Bears, tigers, wolves and wild boars were much stronger than ordinary humans. However, they still weren’t magical-beasts and never cultivated to increase their power.

Even before I started Strengthening my body with Qi, I could lift one-hundred kilo hunks of iron ore over my head and do squats with them. With a tiger sitting on my back, I could still do push-ups, and I could knock a grizzly out with a single punch. I definitely wasn’t ‘normal’ and considering my natural height was about two-meters, I was able to fit an extraordinarily large amount of muscles on my giant frame.

Every time I improved my ‘Grrr~!’ by one level, my physical capabilities doubled. Not only that, but as I grew bigger, my power increased outside of that ‘base’ value. Let’s just say that if what I started with was considered one ‘Bear’, then I ended up with about fifty ‘Bears’ on that fateful day, when I was separated from my first friend.

To put it in perspective, when we originally met, Lang Wong only had around five or six ‘Bears’ of physical strength. Of course, once he finished his second Qi Strengthening, he was closer to twenty-six hundred ‘Bears’. I’ve never been a particularly big fan of mathematics, but it is rather fascinating sometimes.

The road of Qi cultivation is filled with exponential growth, but to be completely honest, most people don’t even invest the time to simply ‘think’ and truly quantify their power. They just make up some silly and absurd numbers without understanding what they actually mean.

Primary: 512
Secondary: 262,144
Tertiary: 134,217,728
Quaternary: 68,719,476,736
Quinary: 35,184,372,088,832
Senary: 18,014,398,509,481,984
Septenary: 9.2,233,720,368,548E+18
Octonary: 4.7,223,664,828,696E+21
Nonary: 2.4,178,516,392,293E+24

From the first core until the ninth, the amount of time, effort and sheer Qi required was even more absurd than how much power could be obtained. Well, everything’s ‘relative’ in the end though… I mean, in regards to ‘humans’, they were all pretty similar in strength, so they were typically able to tell by the level of cultivation. However, all animals, plants and other ‘creatures’ needed to be catagorized properly, or it would become extremely confusing.

After all, there were ‘dragons’ that already had about a thousand ‘Bears’ of physical power the moment that they hatched. These were the ‘Realms’ and each one always had nine ranks, because for whatever reason, some guy a super-long time ago decided that it was cooler than ten. Somebody else really liked sevens and now everything is all nines and sevens, for all of eternity. Anyway, it’s too late to change that kind of nonsense now, so just go with it and accept it as like, the laws of Heaven or some other superstitious silliness.

Okay, so some places start with ‘Grass’, then go ‘Mouse’, ‘Cat’, ‘Dog’, ‘Human’, ‘Wolf’, ‘Tiger’, ‘Bear’ and all the way to ‘Dragon’ eventually. Also, I’ve seen some who had ‘Woman’ before ‘Man’ in their list of ‘Realms’, but at some point in time, there was this whole ‘political correctness’ plague that spread throughout the universe and so I’m just going to stick with the ‘current’ version. To avoid confusion, I’ll also leave out my ‘own’ personally created system, which involves the noises that the animals made and was a disaster that I really don’t want to talk about.

The most common version is essentially based on the colors of the visible spectrum: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet. There used to be more, but it became unnecessary and redundant; plus, there are also the ‘Elements’, so once you had everything mixed together, it was difficult to tell what people were trying to say.

Nowadays, the seven-colored system is used by not only ‘Mortals’, but also ‘Immortals’ and ‘Deities’. I was serious when I said that a billion years isn’t that long when you’re a cultivator; I’m honestly surprised that I could reach the pinnacle before a trillion. Hmmm, I think this is probably getting way out of hand; let’s get back to that ‘fateful’ day, when I had to metaphorically say “Goodbye!” to my first friend.

It was warm and sunny on ‘my’ beautiful mountain; I was on the peak, sitting cross-legged and meditating like always. If I was alone, I wouldn’t care, but Lang Wong always seemed to feel awkward when I was naked, so I started wearing simple furs to cover my groin. Even though I didn’t have genitals, he was still a little ‘distracted’ by my buttocks occasionally. Aside from him being a child, there was also the fact that I didn’t have a sex drive; obviously, I never even thought about ‘mating’ back then, nor did I understand it.

As the two of us were sitting there next to each other, I heard an unfamiliar bird-cry and felt a sense of impending danger in my gut. On the other hand, my little friend had much more profound senses than I did, so he was immediately able to ‘feel’ the aura of a powerful enemy approaching.

In the sky, there were dozens of gigantic white cranes soaring towards us. The peak of the mountain was fairly flat and wide; even though there was a decent amount of snow and ice, there were still evergreen pine trees and a few ferns, so it wasn’t totally desolate.

Lang Wong frowned, turning to me and placing his relatively tiny right hand on my left forearm. Then he softly said “I’m truly sorry for bringing this disaster to your home Guru… I know you don’t really understand what I’m saying right now, but you need to leave now. You can’t stay here any longer and I don’t know if I can protect you from these people… Hurry and go!” After an abrupt shout, he concentrated his fiery Qi into his palm and scorched my flesh pretty badly.

Out of reflex, I punched him in the face, but I did sort of ‘comprehend’ what he was trying to tell me. No, I obviously didn’t stay there and try to help him fight the small army of people in the ‘Orange’ and ‘Yellow’ Realms. I was only at the fifth rank of the ‘Red’ Realm, so there’s no way I was going to stick around and get ganked or just killed by the aftermath of a randomly fired spell.

I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I wasn’t some suicidal unnecessary-hero type of character. Besides, you already know that Lang Wong survived the battle; he eventually became the ‘God of Fire’, so you don’t need to worry about him. Me on the other hand, even though I practically soared down the back of the mountain and headed north through the forest, they already had a bunch of relatively weak assassins lurking in the trees.

‘Killing intent’ is essentially just what it sounds like; when people or whatever, think about attacking or harming someone, they can intentionally or accidentally give off a telepathic warning ahead of time. Of course, the target has to be sensitive to that kind of thing… I might have been a bit ‘slow’, but my instincts were still pretty sharp.

The moment that I felt a bit of danger from my left, I swiftly ducked and rolled across the ground, before hiding behind a huge birch tree. An instant later, the spot where I was running towards was abruptly struck by lightning. Then a dozen knives flew into the bark, but I did manage to avoid being turned into a very unhappy porcupine.

“Wow! Is that a hairless tan-skinned demon-ape?! Dude, we could totally make a fortune if we capture it alive!” One of the two men who were hiding in the bushes started shouting randomly in an overly emphatic voice.

The other one yelled “Nah man, we should just like, ya know~, kill it an stuff! It’d be way too hard ta tame it, ya know?!”

I actually can’t remember exactly what they said, but it probably went something like that… maybe? Well, it doesn’t really matter either way, because I couldn’t understand Human back then. All you care about is the semi-awesome fight scenes and the dialogue is basically just filler anyway.

“Bro, look out!” I lunged out from behind the tree and sprinted towards the closest enemy. Considering that I was a four-meter tall giant with bulging muscles, it wasn’t surprising that they were immediately able to see me.

However, since the two of them were barely even rank-two Red Realm novices, they simply didn’t have the physical prowess required to avoid me. The first man that I encountered was wearing all black garments, with even a cloth mask and hood to totally cover his head, so I have no idea what he looked like. All I know is that even when he stood upright, he was barely above my waist.

With a lift of my right knee, his chest caved in and he was thrown three-dozen meters away, turning into a gory paste on the side of a huge boulder. What? I said that I never killed a ‘person’ before, but did you think that all those thousands of animals I ate were already dead when I found them? It’s not like I could go to the grocery store or the market and have other people butcher my food for me.

I honestly could never understand those ‘vegetarians’; they always complained about how it’s cruel to eat living creatures… Plants can feel and think too! Haven’t you ever seen a medicinal herb gain sentience? What about the Dryadic races or Treants? Especially those hypocritical pacifistic monks who only consume the Qi from Heaven and Earth. I know this may seem like a shocking revelation guys, but you’re basically devouring the lifeforce of the planet you’re on and the stars in the sky. You’re literally killing the world and the entire universe! Well, sure, it might be a little insignificant in the early stages, but I’ve seen ‘benevolent’ Gods and Goddesses destroy entire planets from a single day of obtaining ‘sustenance’.

Back to the miscellaneous escape-scene… The moment I kneed the first assassin in the chest, there was a powerful blast of lightning that struck me in the back.

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