With a groan that was half snarl, half sob, Long Chen used his right arm—the only one still working—to push the heavy carcass of the tiger off. Every movement sent waves of agony through his broken ribs and what was left of his left arm. The pain was a blinding white fire, but adrenaline and sheer stubbornness kept him conscious.
"Get... off me... you bastard..." he hissed, his voice hoarse.
Each attempt to get up felt like he was torturing himself. His bones moved where they shouldn't, and a low, wet crack echoed from within. Hot blood ran down the back of his hand, mixing with the mud. Long Chen could taste the metallic tang of his own blood on his tongue—hot and bitter—as his teeth clenched with effort.
With one final push and a muffled cry, he managed to drag himself to the side, barely escaping from beneath the dead weight. He remained on all fours for a moment, panting, sweat and blood dripping from his chin to the forest floor. The world spun dangerously.
Ignoring the dizziness, he forced himself to stand, using the tiger's body for support.
The tiger had black fur streaked with gray stripes, now stained with blood. Its eyes, still open, stared into nothingness with a faded gleam of fury. Its protruding fangs shone under the light like sharp daggers, still tinged with the blood of Long Chen's left arm. The Staff of Glory embedded in its forehead looked like a massive horn jammed into its skull, as if sprouting straight from its brain.
Long Chen's eyes fell with pride on the "Staff of Glory", still lodged in the beast's cranium. He gripped it with his right hand—the only one he had left. There was no time for delicacy.
As best he could in his current state, he planted his feet firmly on the ground, clenched his teeth against the pain threatening to make him faint, and with all the strength he had left, he pulled it back.
CRACK! SPLATTER!
The sound of the skull breaking was grotesque. A portion of the tiger's head opened like a rotten fruit, spilling gray brain matter and dark blood across the ground and onto his already blood-soaked clothes. The smell of copper and death filled the air, but Long Chen barely noticed.
His eyes were fixed on the mess that had just appeared.
And there, in the midst of the chaos of flesh and blood, was what he had been looking for. Glowing with a cold and deep light, a crystalline and perfectly smooth sphere, about the size of a fist. But its color was… black. A polished black like obsidian.
"A black Demonic Core?" he murmured, curiosity momentarily surpassing his revulsion. He had never heard of such a thing, aside from Darkness-Attribute Demonic Stones. But there was no time to analyze it now. He yanked it from the tiger's brain, the cold and solid sensation in his hand serving as confirmation of his victory.
"What should I do with this?"
He looked at the enormous corpse. Damn it! How much energy would be wasted in that flesh! How delicious a big piece of roast meat from a five-star Bronze-Rank tiger would be!
A pang of regret struck him. "What a waste," he thought. "If I had a spatial ring with me, I could bring this mountain of treasure home."
Sighing, knowing every second that passed increased the risk, he turned around. The smell of blood was now like a beacon in the forest, an open invitation to any predator nearby.
He had to leave, find a safe place. Long Chen didn't mind dying there, but now that he had earned such a substantial reward, he wanted to absorb it to continue his exploration even stronger.
However, before he could take the first step, a sharp sound—like the cry of an eagle—cut through the air.
SKREEEEE!
The eagle's cry rang out high and piercing, echoing across the sky. Instinctively, Long Chen looked up, but saw nothing beyond the canopy of leaves. A chill of foreboding ran down his spine. Too late.
Silence fell like a blade after the scream. For a moment, the entire Spiritual Ancestral World seemed to hold its breath. Then, a tear ripped through the sky. It wasn't just a sound—the air itself seemed to vibrate.
Something descended. Too fast, shaking the dense trees. The world became shadows and wind. Long Chen barely had time to blink before feeling the icy cold of something slicing his neck like silk against flesh.
In the next instant, his vision darkened.
A cold void swallowed him. Bang! His body collapsed, lifeless, onto the blood-stained earth, his head rolled a few inches, his eyes still open in shock, reflecting only the blue of the sky he hadn't seen in time. The black core disappeared from his now limp hand.
In his vacant pupils, only the image of a golden eagle, about thirty or forty meters long, appeared, carrying the three-eyed black tiger's carcass as if it were nothing.
---
For Long Chen, the end came with a cold and silent darkness.
For a moment, nothing existed.
No thought. No pain. No body.
Then, as if pulled back by an invisible force…
Long Chen woke up! …..
____
[Glory City – Long Chen's Room]
Cough! Cough! Cough!
Long Chen woke up in a wave of dry coughing, feeling his once-constricted throat finally breathe again, sitting up in his bed. He quickly grabbed a jug of water at his bedside and drank it in large gulps, recovering.
His heart pounded against his chest, and he gasped for air as if he were drowning.
His room.
He was back in his room. The soft moonlight came through the window, illuminating the simple furniture. Time seemed not to have passed, as the night was only beginning.
He frantically looked at his hands. Perfect. He felt his left arm. Whole. No pain. His ribs? Intact. His clothes? The same simple linen as before, clean and without a single tear.
"Did I... really die?" he whispered, voice trembling. The agony, the battle, the death… it had all felt so real.
But then Long Chen felt the aura in his body slowly spreading. The weak and dry meridians in his body felt like drought-stricken land absorbing water after a rain.
Incredibly, that ancient aura had strengthened his body and soul. He felt a new and vibrant power circulating through his meridians. The unmistakable power of a Two-Star Bronze-Rank Spiritualist.
"My body and cultivation have gotten much stronger."
Long Chen smiled and threw a light punch, feeling that his body was more powerful than before.
The most apparent change was the muscles beginning to show on his once frail and weak body. His first thought was that the potent energy from that world was much purer than the energy of this era.
It was many times stronger.
And as if to erase any lingering doubts, the air in his right hand shimmered. With a sudden and cold weight, the Black Demonic Core of the Three-Eyed Tiger materialized in his palm.
The black, crystalline sphere seemed to absorb the moonlight—a seemingly impossible trophy from a nightmare world. Immediately afterward, a cloth pouch that had been strapped to his back appeared, filled with the rabbit's cores, and then the Staff of Glory dropped to the floor, still bloodstained.
Long Chen stared at his rewards, then looked at his own body, which seemed transformed.
A slow, confident smile spread across his face. Just as the voice in his mind had said. The Spiritual Ancestral World was a divine training field—a supreme cheat. And he had just brought back all his prizes.