The Beast Subjugation Division's headquarters was a fortress built into the side of Fragrant Cloud Peak, its walls scarred with claw marks and elemental scorches from centuries of contained beast attacks. The division's commander was an old woman named Grand Elder Zhou who had personally killed over a thousand spiritual beasts and whose left arm had been replaced with a spirit metal prosthetic that could punch through stone.

'New blood,' Grand Elder Zhou said, examining Bai Xiaochun like he was a disappointing vegetable. 'You're the one the obelisk rated near-universal survival.'

'I think there was a mistake,' Bai Xiaochun said.

'The obelisk doesn't make mistakes. You're hard to kill. That means you get the hard jobs.' She thrust a mission scroll into his hands. 'Standard beast suppression. A Flame-Tailed Tiger, Level Five, been attacking trade caravans on the eastern road. Take a squad of three. Kill it.'

The eastern road was a two-day journey through monster-infested forests. The Flame-Tailed Tiger was a Level Five beast — two levels above the alpha wolf he'd barely survived. Bai Xiaochun looked at the mission scroll, then at his hands, then at the ceiling, as if hoping divine intervention would arrive.

'I don't suppose there's a documentation error,' he said. 'Maybe this tiger is actually a kitten with a particularly striking tail?'

'Report for duty at dawn.'

Bai Xiaochun spent his last night of relative safety cultivating the Undying Live Forever Technique with desperate intensity. If the obelisk was right — if he really was hard to kill — then the only way forward was to become even harder to kill. It was not a strategic decision. It was the pure arithmetic of terror.