Amplification Doubled

The village chief's eyes suddenly lit up.

For a moment, the wrinkled face froze in stunned disbelief. Then a surge of excitement made even his lips tremble.

He stepped forward, placed both hands on Lin Yi's shoulders, his fingertips quivering slightly.

"Good, good, good..." The old man said "good" three times in a row, each one heavier than the last.

"Little friend Lin, you truly are... a monster walking among men!"

Beside them, Biao still wore an expression that said, "I have absolutely no idea what just happened." His huge head turned back and forth between the village chief and Lin Yi, his thick brows knotted into a lump.

Xiao Hu reacted the fastest. He had already leaped up and circled Lin Yi twice, words pouring from his mouth like a string of firecrackers.

"Brother Lin lit up! Brother Lin, that pattern on your body looks amazing! Can you draw one for me too?"

The village chief ignored the two of them entirely. He grabbed Lin Yi's arm and headed straight for the Bluestone Grounds.

"Come, let's test it! Let me see with my own eyes just how powerful this thing is!"

Lin Yi staggered two steps as he was dragged along, but did not struggle free. To be honest, he also wanted to know just how great an amplification the Savage Bull Diagram could give him.

He matched the village chief's pace, while beckoning Biao and Xiao Hu behind him.

Though Biao looked utterly bewildered, as the strongest man in the tribe, sensitivity to the word "strength" was carved into his bones.

Without a word, he followed. His gaze remained fixed on the faintly visible patterns on Lin Yi's skin, while something shifted deep within his eyes.

Xiao Hu jogged alongside them, his chatter never stopping for a moment.

Before long, the group arrived at the Bluestone Grounds.

There were few people on the grounds that afternoon. The sunlight had baked the various bluestones until they were faintly warm, casting short, solid shadows across the earth.

The village chief led Lin Yi directly to the eastern side of the grounds, where a grayish-brown boulder crouched. Its surface was rough and its edges sharply defined. By estimate, it weighed around thirty thousand jin.

"With your Initial Blood Resonance foundation, your normal strength is twenty thousand jin." The village chief stepped back two paces. "Try this thirty-thousand-jin one first."

Lin Yi nodded, took a deep breath, and walked before the boulder.

He lowered into a half squat, hooked both hands beneath the boulder's rough lower edge, then fiercely activated the dormant Savage Bull Diagram within him.

Blood-gold patterns instantly lit across his skin, spreading from his chest to his arms, climbing over his shoulder blades and across his back.

Guided by the patterns, his blood and qi roared into accelerated circulation. A force nearly twice as abundant as usual surged up from the depths of his bones, flooding into his arms, waist, and back.

"Up!"

His arms suddenly exerted force, and the thirty-thousand-jin boulder was steadily lifted from the ground!

His feet stamped two shallow pits into the soil of the Bluestone Grounds, yet Lin Yi's upper body did not budge. The taut lines of his arm muscles stood out distinctly beneath the patterns.

He maintained the lifting posture for a full three breaths before slowly lowering the boulder. The ground trembled faintly with it.

"Thirty thousand jin... easy." Lin Yi flexed his wrists. "That wasn't my limit."

Biao's mouth had already fallen open. Eyes accustomed to fighting vicious beasts precisely caught the patterns that had surfaced over Lin Yi's body in that instant. That blood-colored totem stirred an instinctive, impossible-to-ignore warning within his mind—a hunter's intuitive judgment of dangerous power.

His lips moved, and he squeezed out words that were nearly a murmur. "...A Divine Ability? How is that possible...?"

Lin Yi did not stop.

His gaze had already locked onto another, larger gray boulder in the center of the grounds. It was a full size larger than the previous one, crouching on the ground like a squat stone beast.

Following his gaze, the village chief's expression changed slightly. "This one weighs about forty-five thousand jin. Your First Cry Realm foundation is twenty thousand jin. Even with a martial technique empowering you, don't force yourself too far..."

Before he could finish speaking, Lin Yi had already walked up to the boulder.

He half-squatted again and gripped the bottom of the stone.

This time, he did not pause. Instead, he fiercely poured all the blood and qi in his body into the Savage Bull Diagram. Every pattern flared at once, blood-gold radiance shining through his body as a hazy, heavy phantom of a Savage Bull condensed behind him!

The phantom was enormous—clumsy, yet brimming with oppressive force—as if an invisible giant beast had merged with him.

"Up—!"

Lin Yi let out a thunderous shout. Veins bulged across his forehead, while the muscles in his back tightened to their limit beneath the pull of the patterns.

The boulder let out a dull scraping sound and was actually lifted slowly off the ground!

One foot, two feet, three feet—

He held aloft the forty-five-thousand-jin boulder, his back slightly hunched, the muscles in his arms swelling as if forged from iron. The blood-gold patterns on his skin shone so brightly they nearly turned white.

Power streamed endlessly from the patterns, supporting his frame against the boulder's weight and keeping him firmly standing there.

One breath. Two breaths. Three breaths.

Lin Yi finally set the boulder down. The ground sank with a boom, and he could not help taking two deep breaths, but the smile on his face could not be suppressed.

He now knew where his limit lay.

With a twenty-thousand-jin First Cry Realm foundation, activating the Savage Bull Diagram allowed him to unleash nearly forty-five thousand jin of strength.

More than double the amplification.

"Unbelievable..." The village chief's voice came from behind him, old and weighty, every word carrying thick, profound shock.

"Initial Blood Resonance, yet strength approaching the Tide-Chasing Realm. Is this the might of a martial technique...?"

Xiao Hu was already jumping and shouting at the side. "Brother Lin is amazing! Brother Lin is even stronger than my dad!"

Biao smacked the back of Xiao Hu's head.

"Nonsense. Your dad has eighty thousand jin of strength." But when he looked at Lin Yi again, there was no longer the slightest trace of confusion in his eyes. Only a light mingling shock and fanaticism remained.

The village chief walked up to Lin Yi and looked deeply at him. "What is this martial technique called?"

Lin Yi scratched the back of his head and gave a slightly embarrassed laugh. "I'm not good at coming up with fancy names. Since I peeled it off the Savage Bull King, let's call it the Savage Bull Diagram."

"Savage Bull Diagram..." The village chief savored the three words, then slowly nodded.

"Simple and direct, pointing straight to its root. A good name."

Only then did Lin Yi turn to Biao beside him. Seeing that he still had not fully recovered from the shock, Lin Yi could not help smiling and shaking his head.

He briefly explained the whole story: how he had completely imprinted the Savage Bull King's Divine Markings into his mind during battle, how he had comprehended and deduced them through the night, and how he had gradually transformed them into a martial technique suited to the human body.

Biao remained silent for a long while after hearing this. The expression on his rugged face was extraordinarily vivid, until all his emotions finally merged into one sentence. "You damn... really are a monster."

"I'll take that as a compliment." Lin Yi shrugged, then clapped his hands. "Once I've spent a few more days getting familiar with it and sorting out how to teach the Savage Bull Diagram, I'll teach it to all of you."

He raised his brows at Biao. "When the time comes, Brother Biao, you'd better learn properly."

Hearing this, Biao instinctively straightened his back. But then Lin Yi casually said—

"It's nothing more than condensing Divine Markings with blood and qi, connecting them with the body's Aperture Points, and forming a complete diagram to amplify oneself."

A subtle, unprecedented bewilderment appeared on Biao's scar-covered face.

He muttered inwardly, No, why does this sound so mysterious? Can I really learn something like this?

Lin Yi knew what he was thinking the moment he saw his expression. Amused, he patted Biao's arm. "Don't worry, it's very simple. With a master teacher like me guiding you hand in hand, how could you fail to learn it?"

Biao opened his mouth, but in the end, only managed to squeeze out, "...Let me process this first."

Lin Yi burst into laughter.

On the sunlit Bluestone Grounds, the blood-gold patterns slowly faded from his skin, like a receding tide sinking beneath the sea's surface.

Line by line, they grew fainter until they vanished completely.