Chapter 44: Unfinished Hunt

The spirit wolf had vanished for a while now—at least, to Leon's eyes.

Lyra suddenly raised her hand, halting the line. "Left."

Leon turned his mount, squinting into the whiteout. There was absolutely nothing there. "Are you sure?"

"Yes," she said, pointing toward a steep, snow-covered slope. "The tracks are underneath the new layer."

Leon stared at the smooth drift. "How can you see that?"

"Higher cultivation," Lyra explained. "Even if the snow hides the tracks, my perception is at a high enough level that I can see the structural traces left that have long since been buried underneath the fresh powder."

"I see," Leon replied, permanently filing the data away.

He stopped asking questions, and they followed her lead. Lyra's superior perception allowed them to continuously track minor physical signs that had already disappeared beneath the onslaught of the storm—a broken branch buried beneath a heavy drift, a faint energetic disturbance in the ground, or pawprints that had been covered almost completely by the wind. The wolf was still running, and they were still following.

The hours became indistinguishable. During the long pursuit, Maya and Adrian encountered several Grade Zero beasts that lunged from the drifts. At first, Leon had stayed nearby in case they needed tactical backup, but eventually, he stopped doing that entirely. They could handle themselves.

More importantly, their Sage Breathing was rapidly becoming second nature. Neither needed to consciously think about maintaining the internal rhythm anymore; their bodies simply continued running the loop while they fought, moved, and recovered.

Maya finished off another reptilian beast with a clean strike and immediately resumed the chase without losing her stride. Adrian followed right beside her.

"You two are getting used to it," Leon noted.

Maya glanced at him over her shoulder. "So are you."

Leon smiled faintly. He had spent the entire day cultivating whenever the situation allowed it, maintaining three times the normal circulation speed cycle after cycle. Eventually, nine full cycles were complete. By the time another day had nearly passed, his meridians were entirely empty again, completing the final cycle of the first stage.

The first stage of the Bloodline Awakening Foundation Realm was officially complete. He felt the anatomical difference immediately. Before, his meridians had been able to hold roughly six hypothetical units of Qi before reaching capacity; now, they held seven. It wasn't an explosive increase, but it didn't need to be. Every completed stage was actively making the vessel itself larger.

Leon looked inward, assessing the new structural capacity, and then began circulating his energy again to start stage two. His eyes narrowed. He wanted to reach the peak of Bloodline Awakening as quickly as possible.

---

The next part of his training proved more conceptually complicated.

"Sage Arts?" Leon asked, looking over at Lyra as the mounts trotted through the snow.

She nodded. "You've already touched the first part."

"Sage Eyes?"

"Exactly," she continued walking her beast while explaining the framework. "Sage Arts begin with controlling how Qi is expressed, and there are two broad aspects to master. The first is giving Qi different specialized properties when you output it, and the second is using Qi to actively influence space."

Leon considered the terminology. "Sage Eyes is the first?"

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"An extremely basic example," Lyra clarified. "You're using Qi as a form of power to enhance your internal perception and body, but the actual arts are much more complicated."

"Much more?"

"The true beginning is creating an energetic pattern," Lyra said, pointing toward the frozen world around them. "Specific arrangements of Qi, specific frequencies, and specific structures. Once you can consistently produce an effect through one of those patterns, you've technically learned a Sage Art. And that becomes the origin of the five arts: Formations, Talismans, Forging, Alchemy, and Divination."

Leon nodded slowly. "The foundation."

"Yes. The greatest practitioners don't simply learn those arts from others; they eventually reach the level where they can develop them entirely from their own understanding. People can learn the five arts later in life, but they never reach the same master level as those who attained the Sage Arts at the foundation realm. This is due to the phenomenon of breakthrough enlightenment. You should have already noticed how regular cultivation clears your mind and improves your attainment and understanding gradually, while minor breakthroughs immediately push that understanding to the next level. Major breakthroughs are far more dramatic. You gain inspiration directly from the heavens for the entire duration of the breakthrough, and this enlightenment shows its greatest effect the higher your comprehension already is."

Leon looked ahead into the storm. That sounded deeply interesting, and he stored the information away for future application.

---

Suddenly, Lyra pulled her reins, bringing her mount to an abrupt halt. "Something's wrong."

Leon turned to look at her. "The wolf?"

She stared intently into the shifting blizzard. "The pattern."

"What about it?"

"I've seen this behavior before," she frowned, studying the trail. "The distance it has traveled should have forced it to stop and rest long ago. It hasn't slowed down a single time."

"Maybe it's desperate," Leon suggested.

"Perhaps," Lyra's expression remained highly uncertain. "I studied patterns like this before. I remember this one."

"You don't remember what it means?"

"No," she stared blankly at the tracks. "It almost looks like a calling."

Leon raised an eyebrow. "A calling?"

"No," she shook her head, dismissing the thought. "Definitely not. If it were, we'd know; the other signs don't match." She thought for another moment before continuing. "Perhaps it's pursuing something—a soul-nourishing creature, a rare herb, or something that just matured."

Leon glanced toward the direction the wolf had gone. "So we're chasing it, and it might be chasing something else."

"Essentially."

"There was an old idiom about this which I can't remember perfectly," Leon muttered. "Something about a cicada and an oriole... Oh yeah: the mantis stalks the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind it."

The wind suddenly screamed across the plain, slamming heavy sheets of snow into them. Visibility dropped to near zero, forcing the mounts to slow their pace. Leon pulled his heavy jacket tighter around his chest. "How much longer?"

Lyra looked back down at the tracks. "I don't know."

Leon exhaled slowly through his nose, feeling his impatience building. Every hour spent chasing this creature was another hour stolen away from his actual goals—cultivation, fixing his fractured body and soul, and finding the new survivors to get real answers about Earth. The wolf was an interesting target, but was it truly worth losing days over?

"Is this really worth it?" Leon asked flatly.

Lyra looked directly at him. "Yes."

"Why?"

She hesitated for a beat before answering. "You don't understand what we're hunting. The spirit wolf is a Grade One with a beast core, which makes it the only Grade One beast with the status of a Grade Two. This gives every part of its body immense value because they carry the attribute called defying heaven—something that allows forged weapons to deal damage to higher tier enemies, or armor to block damage far above its level. This is specially effective for growing and soul-bound weapons. That's why it's so valuable."

Leon nodded slowly, adjusting his posture. "So it's effectively—"

"A special Grade Two beast disguised as a Grade One," Lyra finished.

"I'm only interested in the spirit blood," Leon noted. "That should give quite a boost."

Lyra shook her head firmly. "That's the problem with calling it a simple boost. It isn't merely an increase in cultivation volume. Its core gives it a qualitative advantage over ordinary Grade Two beasts. Absorbing its spirit blood would give the highest nourishment you can get from any Grade Two beast."

Leon went quiet, carefully calculating the distance they had already traveled against the potential payoff. Then he asked the only question that mattered to his progression metrics.

"Would killing it raise my spirit blood from Ancient to Desolate?"

Lyra smiled. "Yes. It would even somewhat boost your progress toward an Immemorial spirit blood."

Leon looked back toward the roaring storm, his frustration instantly disappearing. "Then we're staying on the trail."

Maya laughed from the adjacent saddle. "I thought you were about to convince Lyra to abandon the hunt."

"I was," Leon admitted, tightening his grip on the reins. "Then she mentioned Desolate."

Adrian shook his head in amusement. "Of course."

The blizzard swallowed their voices as the group pressed forward, driving their mounts deeper into the whiteout where the spirit wolf kept running.