The art of beast sealing is noble, among cultivators at least. In truth, it's quite barbaric, even to the most hardened Immortal veterans. First, a suitable spiritual beast, kill it, butcher it, and take out its left lung, right eye, and spinal fluid, then drink it while repeating this chant: “With this lung, I shall breathe in the Heavens! With this eye, I shall see the face of the Heavens! With this spine, I will hold up the heavens, SEAL!”

  –Excerpt from ‘Noble Cultivation Arts’, by The Sealing Demon Yu.

  The first thing Harry noticed as he stared at his status screen was an additional point of [HP] that hadn’t been there before. The rat wasn’t sure where it came from, but he suspected that the tribulation had something to do with it and the peculiar way he felt after obtaining his first soul.

  Regardless of where it came from, Harry was happy with it and wouldn’t mind if more appeared; each point represented a life, and the more he had, the less killable he’d be. The rat didn’t mind that at all.

  His gaze slid down the facet section, gliding past his other facets until it stopped, right at the newly unlocked [PER] stat.

  Fifty pints of biomass vanished into the stat, bringing it up to a nice twenty. The difference was more discernible this time; Harry’s eyes and brain felt significantly faster, and the world became a tad more beautiful and vibrant.

  Harry also noticed that his range of vision had been extended significantly. The changes weren’t unique to his eyes only, though. His already sensitive ears became even more acute and could now pick up sounds from a greater distance; they were also significantly clearer and less distorted, even from afar.

  Next was Harry’s nose, which received a major boost as well and could now better distinguish between scents, pick up scent trails, and identify new ones.

  It was a very comprehensive upgrade, and Harry was a little thrown off by that; usually, a stat would only change and upgrade one thing, maybe two, but never four or three.

  It made the rat reconsider why that was and his entire perspective of stats and their governed parts as a whole, but he didn’t dwell on it too much; it didn’t matter at the moment.

  With that done, Harry moved down to the section that supposedly housed the soul and tried poking it for a good two minutes before giving up and moving on to the traits section.

  The first trait he set his sights on was [Spiritual sense], a trait he’d been wanting to try ever since he got it but never got the chance, until now.

  With a thought, the trait activated, and Harry’s world shifted, but didn’t look much different initially. That was until the rat shifted his gaze to a lone grass stalk in the distance and noticed something different: faint, almost invisible, soft golden particles swishing around it, dancing on an invisible wind.

  The rat felt as if countless bolts of lightning were slamming into his mind the moment he ‘saw’ these particles and his power flared up, manifesting into a new trait, a very odd one at that.

  -Trait acquired: Enlightenment (-)

  -Trait acquired: Telepathy (0)

  +10 INT

  A strange power blanketed Harry, one that didn’t belong to him; it manifested as a beam of azure light that stretched from the heavens and down to Harry’s levitating body, invisible to everyone but him.

  The rat felt his mind expand and contract under the gentle care of this strange power, shifting into something more substantial, more robust.

  He didn’t feel any smarter, at least not in a traditional sense; he felt more inclined to rational thinking than before, and had a better memory. That wasn’t all; his intuition felt a bit sharper, and Harry felt packets of knowledge streaming in from the Heavens via the light that connected them.

  The world now considers him a spirit beast, a newly enlightened one. Spirit beasts were mundane creatures who managed to gain enlightenment by peering at the spiritual energy of the Heavens and Earth, removing them from the mortal coil forever.

  They were supposed to gain access to spells and strange powers upon enlightenment, but Harry hadn’t gotten any of that, and he wasn’t sure if it was because of his strange nature or a fault of Heaven.

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  The more the rat examined the information packets, the more his theory shifted; he was missing a lot of stuff. He had no beast core, no bloodline, spiritual roots, and only one spell: [Telepathy].

  Well, it was one, not anymore; his power had turned it into a trait instead. Harry wasn’t sure if that was a good thing yet; only time would tell. Thinking about it, it made sense for his power to convert the spell into a trait; he didn’t have the necessary metaphysical features to cast spells, so why have them at all?

  What he couldn’t fully wrap his head around was why. Nothing should’ve gone wrong yet something had, a very critical aspect from the looks of it, too. That was the worrisome part, but Harry couldn’t bring himself to think about it too much; nothing had happened to him physically or metaphysically that had caused him any harm, as far as he could tell, so was it that bad?

  Still, the gains, while unexpected, were happily welcomed; with [Telepathy], cross-species communication was no longer a hurdle. Harry felt like the trait had great potential, too: his intuition kept praising it, as if it were the best trait in his arsenal at the moment.

  He wouldn’t be upgrading it now, though; the base cost alone was 2000 units of biomass, an absurd sum given Harry’s current funds.

  No, what he would be upgrading now are traits that would allow him to fight, survive, and escape if need be.

  First on his list was [Regeneration].

  -Trait upgraded: Regeneration (1) →Regeneration (2)

  -Please select an upgrade option:

  -Cost (1): Reduce [STAM] cost by 20%

  -Speed (0): Increase regeneration speed by 5%

  -Speed (1): Increase regeneration speed by 20%

  The rat selected speed without much thought; cost was good, but wouldn’t matter if he healed at a snail’s pace, which wouldn’t save his life.

  As Harry was about to select another trait to upgrade his nose twitched as the distinct smell of rat droppings, blood, and semen reached it. Harry paused and shifted his head left, toward a small patch of weeds and stone far away from the town’s main gate.

  He couldn’t quite make out what was going on there as his vision wasn’t that good and it was a good distance away, but the order was unmaskable; a rat was in there, somehow.

  Harry’s suspicions were confirmed when a large section of the weed simply fell away, and a red, somewhat plump rat crawled out, sniffing the air as it looked around curiously. Then, as if sensing what it wanted, it repaired the fallen-off section of the weed before vanishing into the grassfield.

  Harry immediately tensed and went on alert; the direction the rat had taken led straight to him, exactly where he was standing now. Before Harry could figure out where the rat would attack from, something slammed into him, sending the startled rat flying through the air and into the mud-brick wall of the burrow. Harry’s eyes snapped wide open, and [Adrenal Burst] roared to life at the back of his mind, consuming a decent chunk of his stamina to boost his [AGI].

  The world slowed, and Harry blinked off the ground and got to his feet, just in time to receive a massive, glowing fist rippling with twitching muscles and hair to the chest, sending him flying yet again, a full ten meters this time.

  Harry’s vision spun chaotically through the air like a bird whose wings suddenly got clipped, crashing into the soft earth with great force.

  Although they were only ten meters apart, it was enough for Harry to finally see what was attacking him.

  It was the slightly plump rat, but it looked vastly different; it looked nothing like a rat. If Harry hadn’t seen it before, he would’ve mistaken it for a brown bear. Gone was the slightly plump frame and dull crimson glow; what stood before Harry now had none of those.

  It was a rat covered from head to toe in a flowing, blood-red mane that leaked a ghastly crimson aura that bled into the surroundings and flesh, causing them to contract and swell with physical power angrily.

  Its fangs were so long and large that they couldn’t fit into its mouth, and dripped with thick, red saliva that boiled the moment they made contact with its tongue, which resulted in a constant release of thick crimson steam that obscured most of its face, but Harry could see the large beady, crimson eyes of the monstarous eyes looking at him, filled with nothing but cold burning hate.

  Suddenly, the rat stood on its massive hind legs, bent down slightly, and kicked off the ground, while opening its massive mouth wide as it lunged for Harry’s head. Harry shifted to the side and watched as the massive rat fell on its belly and slid across the ground, uprooting a massive amount of grass in the process, roots and everything.

  Harry landed on his back with a calculated leap and began hacking away with his claws, managing to cut a few inches deep into the rat’s flesh before he sensed movement. The rat’s left hand suddenly moved with unnatural speed, twisting back to backhand a leaping Harry out of the air with so much force that cracking sounds rang out as part of Harry’s exoskeleton cracked open and fell off, revealing black, squirming flesh underneath.

  Harry’s eyes became bloodshot, and he spat out three mouthfuls of blood as he crashed into the ground, leaving huge furrows as he slid and bounced on the soil’s surface. The bear-like rat rolled over on his back, snorted, and brushed off some dirt from his nose and roared as it lunged after Harry once more.

  The rat leaped to the side, cursing inwardly at the lack of visual cues on the bear-like rat’s face. He’s coated his claws with nearly half his venom when he managed to cut into his back, but his venom didn’t seem to be working at all.

  Either it was too weak, or the rat was somehow resisting it with another ability. Both possibilities were bad news for Harry; worse, the rat seemed to have adapted and no longer fell face-first when lunging at him.

  Harry had initially considered the rat’s strength to be only slightly above his, but that notion was quickly dispelled after receiving a blow that rattled his insides so hard they bled and cracked his exoskeleton.

  Sure, it was healing up nicely, aided by one of its upgrades and his [Regeneration] trait, but Harry no longer wanted to go anywhere near him; one slip up and death was guaranteed.

  The turn of events was simply too sudden, and Harry’s mind was still in disarray from the entire ordeal. This rat was an unknown vector he couldn’t have possibly accounted for; he didn’t remember seeing him anywhere in the Ballcrusher gang, if he had known that such a freakishly strong rat had existed here alongside Ballcrusher himself, Harry would’ve never dared to formulate his plan like that.

  The rat couldn’t help but curse his luck; such a strong foe just had to be his first opponent. Why couldn’t it be a lackey, or even one of the outcast sons? Anything would’ve been more preferable than his current opponent.

  Not only was the rat before him freakishly strong, but it was also fast, extremely tough, and cunning; the worst combo ever, in Harry’s opinion.

  That was just what he saw, too; Harry was sure that the rat was a spiritual beast, that was the only natural way to explain the flowing crimson fur and the sudden, heaven-defying transformation.