He hunted.
Days passed. Maybe weeks.
He didn't cultivate in the normal way. He had no profound veins, no techniques, no master.
But he was growing.
He learned to move silently through snow, to smell the weak from afar. His fingers could pierce bone. His breath stayed even in freezing winds. He had no elemental affinity, yet the creatures he devoured—ice foxes, wind birds, frost bears—left traces of their nature behind.
Not powers. Not spells.
Adaptations.
He healed faster now. His skin grew tougher. His eyes adjusted in the dark.
He no longer questioned how. It was simply what he was.
And he knew he had to stay hidden. The Azure Cloud Continent wasn't vast, but it had its dangers—roving sects, divine beasts, ruined cities from the War of the Gods. And the greatest threat of all:
Cultivators.
He couldn't face them. Not yet.
So he killed only beasts. Slowly. Quietly. Feeding in silence while the world spun toward the events he remembered.
"Yun Che will die soon," he whispered to the wind. "And be reborn in another body. The Sky Poison Pearl. Jasmine. The Heretic God's legacy."
"And I... I'll be ready."
---
One night, as the auroras danced above the snowy crags, he encountered a wounded cultivator—a woman in light blue robes, crawling through blood.
Frozen Cloud Asgard.
His eyes narrowed.
She was dying. Internal injuries. Blood ice forming on her ribs. A disciple caught in a rogue beast ambush, far from her sect. She looked at him with cloudy eyes.
"P… please…" she rasped. "Help…"
Her pulse was strong. Her blood rich.
He stepped forward, shadows clinging to him.
But something inside him stopped.
Not pity. Not compassion.
Caution.
To feed on a cultivator was different. Their will, their sense of self—it might resist. It might... fight back.
"No," he muttered. "Not yet."
He turned away. Fled into the cold.
There would come a time when even the profound practitioners would be prey. But for now, he would remain a phantom, a beast in the dark.
---
And far to the east, a crippled boy in Floating Cloud City stared at a red jade pendant, unaware that fate had already begun to twist—and that something inhuman was watching him from afar.