Inscribing: The Outline of a New Cultivation Method

As for how to teach the Savage Bull Diagram to the tribespeople, Lin Yi had long since made his plans.

He intended to draw the entire Divine Markings diagram and the human body's Aperture Points diagram in full on the same piece of beast hide, circling every aperture the Divine Markings passed through in vermilion and marking the connection sequence with absolute clarity.

He would add concise written explanations as well, spelling out exactly where to begin inscribing the markings, how blood and qi should circulate, and how breathing should coordinate with exertion.

His Super Brain stored every Aperture Point position he had sensed during last night's deduction, accurate down to the finest detail.

Those points had been corresponding nodes on the Savage Bull King's body. He had calibrated and matched them to the human body one by one, and they were now so familiar to him that it was like walking a road through his own body hundreds of times.

As long as he made the diagram, even someone utterly clueless about cultivation could follow the map to find the path and condense the markings. The only difference would be how quickly they did it.

Lin Yi went straight to the village chief.

"Village Chief, help me find a whole piece of large beast hide. I'm going to inscribe the martial skill."

The village chief did not hesitate in the slightest upon hearing that.

"No problem! Wait here. I'll bring you the best beast hide in the tribe!"

The old man turned and headed for his house, moving more than twice as fast as usual. Even his gray-white hair was blown up by the wind.

Lin Yi watched his openly delighted back and could not help curling his lips into a smile.

Before long, the village chief returned carrying a roll of beast hide.

The hide was a full two feet square, tanned until it was exceptionally soft and fine. Its surface carried the warm sheen of pale honey, its edges had been trimmed neat and even, and it felt smooth and thick to the touch. One look was enough to tell it was one of the tribe's treasured possessions.

"This is the back hide of a Red-Maned Deer we hunted last year. I never had the heart to use it."

The village chief stuffed the hide into Lin Yi's hands and patted the back of his hand. "Take it. Draw whatever you want!"

Lin Yi accepted the hide and thanked him. The village chief stepped closer and lowered his voice. "Roughly... when will it be done?"

"Tomorrow," Lin Yi said.

The village chief opened his mouth, seemingly wanting to make sure he had not misheard, but in the end he asked nothing further.

He nodded heavily. "Good! Then we won't disturb you." With that, he turned around, grabbing Biao's arm with one hand and Xiao Hu's collar with the other, dragging the bewildered adult and child away together.

Biao said, "I haven't even—"

The village chief said, "Don't say a thing."

Xiao Hu said, "Village Chief Uncle, I..."

The village chief said, "Go home and eat."

Lin Yi watched the old man, the burly man, and the child recede down the dirt road in an absurdly comical formation. Smiling, he shook his head and carried the beast hide back to his stone house.

The stone house was quiet and bright. The lingering sunlight slanted in through the window, spreading a patch of warm light across the floor.

Lin Yi spread the Red-Maned Deer hide across the stone table, pinned its four corners with stone bowls, then dug out a sharpened piece of charcoal and a small bowl of vermilion pigment mixed from mineral powder. His "martial skill drawing project" began.

He first raised the charcoal and drew a standard human outline.

The lines were simple, but the proportions were precise. The limbs were evenly placed, and the head was round and upright. Then he held his breath and focused, using the charcoal to mark tiny sesame-seed-sized circles one by one according to the Aperture Point distribution in his memory—from Hundred Meetings at the crown, down the Conception Vessel along the front of the chest, past the dantian, branching through both arms along the Three Yin and Three Yang of the hands, then descending the Governor Vessel down the back, passing the lumbar Shu point and Huantiao, before running straight through to Bubbling Spring at the soles.

Major acupoints, minor acupoints, auxiliary points—every single one was marked with crystal clarity.

Once the acupoints were marked, he began drawing the flow of the Savage Bull Diagram's patterns.

The blood-gold patterns emerged beneath his hand as lines, beginning at both shoulders and drawing inward along the collarbones. They converged at the center of the chest into a vortex-like core, then spread downward along both sides of the waist and abdomen, finally branching down the outer edges of the legs before ending at the ankles.

At every bend in each arc, he used vermilion to mark the corresponding Aperture Point name. The arrows indicating the order of connection were equally clear.

When the final stroke fell, Lin Yi stepped back half a pace and examined his work.

The human figure on the beast hide was upright and distinct. Meridians and Aperture Points were arranged in orderly fashion, while the blood-red Divine Markings flowed smoothly across the human outline, their correspondence clear at a glance.

He added several short mnemonic verses beneath the figure, then swept his eyes over the whole image once more. The content was accurate, the key points distinct, and everything easy to understand.

"Not bad, not bad." Lin Yi patted the charcoal dust from his hands, curling his lips as he muttered to himself. "With a martial skill diagram like this, even a fool could learn it."

Only after finishing everything did he realize, belatedly, that the sky outside had already darkened.

The light in the stone house dimmed, leaving only a trace of dusk seeping through the crack in the door and falling across one corner of the beast hide.

At the same time, his stomach let out a loud rumble.

"Ah, I forgot to eat."

Lin Yi rubbed his empty stomach, remembering that he had not eaten anything since last night.

He walked to the corner, dug out the two remaining pieces of fierce beast jerky, stuffed them into his mouth, and began chewing with loud crunches.

The jerky was hard and tough. His teeth cracked down with crisp snaps, and he swallowed it after only a few bites.

After eating, he sat at the edge of the stone bed and suddenly realized a problem—his appetite was getting bigger and bigger.

Before crossing over, he had been a shut-in who muddled through on two takeout meals a day. One bowl of rice covered in toppings had been enough to deal with him.

But now, more than two pounds of fierce beast jerky had gone into his stomach, and it had barely laid a foundation. He was still far from full.

Lin Yi estimated that his appetite had nearly increased tenfold during this time. And as his cultivation deepened and his blood and qi grew ever more abundant, that number would likely continue swelling.

No wonder the tribe's hunting party had to go out every few days. Food alone was a bottomless pit that could never be filled.

After eating and drinking his fill, Lin Yi found that he had no desire to sleep at all.

The stone house was so quiet that only the low chirping of night insects remained. Outside, the tribe's lights were being extinguished one after another. There were no other sounds—no phone, no internet, no games, no food delivery apps.

The nights in this world were barren to an outrageous degree.

Leaning against the wall by the stone bed, Lin Yi stared blankly at the pitch-black ceiling for a while. A thought drifted through his mind on its own: The tribe's few nighttime entertainments probably only leave one activity—making babies.

He quickly flung that thought aside and cleared his throat.

"Forget it. I should deduce the cultivation method instead."

When it came to the Savage Bull Diagram, Lin Yi knew it like the back of his hand.

He had personally deduced and created this martial skill from beginning to end. When to condense the markings, how to activate them, how to distribute strength and qi—he understood every detail completely.

For him, the martial skill's proficiency had been complete from the moment it was born. There was no need to practice it from scratch like in novels.

How could a creator not know how to use what he created? There was no such logic. Unless it was a body-tempering cultivation method that required genuine physical transformation, a martial skill reached full proficiency the moment it was created.

"The problem now is that the cultivation method itself still isn't good enough."

He sat cross-legged and straightened his posture, pulling his thoughts back to the main issue. As the tribe's inherited entry-level cultivation method, the Bluestone Blood-Transporting Method had the advantage of being simple and direct, with a low threshold that anyone could grasp.

But its drawbacks were equally obvious: its efficiency was low, relying on external pounding to slowly grind one's body down.

And after years of accumulation, it left no shortage of hidden injuries within the body.

Biao's body was built like an iron tower, yet when Lin Yi touched his back and shoulder blades, he could feel a faint stiffness in the gaps between his bones. That was the root left behind by years of smashing himself with bluestones.

But the Savage Bull King's cultivation method had shown him another path.

After fully comprehending the Divine Markings diagram, he had naturally figured out how the Savage Bull King cultivated. That creature's method was exceedingly simple: eat wildly, store blood and qi, then let the Divine Markings circulate autonomously within its body day and night, endlessly washing the blood and qi it consumed through every muscle, tendon, and bone.

Its entire body was like a furnace that never stopped running. Its own blood and qi were the furnace flames, tempering and refining itself day and night without any need for external pounding.

What Lin Yi needed to do now was graft and adapt the Savage Bull's internal circulation system onto the framework of the Bluestone Blood-Transporting Method.

He already had a clear blueprint in mind: use the Savage Bull Diagram patterns inscribed within the body to form a permanent blood and qi circulation circuit.

This would allow blood and qi to flow through the patterns on its own rather than relying on external strikes, endlessly washing through the blood vessels, fascia, and bones day and night to achieve the same tempering effect as bluestone pounding.

The vibrations of external pounding would give way to the internal tremors of blood and qi—more efficient, with less wear and fewer hidden injuries.

That way, he could completely free himself from dependence on external objects.

He would no longer need to carry a rock around and smash it against himself every day. Anytime, anywhere, even while lying down asleep, the blood and qi circulation within his body would automatically temper his flesh.

And once the Savage Bull Diagram martial skill activated the Divine Markings at full speed, its amplification effect would not diminish in the slightest.

Two birds with one stone.

The more Lin Yi thought about it, the more feasible it seemed. His mind had already begun breaking the task down automatically.

First, adapt the Savage Bull patterns' circulation paths to the direction of human meridians; second, establish the activation conditions and maintenance rhythm for blood and qi self-circulation; third, merge it with the existing mnemonic framework of the Bluestone Blood-Transporting Method to form a complete and internally consistent cultivation system.

At his current rate of comprehension, he would need only about two days to complete the deduction.

The direction was already there, the principles were already clear. All that remained was repeated verification and fine-tuning. For him now, those were no longer difficult problems.

Once his thoughts were sorted out, Lin Yi's restless mind finally calmed little by little.

He reviewed the outline of the new cultivation method in his mind once more, confirmed there were no major logical flaws, then let out a long breath and fell backward onto the stone bed.

Several strands of starlight leaked through the gaps overhead, cool and faint, like shattered little pearls scattered across the darkness.

Lin Yi closed his eyes, a faint curve still lingering at the corners of his mouth.

Once he developed the new cultivation method, it would not only give the tribe an offensive martial skill through the Savage Bull Diagram.

There would also be a more efficient, safer cultivation method that did not require smashing rocks against one's body every day. By then, would the people of the Bluestone Tribe rise into the Tide-Chasing Realm one after another, perhaps even touch the threshold of the Sinking Mountain Realm?

He thought about it for a while, let out an amused snort through his nose, then fell into a deep sleep.

And on the beast hide atop the stone table, the Divine Markings faintly gleamed beneath the moonlight, as though they too were breathing quietly.