A blazing inferno, melted snow, charred remains. Those were the things Vajra expected to see after launching his attack. But a spiralling flame, starved embers, a human figure and two wolves. Those were the things that entered his vision.

It took him a moment to parse what had happened, but even after having thought about it, it still didn’t make much sense. A human. Wolves. Wolves and a human… No fire, no ash. Unexpected.

Since things were already moving in a difficult-to-comprehend direction, Vajra did something he himself found difficult to rationalise.

“What are you doing here, human?”

Of course, he didn’t expect a response. He had never known a human who was able to comprehend Beast Language. Even his master had only grasped a pitiful few distorted pronunciations of simple phrases. Not that Vajra was in the business of teaching.

The surprises just continued coming as the human shifted his gaze to look Vajra directly in the eyes.

“Extract the fire element qi from her body and donate essence blood enough for her to make a full recovery. You have 30 seconds to begin.”

Not only had the human spoken Beast Language quite fluently, but his pronunciation also had a regal air to it. It was as if he were a high-standing beast, but for such a beast to be on the lower continent was a ridiculous notion. At least Vajra had never heard of one. It was known to all that the lower continent was ruled by three supremely powerful human cultivators in the sixth realm.

They wouldn’t allow the rise of a beast of equivalent strength, and for a beast who was already in that realm or above, coming to the lower continent would be viewed as a complete waste of time, not to mention a tremendous risk.

Vajra had just gotten over the fact that a human had actually understood him and responded in Beast Language when he finally understood the actual content behind the words.

He could only open his eyes wide and move backwards slightly. It was only when the next bolt of lightning fell that he realised that he was on a bit of a time crunch. If he waited too long, dealing with Rhava would become needlessly difficult.

“I don’t know where you came from, human, but since you were able to block one of my attacks, you should have gathered quite a number of beast cores. It will be no problem for you to get into the sect, so take my advice and mind your own business before I decide to cull the numbers a little.”

“You have 20 seconds remaining.”

Vajra couldn’t help letting out a burst of raucous laughter.

“Do you really think you can walk sideways here? It’s true that I’ve been instructed to refrain from acting against the more talented participants, but don’t push your luck too far. At the end of the day, I’m already a member of the sect and you’re just a new recruit who has yet to prove himself. If I decide to have a little snack, no one will say anything about it.”

“10 seconds.”

Vajra’s laughter stopped and he became more serious.

“You really want to exchange your life for this? Why are you standing up for these two? What does it benefit you?”

“Do I need a reason to stand up for my family?”

“Family? What nonsense is this?”

“5.”

“I would like to see just what you’ll do, human! Don’t get cocky just because you were able to-”

“Time’s up.”

“You know, you’re really getting on my-”

Vajra found it impossible to complete his sentence. All of a sudden, his vocal cords ceased to produce sound. And that wasn’t all. Even his mouth seemed to stop moving, frozen in place. As if that wasn’t already shocking enough, he saw the boy start to rise into the air. No, that wasn’t it, if the boy was rising, then so was the snowy mountain underneath his feet. The truth of the matter was that it was Vajra himself who was descending. And it wasn’t a graceful descent either. He fell like a rock, landing in the snow with an ungraceful thud.

That was when he realised that his unresponsiveness didn’t lie just in his mouth and throat, he couldn’t move anything. He couldn’t even blink his eyes. He could only continue to look forward with his body half-buried in the snow at the boy whose blue eyes were shining with a piercing light. The light was so intense that everything else seemed darker in comparison. Not even the occasional flash of lightning could wash away that cool blue light.

At some point, Vajra realised that the snow was falling in strange ways. It would sporadically teleport. At one moment, a snowflake would be frozen in time, then it would suddenly fall a few centimetres before standing still once more.

Vajra felt the cold overtake his body as he laid there. It wasn’t the normal cold of the snow, it was something much more pervasive, a chill that went deeper than his bones, straight to his spirit.

He didn’t see when the boy had moved, but he was suddenly standing right in front of him, looking down at him with those cold blue eyes of his.

Vajra couldn’t see the boy’s mouth moving, but he could hear his words.

“Having reached the fifth layer, you must have experienced many things and learnt a lot of lessons along the way.”

At that point, darkness started to take over Vajra’s vision. It crept towards those two blue lights, erasing everything else in the world.

“Unfortunately, you failed to learn the most important thing. No matter h-”

Vajra could no longer hear words, and he could see no light. All was black. All was nothing.

***

“No matter how s- Oh. You’re already dead.”

Tianlan bent down and used his Sonic Drill technique to have his hand tear through Vajra’s skull and extracted a glowing red orb. The orb was translucent and warm to the touch. Its size was slightly too large for Tianlan to wrap his fingers around it.

After standing back up, Tianlan felt a wave of exhaustion and a stabbing pain in his eyes. When he raised his hand to cover them, he felt a wet sensation. Taking a look, he could see that it was his blood which had turned crystal clear as he practised the Way of Essence.

This was the first time he had suffered such a backlash, but he noticed that other than the tiredness, the pain and the blood, he hadn’t suffered any other problems. His immediate concern was for his vision, but he was relieved to find that it hadn’t worsened.

Ignoring the pain and the blood, Tianlan turned to Shiva and Rhava.

Rhava, who had reached the end stages of his tribulation and was only moments away from reaching the core refining realm, forcibly turned his shocked gaze away from Vajra’s corpse and onto Tianlan whose eyes had lost their light.

“Are you alright?”

“I’ll be fine. More importantly.”

Tianlan walked up to Shiva and knelt on the ground in front of her.

“Is there still hope?” asked Rhava as he made sure to stay far enough away.

He watched as Tianlan’s gaze scanned over Shiva’s body.

“Don’t worry. She’s going to be alright.”

Tianlan raised Vajra’s beast core into the air then dropped it into his mouth and swallowed it with much effort.

“What are you doing? That’s a beast core! The wild energy will overwhelm your body!”

“We don’t have any other choices. Shiva needs to absorb the energy from a source as potent as this, but its fire nature will only worsen her wounds. The only way we have to deal with it is to purify out the fire aspect of it.”

Tianlan retrieved a few herbs from his robe and ate them one by one.

Rhava recognised them as yin-nature natural treasures.

“Since I don’t happen to have a cauldron with me, and my knowledge of alchemy isn’t enough to be able to refine without one, I can only use my own body as the cauldron.”

Rhava opened his eyes wide and took a step back.

“I don’t know much about alchemy, but I know enough to tell that what you’re doing is very dangerous. Not to mention you’re about to let wild qi run rampant in your body. There’s no telling what kind of harm that will do. Why would you…”

Rhava stopped speaking when he saw Tianlan place his hands over his stomach.

“Rhava. Would you sacrifice your life for Shiva?”

“Of course I would.”

“She answered the same when I asked her that. And she proved it to be true today.”

“…”

Rhava looked at Shiva. His heart ached as he recalled what she had done for him.

“That is what it means to be family,” said Tianlan. “And when you called me brother, you became part of mine, and so did Shiva. Naturally, I won’t allow my sister to suffer when I could take her place.”

“But you've only known us for-”

Rhava watched as Tianlan’s skin turned red and he started to sweat profusely. Eventually, steam started to escape from his reddened skin. Rhava couldn’t imagine how painful it was, but Tianlan didn’t show a trace of it. He actually forced a smile as his body was wracked with tremendous pain.

“The only requirement for a member of the Shao Clan is to view the others as family and to treat them as such. So it doesn’t matter how long it’s been, both of you are my precious family.”

“I can’t understand it.”

“If it makes you feel better, I didn’t invite the two of you to our family for no reason. It turns out you both possess traits that make you highly compatible with us. It could even be said that we were fated to meet.”

“…”

“Well, there’s no need to think about it too much, is there? From today forth, the two of you are members of the Shao Clan. That’s all that matters. By the way, my name is Shao Tianlan, but you can just call me Tianlan.”

Tianlan’s skin started to revert to its original condition as he finished refining out the harmful elements from the beast core but it didn’t return to normal. He was still in a fierce internal battle against the rampaging wild qi that was being slowly refined out of the core.

He placed his hands on Shiva’s body and started to transfer the energy to the places she needed it most and helped her to circulate it for recovery.

It was fortunate that Mei and Shiva were both female canine tribesman, which made them quite similar. Through the observations Tianlan had made of Mei’s body after the sparring matches, he was able to see how she naturally recovered her strength and healed the minor injuries she would sustain on occasion. He used that knowledge to help the unconscious Shiva to begin the healing process.

The wild qi, which had been infused with the yin-nature of the herbs was very effective in expelling the fire qi from Shiva’s body, and using Mei’s natural recovery methods proved to be extremely beneficial to Shiva. Tianlan could see her tissues repairing at a visible rate. Her weak pulse was starting to strengthen and her breathing became deeper and more relaxed.

Rhava almost couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The shock was to such an extent that he missed the fact that he had completed his tribulation and entered the realm of core refiners.

It wasn’t long before Shiva’s eyes started to open, and when she saw Tianlan and Rhava looking down at her, she almost decided to close them again thinking it was a dream.

“Shiva!”

Only when she felt Rhava stroking his head against hers did her eyes pop open.

“Rhava?”

She moved her neck expecting to feel excruciating pain, but she was surprised to feel that it was mild at best. Even as she looked down, she could see her silvery-white fur there as if she hadn’t been lit aflame just now. But the snowless ground was a testament to the events she recalled.

She got on her feet and looked around dazedly. She didn’t notice the snow-covered body of a certain tiger.

“What happened?”

“What happened? Our brother saved us. That’s what happened.”

“Our brother?”

Shiva set her sights on Tianlan who smiled at her then turned back to Rhava.

“Does this mean…”

“You were right, Shiva. I should have listened to you from the beginning.”

Shiva didn’t express any kind of reaction, instead, she looked up to the air above them, then off to the volcanic region in the distance.

“What happened to Vajra? Did you fight him off?”

Instead of answering her, Tianlan and Rhava stepped to the side.

Shiva looked at them, confused, and when she saw that they didn’t have anything else to say, she looked behind the spot they had been standing at. There, a little distance away, she could faintly make out the orange and black stripes of a tiger.

Before she could even say anything about that, she heard the rumbling of thunder.

“Rhava, have you still not completed your breakthrough?”

Rhava shook his head.

“That’s not mine.”

“Hm?”

Shiva looked up as the lightning suspiciously began to pool directly above her.

She turned her anxious gaze to her two brothers.

“S-Save me.”

The two just stood there smiling at her.

Her teary eyes, while effectively pulling at the heartstrings, weren’t enough get her brothers to assist her as the first bolt of lightning fell without mercy.