92: Every carving and polishing has its own destiny

In the distance, the sun was bright, and green trees cast their shade.

Suddenly, something stirred, and a pure white rabbit appeared before his eyes. The rabbit's snowy fur shimmered with a faint golden glow under the sunlight.

“Boom!”

His blood ignited, and all the colors in his vision vanished, replaced by a blood-red expanse, even the sky resembling a flowing pool of blood.

A delicious rabbit!

His heart, blood vessels, and eyes were like an X-ray machine, seeing everything clearly.

Delicious, skin it and eat it!

A voice roared wildly in his mind.

Completely out of control, Jiang Hanwen's vision swayed, and “he” lunged towards the rabbit the next second.

“Bang!”

Halfway through his charge, Jiang Hanwen was suddenly sent flying. Intense pain, like countless long needles, pierced his entire body. It… it hurt so much!

His head felt like it was splitting.

“Hiss!”

Enduring the severe pain, he looked in the direction from which the sound came.

A large snake with colorful patterns watched him warily, its purplish-red tongue flicking in the air, the forked tip gleaming with a cold, scissor-like glint.

“Meat!”

The murderous intent in his head surged again, and the stinging pain turned numb. Jiang Hanwen, once more out of control, charged forward.

Breaking one claw and one leg, his remaining claw pierced the snake's eye, burrowed into its head, and began to feed.

His broken claws and leg felt itchy. Although it typically takes a hundred days for broken bones and tendons to heal, with the sustenance from feeding, they recovered in just half an hour, an eerily fast recovery.

Discover a living creature—kill.

Even if his limbs were broken—kill.

A life controlled by instinct meant he swung between death and hunger every day, with only endless slaughter and healing, no chance for rest.

Until one time, his legs were broken, and two hungry wolves relentlessly chased him. He could only escape using his claws.

Suddenly, he was flung off a cliff by a strong wind tearing at a large tree, soaring over a canyon.

Behind him, the two hungry wolves stopped, roaring in frustration, but dared not proceed further.

He survived, but this time, there was nothing but birds flying in the sky.

Without the stimulation of living creatures, hunger once again crept into his heart. His legs were broken, and he was about to starve to death, just as he had been when he first opened his eyes.

Besides hunger, the pain in his legs gradually intensified, like thousands of ants baring their sharp mandibles, gnawing away at his dwindling consciousness.

He dug a hole, lay inside, and waited for death to arrive.

On the edge of death, something was triggered.

He heard a strange, hoarse roar in his ears. He didn't understand the words, but he grasped their meaning.

“Survive, Fire Seed, survive!”

In a daze, he saw a grand scene of heaven and earth collapsing. Ancestral Dragons of various colors coiled in the sky, looking mockingly at the center.

There, a scarred Black Dragon, its scales all shed, stared back at the sky with stubborn anger.

Following the direction, the entire sky above was covered with profound blood-red patterns. A formidable man holding a scepter and clad in a nine-colored cloud robe stood upon the blood-red patterns.

He brought the scepter down heavily.

“Punish!”

With a soft cry that shook the heavens, the blood-red patterns transformed into a large net that descended from the sky, binding the Black Dragon.

The Black Dragon could not escape and could only let out a heart-wrenching Dragon roar.

Sorrow welled up in his heart, and he suddenly shed tears. That Dragon was his kin... The image blurred and disappeared. It seemed as though something had been added to his body.

But the hunger was too severe; he truly lacked the rationality to investigate.

Suddenly, he smelled a fragrance, and his entire body trembled uncontrollably. Food, it was food!

Immediately after, he heard voices.

“His mother, the child went to the farm, it’s you…”

The familiar voice struck Jiang Hanwen like a heavy hammer, waking him up. This was his Father Jiang's voice!

In a flash, Jiang Hanwen remembered. This was a scene from years ago, when his Father Jiang took him to pay respects.

He was currently in the basement of his house, not, at this moment, a wild beast hiding in a cave, tormented by hunger and pain!

Even though he realized this, he still couldn't break free, like a third party connected to his senses, quietly watching his own actions.

The voices faded, and he crawled out of the cave, seeing a white mass on the ground, grain by grain, and next to it were a few pieces of meat, lean and fatty.

He ate frantically, and his shriveled stomach swelled up again.

He sniffed in the direction they had gone, and followed again. He still wanted to eat, to eat meat!

Breaking through the soil, he saw two people walking away and continued to follow them stealthily.

Jiang Hanwen understood in his heart; it wasn't what Father Jiang had said about occasionally seeing it. This was the beginning of Father Jiang and Xiao Bu Dian's acquaintance—Da Cang Mountain.

Once they entered the village, the smells were complex, and Xiao Bu Dian got lost.

It wanted to eat meat whenever it saw it, and couldn't help but want to kill whenever it saw people, continuing to rampage through the village purely by instinct.

However, how could people who survived in the jungle world be inferior to the wild beasts within it?

It scratched two men, and the grand meal it had painstakingly earned had a strange, spicy taste.

But he was hungry, hungrier than ever before, without even a shred of rationality, so he could only continue to eat.

The more he ate, the blurrier his consciousness became, making him feel dizzy.

Until, a hoe viciously severed his tail, and the intense pain brought him back to his senses.

Looking around again, he was surrounded, with people holding iron tools everywhere.

It panicked, scurrying around the yard, but the encirclement had already tightened. Not only did he fail to escape, but he left trails of bright red blood on the ground.

This time, facing the encirclement, instinct couldn't help him; it only filled his mind with bloodlust, serving no other purpose.

The contents of his stomach were mostly digested, and he was hungry again, his strength to run suddenly dwindling.

He was allowed to run, dragging the large net woven from hemp rope along the ground.

“Hahahaha~”

“You bastard, daring to steal my family's rice.”

“Kill him, we'll make soup tonight and have meat!”

...Amidst the cold mockery, his instinctive bloodlust faded. He was completely exhausted, and his already barely recovered legs, lacking nutritional support, stumbled again.

He took two more blows, hitting his back. Threads of crimson oozed from the corners of his mouth. He understood that this time, he was truly going to die.

Instinct urged him to flee, his bloodshot eyes returned to calm, and rationality returned.

The instinct that had driven him mad, like a skilled executioner, cut his wrist artery, then mockingly left, quietly watching him meet his end in Yellow Springs.

“Bang!”

Another stick struck him. He felt as if he had vomited all the blood from his stomach; there was nothing left.

Until, hearing the commotion, Father Jiang, who had been invited to share the meat, appeared in his sight.

Warm, soft light fell, and in the cold shadow of death, he felt a warmth. Among the many eager, devouring gazes, that was the only look of compassionate kindness.

As if by fate's call, he used the last of his strength to lift his head and saw a pair of earnest eyes.

He painstakingly crawled with his unbroken left claw, his head twitching. Under everyone's gaze, his tail dragged a crimson blood trail, and he desperately crawled to Father Jiang's feet, trembling as he extended a claw.

A pair of strong, powerful hands grasped his small claw, followed by a strong sense of weightlessness. He was lifted by Father Jiang for examination.

“Oh dear, isn't this the big rat that stole bamboo shoots from the back mountain? How did it get so beaten up?”

“Uncle Jiang, you're not going to be kind-hearted again and want to let him go, are you?

My older brother and I were both scratched by him.”

The injured man pointed to the half-foot-long bloodstain on his left leg, his eyes filled with wisdom, the wisdom of someone waiting for the right price.

“How about this, you and Xiaodong first take two pieces of meat to eat. I'll keep it at my house for now. If it still causes trouble, then we'll have meat, how about that?”

Hearing that they could have meat, the two men exchanged glances and continued, “We also prepared wine and half—twenty catties of rice!”

“I'll compensate for everything, alright?”

“That's wonderful, Uncle Jiang, you truly are a great benefactor, haha.”

Jiang Hanwen, while sensing Xiao Bu Dian's emotional changes, deeply felt the profound mystery of fate.

If he hadn't returned home this time, he and Father Jiang wouldn't have gone to Da Cang Mountain.

How then, could they have met Xiao Bu Dian?

Was it truly a matter of carving and sculpting, with a predetermined destiny?

His vision closed and opened, and his sight had already shifted to Jiang Hanwen's home.

Father Jiang used several thick tree branches, as thick as arms, to secure Xiao Bu Dian in a beast net.

He fed it three meals a day, and each time he gave it meat, Father Jiang would cut off three-quarters of it, either boiled or fried.

Fearing that raw meat would ignite its wild nature, he always cooked it before giving it to Xiao Bu Dian.

After a month of nurturing, Xiao Bu Dian's crippled legs healed, and his body regained strength. The daily food became increasingly insufficient, and he began to feel a stronger hunger and thirst.

After nightfall, he burrowed out of the earth to leave, and returned to the beast net before dawn.

This continued until the forty-second day. When he returned, he saw Father Jiang sitting by the beast net.

“Little fellow, since you're well now, go back to your mountain. Don't come to the village anymore.”

The moment he was driven away, an unprecedented bloodthirsty instinct towards Father Jiang surged into his heart. How dare he tell him to leave? He wanted to kill him, drink his blood, and eat him!

Xiao Bu Dian's eyes were blood-red. He gripped the beast net with his claws and pulled with all his might. The already loose wooden stakes snapped with a 'clack' and were all torn from the soil.

Father Jiang neither dodged nor flinched. He simply sat there quietly, closing his eyes, awaiting the judgment of fate.