1 Chapter 001: The Baby Grass Snake

On the outskirts of Star Dou Forest where the spiritual energy density is at its lowest. Only a small majority of animals and plants are able to cultivate, thereby be able to step foot onto the path of spirit cultivation.

One in a thousand, the chances are for ordinary animals to successfully awaken and become spirit beasts are quite slim. It is even lesser than the chances of a human being able to become a spirit master, just because their ordinary spirit essences does not possess the potential to cultivate spiritual power.

Everything is decided the moment that you are born, whether you are able to cultivate spiritual energy or not; depends solely upon the grade of your spiritual essence (the soul), the rarity of your ancestral bloodline (the body), and the vessel to house, hold, and utilise the spiritual power (the mind).

And so for an ordinary animal to successfully awaken and become a spirit beast, they must gather enough or steadily accumulate sufficient amounts of spiritual energy in order to transform and mold their physical bodies into mortal vessels that are capable of housing and utilising spiritual power.

The most common method of ordinary beast becoming spirit beasts is usually for the ordinary beasts to consume one another, gradually absorbing the life essence and vitality of the consumed prey, and steadily adding it into one's own. It's like an actual food chain, with the food producer, for instance, the plants being able to passively produce spiritual power. Plants tend to have no natural enemy, so as long as they live long enough. With the gradual accumulation of spiritual energy in one's own body, they are steadily able to reforge it over a long period of time and transform it into a creature, now known as a Spirit Beast, which are capable of cultivating spiritual energy and spiritual power.

The Dark Shadow Leopard is one of such creature, living on the outskirts of the Outer Regions of Star Dou Forest. It was originally an ordinary jungle wild cat in the beginning, but after many years of surviving from the measly little scraps and the remaining leftovers of other wild beast's scores. It was able to gather enough accumulated potential spiritual energy to successfully transform into a complete spirit beast.

It's own race and species was completely changed upon awakening as a spirit beast, alongside the off-chance of gaining some insights into the laws of comprehending the darkness element. It is now capable of cloaking its own main body with the darkness element in order to blend in with the shadows and the surrounding darkness within the eniviroment, a perfect camouflage to hide from potential predators, and a much easier approach to stalking prey.

A fully grown mature adult-sized Dark Shadow Leopard spirit beast is capable of infusing dark shadow spiritual energy into their claws, thereby producing five long protruding sabre blades. Its sharpness is capable of easily slashing through the defences of a peak grandmaster realm human spirit master, despite just being a couple of hundreds years old spiritual cultivation wise.

The Dark Shadow Leopard spirit beast despite its large massive physique being slightly bigger than an average adult male African Lion. The female counterpart of the Dark Shadow Leopard spirit beast are known to be far stronger than the male Dark Shadow Leopard spirit beast.

This is because of the way that they are built differently, whilst the male Dark Shadow Leopard spirit beast focuses more upon brute strength, muscles, and short instantaneous burst of power, like a typical male lion. A short instantaneous quick strike from a powerful male Dark Shadow Leopard spirit beast is enough to down or kill any normal average spirit beast.

On the other hand, the female counterpart of the Dark Shadow Leopard spirit beast is more capable and cunning. If the first strike of its initial attack is not enough to instantaneously down or take out the opposing spirit beast. It would then simply target the opposing spirit beast's weak points, by blinding its opponent's eye and severely reducing their field of vision. Whilst, at the same time, targeting the opposing spirit beast's back hind legs in order to reduce their field maneuverability, and possibly preventing their target from fleeing.

The two-hundred years old female Dark Shadow Leopard spirit beast could be seen crouching its large agile feline body downward. Due to the passive camouflaging ability of the dark shadow element, its dark greyish black spotted body gradually blended with the surrounding tall grass of the forest area.

Without any sort of indication beforehand, the prowling female Dark Shadow Leopard spirit beast then lets out a low but intense growl of annoyance. Whilst, pulling its bare lips backwards, thereby revealing a pair of razor-sharp dagger fangs, much like the ancient prehistoric Sabertooth Tiger. Unlike what most popular theories suggests, the most closest living relatives of Sabertooth Tigers are not actual tigers or lions, but rather leopards, with the Clouded Leopard being the most closest living relative of the Sabertooth Tiger in our era.

Something seems to have struck a nerve within the female Dark Shadow Leopard spirit beast, as it unwillingly eyes its entire surroundings with an intense gaze, ready to pounce upon anything in short haste. Whether they are moving or still. If it identifies the target as food within its eyes, then they are as good as a garner.

The female Dark Shadow Leopard spirit beast is probably just hungry, and that is why it is currently in a foul mood. It probably hasn't eaten anything since the moment that it woke up. So it's probably starving and is quite aching to get a mouth upon anything tasty looking to enter its belly.

Unknowingly, by accident, the female Dark Shadow Leopard spirit beast had accidentally stumbled across an ordinary green baby Grass Snake that lay within its line of path. So when it was still prowling upon the ground, one of its front paws has accidentally touched the body and surface of the baby Grass Snake's rigid snake scales.

Since the baby Grass Snake was obviously still alive, being accidentally stepped upon with enough force. The baby Grass Snake would obviously react negatively, hissing strongly, and wriggling upon about in an attempt to escape from the grasp of the female Dark Shadow Leopard spirit beast.

The female Dark Shadow Leopard spirit beast reacted almost instantly, whilst lifting its front paw up and jumping backwards to get to a safe distance, and carefully observing the target at a glance to gauge their potential threat level.

With over a decade of experience, the female Dark Shadow Leopard spirit beast naturally was well experienced at detecting the movements of other wild beasts and the life signatures of other spirit beasts. Since spirit beasts are naturally not that very intelligent at the beginning of spirit cultivation. So they are naturally not able to hide their growing spiritual presence.

With the growing spiritual energy withinside them. The higher spiritual pressure they overly exert into the surrounding area, a clear indicator at what cultivation level that particular spirit beast is on and how strong it is when compared to other spirit beasts of a similar levels.

The female Dark Shadow Leopard spirit beast is like a trained assassin, as the moment that it has detected the presence of another lifeform, whether it is on purpose or by acident. It would then immediately go into hiding, to access the situation first, before gauging the target's strengths and weakness, and seeing how easy it is to take out the target with the least amounts of risks.

The female Dark Shadow Leopard spirit beast had instinctively activated its dark shadow energy cloaking ability to easily blend in with its surroundings, thereby going into stealth mode, before it is able to make any other decisions.

However, the moment that the female Dark Shadow Leopard spirit beast's line of vision had landed upon the frail small of the two to three inches long baby Grass Snake. The female Dark Shadow Leopard spirit beast then immediately ceases the activation of its own dark shadow cloaking ability.

The dark shadow element spiritual energy that was steadily covering around the massive physique of the female Dark Shadow Leopard spirit beast then immediately disperses, becoming mere wisps of smoke, before fading into nothingness.

'A mere ordinary beast (animal), with no ounce of spiritual cultivation, dares to taunt me...' It was what is going through the female Dark Shadow Leopard spirit beast's head, if it is intelligent enough to be capable of thought and reasoning.

Its mood was getting worser. Having instead realised how it was being made fun off. A two-hundred years old spirit beast is actually afraid of an ordinary animal. If words were to get out or other kinds of spirit beast, then surely it would be made the laughing stock of the entire Star Dou Forest Outer Region. So the current situation only seems to further exasperate its current foul mood, and further lit the burning heat of its own hunger.

The baby Grass Snake was only an ordinary animal. A couple of days, up to a week old at best. It has yet to even fully take a single step into the road and path of becoming a Spirit Beast, and it already has steadily come across a powerful enemy which is the two-hundred years old female Dark Shadow Leopard spirit beast.

The baby Grass Snake was amongst the latest and the last one of its own siblings to hatched out of its own egg. Its intelligence is like that of a newborn. So by accident, the baby Grass Snake then accidentally wandered off, away from the safety and comforts of its mother snake den by chance.

The baby Grass Snake has yet to even absorb a small fraction of spiritual energy into its own body. So that is why its own presence was so low, pretty undetectable to any spiritual sensitive spirit beast. The current baby Grass Snake is nothing different to any other common reptilian snake that you would commonly find upon Earth.

Its lime green-coloured hexagonal snake scales perfectly matches with the verdant green-coloured tall grass of its surroundings, acting as the perfect camouflage to hide it from any ongoing predators that may want to kill it.

From the point of view of the female Dark Shadow Leopard spirit beast, the little two to three inches long baby green Grass Snake may not be worth it as a meal. Barely even filling its stomach up as a light snack.

And from personal experience, most types of snake kind of beasts tend to be quite venomous. Even if the poison from the snake's venom gland is accidentally consumed, it is most likely not strong or potent enough to kill such a strong and powerful spirit beast such as the female Dark Shadow Leopard spirit beast, but it would surely likely give the female Dark Shadow Leopard spirit beast a great deal of a bad unsettling stomach.

When it was younger, the female Dark Shadow Leopard spirit beast had unknowingly eaten a dead snake's carcass. Without knowing the consequences, it has accidentally bit into the snake's the venom sac, thereby causing the poisonous venom to explode outwards withinside its own mouth like gas bomb.

The snake's venom was extremely acidic, as it slowly burns away the inner layering of the female Dark Shadow Leopard spirit beast mouth. It's like its mouth is actually on fire, and it took literal weeks for the wounds to fully heal completely. And during that period of time, it has barely even eaten anything, as whatever sort of food that it would eat will then immediately irritates its mouth wound, caused by accidentally biting into a snake's venom sac.

Another time is when the female Dark Shadow Leopard spirit beast has killed and stolen a prey from a snake type venomous spirit beast. However, the killed prey was already poisoned by the venomous snake-type spirit beast, so the dead carcass was pretty much already contaminated by the time the female Dark Shadow Leopard spirit beast had killed it.

And it was only able to easily kill the prey because the prey was already weakened by the venomous snake spirit beast's poison. So when it consumed the dead carcass, some of the poison had steadily made its own way towards the female Dark Shadow Leopard spirit beast, thereby causing temporary paralysis, sudden contractions of the muscles, and a numbing sensation.

Fortunately enough, the female Dark Shadow Leopard spirit beast has not immediately encountered any sort of strong kind of spirit beast or predator. Otherwise, it would already be dead by now.

So it patiently waits, waiting in hiding, out of plain sight of any potential predator. For the negative side effects of the venomous snake-type spirit beast's poison to gradually fade away, or is then expelled off from its own body by its own immune system.

Having already learned its own lesson, it is best to not get involve with snakes. Like the old saying goes 'if you mess with a snake's tail then you would get a bite from the snake's head.' So it is best to avoid all types of snake entirely. Nothing really is ever great when you would come from encounter a snake.

But still, the female Dark Shadow Leopard spirit beast was not satisfied. Even a wild small Wheat Tail Forest Mice spirit beast is more fulfilling than this weak piece of shit.

So the female Dark Shadow Leopard spirit beast then scorns at the baby green ordinary Grass Snake. Not before immediately closing in upon the distance between itself and the baby Grass Snake.

The female Dark Shadow Leopard spirit beast then immediately brung out it's front right paw out, casually swinging it like a sickle.

The female Dark Shadow Leopard spirit beast's right claw cleanly cleaves through the tall grass, and striking down upon the poor defenseless baby Grass Snake. There were no resistances from the baby Grass Snake, as the baby Grass Snake's body was then immediately sent flying in the air, and hovering for a couple of seconds, before hitting a big old tree.

Fortunately enough, the female Dark Shadow Leopard spirit beast was not utilising its full strength, and was just casually swatting away the baby Grass Snake with its claw.

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However, the baby Grass Snake didn't really escape out from this ordeal relatively unscathed, as four claw shaped deep dent marks could be seen upon the two-inch long baby Grass Snake's body, alongside with a little bit of bit of bleeding.

Thankfully enough, the four slash wounds claw mark from the female Dark Shadow Leopard spirit beast has completely avoided all of the baby green Grass Snake's most major internal organs, which means that the baby green Grass Snake was not within any immediate danger.

Escaping death by a hair's breathe, but not before having the air completely knocked out from its body, having struck the thick bark side of a nearby tree trunk, with a loud thud.

All of the air and oxygen has been completely pushed out from the little baby green Grass Snake's body, as it unconsciously hisses outwards in extreme agony and pain, like it wanting to cry out that it has been wronged, but couldn't.

When the baby green Grass Snake then decided to look back at the its assailant. It saw a massive towering figure, one that it could never hope to ever contend to. Its like comparing the size of an average small mice to a fully grown mature adult-sized cat.

Filled with a deep sense of dread and overwhelming fear, the small injured baby green Grass Snake then slowly slithered off, trying its very best to desperately get away from the aggressive female Dark Shadow Leopard spirit beast.

Its only instinct that is still currently working is its own will to live, embedded within its core since the moment that it was born and hatched out from its egg. Its to survive, eat, sleep, and grow stronger.

The female Dark Shadow Leopard spirit beast didn't really care about whether or not the baby green Grass Snake would survived through this incident and ordeal or not, or unknowingly died by the strenuous injuries that it incurred from encounter.

The female Dark Shadow Leopard spirit beast was just simply venting out its own frustration, having woken up late, and is now hungry and starving.

For spirit beasts who have yet to fully developed, their sentience and intellect is equivalent to that of a child. So they tend to be quite emotionally unstable and frequently incurred sudden bursts of emotions, like a child's tantrums.

After the incident with the baby Grass Snake, the female Dark Shadow Leopard spirit beast then continues to resume its hunting endeavour in order to satiate its undying hunger.

• • •

On the other hand, the heavily injured two inch long baby Grass Snake has struggled strongly, slithering through a field of tall grass blade, as strenuous amounts of pain that it incurred from the four open claw marks slowly wreck its entire body.

But, nevertheless, it didn't really care about how much physical pain its own body is currently feeling, as the thought on its mind and the desire it has right now was to get out from this place and away from the female Dark Shadow Leopard spirit beast. Far away as possible, as much as its limbless limbs could take it as far as possible, until it runs itself out of breath and tire itself out, pushed until the brink of exhaustion is when it gives itself out.

Unbeknownst to the tiny unimportant insignificant creature, dark storm clouds has unexpectedly been gathering up high in the sky, above the outer areas of the Outer Region of the Great Star Dou Forest. Its almost like a large storm is quickly brewing.

However, like a small breeze immediately snuffing out a candle flame, a bolt of divine lightning has struck down from the darkened sky and landed upon the figure of the injured passed out baby Grass Snake.

The sounds of the divine bolt of lightning striking the ground has caused a loud crackle, attracting the attention of all spirit beasts that lives withinside the Outer Region of the Great Star Dou Forest and some of the Ten Great Ferocious Spirit Beasts that withinside the areas of the Inner Regions of the Great Star Dou Forest.

A small crack has formed in the space and area that is above the knocked out unconscious baby Grass Snake that has been struck by a bolt of divine lightning, as a wisp of blue smoke then immediately escapes from the crack in space area, and then enters the body of the unconscious baby Grass Snake.

The crack in space area that is next to the unconscious baby Grass Snake then immediately closes, repaired itself, filling the empty void area, like it never even happened in the first place.

Like a snuffed out candle flame, the dark storm clouds that were previously gathering in large numbers above the area of the Outer Region of the Great Star Dou Forest has quickly dispersed, almost like it didn't even existed in the first place.

The sounds of System then rings withinside the unconscious baby Grass Snake's head, but since the poor little green creature was unconscious. It was not aware of the System having taken root withinside its soul and sea of conciousness.

[A random host has been chosen withinside the designated area to be the host and Designated Player of the System!]

[The System has changed itself to fit and naturally adapt with the Laws, Rules, and the Regulations of the Douluo Dalu Universe!]

[The System has been renamed to Divine Beast Cultivation System!]

[The Divine Beast Cultivation System has successfully integrated with the host!]

[A secondary soul has been detected withinside the proximity of the Designated Player of the Divine Beast Cultivation System!]

[The qualities and capabilities of the secondary soul greatly exceeds that of the primary Designated Player of the Divine Beast Cultivation System!]

[An alternative options has been generated...Soul Fusion is possible! Possibly of Soul Rejection is near impossible!]

[Commencing the spiritual fusion of the primary Designated Player's host soul and the secondary soul! Soul fusion successful!]

Due to the sudden integration of the System, which was a otherworldly interference of a different rule of nature itself, two entirely different souls of different nature, age, race, and conciousness has unexpectedly fused together.

With the secondary soul being the unexpected dominant one, having taken control over the unconscious injured baby Grass Snake's body. Whilst, the infant soul of the injured baby Grass Snake has unknowingly assimilated with the secondary host soul, thereby causing some slight mutation within the soul, but nevertheless, it still produces some positive results, as the fused soul has grown stronger.

[Due to the user having successfully undergo the process of soul fusion. A unique grade soul growth skill has automatically been generated as a result of the spiritual fusion [Germinating Life Seed Lv.1!]

[The excess spiritual energy that been leaking out from the void area has been absorbed by the Divine Beast Cultivation System and steadily being converted into Low Grade Spirit Gathering Pills!]

[You have gained 22 Low Grade Spirit Gathering Pills as a result of condensing pure chaotic spiritual energy from the void!]

[Warning: Due to the host being not strong enough to handle the full extent of the Low Grade Spirit Gathering Pill. It is best to consume 1 Low Grade Spirit Gathering Pill every couple of hours to prevent potential qi loss and the worst possible case spiritual qi deviation!]

Spiritual qi deviation is the worst possible case as the host body is not able to contain all of that said spiritual energy, so the unrestrained spiritual energy then runs amok withinside the host body, thereby causing a lot of damage or worst a potential dropped in cultivation base, or even death as the most worst outcome.