The Whispering Pine Forest was straight out of a xianxia novel and I was loving every single moment of it.

  This was the real deal. An actual cultivation world forest where dangerous spirit beasts went on the hunt.

  I'd been tracking the wolves for nearly two hours now, and it was definitely far more difficult then I thought it would be.

  Back on Earth I'd read about tracking in survival guides and nature documentaries, even played video games with hunting mechanics. None of it compared to actually doing it.

  I had found wolf prints about thirty minutes into my search by a stream, but the trail had ran cold. It took a lot of wandering and deduction to find that White Wolves hunted by the streams before congregating in the forests once more. I tried to follow this pattern and eventually found tracks of large paws that left deep impressions upon the soil.

  The feeding ground sealed the deal with my search.

  A small clearing littered with bones and torn hide, blood still relatively fresh, with the meat stripped off. White Wolves were apex predators in this region and it showed. I crouched low, examining the kill site.

  That's when I saw it.

  A lone wolf, maybe fifty paces ahead through the trees. Its fur was that perfect silver-white the mission scroll had described, catching the dappled sunlight in the forest’s clearing.

  I started stalking it, moving from tree to tree, keeping low and quiet. The wolf moved with unhurried grace, occasionally stopping to sniff the air or mark territory.

  Part of me knew it was too perfect. Too easy. But I was excited and eager and that eagerness pushed caution aside.

  Ten minutes of following and I still hadn't noticed the forest changing around me. Hadn't realized the undergrowth was thinning. Hadn't seen I was being herded into position.

  The wolf I'd been tracking suddenly bolted sideways and vanished into the brush.

  Oh no.

  The ambush came from everywhere at once.

  Two wolves burst from the left, one from the right, and movement behind me signaled at least two more cutting off retreat. They moved with such coordination that it would make military tacticians jealous.

  It was terrifying and amazing and I had about half a second to appreciate it before the first wolf reached me.

  Claws raked across my shoulder, tearing through my outer robe and into flesh. Pain exploded bright and hot. The second wolf's jaws snapped at my leg, teeth grazing my calf and tearing the top layer of skin. Blood bloomed warm as the third lunged for my exposed back.

  Instinct threw me into a forward roll. I came up running, every analytical thought drowned out by my survival reflexes.

  The wolves pursued, their coordinated chase cutting off my escape routes, forcing me toward denser forest where their pack tactics would dominate.

  My shoulder burned. My leg throbbed. Blood ran down my arm and dripped from my fingertips as I vaulted a fallen log and changed direction.

  I needed space to regroup and use my training instead of just panicking.

  A cluster of boulders appeared ahead and I made for them, hearing the pack closing behind me. I reached the rocks and spun around, pressing my back against stone.

  They were patient now that they had me cornered, confident in their superiority.

  And they were magnificent.

  Each one was easily the size of a large dog back on Earth. That silver-white fur seemed to shimmer with barely visible spiritual energy.

  My breath came in ragged gasps. The claw marks on my leg made standing painful.

  Yet I was grinning.

  I was a cultivator alone in a spirit beast forest, injured and cornered, facing overwhelming odds. This was the scenario I'd read about hundreds of times, and now I was living it. The pain was real, the danger was real, and the stakes were life and death.

  It was perfect.

  Only thing for certain was that I did not have plot armor by my side.

  I couldn't overthink this. Couldn't run probability calculations or analyze optimal response patterns like some kind of game. I had to trust my training, my instincts, and be willing to die if that's what it took to see if all my training actually worked.

  The wolves began closing in.

  I took a deep breath. Then another. That breathing technique from the meditation manual I'd read before aided me.

  I breathed in through the nose, deep into the lower dantian, hold for three heartbeats, out through the mouth slowly.

  Something clicked into place.

  The pain receded to background noise. My racing thoughts quieted. The world sharpened, each detail crystallizing with perfect clarity. The wolves' muscle tension. The way they distributed their weight. The slight tells before they moved.

  Flow state. I'd read about it in sports psychology books, martial arts interviews, accounts from soldiers in combat. That zone where thought and action merged, where you stopped trying and just were.

  I was there now.

  The first wolf lunged and my body moved without conscious decision. Mountain Root Stance grounded me as I swayed left, jaws snapping shut on empty air. My counter-strike was swift, an explosive step into the wolf's committed lunge, fist driving into exposed ribs with precision I'd drilled a thousand times.

  The wolf yelped and stumbled sideways.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  Two more attacked from different angles. Swallow Returns to Nest, three quick backward steps, my hands moving in Flowing River Palm circles that redirected their momentum. They snapped and lunged but I was already moving, already responding.

  A wolf went low for my injured leg. Phantom Step shifted me sideways and my palm strike caught it behind the ear, stunning it momentarily.

  I was actually doing it. Actually flowing between five different martial styles without thinking, letting each movement birth the next.

  But…I was still losing.

  I could dodge, strike, and hurt them. But my precision strikes targeted human meridian points for disrupting qi flow. I could knock them back, and buy seconds, but I couldn't finish them off.

  The wolves realized it too. They pressed harder, accepting hits that would drop a human cultivator.

  I needed killing power.

  Liu Wei's face flashed through my mind. Tiger Descends the Mountain, the aggressive, overwhelming style he'd used. The style the original Cao Chang had also favored this style for years as well.

  The overhead strike that cracked skulls. The ripping claw that tore flesh. The pouncing double-fist that crushed bone.

  Two wolves lunged from opposite sides.

  I exploded forward into the left one, counter-striking timing merged with Tiger Descends execution. My fist came down in a brutal overhead arc with all of my weight behind it, reinforced by Iron Thread Fist's full-body coordination.

  The impact was completely different from my earlier strikes.

  Something cracked beneath my knuckles. The wolf's legs buckled as its spine failed.

  It dropped and didn't get up.

  Yes! The integration worked!

  The other wolf hit me from behind, claws tearing fresh furrows across my back. But I was already moving, already flowing.

  Phantom Step for distance.

  Mountain Root to ground myself.

  Then I turned and executed Tiger's Leaping Strike enhanced by my explosive movement—both fists driving into the wolf's chest.

  Ribs shattered audibly. The wolf flew backward and slammed into a tree.

  Blood dripped from my knuckles, a mix of mine and theirs. My fingernails had torn during the impacts, leaving ragged edges.

  Three wolves down. Two still circling but their coordination had broken.

  My breathing stayed steady despite the pain, despite the blood loss. I was still in that flow state.

  The two remaining wolves growled, finally breaking their silence.

  I settled into my stance, feeling everything I'd learned solidify into something cohesive.

  Blood dripped from my knuckles and torn nails, painting the forest floor in dark drops that caught the strange Emberfall light.

  Come on, I thought, watching them circle. Let's finish this.

  The wolves split up, trying to use their remaining numbers advantage. One feinted left while the other prepared to rush right. Classic pincer movement. They were still coordinating even after losing three packmates.

  I had to respect that.

  But I'd figured out the rhythm and understood how they worked together to createopenings for each other.

  More importantly, I'd integrated the killing power I'd been missing.

  The right-side wolf committed first, launching into a full sprint. I waited, grounded in Mountain Root, letting it close the distance. At the last possible moment I used Phantom Step to shift sideways and Tiger's Rending Claw technique caught it across the throat mid-leap.

  It crashed to the ground, twitching, dark blood pooling beneath it.

  The last wolf hesitated. I could see the calculation in its intelligent eyes. All its packmates down. This strange prey that should have died but instead kept getting more dangerous.

  It turned and ran.

  Part of me wanted to let it go. It was magnificent, after all, and I'd already proven my point. But the mission required ten pelts and I'd only taken down four wolves definitively.

  I gave chase, my injured leg protesting but holding. The wolf was fast but I'd spent a month drilling explosive movement. I closed the gap, used Swallow Returns to Nest's advancing footwork to get ahead of its escape route, and when it tried to dodge I was already there with Tiger Descends the Mountain's overhead strike.

  It dropped to the ground and didn't get back up.

  I stood there in the clearing, surrounded by five downed White Wolves, breathing hard and grinning despite the pain radiating from a dozen wounds. My robes were torn and blood-soaked. My shoulder throbbed. My leg hurt with every step.

  And I felt amazing.

  This was real cultivation world combat. I'd been ambushed by intelligent spirit beasts, been injured and cornered, and I'd adapted and won through a combination of analysis, training, and in-the-moment synthesis.

  I wanted to shout. To laugh. To find more wolves and do it again.

  But first, pelts.

  The sect required physical proof for mission completion, which meant I needed to harvest these wolves properly. I was grateful that the original Cao Chang's memories included basic field dressing knowledge from clan hunting trips, so he knew how to skin animals using the environment around him.

  The work was messy but straightforward. Start with a cut from throat to tail, peel the hide away from the muscle, careful not to tear the valuable fur. White Wolf pelts were prized for their spiritual properties, which meant I needed to keep them intact.

  Twenty minutes later I had five pelts rolled and secured in my pack. The forest floor looked like an abattoir, but that was nature. Other scavengers would clean up the remains.

  Five pelts out of the required ten. Not bad for my first real mission, especially considering I'd been ambushed by an entire pack. I could either track down another pack or head back, claim partial credit, and return later for the rest.

  But that decision could wait. Right now I had more immediate concerns.

  My wounds weren't life-threatening but they weren't trivial either. The shoulder gashes had mostly stopped bleeding but they'd need cleaning and binding. The leg wounds were worse, deeper than I'd initially thought. My back felt like it had been used as a scratching post.

  I needed medical attention, but the sect was two hours away and I wasn't sure I wanted to explain to Sister Qiao how I'd gotten torn up on what was supposed to be a routine culling mission.

  Then I remembered something from my month of library research. The Chronicles of the Sunset Continent had included sections on regional flora, including medicinal herbs that grew in forested areas like this. And the martial arts library had basic field medicine manuals for disciples on extended missions.

  I could treat myself.

  Probably.

  Maybe.

  The thought made me grin again despite the pain. Of course I could. This was exactly the kind of self-reliant cultivator moment that showed up in every xianxia story.

  The protagonist injured after a tough fight, foraging for healing herbs.

  I started searching the area around the clearing, looking for the herbs I'd read about. Bloodstop Root grew near water sources—reddish roots that when crushed into paste would help clot wounds. Moonwhisper Leaves were silvery-white and grew on the shaded side of ancient trees, good for reducing inflammation and preventing infection.

  The stream where I'd found the wolf tracks earlier was maybe ten minutes away if I could retrace my path. I headed that way, moving carefully to avoid aggravating my injuries.

  The forest felt different now. I'd proven I belonged here, that I wasn't just prey waiting to be hunted. Every rustling leaf and distant sound still put me on alert, but it was excited vigilance rather than fear.

  I found the stream and started searching its banks. That was when I found the Bloodstop Root, exactly like the illustration in the Chronicles. I dug up several bundles, careful to leave enough for regrowth. The roots were thick and fibrous, with that distinctive reddish tint.

  Moonwhisper Leaves took longer to locate. I had to search the shadowed side of several massive trees before I found a cluster growing on an ancient pine. The leaves were cool to the touch, almost like touching metal, with a silvery sheen to it.

  Perfect.

  I found a relatively clean spot by the stream and started preparing the medicines using techniques from the field manual I'd memorized.

  Crush the Bloodstop Root between two rocks until it formed a paste. Mix in water to create the right consistency. Apply directly to open wounds.

  The paste stung like fire when I applied it to my shoulder, but I could feel it working immediately. The bleeding stopped, the flesh around the wounds tightening. The Moonwhisper Leaves I chewed into a poultice, then spread over the treated areas. It left a cooling sensation on my skin which was similiar to a prickling feeling.

  I worked my way through the rest of my wounds. Shoulder, back, leg, arm, the dozen smaller cuts and scrapes I'd accumulated.

  When I was finished I cleaned my hands in the stream and looked at my reflection in the water. Blood-stained, battered, but grinning. This face belonged to Cao Chang, but that expression was pure me.

  The mission wasn't complete yet. I still needed five more pelts to hit the quota. But I'd proven that my style showed great promise, just like like how I set out to do!

  Now it was time to hunt down five more wolves. I guess I was the predator now.