As for how to teach the Savage Bull Diagram to the tribesmen, Lin Yi had long since made his plans.
He intended to draw the complete Divine Markings diagram and the human Aperture Points diagram onto the same beast hide, circling every aperture the Divine Markings passed through in vermilion and clearly marking the order in which they connected.
He would add concise written instructions as well—where to begin inscribing the markings, how qi and blood should circulate, and how breathing should coordinate with exertion, all spelled out plainly.
His Super Brain contained every aperture location he had sensed during last night's deduction, precise down to the finest fraction.
Those apertures had been corresponding nodes on the Savage Bull King's body. He had calibrated and matched them one by one to the human body, and now he knew them by heart, as though he had walked those paths through his own body hundreds of times.
As long as he made the diagram, even someone completely ignorant of cultivation could follow the map to find the treasure and condense the markings. It would only be a matter of speed.
Lin Yi went straight to the village chief.
"Village Chief, help me find a whole, unbroken beast hide. I'm going to inscribe the martial skill onto it."
Upon hearing this, the village chief did not hesitate in the slightest.
"No problem! Wait here. I'll bring you the finest beast hide in the tribe!"
The old man turned and hurried toward his own house, moving more than twice as fast as usual. Even his gray-white hair was tossed up by the wind.
Watching that openly delighted back, Lin Yi could not help but curl his lips into a smile.
Before long, the village chief returned carrying a rolled-up beast hide.
The hide measured a full two chi square. It had been tanned until it was exceptionally soft and fine, its surface carrying the warm luster of pale honey. Its edges were trimmed neatly, and it felt smooth and thick to the touch. One glance was enough to tell that it was one of the tribe's treasured possessions.
"This hide came from the back of a Red-Maned Deer we hunted last year. I could never bring myself 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 like!"
Lin Yi accepted the hide and thanked him. The village chief stepped closer and lowered his voice. "Roughly... when will it be ready?"
"Tomorrow," Lin Yi said.
The village chief opened his mouth, seemingly wanting to make sure he had not misheard, but in the end, he did not ask again.
He nodded heavily. "Good! Then we won't disturb you." With that, he turned around, grabbing Biao by the arm with one hand and Xiao Hu by the back of his collar with the other, dragging the big one and the small one away while both were still dazed.
Biao: "I haven't even said—"
Village Chief: "Don't say anything."
Xiao Hu: "Uncle Village Chief, I—"
Village Chief: "Go back and eat."
Lin Yi watched the old man, the sturdy man, and the child disappear down the dirt road in an utterly 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 last golden light of evening slanted in through the window, spreading a warm patch of light across the floor.
Lin Yi spread the Red-Maned Deer hide over the stone table, weighting down its four corners with stone bowls. Then he dug out a sharpened piece of charcoal and a small bowl of paint made from vermilion mineral powder, beginning his "martial skill illustration project."
He first 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, holding his breath and focusing his mind, he used the charcoal to mark sesame-seed-sized circles along the aperture distribution stored in his memory—starting from Hundred Meetings atop the head, descending the Conception Vessel along the front of the chest, passing through the Dantian, branching into both arms through the three yin and three yang hand meridians, then following the Governing Vessel down the back, passing Lumbar Shu and Jumping Ring, straight through to Gushing Spring at the soles.
The major apertures, minor apertures, and auxiliary apertures throughout the body were all marked with perfect clarity.
After finishing the aperture markers, he began drawing the path of the Savage Bull Diagram's markings.
Those blood-gold markings emerged beneath his brush as lines. They began at both shoulders, gathered inward along the collarbones, formed a vortex-like core at the center of the chest, then spread downward along both sides of the waist and abdomen. Finally, they branched down the outer edges of the legs and ended at the ankles.
At every turn in each curve, he marked the corresponding aperture name in vermilion. The sequence arrows at the connection points were also drawn with absolute clarity.
When the final stroke fell, Lin Yi took half a step back and examined his work.
The figure on the beast hide was upright and clear, its meridians and apertures arranged in order. The blood-red Divine Markings flowed smoothly over the human outline, their correspondences distinct and obvious at a glance.
Below the figure, he added several short mnemonic verses, then reviewed the entire image once more. The content was accurate, the key points distinct, and everything clear and easy to understand.
"Not bad, not bad." Lin Yi dusted the charcoal ash from his hands and murmured to himself with a satisfied smile. "With a martial skill diagram like this, even a fool could learn it."
Only after finishing everything did he realize, belatedly, that it had already grown dark outside.
The light inside the stone house dimmed, leaving only a lingering trace of twilight seeping through the crack in the door and falling on one corner of the beast hide.
At the same time, his stomach let out a loud growl.
"Oh, right. I forgot to eat."
Lin Yi rubbed his flat, empty stomach, remembering that he had not eaten anything since last night.
He went to the corner, dug out the two remaining pieces of ferocious beast jerky, stuffed them into his mouth, and chewed away noisily.
The jerky was hard and tough. Every bite produced a crisp crack, and within a few mouthfuls, he had swallowed it all.
After eating, he sat beside the stone bed and suddenly realized something—his appetite was getting bigger and bigger.
Before transmigrating, he had been a shut-in who got by on two delivery meals a day. One bowl of rice with toppings had been enough to deal with a meal.
But now, after eating more than two jin of ferocious beast jerky, he had only barely lined his stomach. He was still far from full.
Lin Yi estimated that his appetite had nearly increased tenfold during this period. And as his cultivation deepened and his qi and blood grew denser, that number would probably continue to swell.
No wonder the tribe's hunting party had to head 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 had gone out 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 beside the stone bed, Lin Yi stared blankly at the pitch-black roof for a while. An involuntary thought drifted through his mind: the tribe's few nighttime entertainments probably only left one activity—making babies.
He hurriedly flung that thought away and cleared his throat.
"Forget it. I should deduce a cultivation method instead."
When it came to the Savage Bull Diagram, Lin Yi knew it like the back of his hand.
This martial skill had been deduced and created entirely by him. When to condense the markings, how to activate them, how strength should be distributed—he understood every detail completely.
For him, this martial skill had possessed full proficiency from the moment it was born. There was no need to practice it from scratch like in novels.
How could the creator himself not know how to use what he created? That made no sense. Unless it was a body-tempering cultivation method that required the physical body to undergo a real transformation, martial skills reached full proficiency the instant they were created.
"The problem now is that the cultivation method itself still isn't good enough."
He sat cross-legged, straightened his posture, and pulled his thoughts back to the main matter. As the tribe's inherited beginner cultivation method, the Bluestone Blood-Transporting Method had the advantages of being simple and brutal, with a low threshold that anyone could handle.
But its shortcomings were plain to see as well: low efficiency, relying on external pounding to slowly grind away.
And over the years, it accumulated quite a few hidden injuries in the body.
Biao had a body like an iron tower, yet when Lin Yi touched his back and shoulder blades, he could feel a faint stiffness lurking in the gaps between his bones. That was the foundation left behind by years of smashing himself with bluestones.
The Savage Bull King's cultivation method, however, had shown him another path.
After completely comprehending the Divine Markings diagram, he had naturally figured out how the Savage Bull King cultivated. Its method was extremely simple: eat wildly, store up qi and blood, then let the Divine Markings circulate autonomously within the body day and night, endlessly washing the qi and blood it consumed through every muscle, tendon, and bone.
The entire body was like a furnace that never stopped running. Its own qi and blood served as the fire, tempering and refining itself day and night without any need for external pounding.
What Lin Yi needed to do now was graft and transform the Savage Bull's internal circulation system onto the framework of the Bluestone Blood-Transporting Method.
A clear blueprint had already formed in his mind: use the Savage Bull Diagram's markings inscribed within the body to create a permanent qi and blood circulation loop.
Instead of relying on external blows, it would allow qi and blood to flow spontaneously through the markings, day and night without rest, washing over the blood vessels, fascia, and bones to achieve the same tempering effect as bluestone pounding.
The vibrations of external pounding would give way to the internal tremors of qi and blood—higher efficiency, less wear, and fewer hidden injuries.
That way, he could completely cast off his reliance on external objects.
He would no longer need to carry a rock and smash it against himself every day. Anytime and anywhere, even while lying down asleep, the qi and blood circulation within his body would automatically temper his flesh.
And once the Divine Markings of the Savage Bull Diagram were activated to operate at full force, their enhancement effect would not diminish in the slightest.
It would kill two birds with one stone.
The more Lin Yi thought about it, the more feasible it seemed. His mind had already begun automatically breaking the task apart.
First, adapt the Savage Bull markings' circulation paths to the direction of human meridians; second, establish the activation conditions and sustaining rhythm for the autonomous qi and blood cycle; third, merge it with the existing mnemonic framework of the Bluestone Blood-Transporting Method, forming a complete and self-consistent cultivation system.
At his current pace of comprehension, he would need only around two days to complete the deduction.
The direction was there, the principles were clear. All that remained was repeated verification and fine-tuning. To the current him, those things were no longer difficult.
Once his thoughts were sorted out, Lin Yi's restless mind finally began to settle.
In his mind, he reviewed the outline of the new cultivation method 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 on his lips.
Once he developed the new cultivation method, it would not only be the Savage Bull Diagram that gave the tribe an offensive martial skill.
There would also be a more efficient, safer cultivation method that did not require smashing rocks against oneself every day. By then, would the people of the Bluestone Tribe rise to 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 a soft amused snort through his nose, and then fell into a deep sleep.
And on the beast hide atop the stone table, the Divine Markings gave off a faint dark gleam beneath the moonlight, as though they too were breathing quietly.
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