Chapter 205: Hoolay is Quite the Veteran Foodie
Down in the abyssal depths of the Shackling Prison, legendary monsters slumbered. There was Zao Fu, the infamous charioteer. There was the Zhi Ge prototype, the mechanical culprit behind the Xianzhou's catastrophic Aurumaton Rebellion. There lay the sealed, shredded flesh of Shuhu, the Emanator of Abundance. There was Ming Xiao, the Legion Commander of the Wingweavers. And there was Marquis Wu Sheng, a butcher who had slaughtered exactly three thousand, one hundred and twenty Xianzhou natives, drinking their blood to steal their longevity.
If any of these primordial, long-life horrors were to suddenly open their eyes, Hoolay's little jailbreak would look like a minor playground scuffle. The bottom floor of this prison was a VIP lounge for apocalyptic threats. He wasn't the only special old wolf in the pound.
Yet, Hoolay ignored them all. He led his pack of Borisin down the darkened corridors, tracking a very specific, powerful aura. With every step, the scent grew thicker, heavier. It was supposed to be the gift of a Lord Ravager, but this was something else entirely. It was not an aura any ordinary Pathstrider of Abundance could ever possess. Deep within Hoolay's chest, his Scarlet Moon heart began to thrum with a violent, ravenous rhythm. It craved whatever was waiting in the dark.
To the Denizens of Abundance, a blessing from their Aeon wasn't some sacred, untouchable grace. It was a five-star meal. Seizing a blessing required no complex rituals or deep meditation. You just had to rip into the flesh of another blessed being and swallow them whole. It was a brutal, endless cycle: the more you ate, the more blessings you absorbed. The more blessings you absorbed, the more insatiable your appetite became.
And Hoolay? The Borisin Warhead was the ultimate apex predator. A veteran glutton of the highest order.
"The Lord Ravager's gift is just ahead," Hoolay growled, his voice a low, rumbling earthquake. Saliva dripped from his jagged teeth. "Devouring it will be thousands of times more useful than any of your cowardly little schemes."
Under normal circumstances, a prison break meant running for the exit. But right now? His nose told him there was a fully edible Ambrosial Arbor sitting right in the middle of the cell block. Hoolay wasn't leaving until he took a massive bite out of that tree.
Dragged along behind the pack, Jiaoqiu blinked in utter bewilderment. 'Lord Ravager? The gift of Abundance?' The Foxian healer's mind raced, trying to piece together the chaotic logic. What exactly were they tracking? Had centuries of solitary confinement finally snapped the old wolf's mind? Was he planning to stop and snack on the other maximum-security inmates?
The scent thickened into a suffocating fog of pure life force. It was so potent that even the lowest-ranking Borisin in the pack began to drool, their eyes rolling back in feral ecstasy. It smelled of blooming flora, crushed leaves, and raw, unrestrained vitality—a sickeningly sweet fragrance that felt entirely alien within the cold, sterile metal of the Shackling Prison. Jiaoqiu's normally squinted eyes snapped wide open in shock. An aura of Abundance this massive... a literal blind man could have tracked it.
Meanwhile, at the epicenter of this biological anomaly, Rekka was just minding his own business. Thanks to his daily chaotic Path shifts, the Path of Abundance was currently active as a Path Resonance Interplay form. Honestly, even when he wasn't actively drawing on Abundance, merely thinking about Yaoshi was enough to make literal tree branches sprout from his scalp. Hearing a commotion, Rekka turned around. He blinked. A pack of massive, rabid dog-men were staring at him, drool pooling on the floor beneath their muzzles.
He instinctively patted his pockets. Empty. Right. He had tossed his entire stash of restraint cubes at a fragment of the Aeon of Voracity earlier that week. He hadn't bothered to restock his inventory today. Restraint cubes, stabilizing anchors, cognitive interferometers—he was completely out of his usual crowd-control toys.
Jiaoqiu stared at the entity standing before them. The Foxian's jaw practically unhinged. The figure had sprawling, bark-covered antlers erupting from his head, eight muscular arms extending from his torso, and dozens upon dozens of crimson eyes blinking across his skin. Jiaoqiu racked his encyclopedic brain, but he absolutely could not recall any prisoner in the deepest pits of the Shackling Prison matching this eldritch description.
"Such a pure gift..." Hoolay rasped, his claws scraping against the metal floorplates. Over his impossibly long life, the Warhead had consumed mountains of blessed flesh. Yet, not a single meal had ever made the Scarlet Moon in his chest pound with such agonizing, euphoric hunger. He pointed a trembling claw at Rekka. "Cubs! Look closely! Those aren't horns on his head... those are two miniature Ambrosial Arbors!"
The pack howled in agreement. No wonder the aura was suffocatingly dense. Would they bow and beg this divine envoy for a scrap of grace? Absolutely not. They were Borisin. They would honor their oldest, bloodiest traditions. They would take the blessing by force. They would use their claws to pin him, their fangs to tear him open, and they would rip the divinity straight from his bones.
Hoolay's muscles coiled tight. He was absolutely certain that a single bite of this creature's flesh would grant him the power to lead his people to eternal glory. More, it would give him the strength to finally crush that cursed swordswoman under his heel—the one who had swept through his armies like a raging ocean of glacial ice. Yes, even after seven hundred years, Hoolay was still utterly terrified of Jingliu. Her blade had carved a psychological shadow into his very soul, a trauma so deep that centuries of darkness couldn't wash it away.
Rekka casually scratched his cheek with one of his eight hands, watching the green-eyed wolf-men froth at the mouth.
With a deafening roar, the massive Borisin Warhead launched himself forward. Hoolay moved like a furry cannonball, abandoning all martial technique for the most primitive, brutal hunting pounce of his species. His jaws opened wide, aiming straight for Rekka's neck.
BAM.
The great, invincible Warhead flew backward at three times his original speed. A sickening crunch echoed through the corridor as Hoolay's massive body cratered deep into the reinforced titanium wall.
Rekka slowly retracted one of his middle right arms, casually shaking out his wrist.
'That was it?'
Poor Hoolay had burst out of his cell thinking he was the final boss of the Simulated Universe. Unfortunately, he had just lunged at a walking glitch who could casually deal enough damage to put a boss's health bar into the negative millions with a casual backhand.
Look at him now. Who was the real boss here?
A suffocating, incredibly awkward silence descended upon the cell block.
The pack of Borisin—still wearing their Foxian disguises—collectively blue-screened. Their brains simply refused to process the visual data. Their invincible, terrifying, god-like Khan had just been swatted into the architecture like a mildly annoying mosquito. He hadn't even managed to let out a proper scream before impact.
Rekka tilted his head, his dozens of crimson eyes blinking in chaotic synchronization.
"Was it not you who called for me?" he asked, his voice echoing with a layered, otherworldly resonance. "Why, then, do you bare your fangs at my arrival?"
He was absolutely putting on an act. But technically, he wasn't lying. Phantylia, the Lord Ravager who had manipulated the Borisin, was an Emanator of Destruction. Today, Rekka was channeling both Abundance and Trailblaze. If nothing else, he had to put on a much better "Abundance" show than Phantylia ever could.
With a groan of tearing metal, Hoolay peeled himself out of the crater. He hit the floor heavily, stumbling a few paces before his claws found purchase. He panted, thick streams of blood mixing with the dust coating his pristine white mane. The Warhead shook his massive head violently, trying to clear the ringing from his skull. Slowly, he lowered his center of gravity. His arms hung loose by his knees, every muscle coiled tight as a spring. He slipped right back into a hunting stance.
Rekka didn't flinch. He simply stood his ground, the multiple arms on either side of his torso slowly fanning outward like the petals of a grotesque lotus. The crimson eyes embedded in the backs of his hands swiveled in perfect, unnerving unison, locking onto the old wolf.
"Cubs, hold your ground..." Hoolay rasped, waving a hand to stop his pack from charging. "Let me handle this. You are no match for him."
With a brutal yank, Hoolay tore away the ruined half of the torture device still bolted to his face. He spat a wad of blood onto the floor. "Tell me... did the Lord Ravager send you down into this pit to save me, or to enlighten me?"
Rekka remained silent for a few breaths.
In reality, he was just frantically brainstorming how to keep the bit going. Covered in eyes, sporting eight arms, and wearing a crown of literal Ambrosial Arbor branches, he practically oozed the aura of a Divine Envoy. Hoolay had clearly mistaken him for a direct messenger from Yaoshi. Which, to be fair, wasn't entirely inaccurate—Yaoshi had slapped a Blessing of Abundance onto him at some point.
Still, the fact remained that the oversized mutt had just tried to take a chunk out of his jugular.
"I bring you what you desire," Rekka finally proclaimed, keeping his tone perfectly flat and detached.
Hoolay's golden eyes flared with a dangerous light. 'What he desired.'
"A slaughter," the Warhead whispered.
That was the ultimate truth. Seven hundred years of suffocating darkness and heavy chains hadn't managed to erase a single drop of the bloodthirsty instinct carved into the old wolf's bones. He didn't just want freedom. He wanted a massacre.
"What kind of slaughter?" Rekka asked smoothly.
"A well-matched fight to the death," Hoolay demanded, his claws flexing.
Rekka raised one of his right hands, pointing a finger straight up toward the ceiling. "But not down here in the dark. Go up there."
Hoolay's ears twitched, swiveling toward the gesture. "Up there?"
Rekka lowered his hand and glanced past the Khan, locking eyes with the disguised Borisin lackeys. "Explain to your Warhead what the situation is like outside right now."
The leading Borisin lackey hesitated, exchanging a nervous glance with his peers before stepping forward. He leaned in and hurriedly whispered a situational report into Hoolay's ear.
As he listened, Hoolay's snout wrinkled. He slowly turned his gaze back to Rekka, his eyes narrowing into dangerous slits. "You want me to hunt, to tear my enemies apart, and to claim triumph in the blinding spotlight of the surface?"
The old wolf took a slow, measured step forward. "You are no angel of the Lord Ravager."
Honestly, the idea of quietly snapping a few jailers' necks and sneaking out of the Xianzhou like a gutter rat had deeply frustrated Hoolay's pride. But as he stared at the multi-armed entity before him, his hyper-sensitive nose caught something else beneath the overwhelming scent of life force.
It was a very faint, very familiar scent. It smelled exactly like the cunning, deceptive sweat of a Foxian slave right before they told a lie.
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