Chapter 181 - A Seductive Path

In the dark woods, a hundred paces away from the field of broken rock and the den of the savage creature that had become her prey, Ao Wen dumped the carcass of the beast on the ground and began the work of turning the slain beast into something edible. "I don't believe that it's impossible to use my flames here," she said, staring at the fallen creature. "This is a manual for alchemists, every single one of us has a relationship with fire," she reasoned. 

Moving quickly, she began to flay the creature's hide from its thick, bloody muscles. Tang Jin could doubtless tell her which part of the animal was likely to taste best and Feng Xi could certainly do a better job at skinning the beast and preparing it to be eaten. Ao Wen couldn't manage to care about either of those things. It was all she could do to keep herself from tearing into the beast's flesh raw to satiate the overwhelming hunger tearing at her stomach. 

As her hands moved, so did her mind. Now that the fight had ended, the rush of adrenaline had faded and once again, hunger made her thoughts sluggish and muddled. Focusing through the pain of her headache took even more will as she tried to figure out why she couldn't bring forth her flames. "I'm being suppressed," she realized. The darkness of this place wouldn't allow her to bring forth light. It pressed in all around her, covering her energy like a wet blanket, preventing even the smallest of flame from forming. 

"I refuse to let this place turn me into an animal that feeds on bloody, raw meat! I bet they want that, they want me to give over my reason to bloodlust for the hunt. I'm not that easy to suppress!" Ao Wen shouted at the quiet forest. Looking around the forest, Ao Wen paused her butchering to fetch a large and relatively smooth stone from the area near the beast's den. Setting it firmly into the soft loamy soil near the carcass of the beast, Ao Wen fed all of her anger at this place, her frustration and the pain of her hunger and wounded shoulder into the most intense heat she could imagine. She didn't need to summon an actual flame, she just needed to make the rock so blisteringly hot that she could use it like a pan and sear her meal on the stone.

Heat built slowly at first, the darkness pressing against her with an unnatural chill that penetrated deep into her bones, seeping into her meridians and slowing the flow of her energy even as she drew deeper on her flames than she ever had before. Inwardly, Ao Wen worked through her flames, channeling first her purifying emerald flames to purge the dark chill from her meridians, then the azure flames, gently regulating the temperature of her body and preventing the dark chill from sinking into her. Finally, she blended the trace of bronze Earth Dragon flame with her more powerful crimson flames, placing her hand directly on the rock and allowing the heat of the flames to pour directly into the stone. No light blossomed in the night as she stoked her inner fire and unleashed it upon the stone, but steadily, the temperature of the stone increased until the air around it shimmered like the inside of a hearth. 

"Finally doing as I want," Ao Wen muttered, returning to the carcass and gathering several thin strips of meat to toss on the hot stone. She wasn't patient enough to roast anything whole and she was sure that the meat would be tough but right now, she didn't care. With an act of extreme determination, she ignored the sweet smell of searing meat and carved several more strips off the carcass as she waited for her first ones to cook. After a few minutes, she flipped each piece of meat over with one of her knives and poured more heat into the cooling stone. This time, however, she only managed to wait for thirty breaths before her ravenous hunger overtook her will and she tore into one of the strips of beast meat. 

Hot juices spilled down her chin as she chewed the surprisingly delicate and flavorful meat. It was rich, meatier than beef, more like oxen in flavor without the gaminess she'd expected of such a wild creature. Shoving the remainder of the strip of beef in her mouth to chew on while she worked, Ao Wen quickly removed the other pieces from the first batch and threw the next ones onto the hot stone before fetching the next piece and wolfing it down. 

Far from satiating her hunger, the meager beginnings of her meal only stoked the fire of her appetite. Flipping over the next batch of meat, she then cut several more strips, thicker, wider and longer than the ones before. Before she knew it, she was tearing into the second batch of still hot but distinctly rarer beast meat while the third batch smoked and sizzled on the hot stone. "No, no, it's doing it to me again," she realized. If she continued like this, she'd pull the thicker strips of meat off even faster than the last batch until she was eating something that was nearly raw. Once she did that, why not just eat the beast's flesh directly? "How insidious," she marveled. If she resisted one corrupting temptation, she was immediately presented with another. The vision didn't relent because she'd overcome one obstacle, it just found a way to reposition its challenge and force her to overcome it yet again. "If you think this is enough to turn me into a savage predator, you're gravely mistaken," she told the forest. "So, what else do you have to challenge me with," she taunted. "I'm sure you're not done yet!"

In the darkness, a chittering sound echoed as though responding to Ao Wen's challenge. A chill wind blew through the trees, leaves rustling overhead. What light there was in this place began to fade, the few patches of sky she could see through the branches fading from twilight toward a moonless night so dark that not even the stars dared to wander into the blanket of black drawn over the world. 

"So, that's your game," Ao Wen said, reaching out and picking up one of the thicker slabs of meat and tearing into it slowly, savoring each bite. In the darkness, her amber eyes flashed with a bronze light of their own, her pupils elongating and widening until they took on the appearance of a dragon's eyes, piercing the darkness and allowing her to see the world as though faint moonlight had permeated the darkness. "So, what are you trying to hide in your darkness?" Ao Wen wondered. 

Perhaps she'd find out soon when something attempted to take her meal from her. If nothing came to her, however, she intended to finish her meal before setting out in search of more trouble. She might not be in control of the vision, but she was in control of herself and she'd move when she was ready, not when the forest tried to intimidate her.