Chapter 5: The Journey Back – The Hunger

For weeks he had been traveling through this hellscape. The mountains were rugged and steep. Slippery, and filled with many many pits. With the furious winds added to the mix, it was a nightmare to travel through.

 

He had been keeping an eye out for solitary monsters. He desperately wanted to rid himself of the constant torture. Unfortunately, most of the time he was alone in this frozen, and desolate hellscape. The few times he did come across monsters, they were moving in packs. He did not desire to stir a hornet's nest.

 

Anything that could survive in here was no easy picking. He was a prime example of that. Though not the strongest, he still survived in this world for tens of years and in that time had picked many things that would keep him alive.

 

Hunger. It did not see his circumstances, it did not care for his condition. It just constantly gawed at his sanity. ‘Something… Anything…’. He would eat anything as long as this agony went away.

 

The hunger only ever increased. It forced him into using the vital qi despite him having refused to use it till then. As it circulated through his qi vines, he noticed something: ‘it’s not as effective.’ The shadow of death had been delayed, though temporarily.

 

It was still there though and it clawed at his sanity, one scratch at a time. He could not think straight.

 

It was not the first time he was enduring hunger. But despite having endured hunger many, many times before, it had never been this bad before. He would have eaten his own flesh as long as he could stop this ravaging, all-consuming madness. But there were bearly if any, muscles remaining. If he could have looked under the frozen muscles– ‘frozen muscles? Hahaha!’

 

He carefully manipulated the ice.

 

Madness had taken over him. He would have salivated if his body still had the capability. Very, very carefully, he puppeteered his body. Moving his arm, removing the frost that had frozen it solid. He cut off his frozen flesh. Crushed it until it was but fine dust and placed it in his mouth. From then on his body moved on its own.

 

The frozen tongue was manipulated, forcing the dust down the throat. It went straight into the stomach. Only when it was full, did he stop.

 

It was peace. For once.

 

He felt light, as though he had been wearing heavy weights. His thoughts flowed smoothly, and clearly. It was easier to think, to understand. For a brief moment, he regained clarity.

 

It had been nearly a year since his last meal. Now he had suddenly stuffed his stomach with meat and the effects quickly showed. Weakness spread throughout his body but by the time he sense something had gone wrong, it was already too late.

 

Pain erupted from his heart, stronger, intenser than usual. It's beat, irregular. Sometimes its beat got faster and faster and then the next moment it would suddenly slow down. The frequencies only got wilder and the pain also kept increasing and spreading to all corners of his body.

 

He blacked out.

 

***

 

He could not believe that he was alive but as his senses came back so did the pain. It was so intense that he could not move, even if he wanted to. Even his qi had become irregular showing  signs of going berserk. But something was missing within all this bundle of pain. Something that made enough of a difference that he immediately noticed.

 

He did not feel that ravaging hunger. His stomach was full. It mattered little what it was filled with. What mattered to him was that he was no longer being tortured by that madness. But it was just a matter of time until it came back, he could still feel its shadows.

 

He tried moving his arm. It was completely unresponsive. Soon, he found that the rest of his body, too, was in a similar condition. ‘Thankfully, it matters little whether my body moves or not.’

 

He stood up, the moment mechanical. With the hunger gone, his mental facilities had returned somewhat. His control over his qi drastically improved.

***

Click! Click!

Click! Click!

Click! Click!

 

A pack of centipede-like monsters scaled the rugged mountains. Their clawed feet were able to walk without slipping.

 

He followed the pack. Cautious. Patient. His eyes were constantly scanning the pack, his goal the weakest of them.

 

It was challenging to maintain control while his body screamed at him for action. The body did not have to starve any longer and he did not want to bear that pain again. So he chose to be patient even still, he would have a feast by the end of it.

 

He kept observing, trying to understand the Qi flowing individually through their bodies but then also flowing into the leader. It essentially created a protective barrier that covered the pack completely.

 

'It will be difficult,' but he had no choice but to proceed. He had been lucky, coming across this pack. It would have been normal if he had wandered, even at the very least weeks, if not months before coming across anything living in this place.

 

‘Weakness…’, a small burst of qi particles kept occurring periodically. It allowed him to observe everything while keeping his distance. He kept scanning, identifying, and categorizing.

 

Calm and Patient.

 

It had to be lightning fast. Snatch and retreat. The slightest delay and it would be too late to run away. He moved, crossing them and setting up his position in the place he estimated they would pass through. After a while, the pack came still oblivious to the threat.

 

The sharp clicking had long since alerted him of their arrival. It kept becoming louder and louder. He cleared his senses, making sure the one he had marked was still in the same location.

 

One moment, stillness, next, chaos. His body moved, twisted, and turned. His moments were inhuman as he slipped through the monsters on the outer edges, making his way inside. Everything thing was soundless.

 

The ice encasing his body morphed, a pointed tip piercing straight through the middle of the monster. He had sensed the energy most dense there. The tip morphed again, safely holding the core, and then exploded into creepers of thorns that spread throughout the outer shell.

 

It was dead.

 

The momentum dragged him along with the corpse. Only a few droplets of blood had spilled into the air but the scent was unaffected by cold and these monsters certainly processed excellent senses.

 

HooccCCHIiiK!!

HooccCCHIiiK!!

HooccCCHIiiK!!

HooccCCHIiiK!!

 

The pack moved for revenge.

 

While the monsters tried to grasp his location, he was jumping out of the other side of the pack. It was difficult. The monsters had gone insane and showed no sign of stopping no matter how dangerous or worse the terrain he pulled them through.

 

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It was much more difficult than he had imagined. He normally moved with very little weight on but the corpse was anything but light and it affected his mobility much more than he had expected. But he had to take the whole body with him.

 

‘!!!’

 

The qi threads could not sense anything in front. ‘Edge?’ His qi threads quickly crawled and it truly was a cliff. 

 

The path ahead was a dead end while the path behind was filled with monsters. But for him there was no need to think, he jumped.

 

HooccCCHIiiK!!

HooccCCHIiiK!!

HooccCCHIiiK!!

HooccCCHIiiK!!

 

As gravity pulled him down, the rage-filled screams gradually went away.

 

His qi threads had been crawling along the steep surface of the cliff. He would be fine with anything, he still had some time until his momentum became much too great for him to stop.

 

‘Yess….’ His qi threads became the link and his trickle of qi passed through. A spike erupted.

 

‘Uuuffff’

 

His arm nearly broke off as he tried to stop the momentum. Despite being the youngest one, it still weighs a few hundred kilos. Thankfully, another volley of spikes erupted from below, skewing the corpse. With his momentum stopped, he slowly made his way down the cliff.

 

***

 

He awakened from meditation. ‘Too little,’ despite having spent a lot of time, the amount of qi he had recovered was too little. ‘Sigh… it will have to do.’ His body quivered in the anticipation of the feast to come. He suppressed the bubbling hunger, it would take quite a while before he could even think of eating it.

 

Qi threads warped around the corpse. The hardened ice covered the body as armor fell off, little by little. There were multiple layers of isolations before the actual tissues, organs and other biological parts could be accessed. These isolations protected them from the ever-present cold. One by one they were infiltrated. Once the qi threads reached the centermost part of the body, he could sense the heat.

 

His heartbeat quickened, just the slight sense of it was enough to make him drunk. He got a hold of himself. The qi threads spread inside, scanning, and informing him of the inner structure. It took him but a while to categorize what could be eaten and what could not.

 

No tools, no catalysts, not even enough qi. It slowed the process of purifying the meat. Most of it was already useless, it could not be eaten, and that had to be removed without allowing any heat loss. Then, the inner section had to be cleansed, and only then could he start purifying the actual meat.

 

Meditate and work, meditate and work. He repeated the actions as though a machine.

 

If he had not absorbed that many refined cores back then if the qi within his body was not wreaking havoc if his core had not been on the verge of breaking. All that was required was the smallest of imbalances and it would explode.

 

It also kept him alive. It kept the cold at bay. It allowed him to recover the qi even in his current state. The constant pain helped in keeping the hunger at bay. It basically kept him alive.

 

He suppressed the thoughts from spiraling down any further. ‘The meat,’ the process restarted as his focus returned.

 

Just then another wave crashed against his mental barrier and he could feel the emotions becoming unstable once again.

 

For a brief moment, he just wanted to cry but the tear ducks refused to follow. The eyes were useless in this utter darkness anyway. Along with the eyeballs, the eyelids, too, had been frozen, becoming hardened walls in the process. At least, this way the brain was further isolated, allowing greater retention of heat.

 

Ice, edge sharper than most blades, chopped the meat into fine pieces inside. He made a straw out of ice, multiple ice shells further covering the straw, a vacuum separating each, making sure the meat was not frozen. Then he sucked. 

 

‘Ahhh!!!’

 

The pleasure he felt at that moment was unlike any other. Each time he ate little and slowly he could feel the strength returning to his body.

 

***

 

‘Just a bit more…’

 

He had already endured for many months, just a few more and he would have reached his destination. He could endure if it were that much despite the bone-deep exhaustion.

 

The torturous hunger was gone. He could eat every day, most of the time. The intake was sufficient enough that the body no longer consumed itself. All that remained was a slight bit of hunger, something that he could easily bear.

 

With the big bulk of hunger gone the mental power available to him had drastically increased. It allowed him to cover larger distances each day but that too put a toll on his body. 

 

In this journey of many, many months, he had been constantly puppeteering his body. He needed to calculate and execute every action, from the steps he took, how big they were, how he moved, how the feet were placed, and where to go. Despite the rest, his fatigue only kept accumulating.

 

He endured, intent on surviving, intent on keeping his promise, however much he hated that.

 

He descended the mountain. ‘Finally.’ He could sense the flora, it was still far away but the kind that surrounded the Grand Formation was different from all others he had ever encountered. He had entered the last leg of his journey.

 

Ripples…

 

The atmospheric qi quivered. He stopped, the qi threads spreading the greatest they could. There was nothing around him. Qi particles burst with him at the center and the next moment a massive rush of information started coming back. It smashed into his already exhausted mind.

 

‘Where is it?’

 

He had forgotten about the exhaustion. He could still feel the ripples, they were constant but their location remained elusive. ‘Is it even further out?’ He needed to make a decision now.

 

He had survived and thrived in this land by constantly learning and his teachers were these nightmarish monstrosities that not just survived but thrived in this lightless and cold world. For him, these kinds of fights that were of a higher level were especially important.

 

If he had been in his prime condition he would have rushed off there. His current condition did not support what he desired. At the moment, it was difficult taking a few monsters head-on. Just the after-shocks from the clash would be enough to disrupt the delicate balance within his body. The result would be what he dearly desired but what he could not do.

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