Immortal Asura: Crushing the Heavenly Dao

The First Taste of Power

"If you want to eat my flesh, you will have to pay with your souls," Lin Feng whispered, his voice cutting through the low growls of the surrounding pack.

The six shadow wolves tightened their circle, their crimson eyes locked onto his chest. The largest beast, a massive alpha with a scar across its snout, bared its yellow fangs and took a heavy step forward.

"Do not freeze now, boy," the ancient voice echoed faintly in the back of his mind. "Let the gold pathways breathe. Command the scripture."

"I don't know how to control this," Lin Feng muttered under his breath, his hands trembling slightly as the alpha wolf crouched to spring. "Show me the way."

"You do not need to think," the voice responded coldly. "Your blood already knows the path. Trust the hunger in your veins."

The alpha wolf lunged, its massive jaws snapping targeted directly at Lin Feng's throat. The speed of the attack would have blinded him an hour ago, but now, the world seemed to move in slow motion.

Lin Feng did not run. Instead, he reached out with his bare right hand. Instinctively, a strange, black smoke erupted from his palms, coiling around his fingers like dark, living snakes. He caught the massive wolf mid-air, his grip clamping around its thick throat like an iron band.

"What is this dark energy?" Lin Feng gasped, feeling a sudden, intense heat flowing through his palm.

The wolf gave a muffled, choked whimper. The moment the black smoke touched its fur, the beast began to shake violently. Its bright red eyes grew dull, and its thick muscles began to wither away under Lin Feng's touch. Before his very eyes, the wolf's lifeforce and primitive spiritual energy were ripped clean out of its body, traveling straight up Lin Feng's arm.

Within three seconds, the wolf turned to a pile of gray ash, scattering into the wind.

"Did I just do that?" Lin Feng asked, staring at his empty hand in absolute shock. "Where did its energy go?"

"It is inside you now," the ancient voice inside his mind laughed softly. "That is the power of the Forbidden Devouring Art. Their strength is now your strength."

The remaining five wolves took a collective step backward, their aggressive growls turning into high-pitched whimpers of pure terror. They looked at the pile of ash on the ground, then looked up at the glowing golden light beneath Lin Feng's skin.

"You are not running away," Lin Feng said, a dark smile spreading across his face as he took a step toward them. "You wanted to hunt me. Now, it is my turn."

"He has completely changed," a trembling voice whispered from the high rocks above the ravine.

Lin Feng snapped his head up and spotted two outer disciples holding torches. They had been sent by Elder Mo to confirm his death, but they were now shaking so hard they could barely hold their weapons.

"Did you see that?" the second disciple stammered, his face pale as sheet. "He just turned an iron-rank beast into dust with his bare hands. He is a demon."

"We need to run back and tell the elder immediately," the first disciple yelled, dropping his torch into the dirt. "He is not trash anymore. He is going to kill us all."

"You think you can leave after watching me?" Lin Feng shouted up at them, his voice echoing off the canyon walls.

With a powerful leap, his new golden pathways fired like springs, launching him twenty feet into the air. He landed directly on the narrow rocky path right in front of the two fleeing men, blocking their only escape route.

"Please, Lin Feng," the first disciple begged, falling to his knees and dropping his sword. "We were just following Elder Mo's orders. We had nothing to do with Wang Chen beating you up."

"You watched them break my ribs and you laughed," Lin Feng said, stepping closer as the black smoke began to rise from his fingertips again. "You called me a dog that deserved to die in the dirt."

"We can give you all our spirit stones," the second disciple cried, reaching into his robes with trembling hands. "We have fifty stones. Take them all, just let us go back to the pavilions."

"Your stones are useless to me," Lin Feng said, his eyes turning cold and lifeless. "But your cultivation bases will do nicely."

He moved like a flash of lightning, grabbing both disciples by their foreheads before they could even scream for help. The black smoke surged into their skulls, and both men gasped loudly as their internal energy gates forced open. Lin Feng felt a torrent of pure spiritual energy rushing into his palms, filling his golden pathways and expanding his core.

"It feels so warm," Lin Feng whispered, closing his eyes as the stolen cultivation settled into his chest. "I can actually feel my power rising."

The two disciples collapsed onto the gravel, their eyes rolling back as they became completely unconscious, their cultivation bases entirely drained. They were now ordinary mortals, broken and empty.

"They are alive, but they are ruined," Lin Feng observed, looking down at his hands. "I can literally steal cultivation from anything that breathes."

"Yes, child," the voice in his mind approved. "The world has treated you like garbage because you had no roots. Now, you can take the roots of the entire world. Use it to feed your growth."

Lin Feng looked up at the high mountain peak where the main sect pavilions glowed under the starry sky. For years, he had sneaked around those buildings, hiding his face and taking beatings just to survive another day.

"Elder Mo thinks I am rotting at the bottom of this valley," Lin Feng said, a cold determination hardening his features. "He thinks his secret plan to murder Elder Zhou is safe."

"What will you do now?" the voice asked. "You are still too weak to face the sect leader."

"I don't need to face the sect leader yet," Lin Feng replied, wiping the dirt and blood from his face. "I will start from the bottom. I will take everything Elder Mo owns, piece by piece, until he has nothing left but fear."

He turned away from the unconscious disciples and began his ascent up the steep mountain path. The dangerous wilderness of the abyss did not seem to scare him anymore. The nocturnal beasts that usually hunted outer disciples ran away into the deep brush the moment they smelled the dark smoke lingering around his body.

He climbed steadily through the remaining hours of the night, using his new golden pathways to navigate the treacherous cliff faces without breaking a sweat. His broken arm had completely healed, knit back together by the golden liquid fire that now served as his bloodline.

As the first morning sun started to break through the thick horizon, casting a bright red glow across the valley, Lin Feng reached the top of the mountain. He stood tall, his long hair blowing in the cold morning wind as he looked at the massive stone archway that marked the entrance of the Mystic Sword Sect.

He climbed out of the abyss by morning, standing at the gates of the sect that discarded him, ready to hunt.