The cracking of an egg could be heard as a tiny black snake poked its head out of the shell, it innately looked around for its parents but found itself sequestered in a dark brooding forest. Despite the initial struggles of not having a parent in its infantile stage, it survived. The snake would throw itself in the bushes at the slightest indicator of a predator and satiate its hunger from the leftover carcass of beasts. As the snake grew, its quality of life gradually increased as it was no longer the weakest animal in the forest and no longer had to live in constant terror.
However as it grew, its strong sense of survival warped and twisted into a hunger for violence. Perhaps the reason for such a drastic change was the snake's pitiful early life but that was not important. Every beast it stumbled across became its blood enemy.
The more the ebony snake killed the stronger its bloodthirst grew but eventually its carelessness in how it picked its enemies became its undoing.
The snake sat patiently in the bushes, but not as prey trying to hide but as a predator scouting for its next victim. After a certain amount of time the snake found a panther strolling through the forest. Without hesitation the snake propelled itself at the panther and coiled its body around the panther's neck having a vise grip. Cracking could be heard as the panther's neck bones were slowly breaking under the immense pressure. The panther's eyes were bloodshot and wide open in shock at the sudden and intense attack and as it tried to call out it could only make quiet gurgling squealing noises.
The panther collapsed to the ground and began to roll around while clawing at the snake in a sad attempt at survival, but eventually a gruesome crunch was heard and the panther went limp as blood spewed out of its seven orifices.
Just as the serpent was about to celebrate the big catch it had caught it heard an ear screeching guttural roar rushing from behind it. The snake had no time to react as a crashing force hit it from behind causing it to detach from the neck of the dead panther and go flying into a tree.
As the ebony snake got a better look at its assailant it saw that the one who attacked it was a panther exactly like the one he had strangled to death with a few small panther cubs following behind the big panther. The snake connected the dots as it realised the panther it had killed was the father and the panther that assaulted him was the mother taking care of her children.
The snake was given no time for respite as the mother panther pounced at it with a distorted expression of rage and anguish, the snake tried to create some distance but it was still slightly disoriented from getting slammed into the tree. The mother panther pinned the snake, her claws made indents in the snake's thick scales as she began to maul at the snake's head using her powerful jaw.
The snake had no shot at survival as the panther kept ripping chunks of its flesh off. Despite the snake dying swiftly the panther didn't stop its crazed attack until all that was left of the snake were chunks of flesh, blood and organ bits.
After it snapped out of its crazed state the panther glanced at what remained of the snake before turning to stare at her partner's corpse, all her rage simmering down into sorrow as she saw her children circling around their father wondering why he wasn't responding to them.
However, while the mother panther was mourning, something magical was happening with the mutilated snake. Its consciousness, its memories and the entirety of its life experiences had slowly seeped out of its body and travelled at an incredible speed to a completely different location of the world, after some time the snake's consciousness swooped down and into the body of a tiger cub.
The tiger cub looked around in pure confusion as the last it had remembered was being killed by the panther. It tried to move its body but failed horribly as it was in an extremely different body compared to his snake body. After some investigation the tiger cub came to a shocking conclusion.
It had been reborn as a tiger!
It was so shocking that the tiger cub didn't want to believe it but the facts were right there in front of it. The tiger cub eventually came to terms with it and chose to just accept the situation it was put in and make the best out of it.
Similar to its first life, the tiger cub grew up and killed all the beasts it encountered, consuming them whole. But it was much more careful than its life as a snake and made sure to scout out the area just before a kill so no unwanted variables would pop up.
The tiger managed to live a little longer than in its past life by being cautious but even if the tiger wasn't looking for trouble, trouble would come looking for it. On a regular day, while the tiger was casually walking through the jungle it had caught sight of a strange looking horned rabbit, in situations like these where something felt wrong the tiger would simply observe first before doing anything rash.
However as the tiger had caught sight of the rabbit, it too had caught sight of him. The tiger thought that the rabbit would run immediately at the sight of it, as all other rabbits do but this one was different. At the sight of the tiger the rabbit rushed at it and reached the tiger in less than a second. The tiger could barely react as the horned rabbit slapped it across the face and sent it flying a meter or two.
The tiger was flabbergasted at how such a small beast had such strength and speed, but as the tiger was still thinking about how to get out of this strange situation, the rabbit was already on the move. The rabbit closed the gap between themselves and grabbed the tiger's head with both paws, it stabbed its horn through the tiger's jaw and it reached all the way to its brain, killing the tiger instantly.
This was Ouroboros first encounter with a spiritual beast.
Just like the previous time, the tiger's consciousness traveled out of its dead body and into the body of a baby bird, and just like the previous time it had died due to being near two strong human cultivators clashing in battle and got its consciousness sent into the body of a different beast.
The cycle continued again and again, each lifetime having it grow continuously in both intelligence and wisdom, bit by bit. By the time a couple dozen lifetimes had passed the lifeform had gained enough intelligence to rival a human.
The lifeform had a single mission in mind, to find out how to become like those incredibly powerful beings, the ones who defied the rules of heaven and earth and gained powers beyond their mortal bodies. The lifeform first began its search after being killed by the horned-rabbit that had lit an ember in its heart and as the lifetimes passed and it had witnessed more and more heaven-defying scenes that ember had eventually grown into an inferno.
After dozens of lifetimes of searching it had finally found the answer, but with it came a shocking truth about itself. The path to advancement wasn't that hard, at least in the beginning stages, you simply needed energy, but the lifeform had come to realise that the energy it needed to advance was hundreds of times more than what any normal beast would need to advance.
That truth had nearly made the lifeform give up in despair, for example while another beast would need to kill and consume a hundred beasts to advance and become a spirit beast, the lifeform would have to kill and consume well over ten thousand beasts to become a spirit beast.
However ultimately, the lifeform kept going, although it sounded extremely hard, it was not impossible.
Life after life, the lifeform persisted, every setback it faced, every death it endured simply put it one set closer to the goal, and that's when it happened, in its 102nd life.