The wolf tide is Qing Mao Mountain's recurring lightning-wolf disaster. Dens fill, packs swell, and every few years the villages must endure a large assault.
On Qing Mao Mountain, Mo Yan reports that the wolves’ dens are nearly full and that, at the current breeding rate, a wolf tide will strike the mountain villages the next year even if none breaks out in the current year. Gu Yue Mo Chen treats that timing as ordinary: outbreaks come about every three years. The question that matters for planning is how many Thunder Crown Wolves head the packs; those heads of the pack are the most troublesome part of an outbreak. ch. 31
Cycle and prelude
Fang Yuan remembers the same rhythm: every three years a large wolf tide attacks each of the big mountain villages. Before the main outburst, smaller beast tides appear as subsidiaries. Growing wolf groups squeeze other beasts out of living space; migrations stack until mixed beast tides form and must be broken early or they grow larger. ch. 93 A lightning wolf pack can show up even when clansmen insist it is not yet time for the wolf tide outburst. ch. 95 The small beast tide remains a prelude; the real terror is the later large wolf tide, when tens of thousands of lightning wolves charge the village with a terrifyingly powerful lightning wolf king. ch. 97 In a full nest the scale is named by king tier: thunder crown wolves are myriad beast kings, beside hundred beast king bold lightning wolves and thousand beast king frenzy lightning wolves. ch. 130
Qing Mao assault
A thunder crown wolf that looks like an ordinary pack leader can instead be a lightning lycan: a myriad beast king with human-level intelligence that commands the pack, stronger as a strategist than as a brute, and dangerous enough to wipe Xiong Clan when that clan fails to hold. Gu Yue Clan and Bai Clan survive that fight only through a dangerous battle, and when a new, stronger wolf tide surges in right after, the two clans have no way left to resist it. ch. 168
After the harshest attacks, Gu Yue village is short on food and goods, many mortals starve, and the elder table shrinks from more than a dozen seats to fewer than ten, with survivors injured. The lightning lycan is heavily hurt, large lightning-wolf numbers are broken, and for the next months only shrinking packs remain as the lycan recalls wolves to the den. ch. 171 ch. 172 Gu Yue clansmen later accuse Xiong clan of retreating early to let the wolf tide weaken the other two villages; Xiong survivors still reappear with an ancestral concealment method, so the mountain stays a three-clan contest. ch. 175 The same disaster is also an opportunity for individuals: Xiong Jiao Man rises to rank three during it and raises Bear Enslavement Gu enough to enslave bear-type hundred beast kings. ch. 189
Beast tides as the general class are covered on Beast Tide.
Connections(12)
0 later connections are veiled.