But it was Xiao Lan who rose amidst the storm, her figure shining like a sun in the heart of the harshest winter. Her sword, "Purifying Light," rose towards the valley's dark sky. And then, with a cry that was both a challenge and a judgment, she traced a single, elegant descending arc. A line of pure white fire, as thin as a hair yet imbued with inconceivable power, so concentrated it seemed to distort reality itself as it passed, cut through the blizzard as if it were mist and plunged deep into the beast's chest, right where Lin Feng, in his distant observation, had noticed the creature's energy seemed to fluctuate irregularly, as if its vital core resided there.

There was an instant of absolute silence, as if the universe held its breath. Then, the Glacial Blizzard Beast let out a final, terrible roar, a lament that seemed to carry all the cold of the valley with it, before collapsing with a crash that shook the mountains, its enormous body raising a cloud of snow and frost that took several minutes to settle.

Xiao Lan descended slowly, her breathing barely ragged, her face as cold and serene as the surface of a

frozen lake on a moonless night, though Lin Feng, even from his elevated position, thought he saw a fleeting flicker of exhaustion deep in her jade eyes. Her companions surrounded her instantly, their faces a mixture of relief, exhaustion, and almost religious adoration.

Lin Feng slowly exhaled the breath he hadn't realized he was holding. He had witnessed something extraordinary. Something that defined the word "power." And something profoundly terrifying in its magnificence.

He decided, with absolute certainty, that he had seen enough. "Too much noise for my liking," he muttered to himself, an ironic smirk curving his lips. "And definitely too many fangs and claws, even for a goddess of her caliber. Time to return to my much safer, and in its own way, lucrative hunt for silkworms and suicidally-inclined rabbits."

With a final glance at the distant figure of Xiao Lan, who now seemed to be giving instructions to her companions as they began to collect the beast's core and other valuable materials from its corpse, Lin Feng slipped from the tree with the agility of a shadow and disappeared into the undergrowth of the icy forest, his heart beating with a new and complex mix of emotions: bitterness, awe, a hint of envy that now felt more like a sting, and a growing, cold resolution beginning to solidify within him.

He returned to his low-level "hunting grounds," the image of Xiao Lan's power seared into his mind. The irony of his own situation—he, with that strange, painful energy writhing inside him, an energy he neither understood nor controlled, reduced to hunting spirit insects and rodents to survive—was almost comical if it weren't so tragic. But his usual dark humor was now tinged with a layer of steel.

"She dances with heavenly fire and commands the elements with the grace of an immortal," he thought as he expertly crushed the head of a particularly fat Crystal Caterpillar with the sharp edge of his shovel. "I... I'm still learning not to trip over my own feet while shoveling manure, and my greatest achievement is turning this tool into an extension of my patheticness." He held up the tiny crystal core, which barely emitted a glow. "But this thing in my dantian..." he touched his lower abdomen, feeling the painful yet potent and erratic throb of the dark energy within, "...this thing that burns and freezes me from the inside didn't awaken just for me to become the king of the sect's garbage collectors, nor the main supplier of fertilizer for their precious gardens."

A new, dangerous light glinted in his eyes, cold and calculating like the ice fragments surrounding him. The Spirit Beast Trial was long. It was full of "opportunities" for the bold, for the desperate, for those willing to dance with the unknown and use any tool at their disposal.

And he, Lin Feng, the fertilizer specialist, the misunderstood genius of the Dao of the Shovel, was a very, very fast learner.

Perhaps, just perhaps, his shovel could also serve to dig some graves a little larger than those for rabbits. Perhaps even for the occasional "snake" in disciple's skin who crossed his path. The thought drew a smile from him that didn't reach his eyes, a smile that promised trouble.

The Spirit Beast Trial had proven to be, just as Lin Feng had cynically anticipated, a glorified exercise in natural selection where the "less fit" served as entertainment or premature fertilizer. After the initial chaos at the entrance to the Umbral Range, and after his distant and sobering observation of the "Ice and Fire Goddess" Xiao Lan and her competent team, Lin Feng had returned to his own, far less glamorous survival strategy.

His "Scrap Hunter's Manual" was proving surprisingly effective. He avoided areas where Spiritual Qi fluctuated too violently—an unmistakable sign of powerful beasts or inner disciples hard at work—and concentrated on the forgotten edges of the forest, dense thickets, and the muddy banks of nearly dry streams. There, with the patience of a saint and the cunning of a starving fox, he stalked his prey: Blunt-Fanged Bamboo Rats, whose pelts were barely useful for mending robes; Crystal Caterpillars that, if disturbed, only knew how to shrink and tremble; and, his greatest achievement so far, a pair of Walking Mushrooms with mildly irritating spores, whose "cores" were more like small, fibrous tubers.

"Another day, another treasure for the collection of the 'King of Cultivation Beggars,'" he muttered to himself as he extracted the bean-sized core from a particularly slow Walking Mushroom with his shovel. "If I keep this up, by the end of the trial, I'll have enough to buy myself... perhaps a new boot. Just one."

The energy in his dantian remained a constant annoyance, a dull ache that sometimes sharpened into icy or feverish pangs, especially when he exerted himself physically or when his concentration wavered. He didn't understand it. He didn't control it. He only knew it was there, a strange, primordial presence that made him feel both more vulnerable and, in a disturbing way, more... alive, more aware of the razor's edge upon which his existence danced. His senses, however, remained sharpened by it, an advantage he had learned not to question.

It was this heightened perception that warned him of danger before his ears registered the footsteps. An out-of-place crunch of dry leaves, a sudden stillness in the forest insects' song, a fluctuation in the airflow. Lin Feng tensed, his hand instinctively gripping the handle of his shovel. 

And then he saw them. Zhang Fu and Li Wei. They weren't alone. With them was a third outer disciple, one Lin Feng knew by sight: Wang "The Wall" Xiong, a burly and dim-witted youth, known for his brute strength and his dog-like loyalty to anyone who offered him a crumb of power or a chance to bully others. Zhang Fu's original trio had dwindled after the Spirit Beast Trial, but it seemed stupidity, like weeds, always found a way to regroup.

"I knew my luck couldn't last," Lin Feng thought bitterly. "It seems trash not only attracts flies but also vultures with delusions of being hawks."

"Did you see him, Li Wei?" Zhang Fu's voice, now harsher, with a tinge of resentment it hadn't held before, reached Lin Feng. "That slippery rat Feng. They say he survived the first day. Impossible! He's up to something. And that humiliation in the pen... No one mocks Zhang Fu and lives to tell the tale!"

There it was. The motivation. It wasn't just casual sadism anymore. It was wounded pride, the need to reassert his "dominance" after the dung debacle. And perhaps something more. Lin Feng vaguely recalled a story his father had told him, before the Demonic Plague, about a sect warehouse supervisor, a certain Zhang, who had been demoted and publicly punished for theft thanks to the relentless testimony of a then-respected deacon surnamed Feng. Could it be? An inherited family grudge, magnified by Zhang Fu's own pettiness? It was such a Xianxia possibility, so ridiculously cliché, it almost had to be true.

"We'll find him, Senior Brother Zhang," hissed Li Wei, his rat-like eyes gleaming. "And when we do, we'll make him pay not only for his insults but for his dog luck. And we'll take every core he's managed to get, no matter how pathetic!"

Wang Xiong merely grunted in agreement, slamming a fist into his other palm.

Lin Feng assessed the situation. Three against one. All of them at least in the second stage of Qi Condensation, while he was still stuck in the first, with that strange energy in his dantian being more of a painful, confusing burden than a weapon. His "victory" in the pen had been a mix of luck, their surprise, and perhaps a jolt of that same internal energy he didn't understand. Now they were forewarned, angrier, and there were more of them.

His first instinct, that of the survivor he had been for years, was to look for an escape route, however slim. He could already feel his muscles tensing, his mind calculating angles and distractions.

But then, just as he was about to turn and attempt a desperate dash into the densest undergrowth, a strange and powerful sensation gripped him. A sharp, stabbing pain in his chest, different from the one in his dantian, accompanied by a wave of confusion and an icy fury that didn't seem entirely his own. And in his mind, a silent voice, a visceral impulse that was almost a command: "Flee? Again? Before these... insects? Where is your pride? Fight! Feel the storm within you! Make them regret they were ever born!"

Lin Feng staggered, his hand clutching his chest. What the hell was this? That thing in his dantian? Or something else, something even deeper and more ancient awakening in response to his desperation and the direct threat? He couldn't control it, this surge of wounded pride and a primal need to crush those who threatened him. The pain in his dantian intensified, the dark energy swirling like a caged dragon, uncomfortable, furious, demanding release.

The thought of fleeing vanished, replaced by a cold, dangerous calm. His eyes, normally veiled by caution or sarcasm, now gleamed with a dark, penetrating light that seemed to absorb the scant forest light.

"It seems fate insists we have this conversation, Senior Brothers," Lin Feng said, stepping out from behind the tree, his voice surprisingly serene, though each word seemed to vibrate with contained tension. His shovel was still in his hand, but now, in the dim light, it looked less like a farmer's tool and more like the staff of a dark judge about to pass sentence.

Zhang Fu and his lackeys were startled to see him appear so suddenly, with that new, chilling aura. For an instant, the humiliation from the pen seemed to outweigh their thirst for revenge. But there were three of them, and he was still, in their eyes, the same old trash, just with a different attitude.

"So the rat finally comes out of its hole!" Zhang Fu sneered, trying to regain his arrogance and mask a sudden, inexplicable unease. "Ready to get what you deserve, eh, Feng?"

"'Deserving' is an interesting concept, Senior Brother Zhang," Lin Feng replied, his voice still calm, but with an echo that wasn't there before. "Often, it's received by those who least expect it, and in the most... unexpected ways." A faint smile, devoid of any warmth, curved his lips. It was a smile that promised nothing good.

That calm, that strange, almost predatory confidence, was the last straw for the bullies. "Get him!" Zhang Fu roared, lunging forward, closely followed by Li Wei and Wang Xiong, their movements clumsy but filled with a brute force that had crushed Lin Feng countless times before.

Lin Feng didn't wait. The impulse from that unknown force in his chest, that cold fury, moved him. He didn't think about techniques; there were none he knew. His body simply reacted, imbued by the erratic and painful energy from his dantian, which now seemed to sharpen his reflexes to an unnatural degree.

His figure flickered, moving with a speed and fluidity that shouldn't be possible for a cultivator at the first stage of Qi Condensation. He dodged Wang Xiong's clumsy charge by a seemingly impossible margin. The burly disciple, expecting resistance, crashed into the tree Lin Feng had been using for cover, letting out a grunt of pain and surprise as he hit his shoulder.

Li Wei, more cunning, tried to stab him in the flank with a rusty dagger he pulled from his boot. Lin Feng pivoted on his heels, his shovel, still held tightly, describing an unexpected and brutal arc. He didn't aim for the dagger, but directly at Li Wei's wrist. The impact of metal against bone was accompanied by a dry crack and a howl of pain. The dagger clattered to the ground.

"My 'Dao of the Shovel' has many applications, Senior Brother Li Wei," Lin Feng commented, his voice serene, but his eyes gleaming with a dark, dangerous light. "It's also useful for pruning particularly annoying and overgrown branches."

Zhang Fu, seeing his two companions neutralized or in trouble so quickly, felt a pang of genuine fear, an icy sensation he hadn't experienced since he was a small child and had gotten lost in the darkest part of the sect's forest. Was this the same Lin Feng they had tormented for years with impunity? But his wounded pride, and the shame of being bested by the sect's "trash," spurred him on.

"Don't get so full of yourself, you filthy waste!" he shouted, unleashing a flurry of blows imbued with his meager second-stage Qi, each intended to break bones.