Inside the cave a puppy tiger ran around playing with a few stones. Sometimes its energy would fluctuate and become as strong as an attribute junior expert and this would cause the fainted Li Lan to spasm. Suddenly one of the fluctuations caused him to awaken.

As he woke up and sat up, he realized he was inside a magnificent huge cave. This was definitely the cave of the emperor demon tiger. His gaze froze, and his body stopped all movement, when he saw the tiger puppy running around, when it noticed him it stopped. It ran to his side and jumped on him, it was in size not different from any other dog. It was pure white, not even the snow could beat this color of pure white. Its eyes were crystal green as jade that had been harnessed by thousands of generations. As a thousand tons of jade where the color deep inside the center of this huge jade, this was the color that this tiger’s eyes surpassed.

Looking at this demon tiger, he was not scared, actually he had clearly forsaken his mind, he was not able to understand this feeling of being dazzled to the extreme. Even if he had never been in love with anything, this feeling was far from love, but so close to it. It was as if this creature that rushed to him with small steps was so familiar to him that he could not think of anything else.

His body even began to tremble, and water began to blurry his eyes, as tears rolled down. He lifted his hand and clenched it has he did not understand why he was crying. In the time it takes one to breathe once, the tiger puppy jumped up on him and began licking his face.

Without resisting all he did was laugh and began caressing the puppy. A half hour passed as they played around. Li Lan was only just a boy, in spite of his absolute decisiveness. In fact, the only way he would be able to fool others was by his appearance. Both by being young, and by being younger than expected.

Li Lan seemed to be 13 years old. But this was only by looks. His real age is for now a mystery. It can be said that Li Lan’s current spiritual level is already beyond peers of his age, by far. But until his Master returns he can’t seem to understand in what way.

As another half hour passed, the emperor demon tiger returned, when Li Lan saw this he froze with fear and did not dare to play around with the emperor’s legacy. He immediately sat down the puppy and kowtowed to the emperor. “I’m sorry for having disturbed you, I will remember this favor and will without doubt return it when I become stronger!” he bowed respectfully and cupped his fists.

A few breaths passed and suddenly a sly laugh could be heard from the emperor. “Boy, why do you not return the favor this day!” It said in a calm yet profound manner. It startled Li Lan, what did he possibly have that he could bring this kind of beast. He looked dumbfounded at the emperor and sought words, but his mind was empty for ideas.

“Don’t worry boy, I have a task that only you can complete. It will even compliment your skills and bring you further to the heavens.” The emperor spoke. This was the first time he noticed, that the emperor was not raising his son as a father, but in fact was the puppy’s mother. “Say thy’ terms and I will heed them.” Li Lan spoke courteously and with great manner.

“Haha great, then I shall tell you my conditions. Firstly, you shall make a contract with my son. I will die in a matter of years, when the contract is made, the second condition is that you take my demon crystal and when you reach heavenly master use it to become a heavenly god. I will of course kill myself right after the contract is made. You are bestowed with a great wind attribute, clearly that of a sect far from this realm. We are beasts of the wind attribute, and yet I who have lived for thousands of year cannot identify it.” It paused for a brief moment to let Li Lan think about this.

Even he himself did know nothing of this wind attribute at all, he clearly had to ask his master returning. But these conditions all worked in his favor. To have such a strong demon beast as his contractor would relieve him a lot. Even that, this demon beast emperor was clearly at the peak of heavenly master, and close to heavenly god.

If his contractor of this pure energy could become a heavenly god, it would adapt flying abilities and would be able to soar the sky with him. He felt compliant and could not think of how familiarly this young demon tiger had felt to him, he nodded and said “I agree, are these all the terms?” he asked out of curiosity. There had not been anything that would not help him, therefore it was a bit weird.

But he knows that the legacy of this emperor solemnly lies in this young demon tiger, so of course to ensure its safety the best thing would be to have it contracted to someone with a similar attribute that could eventually become a strong body of this realm.

Li Lan never thought of himself as weak, and his goals were definitely higher than to just become a pillar of this realm, he wanted to break through and find out what realms that lies beyond the heavens. The emperor asked for one more thing. “I also want you to promise to protect my child, in case you are to die, if at all possible, save his life. If you can promise this, I will grant you the profound wind ability that only contractors with hundreds of years of experience together can learn. Whether or not you will be able to grasp it, is based on the origin of your wind attribute.”

He thought for a while, then agreed. “I already feel a complete familiarity with your son, I will do my best to protect and befriend him, and I will always think of his needs before mine. About the wind attribute you keep mentioning, I have no idea whatsoever about this. I myself have no knowledge of my attribute, and less than that of its origin.” He spoke in calm manner.

The demon tiger puppy stood besides its mom. Then suddenly it spoke. “I will forever remember mom, I will also do my best to protect this boy who have granted compliance to your terms!” the puppy spoke with dignity and grace. It clearly understood the situation, and had already embraced and accepted his mother’s death.

Because of the puppy speaking Li Lan had gone completely silent, only demon beasts of certain cultivation or age could speak. This puppy was certainly not older than five or ten years old. “How old are you?” he inquired with respect while looking at the puppy, and then shifting to the emperor.

“My son is six years old, but have already broken through to the heavenly energy stage of cultivation. When he reaches ten years old, he should be around my size and won’t grow anymore. But when he reached heavenly god realm, he will grow wings like those of angels in dreams.” The emperor answered, he would have thought that the demon tiger puppy was only around his stage of cultivation, but to already be this high was amazing.

Not to speak of the major sects. The amount of contracted beasts of the heavenly master realm was few and could be counted on one hand, and even for the devastation and energy stages were only able to be counted on two hands. This would mean his power would already be among the top. A sudden idea jumped into his head, and he trembled for a moment before catching his breath and calming down.

Inquiringly he asked “Is there a way to hide his prowess, I do not want to get in trouble before I can even protect him.” He was afraid that the major sects would kill him if they knew a peasant like him had come by this sort of beast. The emperor however, did not think of this and simply laughed.

“You have not realized it yet, but you can clearly feel that it is already hidden. Did you not wake up by his fluctuation in power? He only released power to make your body move and mobilize so that you would wake up faster.” Laughingly the emperor spoke.

They sat and spoke for a few hours before night finally fell. To make the contract both the demon beast and the human had to give consent with blood. Their spiritual energy would then be fused and if one was higher, it would help alleviate the others ability by a lot. This though did only help for a certain amount of power, but it would still help it improve quite faster afterwards. Reaching heavenly energy stage was only a matter of five or ten years at this point.

The contract was made, and instantly their minds merged. They were practically one entity now. What surprised Li Lan, because of his minor knowledge in contracting, the demon tiger puppy disappeared. Suddenly it emerged in his mind. “What is my name master!” it called out to him. To have the ability to merge with his mind was really disturbing.

“I will call you Li Tao. Tao means large waves, and inside my profound ability, you certainly is a large wave!” he laughed and smiled. Of course the chattering was inside his mind, and could only be heard by them. But the emperor also laughed.

The emperor sighed, and spoke to her son for a while, before falling down dead. This surprised Li Lan as he was not prepared for this. He did not have the ability to listen to their telepathy despite Li Tao being in his mind. But for the emperor not to speak to him before dying was a bit weird.

“What about the profound wind ability?” he asked Tao with a weird feeling. Tao laughed a bit, then answered. “First pick up mom’s demon crystal, in her abdomen there should be a divine profound scroll. She had already created it years ago so if I was able to find anyone able to contract me after she was death, I would be able to bring it up as a means of exchange.” Li Lan furrowed his brows.

There is no reason for anyone to decline the contracting of such a powerful beast, nonetheless their bloodline is indeed surpassing of almost any other demon beasts. Clearly one of the top ten bloodlines. He did not inquire further, but stepped forward. He took out his blade and did his best to cut open the head of the dead emperor. This took a while, his blade was not sharp, and the toughness of such a profound beast was beyond recognizable for Li Lan.

A few hours passed and he had finally obtained the demon crystal and the scroll. He decided to skin the dead emperor to use for clothing, the teeth could definitely be sold for a high price, and the claws and paws too. A day’s worth of time went by and Li Tao never once spoke when seeing his mother being skinned and ripped for all the parts.

When done and packed, he had many bags of cloth filled with parts and meat of the dead emperor demon tiger. He sighed and walked out of the cave. The sun was setting, then he looked at the demon beast lying on the ground. He already had too much on him, but he could not ignore another demon crystal and much worth. He who had always been poor could only sigh and started skinning the boar. This boar was way too easy to skin and cut in comparison to the emperor.

It only took three hours to skin and find the demon crystal, finally he could go back and find his master. When he thought of this, he froze once, then decided to hurry back. He had not eaten much, and he had been gone for ten days, his master should have been back long ago, and might worry. He did not interact much with Tao, but understood the sorrow one goes through, especially after seeing his mother being skinned and cut apart.

A few hours are what it took to travel back to the waterfall. On the rock in the night sat a man, this was his master Zhou. “Where have you been?” he asked and turned around looking with one raised brow, his face changed from a bit disturbed to amazed. Completely in trance he just stared at his disciple.

Before Li Lan could answer his master began laughing. “What is this, what have you been up to my disciple! To actually reach attribute junior expert stage. How naught, how did you accomplish this? You were only at the stage of envision just a few weeks ago. Clearly you could not just breakthrough six realms at once!” He looked trembling with excitement.

Li Lan sat down, then ordered Tao to come out, this shocked Zhou even more. “To even be able to bring out such a highly cultivated demon beast, and you have a contract of blood already.” This caused him to tremble in excitement. Not only being able to rank top ten in the tournament, he would even be able to rank number one now.

Li Lan told him what had happened and how his power had surged, also of the incident with the emperor demon beast, and how he had a wind attribute. All of this, one at a time made him stunned. His face was pale and there was no sign of liveliness. The blood clearly rushed through his veins, but it was if he was frozen himself. Especially when hearing of the level of Li Tao.

An hour passed by chatting. And eventually everything had been told. This aptitude of luck and cultivation that his disciple had was just too stunning. In five or ten years he would definitely be able to compete with the sect masters.

Tomorrow would a year of training his new abilities begin, and of course learn the way of the wind. Zhou would depart with haste to find books and manuals of wind controlling to help him learn. And so, a year went on with divulging in training and mastering of one heavenly, and one profound ability. Within this year also a strong bonding between Lan, Tao and Zhou occurred.

Artwork of Li Lan & Li Tao