Amplification Doubled

The village chief's eyes lit up sharply.

For a moment, the wrinkled face went blank. Then rising excitement made his lips tremble.

He strode forward and gripped Lin Yi's shoulders with both hands, 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 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 jumped up and circled Lin Yi twice, words spilling from his mouth like a string of firecrackers.

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

The village chief paid neither of them any heed. He grabbed Lin Yi by the arm and headed straight for the Bluestone Grounds.

"Come, try it! Let me see with my own eyes just how powerful this thing is!"

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

Keeping pace with the village chief, he waved to Biao and Xiao Hu behind him.

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

Without a word, he followed. His gaze remained fixed on the faintly appearing and disappearing patterns on Lin Yi's skin, while something shifted in the depths of his eyes.

Xiao Hu jogged alongside them all the way, his chatter never stopping.

The group soon reached the Bluestone Grounds.

There was hardly anyone in the grounds that afternoon. Sunlight had baked the variously sized bluestones until they were faintly hot, casting short, solid shadows across the ground.

The village chief pulled Lin Yi straight to the eastern side of the grounds. There squatted an enormous grayish-brown boulder, its surface rough and its edges sharply defined. It looked to weigh around thirty thousand jin.

"Your Initial Blood Resonance foundation can normally exert twenty thousand jin of force." The village chief stepped back two paces. "Try this thirty-thousand-jin boulder first."

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

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

Blood-red patterns tinged with gold instantly flared across his skin, spreading from his chest to his arms, climbing along his shoulder blades and up his back.

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

"Up!"

His arms erupted with force, and he steadily lifted the thirty-thousand-jin boulder off the ground!

His feet stamped two shallow pits into the dirt of the Bluestone Grounds, yet Lin Yi's upper body remained utterly still. The taut lines of muscle on his arms stood out clearly beneath the patterns.

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

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

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

His lips moved, and he squeezed out a sentence that was almost a murmur. "...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 earth like a squat stone beast.

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

Before his words had even faded, Lin Yi had already reached the massive boulder.

He crouched down once more and gripped the bottom of the stone.

This time, he did not pause. Instead, he violently poured all the blood and qi in his body into the Savage Bull Diagram. Every pattern blazed at once, bloody-golden radiance shining through his body and condensing behind him into the hazy, weighty phantom of a Savage Bull!

The phantom was enormous, clumsy, yet brimming with oppressive force, like an invisible giant beast merging with him as one.

"Up—!"

Lin Yi roared, veins bulging across his forehead as the muscles along his back tightened to their limit beneath the pull of the patterns.

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

One foot, two feet, three feet—

Holding the forty-five-thousand-jin boulder aloft, his back bent slightly. The muscles in his arms swelled as though cast from iron, while the bloody-golden patterns on his skin shone so brightly they nearly turned white.

Power poured continuously from those patterns, supporting his skeleton against the boulder's weight and keeping him steadily on his feet.

One breath. Two breaths. Three breaths.

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

He knew where his limit lay now.

With an Initial Blood Resonance foundation of twenty thousand jin, activating the Savage Bull Diagram allowed him to erupt with nearly forty-five thousand jin of force.

More than double the enhancement.

"Unbelievable..." The village chief's aged, solemn voice came from behind him, every word laden with profound shock.

"Initial Blood Resonance, yet approaching the power of 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 slapped Xiao Hu on the back of the head.

"Nonsense. Your father has eighty thousand jin." But when he looked at Lin Yi again, not a trace of bewilderment remained in his gaze. Only a light that mingled shock and fervor filled those eyes.

The village chief walked before Lin Yi and looked deeply at him. "This martial technique... what is it called?"

Lin Yi scratched the back of his head and gave an embarrassed laugh. "I'm no good at naming things with all sorts of fancy flourishes. Since I peeled it off the Savage Bull King, I'll call it the Savage Bull Diagram."

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

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

Only then did Lin Yi turn toward Biao. Seeing that he still had not entirely recovered, Lin Yi could not help smiling and shaking his head.

He briefly explained the entire course of events: how he had engraved the Savage Bull King's Divine Markings whole into his mind during battle, how he had comprehended and deduced them through the night, and how he had gradually remade them into a martial technique suited to the human body.

Biao remained silent for quite some time after hearing this. The expression on his rugged face was extraordinarily colorful, until all his emotions ultimately converged into one sentence. "You damned... really are a monster."

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

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

Hearing that, Biao instinctively straightened his back. But when Lin Yi casually said—

"It's nothing more than condensing Divine Markings with blood and qi, letting them communicate with the body's Aperture Points, and forming a complete pattern to enhance oneself"—

A subtle, unprecedented confusion surfaced on Biao's scar-covered face.

Wait, why did that sound so mystical? Can I really learn something like this?

Lin Yi knew what he was thinking from his expression. Trying not to laugh, he patted Biao's arm. "Relax, it's simple. With a master teacher like me guiding you hand in hand, how could you possibly fail to learn it?"

Biao opened his mouth, then finally forced out one sentence. "...Let me process this first."

Lin Yi burst into laughter.

Upon the sunlit Bluestone Grounds, the bloody-golden patterns slowly faded from his skin, like the tide retreating beneath the sea's surface.

Line by line, they dimmed until they finally vanished without a trace.