Jingyi held the demon core in her hand.

  It pulsed irregularly, bleeding unstable Qi into the air like a damaged heart leaking poison. Tendrils of crimson light coiled from its surface, seeking something to burn—anything to consume.

  {Analyzing... Core integrity: 63%. Stability: critically compromised. Absorption risk: 97.8%. Backlash severity: lethal.}

  Her face remained expressionless as she processed the data.

  “Unacceptable,” she whispered.

  The mission required this body’s continued functionality. Risking its annihilation over a volatile core would be illogical. She needed strength, but more than that—she needed control. This thing... it could destroy her in moments if she absorbed it directly.

  {Recommendation: Abort absorption. Seek external application.}

  So she adapted.

  Her golden eyes swept over the battlefield—a carnage-drenched clearing choked with blood and twisted corpses. Five attackers lay broken, torn apart by the berserk tiger’s wrath. Bones jutted from flesh. Tendons glistened in the dim morning light. Smoke still rose faintly from the charred ritual ground.

  Jingyi’s mind began stitching new threads together.

  {Initiate Ritual Planning Mode: Bone Guardian Variant}

  In her internal database, she pulled the forbidden technique up—a skeletal puppet animated by Qi through spiritual thread channels. But Jingyi had no Qi thread. Not yet. Her solution was to strip away the reliance on Qi entirely.

  "I will rewrite the function," she said aloud, cold and mechanical.

  She would engrave the bones with witchcraft marks—forbidden carvings that acted as subroutines. Autonomous command sequences, powered not by her Qi, but by ritual sacrifice and blood-binding.

  {Sub-function override: Zombie Chimera Construction}

  She began with the base: the tiger’s body—muscular, lithe, durable. She dragged it into the center of the clearing with much difficulty, then drew a deep blade across its neck, severing the head.

  The skull was set aside with reverence. The rest of the flesh? Peeled clean and tossed aside in a carefully marked pile. Then, with deliberate precision, she sawed through the leader’s body at the waist and placed his upper skeletal half onto the tiger’s neck joint—forming a grotesque centaur-like hybrid.

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  Next, she chose the leader’s corpse which was larger than the others, his Qi signature had been the strongest. She sawed through him at the waist with methodical precision, separating his upper torso from the shattered lower half. She the decapitated and discarded the human leader's head and in its place, she mounted the tiger’s skull, carving out the inner matter and embedding a preserved human brain—removed from one of the more tactical attackers. She slid it into the cavity and used strands of muscle to hold it in place, engraved with runes to prevent rot.

  Into the exposed bones, Jingyi etched tight spirals of ancient symbols—witchcraft marks—for movement, recognition, and servitude. These acted as self-sustaining command nodes, powered not by Qi, but by sacrifice and blood. Each mark corresponded to a nerve line: legs, arms, jaw, spine, and vision.

  Next came the sigil as she drew a sprawling circular pattern etched into the ground using a mixture of demon blood, human blood, and powdered bones. Each line had to be precise, down to the millimeter. Symbols for binding, animation, subservience, and memory retention spiraled out from the center like a mechanical flower.Around the edges, she placed the crushed dantian of one attacker to serve as a spiritual anchor.

  All flesh not immediately required was thrown onto a cloth laid beside the growing creature. Blood was scooped into into the skulls. Organs stacked. It wasn’t waste. It was fuel.

  The other four dantians, she absorbed into her own system. The rush of Qi was immediate and brutal. Her body trembled violently as it struggled to stabilize the influx of foreign energy. Blood trickled from her nose, but she endured.

  {Bloodline Balance Update: Human 13%, Devil 65%, Demon 22%}

  {Vitality enhanced.}

  Back in the center of the circle, The flesh—all of it—had been discarded into the ritual site along with the skeletal remains. Now it was time.

  Jingyi knelt and activated the circle with a single drop of blood from her thumb.

  The ground responded immediately.

  The demon core—now embedded in the creature’s chest—flared violently. Red lightning lanced across the sigils, each glyph lighting in succession like awakening nerve endings. The wind died. The temperature dropped.

  Then, the flesh moved.

  Muscles and skin, veins and fat—everything she had discarded—slithered across the forest floor, drawn by invisible commands. The sinew hissed as it latched onto bone. Veins pulsed like serpents. Tendons reattached. Skin knitted itself around warped joints.

  The creature's shape began to emerge, macabre and magnificent.

  The tiger’s hide stretched across its flanks and back, merging with pallid human musculature. One clawed limb was covered in the tiger’s hide, the other in a clawed hand covered in human skin. The torso’s ribcage was reinforced with both human and tiger ribs, giving it an armored shell of dual-origin.

  The tiger’s skull, now had faint glyphs of cognition as the flesh of the tiger reformed into a tiger’s head crowned with small horns, and clicked into place. The red glow in its sockets blinked alive as one eyeball from the tiger and the other from the attacker set in place. One eye socket glowed red; the other, gold. A tiger’s eyeball sat opposite a preserved human one. Together, they blinked into life.

  Now complete the creature—her creature—stood.

  Nine feet tall, quadrupedal with a humanoid upper half and a tiger’s head. Its breathing was ragged. Its presence bled dread into the soil.

  Its gaze locked onto Jingyi.

  It knelt.

  {Construct Complete: Zombie Chimera. Classification: Necro-Beast Hybrid. Combat Rank: Foundation Establishment – Ninth Level (Qi Foundation Completion). Growth Potential: None. Sustenance Requirement: Blood every 72 hours. Control: Bound to creator’s blood signature.}

  Jingyi didn’t blink.

  "Designation: Alpha," she declared.

  "Primary Directive: Obey, protect, and eliminate any threat to Jingyi Chen."

  The creature let out a grinding growl, like chains dragged over fractured stone.

  She approached and pressed her hand to its chest, over the demon core pulsing faintly beneath stitched-together flesh.

  "You are my first tool," she said. "Not my last. Work hard until you demise for your creator."

  She narrowed her gaze.

  “Now take up my sword. Hunt down any demonic creature within the vicinity. Drink their blood. Retrieve their demon cores. Bring them to me.”

  The command passed.

  The creature turned, its clawed feet gouging the dirt as it walked toward Jingyi’s fallen blade. It picked it up—unnatural fingers curling with surprising delicacy around the hilt—and without hesitation, disappeared into the trees like a phantom from a nightmare.

  Jingyi remained behind, bloodied but composed.

  She walked over to a tree near the edge of the clearing, sat down beneath its broad trunk, and allowed her body to rest.

  The ritual circle behind her crumbled into dust.

  And somewhere in the forest, the sound of death began again.