Memories of his recent fight, from the beginning to the end, come crashing into his skull like a movie, the noise so deafening it masks any sound from the surroundings, the scenes kept on changing until the last moment when he struck the axe with all his might. Sending the dying tiger to it after life… and then it suddenly changed again.
The memories which had been haunting him for years, now, now come crashing also, picture and sound clearer than ever.
These foreign memories kept changing until it settle on the ritual scene again. The scene of cloaked figures moving in circles as they hold a bowl of a red, vicious substance, constantly dripping it on the floor while chanting a strange incantation. After the circle was drawn, a beast body as huge as an elephant was dragged into the center of the rune, and a person stepped in and suddenly began swaying left and right, dancing to weird lullabies coming out of the mouths of those cloaked figures by his sides.
Suddenly, the guy in the cycle sat in the middle as the blood from the beast began flowing from the cuts on its legs, and up they crawled on his body like maggots, in a creepy and eerie manner. The man collapsed in pain and began screaming. The process continued until all of the blood from the mammoth-like beast was sucked dry by an unknown force and flowed onto the body of the hooded guy squirming on the floor.
After which, the blood condensed into a strange rune on the bare part of his torso. And then the scene stopped their paused at the strange rune.
Before Dai Yaun could look at the rune properly, the scene vanished, and it started again from the people doing the ritual and drawing the circle on the ground using beast blood, and then different scenes with different beasts coming up and going away in a flash, until the tenth scene, where the pictures vanished, and strange memories were etched into his brain.
"Ahhh," Dai Yaun screamed, holding his head from the heart, starring ache as the words etched into his skull.
After what seemed like eternity, Dai Yaun smoldered his head using the palm of his hand to soothe the ache throbbing in his skull, as the memories had finished aching and mysteriously vanished. In that instant, a fragment of understanding settled into his mind. He recognized the specific tilt of the runes and the exact pitch of the incantation. For months, these symbols had been haunting him day and night, at the edge of his dreams like ghosts, causing him pain and trouble.
"The Shaman's Legacy," he whispered, his breath hitching. "It wasn't a haunting or any demonic possession as he was accused of. It was an inheritance.
It does not look like a technique, nor a cultivation art. It was more of a knowledge and intricate understanding of how to temper one's body using beast blood and essence, fusing them through sacred rituals like the ones in the scenes, to carve shamanic runes on the body, refining one's flesh and essence. As he understood the use of these shamanic rituals and ruin, Dai Yaun's eyes traced the figures of the two apex predators lying on the floor.
The two beasts, even in death, radiated differing auras. The Tiger's essence was fierce, wild, brimming with a domineering spirit that seemed to roar against the heavens even in silence. The Python, by contrast, exuded a chilling heaviness, a patient, suffocating might that spoke of its endurance and strangling might.
Both beasts were powerful, and yet, as he stood between them, his decision wavered.
Does he truly want to undergo the rituals from those eerie scenes?
As he contemplated his decision, his fingers brushed over the cuts on his arms, the bruises along his ribs, the dull ache of his untrained body. He had been expelled, hunted, and nearly killed.
Something snapped in him as unpleasant memories gushed back into his head, showing how he came to end up in this place in the first place.
Power and strength
His body screamed what he needed, it was power, and without spirit root, his only means out of this predicament was the shamanic ritual.
His gaze shifted to the Blackscale Tiger, its once-bright eyes now glazed in death. "You fought even when dying," Dai Yaun whispered.
"You refused to bow to the end."
He clenched his fists.
As he made up his mind, Dai Yaun dragged the heavy carcass of the Black-Scaled Tiger into a small clearing.
He began the ritual, pulling out a short steel dagger from the belongings of one of the assassins whom he seized earlier. He made several deep, strategic incisions in the beast's thick hide, carefully collecting the pooling blood essence in a large, water satchel fastened to his belt. This was no ordinary blood; it was imbued with the resilience and magic of the tiger.
Using the satchel as a makeshift reservoir, Dai Yaun moved with surprising reverence. He began drawing a complex series of strange, interlocking circles and runes on the damp earth around the carcass. As the blood drip on to the hard floor.
Something in his mind stirred, faint runes igniting in the darkness glowed in his eyes. His breathing slowed. His heartbeat aligned with the rhythm that now echoed in his thoughts, a low, ancient lullaby flowed out of his mind, as if someone else had possessed his body and his actions were being guided.
He sliced the dagger across his palm, blood spilling freely as they mixed with the beast's blood on the ground, causing it to glow brighter.
"asta******..." The words escaped from his mouth in a whisper, yet the moment they were spoken, the air around him seemed to twist and bend with the rhythm of the incantation.
The dark, glossy blood traced an intricate, strange, and eccentric pattern; these signs and cycles glowed as they formed on the cracked floor of the jungle.
When the pattern was complete, he sat cross-legged inside the heart of the design, the Black-Scale's massive body forming part of the perimeter.
Marking the Flesh
He dipped his index finger into the remaining blood essence. Dai Yaun began to draw the runes on his exposed torso. With slow, deliberate movements, he marked a single, dominant shamanic rune directly onto his upper chest. The mark was a strange symbol that he ddidn'tknow the workings of; it looked like a coiled pictogram meant to draw the beast's raw, defensive energy into his own essence.
As soon as the mark was complete, crimson shades of light covered his eyes, as he becomes possessed, standing up in eerie movement, dai yaun clapped his hand loudly, then swing his waist side ways like a young lady walking down the street, swirling around dai yaun large body began deftly mimicking the strange ritual dance from his memories, as his butts sway left and right, chants and lullabies flowed out of his mouth. The dance went on for some minutes before coming to an abrupt standstill as he fell onto the floor convulsing from pain.
The blood of the tiger now flowing out of the cuts he made onto the rune on his torso, crawling their way all over from the ground onto his large body, when viewed from above, Dai Yuan currently look like a log of wood lying in the forest with tiny maggots crawling all around him as they move onto the log.
Despite the pain and convulsion, Dai Yuan did not screamed neither did the chant stop coming out from his now cracked lips. The words were not of any living language, but ancient, resonant sounds that vibrated deep within the jungle floor. They were incantations of transfer and consumption, a prayer to the primordial forces to accept the sacrifice and pass on its remaining might. The words flowed from his lips in a guttural low hum.
As the ritual deepened, The Tiger's body shuddered, shriveled with it, faint threads of dark light seeping from its wounds, swirling into the air like smoke. They gathered around Dai Yaun's body on the floor. The blood seemed alive, it writhed, coiling up his body in thin scarlet veins.
The process of the ritual to form the shamanic rune from his memories. One must merge the blood essence of the beast with one's own vitality and spirit. Failure meant the blood would devour the host, turning flesh to ash. Success meant transcendence.
The blood climbed higher, tracing his arm and legs onto his bare torso in intricate patterns that shimmered faintly from the burning essence in them.
Dai Yaun's body keeps writhing and convulsing on the ground, while the blood from the large beast never stops flowing out and onto the mark on his torso.
His body's instinct forced his will downward, going against the rampaging pain from the blood crawling and merging with his, as his body convulsed. Steam rose from his skin.