Draw Blood

"Stay alive, kid. Don't disappoint me."

"Only if you survive on Beast Planet and draw blood will you be qualified to take the martial arts exam!"

Those cold words were the last thing Su Bo heard before the ship went "whoosh" and vanished from sight with a roar.

Beast Planet!

Su Bo had no idea how far it was from Red River Star.

He'd just woken from his cultivation when he heard someone say something about "killing." Without thinking, he blurted out a question about who they were going to kill.

Then he was grabbed and whisked into the sky.

Situ Ting dragged him out of the atmosphere in a single leap, then stepped into a stealth spacecraft. The ship roared and shot away.

After several dazed minutes, Su Bo was kicked out of the spacecraft.

"Are you kidding me?"

"Boom!~~"

On a desolate plain of yellow earth and blowing sand, Su Bo wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth and sprang to his feet. The ground cracked beneath him as he flashed away with the Wind-Treading Step, covering hundreds of meters in an instant.

It had been three days since he'd been dumped from the spacecraft, and he'd lost count of how many times he'd fled for his life.

He'd just emerged from a primeval jungle when he ran straight into a huge beast out hunting. Acting on instinct, he'd punched the monster.

The terrifying recoil had nearly shattered his wrist.

Then he ran, and it chased...

He'd barely escaped the huge beast when, before he'd gone far, he encountered another one even more terrifying than the first.

Again, he ran and it chased, and he sprinted for dear life.

And so...

After somehow making it through the night, Su Bo had just emerged from hiding to look for food when he ran into the terrifying beast he was facing now.

The monster, which looked like a triceratops, glared at the tiny figure fleeing in front of it with its vertical pupils.

It was hungry, and a delicious meal had just walked right into its jaws. It had to eat the little thing.

One man and one beast, chasing and fleeing...

"Roar!"

A foul wind rushed at him from behind, and Su Bo could smell the stench in the beast's mouth.

He twisted with the Wind-Treading Step and dodged to one side.

The triceratops charged with all its might, smashing a boulder twice a man's height into pieces.

Seizing the chance, Su Bo punched it in the neck. His nearly thirty-thousand-jin blow made the triceratops stagger several steps.

Dazed by the hit, the triceratops shook its head, turned, stamped hard on the ground, and charged at him again.

Bixi Divine Intent fused with his spiritual power. Su Bo seemed to transform into Bixi as he let out a deep, resonant cry.

"Ying..."

"Arghh—!"

A scream rang out as the triceratops's massive body shuddered. An invisible force pierced its mind and stabbed into its fragile spirit.

With a crash, the charging triceratops flipped over and fell to the ground.

"Now's my chance."

Su Bo leaped onto the triceratops and brought his fists down in a fierce, violent barrage, each blow weighing tens of thousands of jin.

"Argh..." Its shrill cries echoed across the wilderness.

Scales shattered, bright red blood sprayed, and chunks of flesh flew from its neck.

The pain drove the triceratops into an even greater frenzy. It charged wildly, trying to throw Su Bo off its back, but it underestimated the strength of the little figure riding it.

Su Bo gripped its scales and flesh with one hand and hammered down with the other, punch after punch. He nearly smashed the flesh on the triceratops's neck to pulp.

Its anguished cries rang out across the wilderness.

They frightened the nearby beasts so badly that none dared approach the area.

High above, a stealth spacecraft had locked onto Su Bo's coordinates. Situ Ting was cultivating, but he was also keeping a constant eye on Su Bo.

If any real danger arose, he could get there right away.

"Idiot!" Situ Ting watched Su Bo scramble about, relying on the terrain as he fled in every direction.

The Triangular Rhinoceros Dragon was a second-level lesser dragon beast, with a trace of dragon blood. Its strength was just about on par with a human at the fifth refinement of the Body Tempering Realm.

This beast had a terrifying physique, but its speed was nothing to write home about.

With Su Bo's strength, if he could just get his head straight, he might be able to fight the Triangular Rhinoceros Dragon.

There was no reason for it to chase him around like this.

He'd simply never faced a beast's ferocity before, and couldn't bring even half his strength to bear. That was why the Triangular Rhinoceros Dragon had driven him into a panicked, headlong flight.

Still, when Situ Ting saw Su Bo suppress the Triangular Rhinoceros Dragon in the blink of an eye, a hint of approval flashed in his eyes.

He'd only been here three days, yet he already dared to face a beast head-on. Even after being hunted down like this, he'd seized his chance to turn the tables. This kid was much better than the martial arts students of past years.

At least he hadn't been scared shitless by the beasts.

Mottled starlight fell from the night sky into a narrow valley.

A bonfire blazed. Su Bo had propped up a huge branch, skewered the triceratops's leg on it, and set it over the fire to roast.

After three days of narrowly escaping death without food or water, he was nearly running on empty.

Maybe he really was unlucky. No matter which way he ran, he kept running into powerful beasts whose auras were terrifying enough to make anyone tremble.

He hadn't encountered a single beast with an aura weaker than his—or even one that matched it.

The weakest one...

Was tonight's dinner!

As the triceratops meat roasted over the flames, golden fat glistened on its surface. Once it was cooked through, Su Bo grabbed it and wolfed it down.

He'd spent the past three days doing nothing but running for his life and had barely eaten a thing.

A warrior's physique was the only reason he'd managed to endure the strain. Otherwise, he'd have ended up as beast droppings long ago.

After eating his fill...

"Come to think of it, did the principal pull one over on me?" Su Bo looked up at the pitch-black night sky. Not a single star was visible.

Without the bonfire, even with his warrior's abilities, he could only see a dozen or so meters into the darkness.

That was all he could see...

If a powerful beast ambushed him, he'd have very little time to react.

Fortunately, his time in the wilderness over the past three days hadn't been entirely wasted. After trying it a few times, he'd found that lighting a bonfire didn't attract the beasts' attention.

Otherwise, he wouldn't have dared roast meat like this.

On the spacecraft, Situ Ting had told him that he wasn't the only one training on Beast Planet. There were also prodigies from the other great cities on Red River Star.

The earliest of these prodigies had already been training here for four or five months.

The strongest among them had already broken through the Muscle and Bone and Internal Organs stages and reached the sixth or seventh refinement.

But in the past three days, Su Bo had run back and forth across the wilderness and jungle, covering at least a hundred li. He hadn't seen a single person.

He hadn't even found the slightest sign that anyone had been there.

Either Beast Planet was so vast that he'd landed in a remote area where he wouldn't encounter anyone for now.

Or Situ Ting had simply been pulling his leg!

After thinking it over for a while, Su Bo pushed the thought aside. He could worry about whether there were other people later. First, he had to survive in this godforsaken place.

This was bad...

The triceratops meat was packed with so much vital essence that it was about to overflow.

Su Bo sat on the ground and took a posture that was half seated, half reclined, forming the shape of Bixi. He completely changed his stance training, no longer using the Coiling Dragon Stance.

Having perfected his stance work, he no longer needed to stick to any fixed posture.

And with Bixi Divine Intent strengthening him...

As long as he wanted to cultivate, any posture could become Bixi!