How much time has passed since he began his journey or since he fought the Smiling Devil? A week? A month? Quin did not know the answer and did not care either.

Hunting was all of his life now and he completely immersed himself in it. At the beginning, he felt a bit awkward and stupid for doing these things, but before he had any kind of doubt about his sudden change of behavior, he had simply lost all of his concern regarding it.

Not caring and not having to think things over and over again, maybe this was the reason why this had been so easy for him. There was no more worry about his life, cultivation, future, family or friends, just life itself. It would be an exaggeration to say that he had become a man of mere instincts, however, he clearly was not fully aware and in control of what he was doing.

He fought and killed several different types of creatures, from the White-maned Tiger, to the Finned Monkey. Skinning them and working with their fur became a chore so he just stopped doing that. At one point he even started to feel that cooking the meat was just something that wasted his time and thus, in the end, he decided to eat it just raw. He still took some part of the animals as a souvenir, though.

Another change was that the period of his hunting shifted more and more toward the night of the day. Even though he had no qi to use and was just a simple human, somehow he had no problems at seeing in the dark.

This time, he would be facing a smaller pack of Fire Wolves. These creatures looked very similar to a normal wolf, however, their fur was red and they had the ability to spit fireballs, in the size of a human's fist out of their mouth.

Though their overall strength could be compared to a weak human who was in the first level of the Qi Foundation stage, they hunted in packs and had a great team work. Depending on the size of their group even Qi Condensation experts would rather avoid them.

Fortunately, this pack had only three of them and so fighting them was still within his ability, especially as he planned to attack from the shadows.

They were too far away for his spear, however he had a couple of knives on him and he began his attack by throwing two of them at the closest wolf. The first hit one of its legs and the second one got embedded into its neck -- without actually killing it.

The other two quickly turned around and started spitting fireballs at him right away. Evading the attacks, Quin leaped toward the injured one and impaled its head with his spear. Then he did a similar thing he had done before: he grabbed the body of the now dead wolf and threw it at the other two.

The outcome was not as good as it had been last time, though, and a fireball managed to hit him in the chest, pushing him a few meters back. Luckily, it was his clothes that got the brunt of the damage, but before he could do anything, another pair of fireballs were flying toward him.

One of them was a near miss, but the other was not and he could only put his right hand into its path to minimize the damage. The fireball exploded after making contact with his arm and then lit it up. His left hand still had the spear in it and Quin threw it at one of them before leaping behind one of the nearby trees. He quickly extinguished the fire on his right arm and ran from one tree to another for some time. The single remaining wolf -- Quin's previous spear throw killed the other one -- hesitated for a moment on what to do but eventually chose not to follow Quin.

This time, he had underestimated the wolves, and more importantly their ranged combat ability. In the end, despite the fact that he killed two of them, he took some serious damage and even had to flee. His right arm became even less usable than before, but he could have cared less.

There was only a single thought on his mind, and that was to finish what he had started. He had no options but to ran away, but there was no way he would let his prey get away. His injury and his arm could wait until the most important thing would have been finished.

He returned to the place of the battle and pulled out his spear, but as he looked at the corpses of the wolves he became filled with hunger. Quin put down his spear, and without even skinning it, he took several big bites out of it. There was nothing comparable to the taste of this meat in his memories and he savored every piece of it. Devouring the prey he hunted was one of the best things he had experienced in his life and granted him a satisfaction he had never felt before. During this time, even his ever constant pain, which tormented him for a long time disappeared.

However, his joy was soon interrupted by the ever growing desire to finish his hunt. Quin had already devoured half of the creature, and it should have been enough to satiate his hunger, but he still felt as his stomach was empty. After some moments of indecisiveness, the wish of pursuing the remaining Fire Wolf won out and although with some frustration in his eyes, he grabbed his spear and stood up.

He inhaled deeply, finding out that the smell of the beast still lingered in the air and with the tracks it left behind, he it quite easy for him to find the wolf.

He lurked stealthily behind the trees and other obstacles, staying outside of his prey's sight and each step he made was careful and completely silent.

Along the way Quin did not have a good opportunity to attack it, so he followed the lone Fire Wolf to its destination: a lush clearing at the side of a mountain. After a few other moments, he noticed that there was a decent sized opening on the mountain wall and that's exactly where the wolf was going. It did not take a long time for him to realize that it was the cave where the animal probably lived and that inside there must be another group of them -- Fire Wolves never lived alone.

He was contemplating for some time on how to proceed as there would be no way that he would let his prey escape, however he was also perfectly aware that he would not even have a slim chance against another pack of them.

Then he heard some kind of noise from the direction the cave was located at. He listened in, focusing on his hearing and he was able to differentiate a couple of different sounds in no time: there were a lot growling and howling, but there was also the sound of something similar to what a big blunt weapon would make.

He did not have to wait for long to see the truth behind the noises as just in a few breaths of time a huge creature ran out of the cave. It was well above three meters and had a humanoid shape. Its whole body was covered by a thick brown fur, however, it had quite a few patches missing. Quin did not recognize the creature, but it looked similar to some of the giant apes he had heard of.

After the giant ape came a pack of wolves with at least twenty members. Although the signs of battle were left behind on them as well, it was quite clear that they had the upper hand.

The Fire Wolves constantly spat out fireballs at the giant ape and no matter how it tried to block them, eventually, it fell to its knees, dead. In the blink of an eye, the entire wolf pack -- including the one which had just returned -- was next to the corpse feasting upon it.

No! Don't eat him! It was also the time when something awakened in Quin. Although it was only wolves that were eating a giant ape, it made him remember the scene when his friend, Dreon, was devoured alive by a group Shriekers. He was standing there for several moments shocked until his conscious mind became the one at the top again and the strong instincts which guided him for weeks started to decrease by each passing second.

Slowly, he remembered all of the things he had done during these days and the entire thing felt surreal to him like he had been dreaming the whole time. After recalling some of his action he felt so disgusted that he could not prevent himself from throwing up.

Fuck! What the hell is going on?