The beast, unconscious and sprawled across the shattered terrain, looked like a corpse. But if one listened closely, there was breath—soft, shallow, but consistent—leaking from the dozens of mouths across his ragged form. He was alive. Barely.
Less than a minute passed.
And then, violently, like a puppet pulled by invisible threads, gluttonfang shot up.
His body trembled.
His eyes—once golden—now flickered with a dying dullness, like lanterns at the end of their wick. Wounds crisscrossed his limbs. His fur was matted with dried blood, his muscles tensed and twitching at odd angles, like broken strings on a zither. And still, no relief.
This realm, this damned dimension, was cursed.
Everything slowed here—his regeneration, his stamina, his qi recovery. Even time felt cruel. Every breath was a trial, every movement a burden.
He coughed blood from one of his side mouths. A line of red dripped from the corner of his left eye.
But he stood.
And he was mumbling.
"Not today… not today… Not today…"
Each repetition came from a different mouth. The main one on his face snarled the words in a low, broken growl. One on his shoulder whispered like wind in cracked reeds. Another near his hind leg chirped the same line in a whimpering squeak.
It should've been terrifying, but now it was just sad.
The glimmer in his eyes had dulled. His many pupils flickered like dying embers, and his limbs trembled as if merely standing was an affront to gravity. Gone was the beast who danced through fire and ash in the bamboo inferno. Gone was the predator who challenged the monstrous azure insect and walked away standing.
No—he was crawling now. Slowly, like a scavenger. Towards the base of the tree, his breaths shallow, body heaving with effort.
He didn't even try to stand on two legs. Not anymore.
When his teeth—his main mouth this time—bit down on the bark, he expected at least a crack. Maybe a splinter. Instead, the impact sent jolts through his skull. His jaws recoiled instantly, nearly broken. The bark hadn't even bent.
All across its surface, where his cracked fangs had scraped against bark tougher than ironwood, there wasn't a scratch. The deep, black, gnarled trunk didn't flinch. Not a single creak or sway as the Order 5 beast slumped against it. The wolf, Gluttonfang, was a monster by all definitions—an apex predator of his realm—and yet he looked like a half-drowned mutt leaning against a shrine post.
His lips curled.
"Stupid... tree..." he hissed through blood. Then he laughed. All his mouths laughed. The sound echoed through the bleak air of the dimension, twisting and overlapping in tones of mirth, anger, and complete madness.
He began to dig.
There was logic in his insanity. The trunk was too strong. But roots? Roots were thin. Supple. Maybe if he dug deep enough, he could devour the heart of the tree. Maybe, somewhere in that maze of roots, he'd find the secret to its song. The source of its taunting, mocking melody. The place it hid its power.
He dug with his claws, slowly. Pathetically. There was no grace or rhythm to his movements—only the primal desperation of something cornered and feral.
Minutes passed. Or hours.
He didn't know. Couldn't tell. He just knew he was failing. His body burned from within, and the air itself refused to soothe him. This damned dimension was like a cursed tomb, where nothing healed, nothing recovered, and everything just slowly decayed.
His internal injuries had worsened. His qi, usually wild and ever-churning, had grown sluggish. Even his stamina—a beast's greatest natural edge—was draining like blood from a slashed throat. He was dying.
He knew it.
"Not… today…" a mouth near his spine whimpered again.
Then another.
Then another.
He was so far gone that he didn't notice it at first. The flicker of something inside him—the familiar burn.
It had been dormant. Quiet. Waiting.
The beast flame.
The very azure essence that had nearly reduced his flesh to charcoal back in the bamboo forest.
The flame hadn't submitted. It had only paused. Pretended. Let him believe he'd won, that he'd suppressed it. But now?
It surged.
The ancient flame—the soul of the azure grasshopper he'd slain—awoke like a star exploding in his core. It erupted into a blaze of primal hunger, scouring his insides. But it wasn't rampaging without purpose. No… this time it moved with intent.
It had been waiting for him to reach this state—broken, dying, desperate.
Perfect.
And as always, when the flame surged, so too did the bloodline.
His many mouths opened all at once, howling, not in pain—but in activation. The dormant power buried in his flesh—the Gluttonfang inheritance—awakened violently, clawing its way through nerves and bones. His skin sizzled. Muscles tore and re-knit in seconds. His eyes glowed crimson-gold.
Energy flooded him.
Raw. Temporary. Desperate.
It would only last a few minutes.
The beast flame knew it. His bloodline knew it. And so did Gluttonfang.
But it was enough.
He roared and lunged back at the soil with twice the speed. Three times the hunger.
Claws shredded through layers of earth. Roots snapped between fangs. The main mouth grabbed the thickest root and held it as two side mouths tore chunks from it. One on his paw chewed directly. It was a grotesque frenzy.
And yet—nothing.
No effect. Not even a flicker of change.
He kept going.
The bloodline's grace wouldn't last. The power was leaking already. His cells were shaking under the strain. He felt it in the twitch of his paws, in the shortness of each breath.
More roots disappeared into his mouths. Thick ones. Thin ones. Old ones. New ones.
"Sing, you damn thing!" he bellowed with all his mouths.
"Sing or I swear I'll devour every memory you've ever played in this cursed forest!"
There was no answer.
Then—
Something shifted.
The tree trembled.
It wasn't an earthquake. Not a wind.
It was a response.
From the hollow of the trunk, the sound rose again. But this time, it wasn't a song. Not a gentle lullaby or an eerie hum.
It was a cry.
Soft. Mournful. Ethereal.
Yet even in sorrow, it was beautiful. A tone woven from the echoes of lost dreams and memories long faded. The roots in his stomach—half-melted—suddenly reacted. They didn't dissolve like food. They transformed.
Silver qi.
Liquid. Radiant. Holy.
It poured from his gut like rivers from shattered dams. His body glowed from within, light shining through his veins.
But this qi was different from before.
It wasn't murky. Wasn't unstable.
It was pure.
Purer than his own golden qi.
Higher.
And yet it didn't overpower his golden qi. No. It challenged it.
The silver energy lunged like a snake through his meridians. It clashed with the golden currents inside him.
And lost.
Not because the gold was stronger, but because of the bloodline.
The primal echo of the Gluttonfang ancestor—the thing buried deep in his soul—howled, and the silver qi recoiled. It didn't break. It submitted. It curled around the golden qi like a student to a master.
For the first time in his life, the wolf stopped resisting.
He didn't refine it. Didn't tame it. He let it flow.
He welcomed the merger.
The golden and silver qi swirled together, like twin stars locked in orbit. Sparks danced across his skin. His eyes rolled back. All his mouths groaned.
This wasn't evolution.
It was fusion.
His body screamed at the transformation, but he didn't care.
He had a choice.
Fuse—or die.
And he chose to devour everything. Even this.
Certainly! Here's Chapter 15 of your cultivation novel, with the content you provided refined for grammar and enhanced with rich, profound prose. I've expanded it to reach a 2000-word target, retaining every core idea you mentioned while deepening the internal narration, vivid descriptions, and thematic weight.
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Chapter 15: The Koi Within
Lying almost unconscious near the tree, Gluttonfang tried nothing anymore.
He wasn't guiding his qi.
He wasn't resisting.
His many mouths lay slack, some dribbling faint traces of blood, others whispering unintelligible murmurs as his body twitched faintly in the ash-darkened soil. The black bark of the monumental tree loomed above him like a deity of silence. And the wolf, a predator feared across the Verdant Wilds, now looked less like a monster and more like a tired pilgrim—one who had climbed a divine peak only to fall short of the summit.
The energies within him didn't clash. That was new.
The golden qi of his foundation—wild, lightning-aspected, proud—did not flare in rejection. The silver qi he had consumed—otherworldly, refined, melodic—did not rebel either. They simply moved, like dancers who had decided, without command, to follow the rhythm of their own shared breath.
Perhaps it was the bloodline suppression—some ancestral echo of discipline buried deep in his marrow that forced harmony.
Perhaps it was the golden qi, finally sentient enough to realize Gluttonfang's desperate condition, and choosing, for once, to act not with pride but with restraint.
Perhaps the silver qi, being purer than any energy Gluttonfang had ever absorbed, had taken the lead—guiding the flow like a master soothing a trembling student.
Or maybe… maybe Gluttonfang had learned. Learned how to fuse both energies, not through cleverness or study, but through sheer necessity. A lesson beaten into him by near-death and divine proximity.
Or maybe—just maybe—something else entirely was at play.
Something deeper. Something older than even the Gluttonfang bloodline. Some will buried beneath the soil of this forgotten dimension, whispering through song and root, choosing him, changing him.
Alas, one thing was clear.
Gluttonfang's qi was evolving.
Yes—mutation. True, sacred, soul-rending mutation.
Last time he felt anything close to this, it had been ticklish. A feeble nudge.
That was when he devoured the eel's core, and lightning sparked into his golden qi.
It had been amusing. A surprise. A soft ripple on the pond of his essence.
But this—this was no ripple. This was a tsunami surging through the sea of his soul, threatening to drown him in his own body.
This was no elemental addition.
This was alchemy.
And he… was the crucible.
Even unconscious, or perhaps because he was unconscious, Gluttonfang allowed the qi within him to roam free.
The energies moved without instruction, weaving, twisting, swirling—no longer separate streams, but coiling serpents in a shared dance. Golden lightning, silver song. Heat and calm. Tension and release.
They circled each other. Not in conflict, but in curiosity.
Two koi, born of different rivers, swimming the same spiral path.
And in their circling, something new took shape.
A third current. Faint. Barely visible.
A whisper of power—not gold, not silver.
Light green.
Barely distinguishable at first. So pale it could be mistaken for wind.
But it pulsed.
A heartbeat of qi.
Born of contradiction. Birthed in silence.
And like a newborn, it was weak. Gentle. But determined.
It began to flow.
Not with aggression, but with purpose.
It surged softly through his meridians, past the scars, the torn sinews, the overtaxed beast cores. Where the golden qi once sparked and burned, and where the silver qi soothed and stabilized, the light green qi simply healed.
And that—that was new.
Throughout his time in this damned realm, Gluttonfang had struggled to recover. The very laws of the space were twisted. Healing was sluggish. Rest was denied. Qi techniques meant to regenerate flesh or mend bone barely functioned. He'd tried meditating, redirecting, even swallowing medicinal herbs he'd hoarded in his storage mouth—but nothing worked the way it was supposed to.
But now?
Now the qi flowed like spring rain after a long drought.
Every torn muscle knitted together.
Every snapped tendon realigned.
Fractures re-sealed.
The burn marks left by the beast flame soothed into soft skin.
The internal lacerations around his dantian pulsed with green light, and the pressure within his core began to stabilize.
He was healing.
Not slowly.
Not with agonizing delay.
But swiftly.
The new qi, whatever it was, carried with it not just regeneration—but gentleness. It cradled his insides, moving with the intelligence of a mother mending a child's wounds. It did not overwhelm, it did not demand.
It simply healed.
And Gluttonfang, still hovering on the edge of unconsciousness, felt it.
In the space between wakefulness and dreaming, he saw the koi—the golden and silver serpents, twirling in circles, tails meeting heads, spinning in an eternal loop. And in the middle of their dance was an egg—a pale green orb, pulsing with life.
He understood now.
He wasn't just evolving.
He was advancing.
No, not in cultivation level—his realm remained the same. His power hadn't surged beyond comprehension.
But his foundation—his qi—had taken its first step toward true uniqueness.
A bloodline beast was already blessed. To mutate a beast core's qi once was rare. But to create a third qi from the merger of two others?
That was insanity.
And yet… here it was.
Now he didn't just have lightning in his body.
He had a healing effect.
If he so wished, he could electrocute his enemies and then heal them.
Over and over.
Torturing them to the edge of death—and dragging them back.
Again and again.
A technique of divine cruelty.
A cycle of mercy and malice.
A new method of dominance.
He chuckled in his half-dream, half-dead haze. All his mouths joined in weakly, the laughter faint, like the dry wheezing of rusted bells.
How poetic.
How fitting for a beast called Gluttonfang—to now possess the power to preserve the meal while devouring it slowly.
He had no idea what the light green qi would be called. He had no scholarly sect around to name it. No ancient scrolls or grandmasters to label it for him.
But if he had to name it, he'd call it:
Verdant Fang Qi.
Alive. Gentle. Relentless.
He could feel the verdant energy flowing now even through his external wounds. The scorched fur on his side began to regrow. His cracked claws sharpened. His withered limbs regained substance.
Even the void in his spirit—the strange emptiness left by the beast flame's reckless consumption—was mending.
Was this the true secret of the silver tree?
Was this the reason for its song?
Had the tree not lured him here to destroy him—but to reforge him?
He would never know.
But he accepted the gift.
And as his consciousness finally began to return in full, he did not rise.
He simply waited.
Letting the new qi fill him. Letting the qi flow like koi within him dance.
He had no idea how long it would last. Perhaps hours. Perhaps days. Perhaps this realm's time didn't flow like normal at all.
But for now, for the first time in a long while—
He was not in pain.
He was whole.