The clamor of the bonfire celebration had long since faded, and the tribe had returned to the silence of the night.
Inside the stone house, Lin Yi sat cross-legged on the stone bed covered in animal hide. He closed his eyes and sank into the depths of his mind.
The complete Savage Bull Divine-Pattern Diagram floated quietly at the center of his consciousness. Dark cyan lines intertwined and coiled around one another, every node and every arc clear down to the finest detail.
The intense pressure of that life-and-death pursuit during the day had propelled his comprehension over some invisible threshold.
Now, as he looked upon the diagram again, the markings that had once merely been recorded patterns were having their layers peeled away one by one, revealing the clear logic beneath. The routes through which the Savage Bull's blood and qi flowed when it activated its Divine Ability, the timing and rhythm of the Divine Markings' flashes, where power gathered and where it erupted—all of it lay before him like mechanical parts taken apart and laid out in full view.
His progress in comprehension was even faster than he had expected.
The greater half that had remained hazy before now surged up like undercurrents beneath ice, absorbed and digested piece by piece by his mind.
Those tangled, intersecting turns he had once been unable to understand now appeared to be nothing more than inevitable paths dictated by the Savage Bull's particular physical structure.
Those nodes that had once seemed abrupt corresponded to several crucial Aperture Points inside the Savage Bull's body.
By midnight, the final obscure point had been completely grasped.
Lin Yi opened his eyes and exhaled a breath of turbid air into the darkness. He now fully understood the entire Divine-Pattern Diagram.
But understanding it was one thing. Turning it into something the human race could use was another.
He closed his eyes again and began the second stage of deduction and reconstruction.
His first few attempts were simple and crude. He used blood and qi to imitate similar markings across the surface of his body according to the principles of the Divine Markings.
Blood-red lines climbed over his arms and chest. At first glance, they truly bore some resemblance to the Savage Bull Divine Markings.
But Lin Yi soon discovered that those markings were all form and no substance. After blood and qi flowed through them, there was no amplifying effect at all. They were like tattoos on the skin, utterly useless.
After some simple thought, he found that the problem lay in the foundation.
The Savage Bull's physical structure was completely different from that of humans. They had their own unique distribution of Aperture Points, routes of blood and qi circulation, and arrangements of bones and muscles.
The reason those Divine Markings worked on the Savage Bull King was that every node in the patterns corresponded precisely to a crucial part of its body.
If humans copied them directly, it would be like stuffing a tiger's skeleton into a cat's body. Nothing would line up.
He needed to redesign everything from scratch.
He had to use human acupoints to replace the Savage Bull's Aperture Points, use the meridian routes of the human body to redraw the course of the Divine Markings, and adjust every arc and every node to proportions and dimensions suitable for humans.
It was an incomparably delicate task.
When Lin Yi first tried adjusting the position of a certain node, the moment blood and qi flowed into the new route, a tearing pain suddenly shot through his body. It felt as if something had tied a dead knot in his meridians, then yanked it brutally tight.
He let out a muffled groan. His blood and qi remained in turmoil for quite some time before settling down.
It was backlash caused by improperly using an Aperture Point. Fortunately, it was not severe and had not damaged his foundation.
The second attempt, the third, the tenth.
Every deviation in adjustment brought pain of varying degrees. Some were stabbing pains like needle pricks, while others were dull aches that seeped deep into his bones.
But Lin Yi gritted his teeth and endured them. At the same time, he precisely recorded the location and severity of every pain, working backward to determine exactly which part had gone wrong.
His comprehension continued to improve steadily throughout the process. With every failure, he found the crux faster than before.
He began breaking the Savage Bull Divine Markings into separate, independent segments.
He took the force-generating logic of the markings around the shoulder blades and altered it to suit the rotation of human shoulder joints.
He took the transmission route of the markings along the spine and refitted it to the meridians running alongside the human backbone. He took the explosive nodes of the markings on the four hooves, compressed them, and grafted them onto human palms and soles.
Dismantling, reshaping, joining, polishing.
Countless deductions collapsed. Countless reorganizations of the markings failed. Countless sensations of torn meridians washed over him again and again like waves.
But with every failure, he came one step closer to the correct answer. Those segments of markings that had once clashed so completely were gradually being worn smooth by him, their sharp edges ground away until they fit snugly against human flesh and blood.
He did not know how much time had passed.
The instant Lin Yi completely sorted out the final blood and qi circuit, connecting the beginning and end of the entire pattern into a closed loop, the blood and qi inside his body seemed to be drawn by some force.
With a boom, it surged into the brand-new markings and rushed along the paths he had redesigned. There was not the slightest hitch, nor the faintest backlash.
Dark-red markings quietly surfaced across his skin.
Those patterns bore a three-part resemblance to the dark-cyan Divine Markings on the Savage Bull King, but their lines were finer and more orderly, their turns gentler and rounder, carrying unmistakable traces of human meridians.
Their color was a rich blood-red, faintly tinged with a weak golden glow, like molten red iron flowing across the surface of his skin.
At the same time, Lin Yi felt the blood and qi throughout his body churn madly under the markings' pull, power pouring forth from every limb and bone.
He instinctively activated his blood and qi. It spilled from his body, and the vague phantom outline of a Savage Bull appeared around him—stout, heavy, and filled with oppressive force.
He clenched his fist.
His knuckles cracked like exploding beans, and the air in his palm gave a soft, compressed squeal as he squeezed it.
That power weighed heavily inside him, as though an additional skeleton had been braced beneath his flesh and blood.
He tried throwing a punch into empty air. The wind from his fist stirred the dry grass beside the stone bed, directly sweeping several blades away.
Lin Yi lowered his head to look at the blood-red markings gleaming with gold on his skin, and the corners of his mouth lifted.
"This power... is so strong."
He took a deep breath and slowly calmed his blood and qi.
The glow of the markings gradually dimmed, but did not disappear completely. Instead, they lay dormant just beneath his skin, like a fuse that could be reignited at any moment.
Light from outside filtered through the gaps in the stone house. It was bright enough that it was already broad daylight.
Lin Yi froze for a moment. It had been late at night when he entered meditation. In the blink of an eye, it was already the afternoon of the next day?
The exhaustion from continuously performing such intense deductions came rushing over him belatedly, but stronger still were the exhilaration and elation of accomplishing something great.
Just as he rose, intending to push open the door and go outside for some air, he heard a hushed but unmistakably anxious conversation outside.
"...He really stayed in there all night and more than half the day?"
"Brother Lin must be doing something huge! I came to call him for breakfast this morning, and I saw his whole body glowing. It was terrifying!"
"Are you sure he was glowing and not suffering qi deviation?"
"Village Chief, what's qi deviation..."
"Enough, you two, keep your voices down. Don't disturb him."
Listening to the three voices outside—the village chief's calm steadiness, Biao's voice still full of vigor even lowered, and Xiao Hu's irrepressible excitement—Lin Yi could not help but smile.
He pulled open the wooden door of the stone house.
Sunlight slanted in, making him squint. The three people outside were clustered at the doorway, craning their necks to peek inside. His sudden opening of the door made all three lean backward in unison.
Lin Yi looked at them, grinned brightly, and reached out to pat the blood-red markings on his body as they slowly faded.
"Village Chief, it worked."
Before you continue