The morning sun trickled through the thick canopy of the Verdant Wilds, dappling the mossy ground with shafts of warm light. Birds chirped, beasts growled in the far distance, and somewhere above, Skyrazor the hawk let out a triumphant screech—followed immediately by a splattering plop as his bowel victory landed squarely on the head of a foraging tree weasel.
It was, all things considered, a beautiful day.
The young wolf sat cross-legged—or at least tried to. With multiple mouths and more eyes than sense, "sitting peacefully" looked more like a twitching tangle of limbs, twitching tails, and drooling muzzles muttering battle reenactments.
"Oi!" barked the eldest boar, his snout twitching with disdain. "Get yer multieyed mangy hide up already! Meditation ain't meant to look like you're choking on a centipede."
Another boar—rounder, rosier, and chewing what suspiciously looked like fermented truffle—grunted in agreement. "We told ya, cub. You're strong, aye, but not strong enough. You couldn't take the Steel Jaw Hippo down last time."
The wolf's left mouth whined, the top-right one grumbled, and the bottom-most bared its teeth in embarrassment.
"I distracted him!" the middle snout said indignantly. "And stole a lily. That's... that's victory-ish!"
"Victory-ish?" snorted the second boar. "He knocked ya clean into a pond rock so hard it still smells like hippo butt."
"My fur hasn't been the same since!" mourned one of the mouths.
"Exactly," huffed the elder boar. "Which is why it's time you start the Foundation Fortification Cycle we told you about."
The wolf paused. All mouths stopped talking.
"You mean," he said slowly, "that cycle?"
"The one that requires you to run through the Mud Womb Trenches, balance atop the Screaming Bamboo Groves during windstorms, and fast while meditating on a rock surrounded by angry aphid spirits?" asked one of the mouths.
"The one that even Skyrazor said 'nah, not worth it,' and he's a flying lunatic?"
"Yes," the boars said in unison, ominously.
The forest seemed to shiver with the weight of that word.
"…Can I just fight a crab instead?"
"No!"
---
Day One: Mud Womb Trenches
They stank. They sloshed. They swallowed the wolf's pride.
The trenches were a sacred, if disgusting, training ground passed down through generations of the Boar Clan's body-hardeners. Made of clay, silt, and something suspiciously carnivorous, each step pulled like quicksand infused with minor sentience. They wrapped around ankles and whispered things like, "You'll never have symmetrical fur," and, "Your posture is awful."
The wolf snarled, lunged, and immediately slipped face-first into a pile of what might've been fermented mushroom. His eyes—six of them—watered.
One boar snickered. Another tossed a truffle at his back.
"Focus your essence through your limbs! Run, don't stumble!" barked the elder.
"I'M TRYING!" all his mouths cried in tandem, spraying mud and shame.
By nightfall, he had completed one full lap. Which, for the record, was only half a trench.
---
Day Three: Screaming Bamboo Groves
The bamboo screamed.
Not in agony or wind-induced groaning—but actual screaming.
"WHY ARE YOU SO UGLY?" screeched a particularly tall stalk.
"WASH YOUR TAILS, DIRTY MUTT," yelled another, with great conviction.
Apparently, centuries ago, a melancholic spirit beast had died here after being dumped by its plant-type girlfriend, and its heartbreak had cursed the grove with perpetual verbal abuse.
The wolf balanced atop a swaying stalk, fur rippling in the storm winds, multiple mouths muttering affirmations like "I'm not ugly," and "Your bark isn't that clever, shut up."
One bamboo pole bucked beneath him. He flipped midair, narrowly landed on another, then winced as a gust nearly knocked him again.
"YOU CALL THAT CORE CONTROL?" shrieked the grove.
"I'm trying my best!" he yelled.
"YOUR BEST SUCKS!"
At the forest edge, the boars sipped berry wine and nodded approvingly.
---
Day Six: Meditation Rock of Hungry Aphids
Tiny spirit aphids.
The kind that lived in cracked rocks and fed on spiritual essence.
The kind that saw the wolf sit, gather his chi, and promptly swarmed him like teens at a night market barbecue stall.
"Don't move," the elder boar had said. "You move, you lose the lesson. Let your energy cycle, let your body harden naturally through the irritation."
The wolf was vibrating.
Literally.
His tails twitched. His eyes twitched. Even his eyebrows twitched.
But his chi was flowing. And for once, none of the mouths spoke. All were gritting their fangs, letting the subtle rhythm of Foundation Fortification settle deep into the marrow.
When the aphids left (after they got drunk on wolf essence and fell asleep mid-bite), he didn't even collapse.
He just opened his main eye and said, "...Again."
The boars smiled.
---
Day Ten: Return of Skyrazor
"BOOM, BABY!" screamed the sky.
The hawk landed in a gale of feathers, cackles, and something dropping dangerously close to the wine barrel.
"Oh not again!" shouted the round boar, rolling away just in time.
"SKYRAZOR RETURNS! AND I HAVE—" he paused to regurgitate a stolen melon. "—GIFTS!"
Skyrazor flapped proudly, beak smudged with whatever mountain berry wine he'd bullied off a squirrel spirit up north.
He turned to the wolf.
"…You smell weird. Better. But weird."
"I've been…training," the wolf muttered.
Skyrazor squinted. "Where's the hippo?"
"Don't worry," said the wolf with a cold grin, his aura stirring faintly. "Next time, he'll be the one knocked into a pond rock."
The hawk let out a delighted scream. "HE'S GROWING UP!"
Then promptly pooped again.
---
Nightfall
The wolf sat by the fire, eyes closed, mouths humming in harmony.
He could feel it now. His body was tougher, his chi more stable. The Fortification Cycle wasn't about brute force—it was about the core, the bones, the true base. He was no longer just a scavenger with weird powers. He was becoming a foundation, a beast whose strength would stand against Orders far above his own in the future.
The boars sat nearby, passing a wineskin between them, proud.
"Still ugly, though," muttered a voice from the wind.
The wolf opened one eye.
"…Bamboo," he muttered darkly, and chucked a truffle into the trees.
Absolutely—here is Part 2 of Chapter 8, continuing the tale with Elder Sun Jin's frustrations and the wolf beginning his true foundation refinement under a strange tree.
The ceramic cup trembled slightly in his hand. Not because of qi imbalance or any external tremor—no, Elder Sun Jin simply lacked the will to enjoy his tea.
He was perched on a wide veranda at the highest tier of the Nail Strom Sect's eastern pagoda, a martial arts manual spread open before him. Its title read: "Heaven-Breaking Finger, 17 Variations, Volume 6." He'd flipped to page three, then stopped. That was two hours ago.
The tea was cold.
The wind was pleasant.
And Elder Sun Jin was seething.
His fingers twitched with the urge to throw the book into the koi pond below, but he resisted. Barely.
"That damn hippo's aura is still in the air," he muttered to no one. "Those lilies—those jade lilies—still haven't been absorbed. I can feel it. I could've snuck in, knocked some furred buffoons unconscious, and plucked one like a daisy."
He closed his eyes, sighed, and sipped the bitter brew with a grimace.
"Instead… Crescent Pavilion. Because of course."
Just the day before, the sect leader—Zaruk the Glorified Brick Wall (Sun Jin's private nickname)—had personally summoned him.
"Sun Jin," Zaruk had said with all the excitement of a stone slab, "you've been selected to deliver the herb tribute to the Crescent Pavilion."
To any outsider, this would be an honor.
After all, the Crescent Pavilion was one of the four grand alchemist houses on the entire globe. A peerless node of pill production located in the faraway Roar Continent, nestled in a valley where spiritual herbs bloomed year-round, guarded by more arrays than a paranoid formation master on his wedding day.
And recently, the Pavilion Head had concocted a pill that rocked the cultivation world:
> A Heaven-Stage Half-Tier Eight Pill.
A pill so pure it made ice jade look like swamp mud. So refined, the alchemy clouds bowed—but stopped just shy of forming Pill Lightning, the sign of a full Tier Eight.
That one pill had rewritten what was considered possible for alchemists worldwide.
So naturally, everyone was kissing the Pill Pavilion's metaphorical backside, bringing tributes in tenfold, if not more.
Because if you didn't?
Well... without pills, cultivation became just punching rocks and hoping for miracles.
The alchemists held the root of progress. Pills for breakthroughs, pills for healing, pills for beasts, pills for soul force, pills for stomach aches, and some pills for... romance-related mishaps.
Elder Sun Jin knew all of this.
He also knew that he had been chosen to be the delivery boy.
Not an elder with teleportation talismans. Not an ancestor in seclusion.
Him.
Sun Jin the Fire-Farting, Tea-Addicted, Unluckiest Elder in the Sect.
"Oh, glorious," he drawled to the horizon. "Spend half a year traveling across fog and fire just to deliver a crate of leaf clippings and dried petals to a smug bunch of pill sniffers."
His eye twitched.
"Could've had a jade lily instead…"
---
Few months later Later – Deep in the Verdant Wilds
A strange tree stood at the edge of an unnamed glade.
It was gnarled and crooked, its bark a patchwork of gray-gold, its roots clawing into the ground like ancient talons. No birds perched upon it. No beasts came near.
But beneath it, in a circle of calm and cracked stone, sat the many-eyed, many-mouthed wolf.
He was motionless, his form outlined by a faint, steady glow of qi that pulsed with rhythm.
Before him were ten glowing metal roots, each one twitching faintly—almost resisting their own refining.
To his side were two squat, dented gourds filled with something sacred, dangerous, and thoroughly unpleasant to taste.
Crooked berry wine.
The boars had called it a joke, a party drink, a last resort. But the wolf knew better now.
The Bronze Kong, battered and still nursing a bruised ego from the Lily Pond incident, had muttered the truth over fermented peach slices:
> "Crooked berries… good for more than hangovers. Burn through impurities. Purify the flow. Only real beasts know that. The rest? Heh. They waste it on toasts."
And so, the wolf had listened.
The boars had laughed at first.
They always did.
But they also gave him the roots.
> "We're old. Lazy. Comedic relief, probably," Grizzleback had grunted, flicking a tail at him. "But you, wolf… you're our hunter. We raised ya. You go get strong, yeah?"
The others had chimed in:
> "We don't need metal roots. We need naps and bad jokes."
> "Go build that foundation. Make it thicc."
> "No one's gonna write ballads about us unless it's about our snoring."
Their words were crude, their laughs loud—but their intentions burned with something rare.
Care.
So the wolf sat beneath the strange tree, the two bottles of crooked berry wine beside him, the ten metal roots in a ring before him, and let his inner world begin to shift.
He drank a small sip—no more.
The liquid burned. His body trembled. His mouths snarled involuntarily.
But the fire helped.
It made the metal roots' spiritual hardness soften, just slightly. Enough to pull strands of qi from them. Enough to burn the impurities without wasting the essence.
The first hour passed.
The first root cracked open, steam rising, its core flickering like liquid silver.
By the second root, the wolf's body glowed—qi channels flickering like lightning beneath fur.
By the fourth, he began to sweat. Not from heat, but from pressure. The foundation wasn't just a vessel—it was a choice. A decision to accept burden. To prepare for the weight of future power.
And with each root, his decision became firmer.
He didn't want to be the wolf who ran from hippos.
He wanted to stand on par with beasts, humans, sects, and beyond.
To be a nightmare not just of appearance, but of potential.
---
By the ninth root, night had fallen. The stars above shimmered. The strange tree above him hummed faintly—was it resonating with his cultivation?
The wolf didn't know. He didn't care.
He reached for the final root.
He drank the last gulp of crooked wine.
And then, everything exploded.
Qi surged. Roots shattered. The glade rumbled.
The wolf's mouths roared in unison, his body suspended mid-air as metal essence flooded his channels, clashing, twisting, and finally—
Settling.
His body hardened.
His spirit stilled.
And for a moment, even the strange tree stopped humming.
He opened his central eye.
"…Foundation," he whispered, voice heavy with exhaustion and pride.
He had done it.
He had burned the roots.
He had built the base.
He was no longer just a beast with tricks.
He was a cultivator.
---
Far away, in a carriage pulled by cloud antelope and guarded by talisman-engraved statues, Elder Sun Jin sneezed violently.
"Someone must be gossiping about me," he muttered.
He sipped his lukewarm tea.
It tasted like despair.