Leopard's Upgrade

When White Tiger said this, his expression didn’t change much. “I hear there are still some familiar faces. After all, I was there for ten years. Even if it’s been a while, a few of the old crowd are bound to still be around.”

He paused, his voice dropping half a notch.

“Besides… if I have to face some things myself, I’m afraid I won’t be able to handle it strictly by the book.”

Chen Guan didn’t answer right away.

He lowered his gaze to the sealed box on the table. A faint, dim purple glow seeped out from the edges of the box.

The spirit core of a tenth-tier void beast.

This was the bargaining chip.

White Tiger was waiting for him to speak.

“When do we leave?” Chen Guan asked.

When White Tiger heard that, he leaned back in his chair, knowing Chen Guan had agreed.

“No rush. Get some good rest first. I’ll take care of sorting out your identity.”

“Don’t worry. You just need to blend in. I’ll bring in the right people for the rest. When it’s all over, you can come back and keep being a student.”

He patted his knees and stood up, walking to the door. Just before pulling it open, he glanced back at Chen Guan.

“Oh, and take care of the spirit core as soon as possible. That Lightning Cheetah of yours needs time to fuse it. Don’t drag it out until you’re on the road.”

“Yeah.”

White Tiger pulled the door open, stepped into the hallway, then suddenly stuck his head back in.

“Those apples on your table? I brought them too. Already washed. Help yourself.”

The door closed.

Footsteps echoed down the corridor, growing fainter and fainter, until they were swallowed up by the turn of some stairwell.

Chen Guan sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the closed door. It was a long moment before he shifted his gaze to the sealed box and the bag of apples on the table.

He lowered his eyes, took off his jacket, and draped it over the foot of the bed. Then he summoned Old Me and placed it on the bed before lying down. This time, he didn’t sleep on the floor. He stayed close.

The ceiling light shone down on his face. His expression was calm, giving away nothing of what he was thinking.

But he didn’t close his eyes.

Chen Guan stared at the ceiling for a very long time.

So long that the light from the streetlamp outside crept through the crack in the window, casting a thin strip of brightness across the ceiling, slowly shifting from left to right.

He sat up.

The sealed box sat quietly on the table, its dim purple glow seeping out through the cracks, flickering like something alive breathing inside.

The bag of apples next to it was perfectly still, red and round, huddled together in the plastic bag, giving off that fresh, sweet scent of fruit.

Chen Guan reached for one and took a bite.

It was sweet, as promised. No prank.

Chewing the apple, he opened the sealed box.

The moment he lifted the lid, a gust of cold air surged out.

The tenth-tier void beast’s spirit core hovered in the very center of the box. Its appearance was unmistakably familiar. An old classic, through and through.

He looked at it for a while, then tossed the apple core into the trash bin.

Then, he released the Lightning Cheetah. Since returning to Huaqing, Chen Guan had kept it stowed away to avoid drawing attention.

A flash of arc light streaked through the air, and the Lightning Cheetah’s form solidified in the cramped dorm room.

The moment it landed, its attention locked onto the spirit core on the table, ignoring even Old Me, which it normally feared.

Its ears perked up. Its nose twitched, sniffing in the direction of the sealed box.

“This is for you.”

The cheetah’s tail curled once. It didn’t respond.

Chen Guan crouched down to meet its eyes.

“This thing… you’ll only get one shot at it.”

The cheetah’s eyes fixed on him, the purple light of the spirit core reflected in its pupils.

“If the fusion succeeds, your path from here on out will be much wider. If it fails…”

He paused.

“There is no failing option.”

The cheetah tilted its head, as if it understood, or maybe it didn’t.

But its tail stopped curling. It slowly straightened out, and the sparks at the tip crackled back to life.

Chen Guan stood up and placed the sealed box on the floor.

For a spirit beast, fusing a spirit core wasn’t exactly unheard of. But a tenth-tier core fusing into a fifth-tier beast? The gap in tier was too vast. Without some kind of assistance to suppress the power, the cheetah’s body would be torn apart by the energy inside the core.

Fortunately, even though Sys—the system spirit—had gone offline, the shop was still usable. Chen Guan was uncharacteristically generous this time. He bought a few things and set up an array for Baobao.

He guided the cheetah to the center of the array, where it lay down. To say it hadn’t coveted that spirit core before would be a lie.

Now that the opportunity was right in front of it, the cheetah seemed almost dazed, unable to believe such incredible luck had fallen into its lap. All its usual sharpness was gone.

Chen Guan picked up the spirit core from the sealed box.

The sensation in his hand was strange. It wasn’t cold or hot, but the moment his fingers touched the core’s surface, a vague sense of weightlessness invaded his perception, as if something was tugging at his sense of space.

He placed the core between the cheetah’s front paws and decided not to touch it again. If he had powers like Guan Jinyue, maybe he could subdue it, but as it was, this thing was useless to him. It was for Baobao.

“Don’t move.”

The cheetah lowered its head, its nose nearly brushing the surface of the core. The breath it exhaled made the purple-black patterns on the core swirl a little faster.

The moment the core touched the cheetah’s front paws, the light in the array flared.

The glow started from the edges, spreading along the lines Chen Guan had carved, circling inward one ring at a time. It moved slowly, like water seeping into cracked, dry soil.

The cheetah lay in the center of the array. Every strand of its fur stood on end. A faint arc of electricity ran along its spine for a short distance before retracting.

Its eyes were fixed on the core between its paws, pupils contracted tightly.

Chen Guan crouched outside the array, one hand resting on his knee, the other hovering lightly over the edge of the formation.

He was waiting for the cheetah to prepare itself.

Fusion like this couldn’t be rushed.

No matter how tame the power within the spirit core might be, it was still a tenth-tier core. Baobao was only fifth-tier. Force-feeding it all at once and letting it seep in slowly were two very different things.

When the light of the array reached the third ring, the cheetah lowered its head.

Its nose pressed against the surface of the core. Its breath carried tiny arcs of electricity, intertwining with the purple-black patterns flowing across the core’s surface.

Then, it closed its eyes.

Chen Guan pressed his fingers down on the edge of the array, applying a gentle force. Spiritual energy flowed into the formation.

The core began to vibrate.

The tremor was subtle, almost invisible to the naked eye, but Chen Guan’s perception caught every nuance.

Deep inside the core, the folded and unfolding patterns quickened, as if something had activated them, spreading toward the cheetah’s front paws.

A purple-black light seeped out from the core’s surface, crawling up the cheetah’s forelegs. Slowly, bit by bit, it soaked into its fur.

The cheetah’s body started to tremble.

The remnant spatial attributes inside the tenth-tier core were probing their way into the cheetah’s meridians. Every surge of energy pulled and stretched the cheetah’s existing structure.

For a fifth-tier spirit beast, this sensation probably wasn’t pleasant.

Chen Guan kept his eyes fixed on the cheetah’s condition, maintaining a steady flow of spiritual power through his hand.

The function of the array was to provide a buffer—breaking down the excessively violent energy within the demon core and then channeling it slowly into the leopard at a rate it could withstand.