Barbaric Bull Divine Rune Diagram

The Savage Bull King lowered its head and charged.

Its four hooves smashed against the gravel of the riverbank. Each landing sent ripples of muddy water spreading outward, while its enormous body carried a savage, nearly violent wind pressure straight toward Biao.

The tips of its spiral horns gleamed with a dark cyan light beneath the sun, like two battering rams poised to smash everything before them into pieces.

Biao did not retreat.

He planted his feet fiercely into the ground. The eighty-thousand-jin strength of the Mountain-Sinking Realm surged from his waist and hips, coursed up his spine, and flooded into both arms. He held his broad-backed saber across his front as its blade collided head-on with the Savage Bull King's right horn.

Clang—!

Sparks flew. The muscles in Biao's arms tightened sharply, veins bulging one after another.

He forcibly withstood the blow. His feet plowed two deep furrows into the ground, yet his body did not budge in the slightest.

"Shoot!"

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

But the Savage Bull King merely shook its head. Its stride did not falter at all. Blood seeped from its wounds and flowed over the shining Divine Markings, making their radiance burn even fiercer.

The other tribesmen were not idle either.

Ten people closed in from every direction. Spears stabbed at its knee joints, stone axes chopped toward its spine, and bone blades thrust into its ribs. Every strike aimed for a vital point.

Yet the Savage Bull King's thick hide, bolstered by the Divine Markings, was far tougher than expected. The bone weapons could do little more than carve bloody gashes into its body; they could not inflict deeper piercing wounds.

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

Lin Yi moved among the tribesmen. After his spear thrust was knocked aside, he took advantage of the recoil to withdraw it and retreat two steps, his gaze remaining locked firmly on the Savage Bull King.

His brain was operating at full speed. He was not thinking about how to attack, but frantically recording.

Whenever the Savage Bull King gathered strength and charged, the dark cyan Divine Markings on its body would abruptly flare. The light flowed along specific paths from its shoulder blades toward its four hooves, spine, and head.

The direction and rhythm of that flowing light clearly matched the contraction of its muscles and the eruption of its blood and vitality.

The Divine Markings were strengthening it, amplifying it.

Lin Yi's eyes tracked those flickering patterns without blinking, while his mind simultaneously constructed a dynamic diagram of the Divine Markings' circulation.

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

His heart pounded madly in his chest.

The secret hidden within these Divine Markings was ten thousand times more valuable than the Savage Bull King itself.

Just then, the Savage Bull King suddenly released an incomparably deep, muffled roar. The light of the Divine Markings across its entire body surged, and dark cyan radiance nearly pierced through its flesh.

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

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

Boom!

The Savage Bull King's horn tips slammed viciously into the blade. A colossal force far beyond his expectations surged through the hilt and into Biao's arms.

Biao felt a sharp agony in the web between his thumb and forefinger. His saber flew from his grip, and the force hurled him backward. His back smashed heavily into the riverbank gravel, and he slid several zhang before barely coming to a stop.

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

"Brother Biao—!"

The tribesmen's cries erupted all at once.

The Savage Bull King had gone mad.

Its eyes were crimson like two ghostly flames. The white mist spraying from its nostrils carried dark cyan blood-qi. It paid no heed to the spears and stone axes striking its body. With a turn of its hooves, it charged straight at the fallen Biao!

It ignored those attacks completely. Its thick hide was split open by one deep bloody trench after another, yet it seemed utterly unaware, intent only on crushing the person who had wrestled horns with it into pulp.

Biao quickly rolled over and scrambled to his feet. In his haste, he thrust out both hands and desperately braced against those roaring spiral horns.

His feet dug into the ground, his waist and back bending into a hard bow like a full moon. All eighty thousand jin of his strength pressed into his palms and arms.

But the Savage Bull King's strength continued to rise.

The Divine Markings flashed wildly. Those horns pushed forward inch by inch. Biao's arms began trembling visibly, the gravel beneath his feet ground into powder, and that savage force drove his entire body backward.

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

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

On the other side, Lin Yi saw the scene. In the flash of lightning and spark, his Super Brain churned through countless plans. Meet it head-on? As someone in the First Cry Realm, he was not even qualified to get close.

Stab its vital points with a spear? The Savage Bull King's muscles were taut all over, and its thick hide combined with the Divine Markings protected its body. Ordinary attacks could not break through its defenses at all.

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

Lin Yi's gaze abruptly dropped an inch.

"Damn it, whatever! This is the move!"

He roared. Blood and vitality poured explosively into both arms. He leveled the spear in his hands, its tip aimed at the spot behind the Savage Bull King's raised tail root, and charged forward like an arrow loosed from the string.

At that instant, there was only one target in his eyes.

Pfft!

The bone spearhead plunged with ruthless precision into the Savage Bull King's most vulnerable fatal gate.

Lin Yi put all his strength into that thrust. With twenty thousand jin of force added to the momentum of his charge, the spearhead sank nearly half a foot in.

"Moo—!"

The Savage Bull King let out a miserable, distorted bellow.

It was no longer a roar of rage, but a shriek of unbearable agony, as though silk were being torn apart. Its massive body convulsed violently, and the muscles taut throughout its body slackened uncontrollably for an instant.

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

His arms suddenly exerted force, flinging the Savage Bull King's head sideways with the momentum. At the same time, he lowered himself and spun, kicking the side of its head!

With that full-force fling and kick, the Savage Bull King's immense body lost its balance under its tremendous weight. It crashed sideways into the ground, splashing mud and water everywhere!

Biao flipped himself upright, wiped the blood from his mouth, and panted as he cast a glance toward Lin Yi. His eyes held both lingering fear and admiration.

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

The moment he thrust that spear in, he had clearly sensed the Savage Bull King's crimson eyes locking onto him with overwhelming fury as it rolled over and climbed back up.

That gaze had gone completely mad. Pure brutality that had burned away all reason, fixed upon only one target.

The Savage Bull King rose to its feet and pawed at the ground. At that moment, the dark cyan Divine Markings seemed ready to burst from its flesh, and the light across its body blazed at its peak.

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

"Holy shit—! I'm gonna die!"

Lin Yi cursed and spun around to run without looking back.

He had never run so fast in his life.

All twenty thousand jin of his strength flooded into his legs. Every kick blasted a shallow pit into the ground. Gravel and mud lashed against his calves with burning pain, but he could not spare it a thought.

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

At the line between life and death, his brain entered an unprecedented state.

The ambient spiritual energy around him seemed to be frantically drawn by something, pouring into his mind at a speed never seen before.

That cool, lucid sensation was like an icy spring pouring over his head, washing his consciousness to unprecedented clarity. His comprehension of his surroundings, his own condition, and even the Divine Markings he had just recorded was rising at a visible speed!

His comprehension was skyrocketing.

Before the pure pressure of death, driven by the survival instinct born from desperate circumstances, that thing which had been growing every day seemed to have had its fuse lit, exploding upward in a sudden surge.

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

Those records, once only lines and nodes, were being peeled open layer by layer, exposing the faintly discernible logical structure beneath. He was still far from understanding it thoroughly, but the intuition that there was something hidden inside had become ever clearer.

"Lin Yi! Run this way!"

Biao's voice came from the front side, hoarse but full of vigor. He had already retrieved his saber and gripped it in his hand as he ran wildly toward Lin Yi.

Lin Yi caught sight of that iron-tower-like figure from the corner of his eye. Without any hesitation, he sharply shifted course and traced an arc as he sprinted with all his might toward Biao.

The Savage Bull King pursued relentlessly. Its huge body flung up swaths of mud and water as it turned, but its intelligence had already been completely drowned by 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 and hacked viciously into the bend of the Savage Bull King's front leg from the side.

He had gathered all his strength into this strike. The eighty-thousand-jin power of the Mountain-Sinking Realm, coupled with the weapon's sharpness, forcibly split hide and muscle, lodging the blade into a gap in the bone.

The Savage Bull King's front limb buckled, and its charge slowed drastically.

The other tribesmen had long been prepared. Spears shot out together! Some aimed at the joints it had injured earlier, while others targeted the torn wounds in its hind-leg muscles. Six or seven spears pierced in simultaneously, accurately striking its old wounds.

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

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

It still wanted to charge and ram again, but its severely wounded limbs could no longer support its massive weight. At last, it swayed twice and crashed to its knees. Its enormous body toppled sideways onto the muddy riverbank, sending mud and water splashing high.

The dark cyan Divine Markings slowly faded from its limbs, shrinking inch by inch back into the depths of its flesh like receding tidewater until they vanished completely.

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

The riverbank fell silent for a moment. Only the crowd's heavy breathing and the murmuring stream could be heard.

Biao walked over while panting, nudged the Savage Bull King's head with the flat of his saber, and only after confirming that it was thoroughly dead did he let out a long breath.

He turned to look at the massive bull carcass, then at the faint traces left on its hide where the patterns had completely faded. His voice was full of heartache.

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

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

"I heard the elders say that many Divine Ability martial arts were created by great experts using the Divine Markings on ferocious beasts as references. This Savage Bull King possessed a Bloodline Divine Ability, and its Divine Markings manifested in full. If we could have taken a rubbing of them..."

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

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

He did not tell Biao.

From the Savage Bull King's first manifestation of the Divine Markings to the moment they finally disappeared, 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 he was incomparably certain of.

His comprehension was still growing. That burst amid life and death had raised his understanding to another level.

He would definitely unearth what was hidden within these Divine Markings.

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

"All right," Biao's voice interrupted Lin Yi's thoughts. "Move fast and clean up. Take all these savage bulls back. The smell of blood is too strong. It'll be trouble if it draws other ferocious beasts here."

The tribesmen moved at his command.

Some used hemp ropes to bind the bulls' hooves, some cut branches to make simple drag frames, and others pulled the scattered arrows from the bull carcasses and returned them to their bags.

The riverbank was quickly cleaned up. The eleven savage bulls were gathered together one by one, and the tribesmen in the Tidal Surge Realm each hoisted one onto their shoulders.

Lin Yi was also assigned a medium-sized savage bull.

He bent down and hoisted the bull carcass onto his shoulder. His twenty-thousand-jin strength made carrying a one- or two-thousand-jin bull effortless, but the solid weight pressing against his shoulder, along with the warmth of bull's blood flowing down his back, made him clearly realize—this was prey he had personally hunted.

Carrying the savage bulls and following the path they had come by, the hunting party began its journey home.

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

In the distance, the outline of the tribe had become faintly visible. Smoke from cooking fires curled upward, blending into the pale violet evening sky.

Lin Yi walked in the middle of the group, carrying the savage bull. The dark cyan Divine Markings in his mind still flickered silently.

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