Kun JiaNing wasn't built for seismic shifts. At twenty-four, his world existed within the meticulously ordered confines of Sector Gamma's logistical hub. His domain was manifests, requisition forms, and the low thrum of Sky University's background systems. His black hair, usually neatly combed, was perpetually slightly ruffled from running fingers through it while cross-referencing shipment codes. His signature round sunglasses, worn even under the sterile luminescence of the hub, were less a fashion statement and more a shield against the overwhelming glare of both artificial lights and the intense personalities that often frequented Gen-Training. He smelled faintly of ozone from the terminals, cheap synth-coffee, and the unique, slightly dusty scent of archived data crystals. Unassuming. Efficient. Invisible. Exactly how he preferred it.
His lineage? A footnote. The Kun name carried weight only distantly, a whisper of relation to the Azure Dragon bloodline so potent in Qing KunJue. JiaNing's branch was the one that forgot the sky, content with ledgers and logistics. His parents, bless their mundane souls, ran a small-scale spirit-ore brokerage in DanNuan's mid-levels. His only brush with the extraordinary was a faint Groundtouch Phase resonance with a minor Earth-Sense Gen at sixteen – good for finding lost styluses under desks, terrible for anything requiring actual power. He'd let it fade, choosing the predictable rhythm of spreadsheets.
Then came the Incident.
He'd been processing a damaged containment unit report – scorch marks, structural warping, energy signature decay matching Chainbound Ice and nascent Dragon-Lightning – when the commotion erupted. Not the usual sparring echoes, but raw destruction. He'd peered through the reinforced viewport of the Gamma Hub's upper level, his round sunglasses reflecting the chaos unfolding in the secure courtyard below. He saw him: Qing KunJue, radiating an aura of terrifying, icy fury, facing off against Jun MuoLan. He saw the desperate ice lances, the wild lightning tearing the synth-steel floor, the brutal, bone-crunching impacts. He smelled the ozone, the scorched polymer, the terrifyingly clean scent of supercooled ionized plasma… and then the charnel-house reek of cooked meat as KunJue's fused Frost-Lightning Execution struck true.
JiaNing hadn't vomited, but his knuckles had gone white gripping the console edge. The cold efficiency, the utter lack of hesitation in KunJue's final strike… it wasn't power as he understood it from holos of the Famed. It was annihilation. It seeped into him, a chilling counterpoint to the sterile hub air. He'd processed the incident report later, the clinical terms failing to mask the visceral horror he'd witnessed.
Weeks passed. JiaNing moved through his duties with mechanical precision, the memory a cold stone in his gut. He avoided the main training sectors, sticking to the humming, impersonal corridors of Logistics. The Mutation Tower's glow, visible through the polarized windows, felt accusatory. KunJue's name blazed brightly; MuoLan's had dimmed and vanished.
He was in the deepest sub-level archive, Sector Gamma-Delta, retrieving backup crystal logs. The air here was colder, older, smelling of dust undisturbed for decades, chilled metal, and the faint, dry tang of decaying data insulation. Rows of towering server racks hummed, their indicator lights forming constellations in the gloom. Utter silence, save for the machinery and his own footsteps.
He knelt before a low-access terminal, his fingers tapping the keys. Tap. Tap. Tap. The screen flickered, displaying a shipment manifest for resilient alloy plating, dated decades ago. Routine. Mundane.
Then, the tremor.
Not in the earth. Inside him. A deep, resonant thump, like a colossal drumbeat echoing from the core of the planet, vibrating his bones. He gasped, clutching his chest. His cheap synth-coffee cup rattled off the terminal and shattered on the ferrocrete floor.
Thump.
Louder. The terminal screen flickered wildly, lines of static tearing through the manifest. The hum of the servers deepened, warped into a dissonant groan. Dust rained from the ceiling vents.
THUMP.
Agony. It felt like his skeleton was trying to tear itself apart and reform simultaneously. A furnace ignited in his gut, hotter than any forge, yet carrying the scent of ancient loam, petrified wood, and ozone from a primordial thunderstorm. Visions, jagged and terrifying, ripped through his mind:
A titanic silhouette against a sky torn by celestial fire – part gorilla, impossibly massive, muscles like corded mountain roots, covered in coarse, dark fur like shadowed basalt. Yet its legs were those of a stag, powerful and graceful, ending in cloven hooves that cracked continents with each step. Its arms, disproportionately long and thick, were covered in fur of purest, blinding white, like snow under a glacier's heart, ending in hands that could crush fortresses or cradle mountains. Tusks, like polished ivory monoliths, curved from its powerful jaw. Its eyes, when the vision focused, burned with the molten gold of a captive sun, radiating ancient, earth-shaking fury and profound, sorrowful wisdom.
A battlefield of impossible scale: Azure Dragons coiled in storm clouds, Vermilion Birds immolating legions, White Tigers moving in blurs of feral light, XuanWu turtles shifting tectonic plates beneath armies. And amidst them, the Gorilla-Stag Beast – the XuKun – roaring defiance, its white arms shattering celestial armor, its cloven hooves stomping creating chasms that swallowed battalions whole. A Fifth Pillar. A Sovereign of Primal Earth and Untamed Sky.
The chilling silence of extinction. Crumbling temples overgrown by jungle. Scrolls turning to dust. The last XuKun elder, fur grey, eyes dimming, whispering forgotten truths into unheeding stone before dissolving into the earth. A clan erased, its legacy buried deeper than the deepest ore vein.
"NO MORE!" The thought wasn't his. It was a roar that echoed from the marrow of the earth, channeled through his straining throat. It tore from him, raw and guttural, shaking the server racks. Lights exploded in showers of sparks. Alarms blared, a shrill counterpoint to the primal sound.
JiaNing arched backwards, suspended in agony. His round sunglasses flew off, shattering against a server rack. His eyes snapped open, no longer their usual soft brown, but blazing with the same captive-sun gold of the XuKun vision. Dark fur, coarse and shadow-black, rippled across his skin like fast-growing moss, thickening over his shoulders, back, and chest. His bones creaked, elongated. His hands swelled, knuckles thickening, nails darkening into stubby claws. The most dramatic change was his arms – they thickened with terrifying speed, muscle layering upon muscle, tendons like steel cables standing out. From the shoulder down, the fur became pure, radiant white, glowing faintly in the darkened archive. It felt like his arms were encased in living stone and lightning, impossibly strong, thrumming with pent-up seismic force.
He crashed down onto all fours. Not human posture. Primal posture. His back hunched, muscles bunching beneath the dark fur. He felt the phantom weight of tusks, the unnatural strength in his stag-like legs wanting to stamp. The air reeked of ozone, crushed rock, wet earth, and his own terrified sweat. XuKun Beast. The name resonated in his soul, a truth he couldn't deny. The forgotten Fifth. Awakened in a logistics clerk amidst the ghosts of data and the memory of KunJue's ruthlessness.
The archive door hissed open, emergency lights painting the scene in stark red and white. Security personnel, clad in standard gear, flooded in, stun batons crackling. Their eyes widened at the sight of the transformed figure hunched amidst the wreckage, his white arms glowing like beacons.
"Contain it! Unknown Gen manifestation! High energy signature!" the lead officer barked, voice tight with fear.
JiaNing panicked. The XuKun's instinct surged – threat. He didn't think. He reacted. With a sound that was half-human gasp, half-guttural growl, he slammed one of his massive, white-furred fists down onto the ferrocrete floor.
Mutation Technique: Earth-Sunder Pulse!
It wasn't a conscious command. It was pure, instinctive release. The power wasn't Foundation Stage trickles. It was Pressure Stage fury unleashed from the first breath, fueled by the XuKun's ancient lineage and JiaNing's terror.
CRUNCH-BOOOOOM!
A visible shockwave, rippling with compressed earth energy, erupted from the point of impact. The ferrocrete didn't crack; it liquefied in a ten-foot radius, then instantly solidified into jagged spikes. Server racks toppled like dominoes. Security officers were hurled backwards, slamming into walls or buried under falling debris. The concussion wave blew out the remaining lights and silenced the alarms, plunging the archive into near-darkness, lit only by the faint glow from JiaNing's white arms and the sparks from shattered equipment. The smell of pulverized concrete and burnt wiring was overwhelming.
JiaNing stared, horrified, at the destruction. At his hands – no, his paws. The gold light in his eyes flickered with panic. He had to get out. Now.
He moved with startling speed for his size, not on two legs, but using his powerful arms and legs in a loping, simian gait that ate up the distance to a maintenance conduit he'd known about. He tore the reinforced grate off like cardboard and scrambled into the cramped, greasy darkness, the XuKun's strength making the escape effortless, his terror making it desperate.
Above, in the chaotic aftermath, Qing KunJue paused mid-movement in a high-level tactical simulation. He'd felt it – a deep, resonant tremor in the earth, carrying an unfamiliar, yet terrifyingly old and potent signature. Not Ice. Not Dragon. Something… primal. Savage. His newly molten gold eyes narrowed. An anomaly. A potential threat. Or… a potential tool.
Sheng JunLun, meditating in a thermal-regulation chamber, felt the Cinderbrand Halberd thrum against his back. Not in response to flame, but to a tremor of pure, unrefined earth power, a fury that resonated with his own Sovereign Flame's ancient core. His molten gold eyes snapped open. Something ancient had stirred beneath Sky University. Something powerful. And afraid.
And high above the city, the Mutation Tower pulsed. Scrolling down its luminous face, amidst the names of the Awakened and the Famed, a new entry flared with shocking, deep amber light, written in archaic, angular script that hadn't been seen for millennia:
Kun JiaNing - XuKun Beast (Groundtouch phase - Primary Awakening)
The Forgotten Beast had returned. And its heir was a terrified logistics clerk with the strength to shatter mountains and the eyes of captive suns, fleeing into the bowels of the university, hunted by security and the sudden, chilling attention of powers he couldn't comprehend. The game board had just been upended by a primal force long thought extinct.