The spirit beast garden was alive in ways European forests never were.
Cain registered it in layers as he lay in the viscous warmth of whatever the creature had been feeding on. First the air—thick with competing qi signatures. Green wood-element energy from the bamboo. A sharp mineral thread from the spirit stones in the soil. And underneath, the ghost-sweetness of blood and growth.
The spirit bamboo grew in geometric precision around him, each stalk as tall as a cathedral column, their leaves a deep jade-green that seemed to glow from within. The formations between the rows were visible to his blood sense as faint heat-shimmers.
The fox had been feeding in a cleared space. Its white fur was matted with the garden's thick humidity. The bamboo filtered moonlight into pale geometric patterns, and the fox had been crouched in one of those patterns when his instincts found it.
*Moonlight and regret.* The taste hit his tongue before his teeth found the throat—the moonlight was real: the fox's blood carried a luminescence that glowed against his gums as he drank. The regret was his own, sudden and irrational.
Cain's teeth found its throat before his conscious mind caught up. The creature barely had time to squeak. One moment it was pressed against a spirit-bamboo root; the next, Cain was crouched over the cooling corpse, drinking deep.
And then he was *sobbing*.
Not from grief. From the sheer *scale* of what had just happened. The fox's blood carried raw, unfiltered spiritual energy—qi—and his blood origin drank it like a man dying of thirst drinks rain. He could feel the qi threading through his vampiric blood, converting into cultivation power with an efficiency that made everything he'd managed in the old world feel like starvation.
*This is what I was meant for.*
His vision sharpened. The distant chanting of monks resolved into distinct voices, distinct footsteps. He could smell them now—the sharp green-qi scent of wood-element cultivators, the heavier iron-and-stone signature of earth-element practitioners.
*Six monks. Running toward me.*
Cain dropped the fox's carcass and wiped his mouth. He was sitting in a pool of animal blood in a cultivation world's spirit beast garden, with six monks converging on his position.
*Great.*
The monks crested the bamboo ridge fifty meters out and stopped dead.
One of them—young, nervous, holding a wooden staff—pointed directly at him.
"THERE! Blood path cultivator! He's drinking—"
Cain moved.
Not toward the monks—toward cover. He dove behind a cluster of spirit bamboo. A bamboo spear punched through the space where his head had been.
"Senior Brother Kong, he—"
"I see him." A new voice. Older, colder. A monk in green daoist robes stepped forward. Foundation stage. *This one I need to be careful with.*
Kong—tall, gaunt, with a scar bisecting his left eyebrow—raised one hand. The other five monks spread into a perimeter. Professional.
"Blood path heretic," Kong said. "What are you doing in Bamboo Green Sect's spirit beast garden?"
*Honest answer: no idea. Best lie: wandering cultivator.* "I was brought here through a spatial rift. I mean no offense."
Kong's eyes narrowed. Behind him, the young monk with the staff was pale—terrified, actually. The other four maintained their positions.
"Lies," Kong said. "Blood path cultivators don't wander into our garden by accident. The formation arrays would have repelled—"
The ground shook.
Not an earthquake—something beneath them, something *big*, thrashing. The spirit bamboo rattled. One of the formation arrays cracked down the middle and went dark.
Another tremor. Then a sound like tearing silk, and a column of black liquid erupted from the earth fifty meters east, fountaining thirty feet into the air.
*A spirit beast. Something broke out of its cultivation array.*
Kong made a decision. He pointed at Cain. "You—blood path heretic. Capture or kill the escaped beast. Prove you're not a spy, or my disciples will do it for you. If you survive, we'll have a longer conversation about your 'spatial rift.'"
He gestured to two of the bored monks. "Zhang, Wei. Monitor him. If he runs, kill him."
*Great. I'm being conscripted.*
The two assigned monks positioned themselves behind Cain. Close enough to watch. Far enough to run.
The black liquid was receding, revealing a path. Cain followed it. Behind him, Zhang and Wei followed. Ahead, the ground sloped downward toward what looked like a collapsed spirit cultivation array—ancient, broken, emanating a hunger that made his teeth ache.
*Something's been eating spirit beasts. Something's been growing here. And it just woke up.*
He rounded a corner of dense bamboo and saw it.
A Blood Craving Worm—bigger than any he'd read about. Its body was the diameter of a tree trunk and the length of a riverboat, covered in vestigial scales that pulsed with a dim, sickly red light. Its mouth was a radial arrangement of teeth that rotated like a garbage disposal. It was feeding on the remains of at least three spirit beasts.
*Not alone. There's at least four more below the surface. This is a swarm.*
The main worm noticed him. Its radial mouth opened—not to bite, but to *scream*, a subsonic vibration that made his bones ache.
The two worms beneath the surface lunged upward, bursting from the earth on either side of him.
Zhang shouted. Wei drew his spirit sword.
*Three worms. One above, two below. The surface worms are slower. The one above is the matriarch. Kill her, the others scatter.*
The matriarch lunged.
Cain sidestepped—faster than the monks expected, faster than the worm could adjust. His right hand found the matriarch's mouth as it closed around empty air, drove into the radial maw, and *clenched*. Blood control. The worm's own blood answered his command, solidifying into a blade inside its body cavity. He twisted.
The matriarch split in half.
Green-black ichor sprayed across the bamboo. The two sub-surface worms faltered. One thrashed sideways and took Zhang off his feet. The other tried to burrow and got stuck on a formation array remnant.
Wei was staring at him.
"Kill it," Cain said, gesturing at the stuck worm. "Before it recovers."
Wei's spirit sword took the stuck worm's head off in one stroke.
Zhang was groaning but alive. The matriarch's corpse was dissolving into the soil.
From the ridge above, Kong watched. His expression was unreadable.
*Now he knows I'm not ordinary. Now I have approximately thirty seconds before he decides I'm more useful as a prisoner than a corpse.*
Cain walked back up the slope. Wei followed at a cautious distance. Zhang limped behind them both.
Kong descended to meet him. Up close, the Foundation monk's eyes were calculating—not angry, not righteous, just *assessing*.
"Your name," Kong said.
*Too many possibilities. A fake name will get found out. My real name will mean nothing here.* "Cain."
"Family name?"
"None. Wanderer."
Kong studied him for a long moment. The other monks had gathered. The young monk who had first spotted him was openly trembling.
"Blood path cultivator," Kong said slowly, "wandering, no family, appears in our spirit beast garden feeding on a spirit fox, kills a Blood Craving Worm swarm in three seconds without using a sword technique." He paused. "Either you're the most unlucky man in the Tiannan Region, or you're lying about what you are."
Cain said nothing.
Kong made a second decision. "Bind him."
The young monk stepped forward and produced a spiritual rope. Cain let himself be tied. The rope bit into his wrists with an uncomfortable heat—it was designed to suppress cultivation. His blood origin burned it away from the inside, but he didn't need to show that yet.
*Being captured buys me time. Being captured puts me in a sect. In a sect means shelter, food, and information.*
*New world. New rules. I've managed worse.*
Cain let the young monk lead him up the slope.
Behind him, the ruined spirit beast garden smoked gently in the morning light. Somewhere, monks were arguing about what to do with him. Somewhere higher, decisions were being made about his fate.
He thought of Mira, burning in a cathedral that no longer existed, and kept walking.
---
*From a window in the elder's hall, a pair of eyes watched Cain being led away. The eyes belonged to a young woman in inner disciple robes—Su Yao. In her hand, a jade pendant grew warm against her palm.*
*"It can't be," she whispered.*
*The pendant pulsed once, then went dark.*
*She closed her fingers around it and made a decision: she would find out what this blood path cultivator was. Even if it meant breaking every rule her father had ever taught her.*