poured from the streets, formations, houses, cultivation chambers, spirit fields, and even the bodies of cultivators who had been careless enough to remain exposed.

Everything flowed toward a single point in the distance.

The Hungry Ghost.

"The defensive formation flickered first," Lu Canghai said. "After that, every Spirit Stone feeding it turned dull almost at the same time."

Su Bai’s expression finally changed.

Lu Canghai continued quietly.

"Within minutes, the spiritual energy surrounding the city had been drained so thoroughly that breathing techniques could barely draw anything from the air."

Su Bai stared at him.

"The entire city?"

"The area around it as well."

A thought surfaced so abruptly that Su Bai almost lost focus.

Devouring.

Something inside him seemed to stir at the word, connecting the image of that distant Hungry Ghost to things he had encountered before.

For the briefest moment, several possibilities tried to connect themselves.

Su Bai pushed them aside.

There was no reason to reach conclusions from one old story.

Lu Canghai was still speaking.

"That was when I learned not to judge those things by their appearance. Their bodies looked starved enough to collapse in the wind, but some of them could consume things no mouth should have been capable of touching."

"What happened to that one?"

"We killed it."

There was no satisfaction in his voice.

Instead, his expression became heavier.

"At the time, we thought that was the difficult part."

Su Bai slowly narrowed his eyes.

Lu Canghai looked beyond the courtyard once more.

"We had not yet met the beings that could come back after death."