After the fiasco back at the academy, Kong Di returned to the one thing that never failed him: Intense training. He had chosen the heavy spear as his weapon, and he poured himself into it the way most cultivators poured their ideals into their dreams.
Ten months became a battering ritual—thousands of thrusts, thousands of repetitions—until his arms, shoulders, and waist knew the spear as if it were his own bone.
The academy's practice arenas had been useful but ultimately not enough. The battles in the arena had given him opponents of all shapes and different types of weapon specialists.
But the academy frowned on killing and 'Life and death' arena battles. Matches were for showing mastery over the techniques, not for tempering the raw battle instinct. That kind of limitation was like poison for anyone like him who focused on real-life battle power and innate battle instinct fighting, and someone who wanted to turn talent into absolute strength. If one did not test their edge against death, if one never put life itself on the line, then the weapon remained a toy and the spear a fallen twig.
So he ventured into the fabled Silvermoon Forest.
Silvermoon Forest was a name wrapped in caution and death. It is a forest so vast that it crosses the territory of more than ten kingdoms. Entire clans told children tales of the vicious beasts that could remember the scent of old blood who went into the forest, of rivers that swallowed corpses. Among the forest's known horrors were three places that made even battle-hardened veterans shudder: Poison Mist Valley, Howling Ghosts Ridge, and Long Bone Lake. Those three were not for novices. They were where the most powerful experts of the Kingdoms ventured, but returned broken.
Huang Kong Di did not intend to enter those depths. He was not a fool. He aimed for the outer ridges—the regions where low-level - mid-level demon beasts still roamed. This was the kind of environment he wanted: raw, vigilant, always on the edge.
The forest received him like anyone else, indifferent and eerie. Silver-edged leaves hushed above. Insects clicked in rhythms; it was quiet enough to hear one's own heartbeat, and loud enough to remind a man that every step could be the last.
On the first day, a pack of 3rd Order Wolf-Fanged Dogs attacked—small, quick, with fangs dipped in battle qi. He dispatched them in long practice strokes; the spear's thrusts were precise, each motion a syllable of the thousands of repetitions and basic movements he had taught his body to remember. The soil was stained with the blood of the beasts. He did not linger as he knew the smell of the blood would soon attract nearby beasts. So, he took out his hunting knife and got the required materials like the fangs, pelt, and Core of the Pack Leader and slipped away to his camp.
By the fifth day, the fights grew more brutal and less pretty. He met a procession of beasts—Peak 2nd Order Iron-Furred Boars, Late 3rd Order Silver Scaled Apes with stone-like fists, and even a Low Entry Level 4th Order Lone Wind Hawk that tore a wingbone out of his arm while he was resting, which took him 2 weeks to heal.
The academy's knockout matches had not prepared him for the burn of blood in a living being's throat. Here, the beasts did not hold back. Their strikes were honest: hit or be hit.
At the end of the 4th week, deeper into a channel of tall oaks where the light narrowed to a single ray of sunlight, he heard a sound like a rolling stone with teeth.
The scarlet scales of the creature flashed through the underbrush first, then its head: a great serpent coiled with a horn of crimson gore rising from its brow. It moved with the silent patience of ambush predators, with a weight that bent the grass. When it turned, the ground seemed to bow.
Huang Kong Di felt a surge. This was no second-rate predator. This was a low Fifth Order Crimson-Horned Serpent, old enough that the sun had seen a dozen of its molts. Its aura pressed down like a mountain's footfall on him.
He tightened his grip and shouldered the spear. The heavy shaft hummed along his bones. He tasted iron in the air and felt the pull of his Cultivation Method, the Dark Sky Canon, coiling within him. The Hollow Hydra's presence thrummed at his back—not a phantom spectacle now, but the edge of something that answered to battle.
The serpent launched first.
Hissing. "Hissss~"
Its body uncoiled like doom made of muscle. The horn released a shockwave of scorching qi that cleaved the air and shattered the tall trees. The strike carried the force of a collapsing tower.
"Booooom!!!"
Huang Kong Di dodged the strike narrowly, and then met the side of the beast with the simplest of moves: a forward Trust, the spear driven like a black flood dragon right into the snake's body. He channeled the first spear of his set—Nine Spears of Hollow Darkness, First Spear — Spear of Emptiness—into the thrust, a variation of his fist technique he created to match the fighting style with his spear. The spear did not merely stab; it carried a pressure that seemed to dissipate the serpent's Battle qi.
The impact was brutal. The serpent's body met the emptiness force and leaked like a wound. The beast's strike faltered. The air around them bucked. Leaves fell, trees shook.
The serpent recoiled, anger flaring from its maw.
"Hiss...hiss"
Then it roared like a dragon.
"Roaaaar!!!"
It struck again—not a single lunge this time but a whipping of its entire body, a tidal whip that bit the ground and sent a wall of earth streaming toward him. Its crimson scales were like molten shields. Its eyes were cold, deep, predatory.
Huang Kong Di pivoted, the heavy spear sweeping low, meeting the tail-snap with a bone-splintering clash. The shockwave blew him a step back; the muscles of his forearms trembled. For a moment, the spear felt unbearably heavy, the kind of weight that he had never experienced.
Pain flared at his lip where a serrated scale had nicked him. He tasted copper. The serpent's strength was not at all low. It bit with ferocity and lethality, aiming to end his life in a single strike. His arms were numb from the repeated strikes, and his head was injured from the snake's scales that had stuck him.
But even the Snake was stunned to see that the wounds on Kong Di were slowly healing at a speed visible to the naked eye. It even started to wonder which one of the two of them is a beast.
Kong Di, seeing that it was distracted, did not hesitate. He let the practice of months speak through him. A succession of strikes, each a notch more decisive: thrust, sweep, parry, step. Small openings were carved into the serpent's rhythm. His spear became a conduit: the dark pressure of the Dark Sky Canon threading along its tip, blanketing the serpent's elemental push until it felt dull and slow.
When the serpent came to his senses and reared to release a line of fiery rays of Battle Qi through its horn, Huang Kong Di took a breath and unleashed the technique he had been holding like a coiled blade: Roaring Hydra Piercing the Dark Sky.
The roar was not a shout but a command of his qi—an oppressive wave that rolled outward from him like a dark eclipse. The ground cracked, and the air darkened from his qi release. The serpent's internal rhythm stuttered as if someone had pressed their fist into its chest. Its horn-flame shattered. The creature's eyes widened in surprise as it was shocked that a little human, it viewed as equivalent to an ant, broke its most powerful technique.
In that broken instant, Huang Kong Di drove the spear forward with all the force he could muster. The spear tore through the strike, and the air circled around the spearhead. The beast felt the spear pierce its scales, tendons, and heart; it felt the hollow and strange emptiness force funnel its own qi back into its wound. The beast howled one slow, terrible sound and then went limp. Even when it fell, its eyes were filled with rage, unacceptance, and shock.
When the serpent's body collapsed, the ribs gasped like a slashed drum. Huang Kong Di stood, chest heaving, the heavy spear trembling in his steel-gripped hands. Sweat and blood mixed on his skin; the wind carried the smell of ozone and iron.
He did not fall. He crouched to the fallen beast, fingers pressing the scales closest to the wound, testing. The beast had nearly ended him at several turns. It had forced him to use the Dark Sky Canon's suppression to its full measure and to expend the hollow spear strike he had developed for just this edge. He had won, but the danger had been real. That was the feeling and atmosphere he sought for his cultivation.
The forest around him suddenly became a zone of silence. The outer ridge had smelled like danger before; now it tasted like roasted and burnt wood.
He sat and tended his wound. The spear's tip still vibrated faintly, as if remembering the red shock. He reviewed the sequence in his mind, sharpening the angles where he had hesitated, noting the moment he had to call the Roaring Hydra Piercing the Dark Sky to fracture the serpent's protective layer of qi.
This was the purpose of Silvermoon Forest: not to make him complacent, but to make him battle-hardened. Each beast would teach him what the arena could not. Each kill would peel away the naive layers of hesitation until only unshakable will remained surging beneath the skin and in his blood.
Before he finally left the forest the next morning, he carried with him the taste of sap, blood, and the knowledge that his spear and his Dark Sky Canon had both awakened another degree. He was no longer simply a child with a powerful Martial Spirit. He was becoming a man who would make the sky itself bow.
Of course, he also collected the spoils of his victory. The Skin of the 5th Order Snake is a heavenly material for any forger and blacksmith for making protective gear. He planned to sell the Skin to the academy Blacksmith pavilion and get contribution points, as well as ask them to make armor out of it for him. He also collected the Crimson-Horned, Blood, Bones, and even its gallbladder, which stored the snake's venom. All these are very high-value ingredients for Alchemists and Blacksmiths.
As he was returning to the capital city, there were deeper things in Silvermoon Forest churning, like the 3 most dangerous regions in the Silvermoon Forest. He had only taken the first step.
And Huang Kong Di tightened his grip on the heavy spear, ready for the next battle.