Savage Bull Divine-Pattern Diagram

The Savage Bull King lowered its head and charged.

Its four hooves hammered the gravel of the riverbank, each landing sending ripples of muddy water outward. Its massive body carried a savage, near-violent wind pressure as it barreled straight toward Biao.

The tips of those spiraling long horns glimmered with a dark azure light beneath the sun, like two battering rams poised to smash everything in their path to pieces.

Biao did not retreat.

He drove his feet fiercely into the ground. Eighty thousand jin of strength from the Mountain-Sinking Realm surged up from his hips and waist, coursing along his spine into both arms. He held his broad-backed saber crosswise before him, and the blade slammed head-on into the Savage Bull King's right horn.

Clang—!

Sparks flew. The muscles in Biao's arms tightened abruptly, veins standing out one after another.

He forcibly withstood the blow. His feet plowed two deep furrows through the ground, yet his body did not move an inch.

"Shoot!"

The two archers behind him released their bowstrings at the same time. Bone arrows tore through the air and embedded themselves in the Savage Bull King's shoulder armor and flank. The arrowheads sank several inches into its flesh, leaving long, narrow bleeding wounds.

But the Savage Bull King merely shook its head, its pace not even disturbed. Blood seeped from its wounds and flowed across those shining Divine Markings, making their radiance burn even fiercer.

The other tribesmen did not stand idle either.

Ten people closed in from every direction. Spears stabbed at the bends of its legs, stone axes chopped at its spine, and bone blades thrust into its ribs. Every strike targeted a vital point.

Yet the toughness of the Savage Bull King's thick hide, enhanced by the Divine Markings, far exceeded expectations. Those bone weapons could do little more than carve bloody gashes across its body; they could not inflict any deeper penetrating wounds.

But the more wounds it suffered, the brighter the Divine Markings on its body became.

Lin Yi was mixed among the tribesmen. After one thrust of his spear was knocked aside, he used the momentum to withdraw it and retreat two steps, his gaze fixed firmly on the Savage Bull King.

His brain was running at full speed. He was not thinking about how to attack; he was frantically recording.

Every time the Savage Bull King exerted its strength to charge, the dark azure Divine Markings on its body would flare brightly. Light flowed along specific paths from its shoulder blades to its four hooves, spine, and head.

The direction and rhythm of that flowing light were clearly coordinating with the contraction of muscles and the eruption of blood and qi.

The Divine Markings were empowering it, amplifying it.

Without blinking, Lin Yi's eyes tracked those flashing patterns as a dynamic chart of their circulation took shape in his mind.

The timing of every flash, the direction of every line's extension, every shift in brightness at each node—all of it was branded into his mind without the slightest error.

His heart pounded wildly in his chest.

The secrets hidden within these Divine Markings were worth ten thousand times more than the Savage Bull King itself.

And at that moment, the Savage Bull King suddenly let out an incomparably deep, muffled roar. The light of the Divine Markings across its body surged explosively, the dark azure glow nearly piercing through its flesh.

It lowered its head, aiming both horns at Biao's chest. Its four hooves exploded with force. This charge was fiercer than any before it, so fast that it tore the air apart with a sharp shriek.

Biao's pupils contracted. He raised his saber crosswise to block, but before he could fully brace himself—

Boom!

The Savage Bull King's horn tips crashed viciously into the saber. A colossal force far beyond all estimates surged along the hilt and into Biao's arms.

Biao felt a searing pain in the web between his thumb and forefinger. His saber flew from his grasp, and he was hurled backward by that force. His back smashed heavily into the riverbank gravel, and he slid several yards before barely coming to a stop.

His blood and qi churned violently, and a thread of dark-red blood seeped from the corner of his mouth.

"Brother Biao—!"

The tribesmen's cries exploded into a clamor.

The Savage Bull King had gone mad.

Its eyes were crimson like twin ghostly flames, and the white mist blasting from its nostrils carried dark azure blood-qi. It ignored the spears and stone axes striking its body, pivoted on its hooves, and charged straight at the fallen Biao!

It directly ignored all those attacks. Its thick hide was split open by one deep bloody groove after another, yet it seemed utterly unaware, focused solely on crushing the one who had wrestled horns with it into meat paste.

Biao quickly rolled over and sprang up. In his haste, both hands shot out and locked tightly against those spiraling horns crashing toward him.

His feet braced against the ground, his waist and back bent into a hard bow drawn as full as the moon. All eighty thousand jin of his strength pressed down through his palms and arms.

But the Savage Bull King's strength was still rising.

The Divine Markings flashed madly. Those horns advanced inch by inch, Biao's arms beginning to tremble visibly. The gravel beneath his feet was ground into powder, and that savage force pushed his entire body backward.

"Damn... this thing's strength is still increasing..."

Biao forced the words through clenched teeth. Blood from the corner of his mouth dripped down his chin, while the veins on his forehead looked ready to burst.

On the other side, Lin Yi saw this. In the instant of lightning and flint, his Super Brain churned through countless possibilities. Face it head-on? As someone in the First Cry Realm, he was not even qualified to get close.

Stab a vital spot with his spear? The Savage Bull King's muscles were taut all over right now, its thick hide protected by Divine Markings. Ordinary attacks could not break its defenses at all.

Unless... he attacked somewhere it could not defend with muscle and thick hide.

Lin Yi's gaze suddenly dropped an inch lower.

"Damn it, forget it. This is the move!"

He roared. Blood and qi flooded both arms with a boom. He leveled the spear in his hands, its tip aimed behind the raised root of the Savage Bull King's tail, then shot forward like an arrow leaving the string.

In that instant, there was only the target in his eyes.

Pfft!

The bone spearhead struck with precision, viciously plunging into the Savage Bull King's weakest and most fatal point.

Lin Yi put his entire strength into that strike. Twenty thousand jin of force combined with the momentum of his charge drove the spearhead nearly half a foot deep.

"Moo—!"

The Savage Bull King let out a miserable bellow so shrill it changed pitch.

It was no longer a roar of fury, but more like a scream of unbearable agony, like silk being torn apart. Its massive body convulsed violently, and the muscles taut across its entire body slackened uncontrollably in that instant.

Biao seized that once-in-a-thousand-years opening!

His arms exploded with force, borrowing the momentum to fling the Savage Bull King's head to one side. At the same time, he lowered his body, spun, and kicked hard into the side of its head!

With that full-force fling and kick, the Savage Bull King's massive body lost its balance. Its enormous weight tipped over with a boom, splashing mud and water everywhere!

Biao flipped to his feet, wiped the blood from his mouth, and looked toward Lin Yi while panting heavily. His eyes held both lingering fear and admiration.

But Lin Yi had no time to respond to that look.

The moment he finished that thrust, he clearly sensed that the Savage Bull King's crimson eyes had locked onto him with boundless fury as it rolled over and struggled back up.

That gaze had gone completely mad. Pure brutality, burning away all reason, fixed upon a single target.

The Savage Bull King rose to its feet, its hooves digging into the ground. At that moment, the dark azure Divine Markings seemed ready to burst through its flesh, and the glow over its entire body reached its blazing peak.

It lowered its head, the tips of its spiraling horns pointed directly at Lin Yi, then charged.

"Fuck—! I'm going to die!"

Lin Yi cursed and turned to run without looking back.

He had never run so fast in his life.

All twenty thousand jin of strength flooded into his legs. Every step blasted a shallow crater into the ground. Gravel and mud lashed against his calves, stinging like fire, but he had no time to care.

The heavy hoofbeats and rough snorting behind him drew closer and closer. He could even feel the airflow stirred up by the Savage Bull King's charge lifting the hair at the back of his head.

At the brink of life and death, his brain entered a state unlike anything before.

The spiritual energy drifting around him seemed to be crazily drawn by something, rushing into his mind at an unprecedented speed.

That cool, lucid sensation was like an icy spring pouring over his head, washing his consciousness into unprecedented clarity. His understanding of the surrounding environment, his own condition, and even the Divine Markings he had just recorded in his mind was climbing at a visible rate!

His comprehension was skyrocketing.

Under the pure pressure of death, driven by the instinct to survive that desperation had birthed, the thing that had been growing every day seemed to have its fuse lit, erupting explosively upward.

The Savage Bull Divine-Pattern Diagram recorded in his mind was now being passively comprehended.

Those records, once merely lines and nodes, were having their outer layers peeled away one by one, revealing a faintly discernible logical structure beneath. He was still far from understanding it thoroughly, but the intuition that there's something hidden inside was becoming clearer and clearer.

"Lin Yi! Run this way!"

Biao's voice came from ahead and to the side, hoarse yet full of strength. He had already retrieved his saber and gripped it once more, charging wildly toward Lin Yi.

Lin Yi caught sight of that iron-tower-like figure from the corner of his eye. Without the slightest hesitation, he abruptly shifted his feet, arcing through a curve as he sprinted with all his strength toward Biao.

The Savage Bull King pursued relentlessly. Its huge body threw up great sprays of muddy water as it turned, but its intelligence had been completely drowned in pain and fury. Only one thought remained in its mind: trample to death the human who had stabbed it in the ass.

The instant Biao passed Lin Yi, his saber swept out horizontally, chopping viciously into the bend of the Savage Bull King's front leg from the side.

He had stored up all his strength in this strike. Eighty thousand jin from the Mountain-Sinking Realm, coupled with the sharpness of the weapon, forcibly split thick hide and muscle apart, wedging the blade into a gap in the bone.

The Savage Bull King's forelimb buckled, and its charge lost much of its momentum.

The remaining tribesmen had long since been ready. Spears shot out together! Some aimed at joints it had injured earlier, while others targeted the torn wounds in its hind-leg muscles. Six or seven spears plunged in simultaneously, precisely striking atop its old wounds.

No matter how powerful the Savage Bull King was, it was still flesh and blood.

After being pushed to the limit, the Divine Markings on its body finally began to dim. The dark azure light flickered on and off, like the final struggle of a candle stub in the wind.

It still wanted to charge, to ram, but its limbs were grievously wounded and could no longer support its massive weight. At last, it swayed twice before crashing to its knees. Its huge body toppled sideways onto the muddy riverbank, splashing water and mud high into the air.

The dark azure Divine Markings slowly faded from its limbs, retreating inch by inch into its flesh like ebbing water, until they finally vanished completely.

Those crimson bull eyes remained wide open, stripped of all light and savagery, frozen in the fury and unwillingness of its final moment.

The riverbank was silent for a while, leaving only the group's heavy breathing and the gentle murmur of the stream.

Biao walked over while panting, using the flat of his saber to push at the Savage Bull King's head. Only after confirming that it was truly dead did he let out a long breath.

He turned to look at the massive bull carcass, then at the faint traces remaining on its skin where the patterns had completely vanished. His tone was full of regret.

"What a pity. If only we could preserve those Divine Markings."

He planted his saber on the ground and shook his head.

"I've heard the elders say that quite a few Divine Ability martial arts were created by great experts using the Divine Markings on ferocious beasts as a reference. This Savage Bull King possessed a Bloodline Divine Ability, and its Divine Markings manifested completely. If we could make a rubbing of them..."

Biao clicked his tongue, the regret in his voice practically overflowing. "At the Tribal Exchange Gathering, it could probably be traded for quite a few good things."

Lin Yi stood beside him, his chest still heaving violently and his breaths deep and heavy. He heard Biao's words, and his lips moved, but he did not respond.

He did not tell Biao.

From the first manifestation of the Savage Bull King's Divine Markings to the moment they finally faded, every line, every turn, every flicker had been completely recorded in his mind.

After returning to the tribe, he planned to speak with the village chief first. Whether these Divine Markings could be understood, whether they could be transformed into martial arts suitable for humans—he needed more information and verification.

But there was one thing of which he was incomparably certain.

His comprehension was still growing. That burst at the edge of life and death had raised his ability to understand to another level.

He would definitely dig out what was hidden in these Divine Markings.

When that time came, what he gave the tribe would be far more than a single rubbing.

"Alright," Biao's voice interrupted Lin Yi's thoughts. "Move quickly. Take all these Savage Bulls back with us. The smell of blood is too strong. It'll be trouble if it draws other ferocious beasts here."

The tribesmen responded and got to work.

Some tied bull hooves with hemp rope, some cut branches to make simple drag sleds, and others pulled scattered arrows from the bull carcasses and returned them to their bags.

The riverbank was soon cleaned up. The eleven Savage Bulls were gathered together one by one, and the Tidal Surge Realm tribesmen each hoisted one over their shoulders.

Lin Yi was also assigned a medium-sized Savage Bull.

He bent down and carried the bull carcass onto his shoulder. Using twenty thousand jin of strength to bear a bull weighing one or two thousand jin was effortless, but the solid weight pressing against his shoulder, as well as the warmth of bull blood running down his back, made him clearly realize—this was prey he had killed with his own hands.

Carrying the Savage Bulls and following the road they had taken here, the hunting party began its journey home.

The setting sun slanted down from the horizon, stretching everyone's shadows long and longer still.

The outline of the distant tribe was already faintly visible. Smoke curled upward from cooking fires, blending into the pale violet light of evening.

Lin Yi walked in the middle of the group with a Savage Bull on his shoulder, the dark azure Divine Markings in his mind still flashing soundlessly.

He knew that the true greatest harvest of this trip was the Divine Markings in his mind.