Chapter 412: Meeting the Greenwood Wolf Again (Third)
From its birth, Xiao Qi was born without guilt or worry. Everything in the world was new to it, and everything made him happy.
But in this current moment, the only emotion Xiao Qi was showing this time was of sorrow…..
“Chirp chirp….”
It chirped twice.
Coming to a stop on Bai Yunfei’s shoulder, Xiao Qi curled up on itself as if tired.
“…..”
From the phoenix-tailed eagle to Xiao Qi, Bai Yunfei’s eyes flickered in between as if slowly making the connection of what Xiao Qi was thinking.
There was plenty to this world, and Xiao Qi was only just starting to learn more about it. So when it finally came across the emotion of ‘familial love’ being shown from the mother bird to its children, Xiao Qi yearned to experience it for itself.
In its short lifespan, such a memory like the sight in front of him had never occurred before. It didn’t know why it felt such a way before, but now that he knew that such a feeling existed, it became a problem Xiao Qi couldn’t stop thinking about.
Having no parents or siblings, Xiao Qi was unfortunately bereft the blessings other young soulbeasts had.
“A mother, huh….” Bai Yunfei sighed. He thought back to the fight that took place between the greenwood wolf and prisma oriole outside the cave, and how the prisma oriole sacrificed its life in order to protect her children.
He just had to sympathize for Xiao Qi. Reaching a finger up, he stroked Xiao Qi’s feather without a word.
Patting the wyrm on its head with his other hand, Bai Yunfei directed it to start moving towards the west.
…………
For the next few days, Bai Yunfei guided the wyrm through the forest–but not deeper into it–and fought many soulbeast for the experience. Having lost some of his strength back when Xiao Qi was in its egg, Bai Yunfei was quick to recover. It wouldn’t be long before he’d be back to full strength.
Ever since that day with the phoenix-tailed eagle, Xiao Qi was distinctly different than before. It’d still hum and chirp happily on a regular basis, but whenever it came across the heart-warming scene of a family of soulbeasts, it’d grow sullen.
No matter what Bai Yunfei did, he always failed to cheer the bird up.
He debated telling Xiao Qi about its mother before but feared that it might backfire on him. Xiao Qi’s mother had died as a result of the greenwood wolf, so to tell Xiao Qi that now would potentially be crushing.
So Bai Yunfei decided not to tell it.
On the fourth day, Bai Yunfei sat bored out of his mind on the top of the blue-eyes wyrm’s head. He had only just defeated the king of the territory here; a mid-stage class six four-armed golden bear. It had taken Bai Yunfei the ‘coil’ form in order to fight the bear, but he managed to defeat it in the end.
Whilst he sat there recovering his soulforce, Xiao Qi came to a plop on his shoulder, as if in a sad mood.
“Howll!!!!” Before Bai Yunfei was fully recovered, he heard a fearsome howl not too far away.
“Xiao Lan, head towards the right.” He instructed.
“Grrr…..” It responded obediently, swinging itself to the right towards the mountain where the howl had came from.
With so much soulforce and elements being concentrated in the area, it was obvious to Bai Yunfei that there was a battle taking place here. Having the ability to detect auras, Bai Yunfei could sense straight away if any two class six soulbeasts were to fight. Though normally this wouldn’t be enough to catch Bai Yunfei’s interest, something about this fight made him curious.
When the wyrm circled around the mountain to the front, Bai Yunfei was able to see the two fighting soulbeasts a kilometer away.
And what he saw caused his eyes to widen.
“Is that really it?! How did it come running all the way here?!”
In the direction Bai Yunfei was looking at, there was a relatively open space where two dark-green figures were clashing with one another. Both were using elemental wood to fight, and if Bai Yunfei looked carefully enough, he could make out the two combatant’s figures.
One was a frog the size of a tiger, and the other–much to Bai Yunfei’s shock–was a greenwood wolf!
Any ordinary greenwood wolf wouldn’t be enough to make Bai Yunfei surprised like this, but this wolf in particular had a very prominent and new scar on the right side of its body. Clearly, this scar was a new one with how the tissue was still slightly raw.
If Bai Yunfei focused on its aura, he’d be able to notice something familiar about it.
It was the very same greenwood wolf he had seen outside the cave!
The same wolf that had killed Xiao Qi’s mother!
Bai Yunfei was bewildered. He hadn’t expected to come across the greenwood wolf here of all places.
The wolf looked nearly fully recovered from its wounds, judging from its appearances and how it fought. The other soulbeast was a late-stage class five soulbeast on the verge of breakthrough; this was a fight to break that bottleneck!
Upon closer observation, the wolf was winning the battle. It wouldn’t be long before it’d kill the frog.
“The Soulbeast Forest is huge, but I happened to find you anyways….alright, let me use you to solve my problems then!”
Growing silent, Bai Yunfei thought for a moment to decide on the next course of action.
“Xiao Qi. There’s something I should tell you.” As Xiao Qi curiously watched the fight, Bai Yunfei stroked its feathers.
“Chirp?” It replied, not sure what Bai Yunfei was about to ask.
“Do you want to know about your mother?”
Xiao Qi froze straight away when Bai Yunfei asked. Feathers trembling slightly from its emotions, Xiao Qi hurried to chirp yes to him.
“Xiao Qi. Prepare yourself for what I’m about to tell you. Your mother…..is no longer here.” He spoke softly. He wasn’t treating Xiao Qi like a soulbeast, but any other human, so he tried to be as considerate as possible.
The moment the final word was spoken, Xiao Qi frozen up straight away. Where it was hopping before in anxiety, it was now frozen still to the ground to look at him, disbelief in its eyes at what it had just heard.
“Xiao Qi,” he began, “On the day I found you, there were two soulbeasts fighting outside the cave….”
He knew Xiao Qi could understand where he was going with this. Without a pause to his words, he slowly continued to retell what he saw between the prisma oriole and greenwood wolf.
“….And in the end, the prisma oriole decided to blow herself up to force the greenwood wolf away…”
“That prisma oriole was your mother. And that greenwood wolf over there is the one that fought her. That wound on its abdomen there was inflicted by your mother.”
“Houuu!!!!”
Before Bai Yunfei could say anything more, a loud roar of excitement came from the battle up ahead.
The greenwood wolf had its head tilted up to the skies to howl while beneath it, the frog was thrashing on the ground with its intestines outside of its body.
The greenwood wolf was injured quite badly, but it was excited that it had won the battle. Already, an impressive amount of aura was radiating from the wolf as it approached. Snapping its jaws onto the frog’s head, it tore apart the frog to get to its soulgem before swallowing it whole!
The moment when the soulgem entered the wolf’s body, green light burst out from the wolf and begun to heal the wolf’s wounds at amazing speeds. Simultaneously, the wolf’s soulforce was rapidly climbing in amount!
The breakthrough was….starting!!