Chapter 22 – Overflowing Essence
The night's fire still burned behind Zac's eyes.
Even after leaving the forge, his body thrummed like a heated blade plunged into water — strength pressing against his skin, begging for release.
He'd absorbed too much.
For the first time since awakening the Yellow Amethyst, Zac felt the strange boundary of fullness.
It wasn't pain — it was pressure, like every muscle and vein was packed to bursting with power.
Just like after a heavy meal, there came a point when one couldn't take another bite.
Now, he couldn't take another drop of essence.
The amethyst within his heart pulsed once, faintly — content, satiated.
Zac exhaled, trembling. So even energy has a limit. If I don't vent this soon, I'll explode before Ren ever gets the chance to kill me.
He looked up at the paling horizon. The night was breaking.
Soon the day shift would come to relieve the night refiners.
And the mountains were calling.
When the next group arrived, Zac didn't even wait for Garrin's barked insults.
He handed off his tools, murmured something about "resting," and slipped away before anyone could stop him.
At first, he jogged — a light pace down the dusty path leading out of the tribe.
But the moment the last hut vanished behind the trees, he broke into a run.
The world blurred.
He darted between trunks like a shadow, bare feet thudding softly against the earth.
His body felt weightless — no, not weightless, but balanced, like the world itself flowed around him.
He leapt a boulder three meters tall and landed in silence.
A five-meter tree branch cracked underfoot as he vaulted through it, his momentum unbroken.
He was like an antelope of stone, his veins glowing faintly gold beneath his skin as essence surged with every breath.
Wind tore at his clothes. Branches lashed his arms. He only ran faster.
For the first time since waking in this world, Zac felt utterly alive.
He finally stopped deep in the back mountains, miles from any human scent.
The forest here was silent except for the cry of distant hawks. Mist coiled low, cold and clean.
He rolled his shoulders, feeling power coiled inside his muscles like compressed thunder.
"It's time," he muttered.
He planted his feet and began the first form of the Stone Serpent Flow.
The ground cracked under his stance.
He exhaled, driving his fists forward in a straight line.
Crack!
Stone dust erupted where his fist landed. The shockwave rattled nearby trees.
Again.
And again.
He lost himself to the rhythm — the serpent's coiling, striking, diving pattern — each blow stronger than the last.
Blood split his knuckles. His arms turned raw.
Still, he didn't stop.
When his fists screamed in pain, he switched to kicks — slamming his shins into a thick boulder until the surface spiderwebbed with fractures.
When his legs gave out, he used his shoulders and back, battering the stone until his breath came in ragged gasps.
It was madness — the kind of training only a desperate man would attempt.
But with the energy of the Desolate Cores burning inside him, his body needed it.
Every strike, every bruise, released more pressure, like steam escaping from a sealed pot.
His blood sang with fire.
When the pain reached its peak, something within him clicked.
The motions changed — slower, heavier, yet sharper.
He inhaled deeply. Essence flowed through his body in perfect rhythm, each breath circulating from heart to limbs, from earth to sky.
The air thickened.
The ground beneath his feet trembled.
Zac's movements coiled like a serpent about to strike — compressing power inward, then releasing it in an explosive burst.
BOOM!
A ring of dust burst outward as his fist connected. A deep fissure snaked through the ground, long and precise, like the path of a serpent tunneling beneath stone.
The Coiling Fang Form was born.
He could feel it — the shift in his energy.
The technique wasn't just movement anymore; it was structure, refinement.
Each cycle circulated essence through his veins, polishing them from within, tempering muscle and bone.
This was how true cultivators trained — by merging body, breath, and energy until all three became one.
Zac dropped to one knee, chest heaving.
His fists were torn, his skin bleeding — but the pressure inside him had finally eased.
Instead of exhaustion, a deep calm spread through him.
"So this is what cultivation really is…" he whispered. "To break and rebuild… again and again."
The sun had climbed high when Zac finally stood, sweat evaporating in the wind.
He flexed his hands; the pain was dull now, distant. Beneath the skin, faint gold lines pulsed with life.
He smiled faintly. "Second form complete."
He looked down the slope toward the faint smoke of the tribe's forge far below.
The fire there burned constantly — a beacon of greed and death.
But here, in the silence of the mountains, Zac's own fire had been reborn.
He turned back toward the valley, the wind catching his hair as he whispered to the forest:
"Ren Flintclaw… I'll climb higher than you ever dreamed."