Shi Yang staggered forward, his bare feet pressing into the wet moss as his new body trembled. The fire crackled, casting shadows that stretched like monsters across the cavern walls. His heart hammered in his chest—not the calm rhythm of his cultivated body, but wild, uneven, animalistic.
A roar split the night. The sabertooth tiger, its fur scorched black and its flank still bleeding where the burning tree had crushed it, clawed its way free from the broken trunk. The cavemen had already scattered, their crude clubs abandoned as they howled in terror. Shi Yang's new hands trembled—thick, calloused, and clumsy compared to what he was used to.
He drew inward, sinking into his spirit as he had done countless times before. Ready to fight back, yet…
Nothing.
His dantian was a hollow void, utterly empty. He reached again, desperate, clawing at the veins of Qi he had always relied on—yet his meridians felt like twisted, blocked tunnels, sealed off and useless.
"No…" he whispered hoarsely through cracked lips. He tried again, pushing harder, but it was like ramming his head into stone. This body—it's crippled. No, worse—it was never meant for cultivation at all.
The sabertooth's golden eyes locked onto him. It snarled, shaking free the last splinters of charred wood, muscles bunching beneath its singed pelt. Shi Yang's instincts screamed.
He turned and ran.
His body was heavy, clumsy, lacking the refinement of his own. Each stride tore the ground, his lungs burning, the primitive flesh unable to channel his will the way he was accustomed. Behind him, the beast gave chase, earth trembling beneath its charge, snapping branches with each bound.
The other cavemen were gone, their shadows already swallowed by the deeper forest. Shi Yang's legs ached, every movement like dragging chains.
Damn it! I can't fight, I can't flee far enough in this form. Am I just meant to die here, and try again if there is another chance?
Yet the fire inside his mind refused to yield. He ducked beneath a low branch, his breath ragged, ears filled with the beast's snarling pursuit.
Somewhere deep inside, that leaf-like calm he had cultivated whispered back to him. If I cannot rely on Qi… then I must rely on what this body can give.
Still, his legs were already failing. The sabertooth closed the distance with terrifying speed.
His eyes narrowed as he neared a climbable tree. He leapt; his left hand snatched a low branch while his right clutched the crude club. "Let's see how tough you really are," he grunted in the guttural voice of the caveman body. Then, with a desperate flip, he wrapped the club around the beast's neck.
The stone haft bit into flesh as he began to throttle it. The tiger roared, thrashing wildly to fling him off. Shi Yang's calves locked around its ribs; his veins bulged, every fiber of the borrowed body straining. The harder he pulled, the fouler the animal's temper grew. With a violent heave the sabertooth slammed itself against a tree, and Shi Yang's back cracked against the wood with a sick, splintering snap. Pain exploded up his spine; his fingers loosened—and that was all the beast needed. It whipped its neck, threw him free, and let out a deafening roar.
"ROOOAR!"
Damn it! Shi Yang snatched up his club without thinking as the sabertooth lunged, jaws gaping. He shoved the haft into the animal's mouth; fangs closed around stone with bone-jarring force. The tiger snapped and ground, teeth clamping down hard, but the club held.
Think. Think of a way out.
Blood and acrid breath washed over his face; gore rimmed the sabertooth's muzzle. He reached inward—Qi, Dao, Mantras—anything. He tried to call the small embers of wood Dao he'd felt earlier, tried to tug at rust and blood technique, but the caveman's meridians were blocked. Nothing answered. Images of techniques failed to take shape.
His arms began to buckle. The beast's weight and fury were immense. Gritting his teeth, he dropped the club and rammed a knee into the tiger's chest, forcing it onto its haunches. He let go of the haft and closed his fist. "I've had enough of this!" he snarled, and then he hit.
Fist after fist hammered into the sabertooth's jaw. The animal cried and bucked, but Shi Yang stayed atop it, raining blows without mercy. His hands battered at bone and tendon; the club still jammed between the creature's fanged maw, a brutal wedge preventing a killing bite.
Adrenaline flooded him—hot, white, and fierce.
With it came a strange, colder flame that crawled under his skin, a layering of heat and chill that sharpened his senses and steadied his fists. Each heartbeat thudded harder, and with that force his blocked meridians quivered, then split. For all the caveman body's bluntness, the sudden, savage violence forced openings in its channels. Qi—thin at first, then streaming stronger—found purchase.
It was crude and raw, not the smooth flow he was used to, but it flowed: a bitter thread of flame that answered the blood-heat in him. He felt it fuse with the panic and fury, tasted possibility. The beast's thrashes slowed. Its struggles grew weaker under the relentless barrage.
"Die! Die! Die!" he repeated, fists driving in until at last the tiger's body went limp beneath him. The roar dwindled into a last, shuddering breath, then silence.
Shi Yang lay across the fallen animal for a long moment, lungs burning, hands slick with blood and sweat. The borrowed body trembled as the newly awakened current of Qi pulsed through—hot and ragged, but alive. He'd forced his way through by sheer violence; the method was ugly, but the result was undeniable.
Slowly he pushed himself upright, tasting iron and smoke in the air. His heart still hammered, the cold flame under his skin settling into a coiled ember. Whatever he had accessed—whatever crude thread of flame Dao had opened—was only a beginning. But beginnings could be fanned. For now, he had survived. That was enough.
Shi Yang sat astride the carcass, chest rising and falling like a forge bellows. The flame-like current still throbbed under his skin, faint but undeniable. He drew a slow breath, and for the first time in this body, he felt the unmistakable pulse of Qi flowing through his meridians—ragged, shallow, but real.
It was crude, but it moved.
His eyes narrowed. If flame can answer, what about the rest?
He stilled himself, probing deeper. A flicker of rust answered—metallic, corrosive, born from his water Dao. It crawled over his bones like a faint bronze mist. Then, hesitantly, the thin sprout of his wood Dao trembled alive, tender but present, weaving faintly with the other two. A grin tugged at the corner of his lips.
"So it wasn't lost," he muttered, his voice hoarse but brimming with dark satisfaction. "This body just needed the right fire to be broken open."
His gaze drifted to the sabertooth's gaping maw. Those massive fangs gleamed even in death, curved blades of bone half as long as his forearm. Perfect.
Without hesitation, Shi Yang braced his blood-slick hands on the beast's skull. He dug his fingers into the gums, veins bulging as he pulled. With a wet, tearing crack, one fang came free, then the other. He held them up to the stormlight breaking through the canopy—pristine ivory, sharp as daggers.
"Good," he breathed, lowering himself to the ground. Crossing his legs, he laid the fangs before him.
Rust shimmered faintly over his palms, seeping like red dew. The ivory hissed as the corrosion of the sea kissed its surface, orange veins spreading and brittling the bone. Slowly, deliberately, he tempered them, cycling Qi as best the caveman body allowed. The cracks widened, the edges rusted like metal, and the gleam of runes emerged.
The lights shone, his Qi flowing into the twin canines. This formed a tight group of formations, and being the first process of The Rusted Sea Sword Sutra—or more so his omitted, sword version, utilizing small daggers.
Hours slipped away. The forest shifted around him—birds crying, the distant howl of beasts rising and falling. Rain drummed, then stopped, leaving mist hanging low.
Shi Yang's eyes snapped open. The stormlight overhead had dimmed to a gray pall, mist veiling the forest. In his lap, the twin fangs trembled, humming faintly. Then they rose—weightless, aloft by the crude Qi he'd forced through their marrow.
The rust-etched surface pulsed with mottled light, and a single word resounded within his spirit sea:
Cut.
The sound was not spoken but born from the Dao itself, like the echo of a blade severing silk.
Cut. Cut. Cut. Cut.
The daggers whirled around him in uneven arcs, carving faint grooves in the damp air, each pass leaving behind a hiss as if the world itself remembered the slice. Shi Yang did not flinch; his eyes followed with hungry precision, a predator watching his weapons breathe for the first time.
"How strange," he said, his eyes drifting along with them. "I can hear their intent just like the rusted sword from the mimic-modern world," he murmured, "but the daggers I made in the real world didn't have this much living intent, even after cutting a dozen people. This beast and that sword must have killed hundreds, and that might be the key formula of living intent."
With a thought, the fangs stilled, dropping neatly back into his palms, heavy once more. He tucked them at his sides, his loincloth made from old animal hide holding them close to his ribs.
Only then did his gaze shift outward.
The forest was quiet, but not dead. The ground before him was churned with the trampling of many bare feet—deep, frantic prints leading away from the burning tree where the cavemen had once gathered. His nostrils flared; even in this dull body, the scent of smoke and sweat lingered in the air. They had fled in terror, scattered like frightened beasts, but not far.
Shi Yang rose, each step heavy but steadier than before. The cold flame within his chest continued to coil, feeding the rust and wood within his meridians, making his body feel just a touch more his own. He glanced down once at the sabertooth's corpse, lips curving faintly.
"You really helped me out quite a bit. I'll have to treat Yoke well, as respects to your race, and what he'll become in the future," he muttered, then folded his hands in a silent prayer, looking at it one more time before turning away.