The Savage Within

Chapter 12: Controlled Transformation

When Ethan returned to his rented apartment, he felt an indescribable sense of relief—like suffering from hemorrhoids and constipation for days, only to suddenly be cured and find himself passing smoothly again.

Thinking back to the sense of danger he felt on the way home, and the strange itching in his gums and finger bones when he chased off the yellow mutt, Ethan couldn’t help but wonder.

Now that he thought about it, the itching seemed connected to his level of anger. When his “territory” was violated, that surge of rage seemed to trigger the sensation in his gums and fingers.

If his anger ever reached a critical threshold, would he grow fangs and claws, maybe even lose control? On the flip side, if he could harness that rage, could he intentionally trigger the transformation—control it instead of being consumed by it?

Losing control terrified him. But the thought of consciously transforming? That, he actually wanted to experience—like a superhero in a fantasy movie.

To him, becoming half-man, half-beast wasn’t the frightening part. What was terrifying was losing his mind, being unable to control himself. If he could retain his reason while shifting, it could be the ultimate experience.

For now, though, Ethan didn’t dare test it. Not until he fully understood the patterns behind his outbursts and rages. For safety’s sake, he would continue pretending to be just another ordinary man.

What puzzled him most was how he could sense the mutt’s threat from so far away, simply through the scent of his own urine. It was bizarre, almost like the protective wards set up by cultivators in fantasy novels.

Could it be that wild animals in nature guarded their territory in much the same way?

He couldn’t figure it out yet, though he suspected it had something to do with “biological information transfer”—that his urine contained pheromones capable of relaying signals.

Since he had to work tomorrow, Ethan decided to shelve the thought for now and drifted off to sleep.

That night he went to bed late, close to two in the morning, but even after just two and a half hours, he woke up naturally—like some internal biological clock had forced him awake.

He grabbed his phone. Four o’clock sharp.

“I wonder what this 4 a.m. thing means… and why it links to that 11 p.m. state before sleep.”

Stretching, Ethan shut off the AC, pushed open the window, and drew in the crisp predawn air. The alley outside was still dark and eerily quiet.

He was still riding the high of his newfound powers, so he automatically activated his night vision, scanning the shadows outside, then tuned into his heightened hearing to sample the neighborhood sounds. Finally, he stepped on his electronic scale.

“Seventy-five point five kilos—down again. But the drop is smaller now. Is it from not eating, or is my body fat percentage still going down?”

Sitting on the sofa afterward, the familiar wave of agitation washed over him.

To study it further, he didn’t immediately burn it off with exercise. Instead, he sat still, trying to suppress it with sheer willpower.

It didn’t work.

By 4:12 a.m., his breathing turned ragged, veins bulged across his face, his fists clenched, and his entire body trembled.

Seconds later, he snapped his eyes open, feral rage burning behind them.

Bang!

He shot up from the bed, dropped to the floor, and hammered out push-up after push-up, so frantically that his form fell apart.

Fifty-five in one go before he collapsed, gasping, the wildness slowly draining from his face.

“Too damn scary…”

At its peak, the urge was overwhelming. He’d wanted to smash through the wall, drag his neighbor Yen Qiaorong out by the hair, and scream at her for ever working as a nightclub hostess.

Yen was delicate and sweet, and when she first moved in, Ethan had liked her well enough. But after learning she’d worked in nightlife, he had deliberately kept his distance.

In his mind, women who worked as “hostesses” were lazy, aimless, lacking ambition. Rationally, he knew people had the right to live how they wanted—but deep down, he couldn’t help but look down on her. Humans were full of contradictions like that.

He never thought those buried feelings would be magnified to the point where he’d nearly attack her.

If he hadn’t burned it off, he might have really snapped and beaten her senseless. The thought made his stomach turn.

Just days ago, he’d read a story about a middle-aged man who roamed the streets with a kitchen knife, slashing at any woman he saw. One victim was a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl, badly injured but saved just in time.

Ethan shuddered. He refused to become that kind of monster.

After a short rest, the rage came back again.

This time, he checked his phone’s timer. From collapsing in exhaustion to the next surge, only 12 minutes and 28 seconds had passed—much shorter than the time it had taken for his thigh injury to heal two nights earlier.

Not daring to resist again, he forced himself through another fifty-five push-ups before collapsing.

Yesterday, his limit had been fifty. Overnight, he’d already gained five more. Clearly, the intense workouts were strengthening him.

By sunrise, after grinding through three hundred push-ups in broken sets, the agitation finally ebbed away.

Drained, he gulped some water, showered, and skimmed through the morning news before booting up his computer.

He decided from that moment to record every change in his body. Though he’d never kept a diary in his life, this was different—too important to leave undocumented.

He created a private online spreadsheet, inputting everything he could remember about his condition from April 25th through today.

By the time he finished, it was past seven.

Ethan got dressed, shut down his computer, and set off for work.

This time, walking the familiar route, he felt no urge to mark his territory.

But as he passed the spots he’d already marked, his heightened sense of smell picked up his own lingering scent clearly.

At the corner where he had chased off the mutt, he stopped. From that point, he silently counted steps until he reached the place where the danger sense had struck him last night.

“Sixty-eight steps.”

Years of working on construction sites had trained him to measure roughly by pacing. Each step for him was about half a meter. Sixty-eight steps—around thirty-four meters.

But last night, he hadn’t walked in a straight line. In reality, the straight-line distance was closer to twenty meters.

That distance roughly matched the outer limit of his enhanced hearing—what a normal person might hear in open air, unblocked.

Of course, it was just a guess. He would need experiments to confirm.

After patrolling his “territory” for a while, he finally headed toward the office.

But as he climbed the steps to his company building, a soft fragrance drifted over him.

Looking up, Ethan saw a tall, graceful figure standing on the stairs, lips curved in a teasing smile.

“Morning, Master!”