The dragon spirit beast was a prideful being. It liked to play with its food before feasting.
Feng Hao slowed down, making the prideful spirit beast fill with arrogance. It saw its prey slowing down, only tired prey would slow down. The prideful beast matched its prey's speed, deliberately showing its superiority.
The prideful spirit beasts powerful arms stomped along the ground. It growled and spit flew from its gapping maw. The beast felt like a powerful king while playing with its prey.
The beast felt fear coming from its prey and was satisfied. The beasts prey had never left its sight, even though they were in a forest. The beast felt like it was the greatest hunter in the world.
The fear coming from the prey kept increasing, the beasts arrogance hit a peak. When the prey finally left the forest and were left out in the open, the beast finally decided to eat them.
If it was not consumed by its arrogance and pride, the beast would have noticed the danger that had condensed in the area.
...
Feng Hao ran with placid steps, the spirit beast had matched his pace, arrogantly strutting forward. 'All according to plan' Feng Hao thought.
The last glimmers of the sinking moon caught the singular horn on the beasts head. Ordinarily, this would be a terrifying scene, most people would be shaking and crying, but Feng Hao only felt pity for the beast.
Feng Hao had already removed himself from a state of calm and was trying to induce fear into himself.
Feng Hao thought about the galactic terrors he had fought before, he thought about the most terrifying events from his life. Eventually Feng Hao had convinced himself that the long shadows that the falling moon cast contained his worst nightmares.
Feng Hao subconsciously released the seal that he had placed on his mind. Memories of extreme anguish and terror slowly trickled into his mind.
Feng Hao began to wildly shake, as if reliving those moments. He hated this, he wondered why these memories were coming back. Feng Hao slowed down, his running became unsteady.
Feng Hao tried to seal his leaking memories but he wouldn't be able to keep running if he used the sliver of available consciousness to rebuild the seal.
Ming Ai had caught up with Feng Hao when he slowed down. She grabbed his hand and pulled him forward.
The hand she took hold of was his right one, excruciating pain swept through Feng Hao's body. The pain briefly snapped him out of the incredible fear he was submerged in.
Feng Hao's usually stoic behaviour stemmed from a lack of knowledge about fear. He had sealed the moments in his life which had caused him to feel great fear.
After feeling great amounts of pain, Feng Hao's survival instincts kicked in and his body acted without thought.
Feng Hao's consciousness sunk into his mind and began to repair the seal while his body acted on its own. It was as if his brain had been split into many different pieces.
His mind knew the plan, his body acted out the plan.
Feng Hao quickly increased his speed, a large clearing in the forest was just ahead. He broke out of the trees, Ming Ai trailing just behind him.
A few scratches were on both of them from sharp branches, both of them were breathing heavily.
The clearing exuded raw, unfiltered killing intent. It felt like a hungry demon was looking at everything that entered its territory.
The dragon spirit beast had finally stopped playing with its prey, it stretched out its front claw and tried to slash at the two children.
Feng Hao gave Ming Ai a tug and pulled her forward just enough to dodge the fatal attack. Although Feng Hao could not fully avoid the attack, a long bloody gash formed on his lower left leg.
Feng Hao could barely continue to run, his body was beginning to fail after he pushed it passed its limits for an entire night.
There was a long crack in the ground just ten meters ahead, once he got passed that, he would be safe.
The sun crested over the horizon as the night came to an end. The dragon spirit beast stopped for a moment before a large black spirit ring surrounded it.
The black on the ring slowly peeled away, revealing a red colour underneath. The spirit beasts was becoming 100,000 years old!
The spirit beast decided to finish off its prey while it was still evolving. The spirit beasts body tensed, it prepared to smash its front foot down on its prey.
Ming Ai had already crossed the small crack in the ground, she was carrying the blond haired girl and Feng Long. When Feng Hao suffered his leg wound and began to collapse, she took Feng Long from his back and carried him.
Feng Hao was Lying on the ground, if he died, he wouldn't even know, his mind had sunk into his consciousness, his body had been moving on its own for a while.
As the spirit beasts front leg descended onto his body, Feng Hao's eyes slowly lost their life.
If Feng Hao's conciseness knew what was happening to his body, instead of sealing his regained memories, he would have felt extremely familiar.
Feng Hao's body grew cold, his eyes became dead and the thick killing intent, that both seeped from the ground of the clearing and was exuded by the dragon spirit beast, was absorbed.
His body became something akin to a void, a dark abyss that was endlessly large and consumed everything.
Just as the spirit beats front leg smashed down onto the ground, Feng Hao shot out, narrowly dodging getting killed.
He quickly crossed the small crack that spanned the entire clearing. Feng Hao grabbed Feng Long and the blond girl with one arm, he grabbed Ming Ai with the other arm. He could not seem to feel the pain that flooded his body as he ran to the other side of the clearing which was bathed with orange light.
The area where the spirit beast had stepped slowly cracked. There was a large ravine under the clearing.
Feng Hao had learnt of the clearing from the many geography books in the secret room. The ravine had been sealed many years ago and could only be opened by a sufficiently powerful human... or creature.
The spirit beast lost its balance on the unstable ground. Not a moment after the ground started to crumble, did thousands of dark shadows shoot out of the ground.
Tens of thousands of gigantic bugs, all of which had to be over 10,000 years old, shot out of the ground. The creature dug into the dragon spirit beast, blood flowed down their shiny exoskeletons as they ripped pieces of flesh from the dragon spirit beast.
The dragon spirit beast roared and flailed as it tried to escape from the ants and spiders that covered its body. A few confident bugs ripped out the eyes of the beast. Eventually the bugs had dug through the spirit beast far enough to unleash its stomach acid, which covered the bugs.
The bugs ate the chunks of half digested food that had fallen on their bodies, savouring the smelly food.
Ming Ai held her breath because of the awful stench that exuded from the broken down food that erupted out of the dragon spirit beasts stomach.
But crawled over each other, trying to rip off a piece of the spirit beast, they had formed a large tower into the air, at the top of which, was the spirit beast. The writhing dark mass bit and chew and clawed into every organ, every piece of muscle, fat, flesh and blood that they could find.
The ground slowly began to repair, so the ravenous bugs grew even more desperate to consume the dragon spirit beast, which had already died because both its brain and heart had been used to fill the stomachs of thousand of bugs.
Slowly, the ravenous bugs were packed back into the ground as the land sealed up again.
This clearing was one of the most dangerous places in the world, once the seal was destroyed, all hell would break loose. Luckily, the bugs preferred targets with more spiritual energy and the seal that held them underground would quickly repair once it was damaged.
At the edge of the clearing, Feng Hao was still keeping a tight grip on Ming Ai. She didn't say anything, but she was trying to pull herself out of his grip.
Because of the strange entity taking over Feng Hao body, he had an extremely low body temperature. His body tempature was almost 80 degrees below freezing.
The cold from his body had seeped into Ming Ai, she was starting to get a cold from the cold.
All of a sudden, Feng Hao warmed up, eventually returning to a normal body temperature, it was at this moment that he collapsed.
Feng Hao had fixed the seal on his memories and returned to consciousness. Although the tech that was installed in his brain from his last life was not present, the aether seal was.
The things he had remembered couldn't be sealed again, he did not have enough stored aether seal them.
The seal was comprised of multiple layers, only the first had partially broken. In his previous life, Feng Hao had attached canisters made of aether to the seal, if it ever broke and he had no aether, he would be able to repair it.
Sadly, the canister did not hold enough aether for him to seal the released memories.
After laying on the ground for a little while, Feng Hao got up, he had remembered everything that was happening while he was in his consciousness.
Feng Hao sat up, he looked at the worn out Ming Ai and his unconscious brother, as well as the blond girl who seemed to be waking up.
He looked at the corpse of the dragon spirit beast, torn scraps of flesh still hanging onto its mostly undamaged bones.
He saw the grass, the trees and the orange sky. He smiled.
He was safe, his brother was safe, everyone was safe.
He whispered under his breath "mission accomplished... captain"
As the happy and peaceful moment came to a close, Feng Hao saw a grey box appear in front of him.
[title gained: Saviour]
[special rank skill gained, would you like to activate?]