Herd of Barbaric Bulls

Everyone lowered their bodies in unison, their backs bending into taut bows as they followed Biao forward with slow, silent coordination.

Lin Yi copied them convincingly, landing on his toes first and heels second, keeping every step as quiet as possible. He deliberately slowed his breathing as well, utterly unlike the panting from his hour-long run earlier.

The shrubs ahead grew denser and denser, their branches and leaves brushing against the Hunting Team members' beast-hide armor with faint rustling sounds.

At the front, Biao pushed aside a clump of broad-leaved grass half a man tall. He froze, then slowly raised one hand to signal those behind him to stop.

Lin Yi poked his head through the gap between two clansmen and followed Biao's gaze.

Ahead lay a relatively open stretch of riverbank, flat and covered with pebbles and sand worn smooth by countless trampling hooves.

A narrow stream wound past one side, its waters murmuring softly. In the middle of the riverbank, more than a dozen massive beasts were leisurely lowering their heads to chew the grass and aquatic plants beside the stream.

There were eleven Savage Bulls.

Every single one made Lin Yi's pupils contract.

They were more than twice the size of the bison he had seen in the modern world, their shoulders nearly the height of a man. Thick grayish-brown hides wrapped their bodies like rough armor, and hard bony plates rose high over their shoulder blades, glinting with a bluish-gray sheen like stone.

A pair of spiral horns extended diagonally from each head, as thick as an adult's arm. Their tips gleamed with a cold, dark light beneath the sunlight filtering through the canopy.

Their four pillar-like legs were planted firmly in the earth. Every step left deep hoofprints in the damp soil.

"Not bad luck." Biao kept his voice extremely low, but he could not suppress the excitement in his tone. "You don't often run into a Savage Bull herd."

Lin Yi stared intently at the largest Savage Bull.

It was a full size larger than the rest of its kind. Its shoulder armor was darker and more sharply edged, while the patterns on its spiral horns were much denser.

Unlike the other Savage Bulls, which had their heads buried in the grass, it stood some distance from the herd with its head slightly raised. Its dark yellow eyes slowly swept the surroundings, as though keeping watch for something.

Biao turned his head and explained quietly to Lin Yi, "Savage Bulls have powerful bodies. They may not possess any Divine Abilities, but when they go mad and charge, even those in the Second Blood-Qi Realm have to avoid their edge.

"It's your first time encountering them, so be careful later. Don't get too close."

Lin Yi nodded, engraving those words firmly in his mind.

"Eleven." Biao's gaze swept over the herd one by one before he swiftly made arrangements. "I'll deal with the biggest one. Each of you hold back one of the others. The archers will shoot from the rear. Clear them out quickly, then concentrate our firepower and help me."

Biao's orders were crisp and decisive, but Lin Yi blinked twice after hearing them, a huge question mark rising in his mind.

Normally, shouldn't they lure one out first, gang up on it, kill it, then lure out the second one and repeat the process?

The hunting scenes he had seen before always followed that pattern. A group of hunters would carefully arrange traps and bait, gradually splitting up the prey herd...

But what Biao meant was—charge straight in?

Lin Yi could not help asking in a low voice, "Brother Biao, we... aren't going to lure them out and kill them one by one?"

Biao glanced back at him, his expression carrying the straightforward bluntness unique to men of the Great Wilderness.

"Savage Bulls are only the lowest-grade Ferocious Beasts. Once grown, they only have around fifty thousand jin of strength. Our Hunting Team is at least in the Tide-Chasing Realm. We have the advantage in numbers too. You really want to waste that effort luring them out one at a time?"

Biao grinned. "A quick battle, a quick decision. Take down this herd of Savage Bulls, and the tribe will have enough meat for many days. Drag it out too long, and the night will grow long and dreams will multiply."

Lin Yi paused for a moment, then understood.

That was right. Savage Bulls were only the lowest-grade Ferocious Beasts. At most, they possessed fifty thousand jin of strength, equivalent to the strength level of Blood-Qi Tidal Surge.

Other than him, everyone in the Hunting Team had at least entered the Tidal Surge Realm, while Biao himself was a formidable Mountain-Sinking Realm expert with eighty thousand jin of strength.

Eleven Savage Bulls against thirteen people and two archers at range—they held the advantage in both numbers and strength. There truly was no need for any fancy, roundabout tactics.

Just do it.

"I understand, Brother Biao." Lin Yi tightened his grip on his spear. "Just do it."

Satisfied, Biao patted his shoulder. He turned around, his voice sinking. "Brothers, quietly get closer. Once we're around a hundred meters nearer, move the moment you hear my command."

No one spoke again.

Thirteen figures lowered their centers of gravity at once. Like a pack of leopards moving close to the ground, they silently approached the Savage Bull herd under the cover of grass and rocks.

Following behind Biao, Lin Yi could hear his own heart pounding heavily in his chest. The blood-qi throughout his body gradually began circulating faster, and his fingertips and soles grew faintly warm.

The distance slowly closed. Two hundred meters. One hundred fifty meters. One hundred meters.

Biao abruptly drew the broad-backed saber from his back, its blade cutting an arc of icy light through the mottled sunlight.

His legs suddenly exerted force, and his entire body shot forward like a cannonball. A shallow pit was stamped into the ground beneath him as pebbles scattered in all directions.

"Kill—!"

With a thunderous roar, he leaped high into the air, raising his saber above his head with both hands before chopping down at the largest Savage Bull!

Almost at the same time, the other clansmen sprang into motion. Their roars merged into one as they charged the Savage Bull herd from every direction.

Some gripped stone axes, some leveled bone spears, while the two archers in the rear had already drawn their bowstrings to the full. Arrows tore through the air.

Lin Yi moved as well.

He lacked Biao's explosive power that let him soar into the sky, and he lacked the natural charging rhythm of an experienced hunter. But he poured all his blood-qi into his legs. One step carried him two or three zhang forward, his spear leveled and its tip aimed straight ahead.

A clansman beside him charged in perfect coordination at his side. Their gazes met for an instant, and they simultaneously locked onto a relatively smaller Savage Bull on the flank.

The Savage Bull herd erupted into chaos under the sudden attack.

Several bulls spun around frantically in place, their hooves digging up mud and stones as they let out frightened, low moos.

But just as the panic was about to spread—

A deep, powerful bellow suddenly rang out.

It came from the largest Savage Bull.

It raised its head and let out a long moo, its voice carrying an undeniable authority.

Miraculously, the restless herd swiftly calmed after hearing that bellow. The Savage Bulls that had scattered in panic gathered again, turned around, lowered their spiral horns, and roared deeply at the hunters charging toward them!

Biao's saber had already descended.

Clang—!

A deafening crash of metal against metal exploded.

The broad-backed saber struck viciously against the largest Savage Bull's spiral horn, scattering a shower of dark red sparks.

Biao pressed down with the force of his descent, yet the Savage Bull's neck merely dipped slightly. Its four hooves remained nailed to the ground without budging, plowing four deep trenches through the soil.

Biao's pupils suddenly shrank.

Something was wrong.

He had used eighty percent of his strength in that strike. By all reason, an ordinary Savage Bull should have been sent staggering backward even if it was not chopped down.

Yet this beast's hooves were steadier than old tree roots. Its horns had received his full-powered strike, and not even the tips had cracked in the slightest.

A numbing shock ran through Biao's tiger's mouth. The instant he landed, he took half a step back to steady himself, then stared fixedly at the massive creature before him.

The dark yellow eyes of the Savage Bull no longer held the blank indifference of livestock. In its place was a cold, intelligent ferocity.

Beneath its shoulder armor, faint dark-cyan patterns emerged over its rough grayish-brown hide. It was as though something ancient had been awakened from the depths of its flesh and blood, slowly flowing out from beneath its skin layer by layer, giving off a faint and eerie glow.

Alarm bells blared in Biao's heart.

Ordinary Savage Bulls barely possessed intelligence, much less the discipline to settle the herd in perfect order with a single command.

The only explanation was that the leading Savage Bull was no ordinary creature.

"An aberrant breed with a Bloodline Divine Ability..."

Biao forced out those words through clenched teeth.

Ordinary Ferocious Beasts had no ability to awaken their bloodlines. Only creatures whose ancestors had once produced high-grade exotic beasts, leaving behind a trace of ancient inheritance in their blood, could possibly activate a Bloodline Divine Ability.

Among their own kind, such aberrant breeds were often born kings, their strength and intelligence far surpassing their peers.

The strength of this Savage Bull King before him was actually enough to contend head-on with him, a Mountain-Sinking Realm expert.

At that moment, Lin Yi in the distance also sensed that something was wrong.

He was currently entangled with the smaller Savage Bull alongside a clansman. Several thrusts of his spear had bounced off the bull's thick hide, leaving only faint white marks.

Hearing the Savage Bull King's roar and the metallic collision from Biao's saber strike, Lin Yi glanced over from the corner of his eye and happened to see the dark-cyan patterns emerging from the Savage Bull King's skin.

The patterns flickered beneath the sunlight, brightening and dimming like living things slowly breathing.

Something was wrong. Far too wrong.

"Don't worry about me first!" Biao's roar drowned out every other sound on the battlefield.

"Clear out the other Savage Bulls first! End this quickly!"

Lin Yi gritted his teeth and withdrew his gaze. He exchanged a look with the clansman, and both of them intensified their assault at the same time.

The clansman sidestepped to the Savage Bull's flank, swung his stone axe in a full arc, and smashed it into the bend of the bull's knee. The beast staggered in pain.

Lin Yi seized that fleeting opening. The blood-qi in his entire body erupted, all twenty thousand jin of strength pouring into his arms as his spear shot out like a gray-black bolt of lightning.

Pfft.

The bone spearhead accurately pierced the Savage Bull's wide-open left eye, penetrating through its socket and into its skull.

The Savage Bull let out a short, shrill cry. Its enormous body convulsed violently twice before crashing to the ground, splashing mud and water everywhere.

"Go!" Lin Yi and the clansman did not pause for even a moment. Pulling out the spear, they turned and charged toward the nearest group of clansmen. Three against one, four against one—they swiftly picked away at the remaining ordinary Savage Bulls.

Supported by the power of Initial Blood Resonance, every thrust Lin Yi made was several times more precise and fierce than before.

The spear was no longer a clumsy wooden pole in his hands. It had become a nimble extension of his limbs. Working together with Old Zhao's restraining and blocking, their hunting speed was astonishing.

One. Two. Three.

In less than a quarter of an hour, all ten ordinary Savage Bulls had fallen across the riverbank.

Their huge grayish-brown bodies lay scattered everywhere. Puddles in the muddy ground had been dyed dark brown by crimson bull's blood, and the air was thick with a suffocating stench of blood.

Eleven people converged from all directions, completely surrounding the Savage Bull King whose Divine Markings were shining across its body.

The Savage Bull King breathed heavily and slowly, two streams of white mist spraying from its nostrils.

Its four hooves scraped faintly against the ground. The tips of its spiral horns pointed toward Biao, and while the ferocity in its dark yellow eyes had not faded, it had clearly lost its earlier composure.

The glow of the Divine Markings grew increasingly brilliant, spreading from its shoulders across its back and ribs, like an ancient totem rising from the depths of its flesh and blood.

Everyone tightened their grips on their weapons, adjusted their breathing, and searched for an opportunity to strike.

Yet Lin Yi, standing at the outer edge of the crowd, kept his eyes fixed on the dark-cyan patterns pulsing across the Savage Bull King's body.

In those few breaths, his Super Brain entered a state of near-instinctive high-speed operation. The direction, turns, and nodes of those patterns—every detail—were infinitely magnified before his eyes.

He vaguely sensed that those patterns were not random markings on its hide. They had rules, structure. Every line resembled a fragment left behind after some older, vaster pattern had been broken apart.

The Savage Bull King's explosive increase in strength, its enhanced body, and its abnormal ability to clash head-on with Biao without falling behind all stemmed from those patterns.

Lin Yi's heart suddenly thumped.

His gaze traced the main branches of those markings while his mind simultaneously constructed their complete outline, attempting to piece them together. But too much information was missing. He could only record them exactly as they were, with no time to decipher their meaning.

Even so, the instinctive intuition within him hammered madly at his consciousness. This is an opportunity.

What lay hidden behind those patterns might run deeper than anything he had seen in this tribe.

Lin Yi's eyes remained glued to the Savage Bull King. His eyes grew faintly red from concentration as his brain completely recorded each dark-cyan pattern, inch by inch and line by line, storing them in his mind.

In the brief silence on the battlefield, the Savage Bull King suddenly lowered its head, its horns pointing forward.

Biao held his saber horizontally before his chest and bared a fierce grin. "Brothers, slaughter it."

In Lin Yi's mind, the final pattern was recorded and fixed in place.

The Savage Bull King roared and charged forward, its hoofbeats like thunder as the earth trembled.

Lin Yi came back to himself, tightened his grip on his spear, and stepped forward after it.