Consuming the flesh and blood of strange creatures is different from the usual eating and drinking. The taste is indescribable, especially for cultivators like Yulie, who need to unleash the potent medicinal effects of the "ferocious medicinal power" in the consumed substances.
Seated in the quiet room on the stone altar, he chewed with his head lowered. When he felt a difficult-to-describe sense of fullness in his abdomen, he finally stopped his voracious eating behavior.
Yulie could clearly feel a rich spiritual energy slowly spreading within his organs, making him feel slightly intoxicated after just a few breaths. For Yulie, who could only receive a strand of spiritual energy each month, he had never encountered such a spiritually abundant food, let alone swallowed it.
A great surprise appeared in his heart: "Indeed, the bronze wine cup is a treasure! After the wolf demon's organs were cleansed by it, not only did they not deteriorate, but they also received unexpected benefits."
As for the specific benefits brought by the bronze wine cup, he needed to carefully ponder over it, but now was not the time for him to contemplate carefully.
Taking advantage of the fact that the wolf demon's organs in his body had not yet been dissolved, Yulie began the ritual of consumption. He leaned on the stone altar, pricked his fingertips, mixed the organ juice in his palm, and began to draw strange characters on the stone altar.
Snake-bird painting.
Twisted runes appeared on the stone altar, covering it from top to bottom. Yulie had practiced this consumption ritual many times before, so his current drawing was flawless.
Under the smearing of human blood and wolf blood, the runes appeared eerie in the dim quiet room, seeming to twist like snakes and insects, and flicker like eyeballs.
Yulie hunched over, lying on top of the altar, as if he had fallen into a pile of snakes and insects, exuding a creepy aura.
After finishing the altar, he took pale white paper flags from the side and inserted them around the altar, wrapping himself up.
The paper flags were dazzling with cinnabar, moving without wind.
The arrangement of the ritual continued step by step.
Before long, Yulie took out the purified altar water from the jar and poured it drop by drop onto his body. The purified altar water was not used to wash the altar but to borrow its spiritual energy to animate the entire altar.
When the purified altar water fell on the altar, the originally distorted and rough runes not only did not disperse but became clearer. The desiccated characters came alive, wriggling like earthworms or centipedes, densely covering the altar.
The runes shimmered, surrounding the altar, moving and intertwining continuously. At this moment, Yulie, with disheveled hair, pale face, and trembling body, was not only because of the wolf demon's organs in his abdomen emitting spiritual power and invading his body but also because of the excessive loss of blood and the exhaustion of his physical body.
Yulie felt as if he had fallen into an ice cellar, cold and lonely. However, the colder he felt, the hotter his heart became, and his eyes gleamed terrifyingly!
Yulie sat cross-legged on the altar, observing the runes writhing all over it, a strange smile appearing on his lips: "Over a year of preparation has indeed paid off, not a single mistake today."
In the next moment, Yulie pricked his fingertips again, lowered his head, and began to draw runes on his body.
At the same time, he took out a pill from his sleeve and placed it in his mouth, pressing it under his tongue. This pill was the Spirit Ascension Pill, even more precious than white musk and purified altar water, with a price comparable to that of materials from fierce beasts. Its effect was astonishing; while ordinary cultivators had a transformation success rate of around thirty to forty percent, after taking the Spirit Ascension Pill, their success rate could reach seventy percent!
Seventy percent probability was almost a certainty!
Yulie had invested a considerable effort in obtaining this pill over the past year. If it weren't for acquiring this item, he could have hunted and killed fierce beasts on the mountain at least six months earlier. Moreover, for a last-ranked cultivator, the Spirit Ascension Pill was a rare find, often unavailable for purchase.
Time passed.
After patiently drawing the runes, when Yulie raised his head again, his body was covered with runes resembling snakes and insects, as if possessed by spirits.
Dressed in ink-stained clothes, Yulie sat cross-legged on the altar. Apart from his eyes shining remarkably, his entire being had merged with the altar.
It was a literal fusion.
As the runes that were originally wriggling on the altar crawled onto Yulie's body while he drew the runes, they attached themselves to his flesh, mixing with the runes on his body, wriggling like little mice.
For a moment, blood, ink, spiritual light, and bruises were indistinguishable on Yulie's body.
He had transformed drastically from his appearance before entering the quiet room.
Yulie seemed to have reverted from a flourishing immortal cultivator to a savage era, becoming a wild shaman who feasted on blood, swallowed charcoal, and painted his body.
In reality, not all consumption rituals were as bizarre and savage as this. However, for low-level cultivators, they needed to experience the wildness and vitality of living creatures through such savage sacrificial acts to complete their transformation into something beyond human!
Moreover, the more ferocious and cold-hearted a cultivator was, the more they could plunder the power of fierce beasts and monsters during this process.
But besides awakening the beastly nature, cultivators also needed to learn to control it during this step.
Otherwise, losing one's humanity was a minor issue; once the blood flow reversed, the body collapsed into a pile of flesh, even immortal medicine would be unable to save them.
So, as Yulie's smile grew more sinister, he fetched a rough rope from the side.
The rope was nothing special, just a finger wide, made of hemp. It had no spiritual energy, was somewhat decayed, and could easily break with a slight pull.
Yulie had put in a lot of effort to find this rope, carrying it with him since arriving in Blackwater Town. It was a dog leash that had been used for at least thirty years, passed down through three generations of mountain guard dogs in a hunter's family.
Yulie directly looped the hemp rope around his neck and tied the other end to an iron stake on the stone altar.
The iron stake was rusty and dark red, indicating its age. Yulie did this because the dog leash had a long history of taming wild beasts among ancient ancestors, transitioning them from the wild to domesticated.
In the process of completing the transformation into a "wolf-like" state, using this item helped cultivators subdue their inner wildness, bind their inhuman beastly nature, and thereby stabilize their human relationships.
Apart from using a dog leash, one could also use a bull ring through the nose, confine oneself in a chicken coop, or wear a cage over the head, all with the intention of suppressing and taming.
When the cultivator could remove the dog leash, bull ring, or cage on their own, it signified the end of the consumption transformation process.
All preparations had been made.
Yulie, with disheveled hair, sat cross-legged on the altar, the hemp rope around his neck, covered in ink.
Next, he would need to endure in the quiet room, waiting for his inner wolf nature to rise, his wolf power to erupt, and eventually suppress it and make it his own.
This was a grueling process that required Yulie to abstain from water and food, not sleep, and endure day and night for seven days.