Final Rage
With slow, steady steps, Linfeng slowly approached the den of the enlightened Raging Bull. He needed to be extremely careful. Each individual step needed to be thought out and perfect. He couldn’t afford to step on a dry twig or to crunch fallen leaves beneath his soles.
The beast he was approaching wasn’t just an intelligent creature capable of cultivation. It was an old beast, as evidenced by its scarred hide and the markings on its horns, indicating that they had been broken and had regrown several times–Clearly not intentionally–As the amounts of such marks were uneven between the two of them…
Even if it was no longer challenged by anything else in the area. Even if it has grown confident and complacent… Even then, a single mistake would certainly be enough to wake it and provoke a head-on confrontation.
Linfeng doubted that he would be able to kill this specimen in an actual fight. At least not without suffering injury in the process.
The young cultivator controlled his breathing and decided to approach the beast from one of the narrower gaps in the wall of roots. He exhaled fully to reduce the size of his torso and squeezed through.
He remained deliberate in his actions and stopped for a few moments after getting through, analysing the slumbering beast… The reason why he decided against simply walking through the main entrance the bull had used was that he worried that it would be able to notice motion through its closed eyelids, much in the same way that one could ‘see’ light even when their eyes were closed.
Linfeng couldn’t afford to miss his shot. If he missed, the beast would be on its guard for weeks to come... If not even longer, and he couldn’t afford to miss out on this bull’s blood.
The Body-Building Pill was going to allow Linfeng to finally unlock Primordial Yang Emperor Physique. With this technique, he would be able to massively increase in strength and would open up the way for him to actually stand up to Anoteros and save Fingmi.
Thus, failing to acquire the best possible ingredient would be a huge loss and cost him time... And time was of the essence. The more time he could save, the less Fingmi would have to remain at the mercy of her captor.
He focused intently, the movements of his body slowing down to a crawl as he began breathing so quietly that it almost seemed like he had stopped doing so entirely.
He grasped the pointy root in his hand tightly as he neared the Raging Bull.
As he got close enough to touch the beast, he felt a sudden pulse in his chest.
‘What the…?’
Linfeng froze in place.
‘...Did it sense that as well…?’
He remained perfectly still for nearly thirty whole seconds before he silently let out the air he had been holding in his lungs. It seemed like the Raging Bull was none the wiser.
‘What was that, System? Is it bad news?’
Don’t worry, Linfeng. It was merely that a slight connection was established between you and the enlightened beast because of Raging Bull Punch. Your technique and the beast’s blood simply reacted to one another since it is so powerful, and your technique is without flaws
Think of it like a resonance of some sort
‘I see… But let’s be clear, the bull couldn’t sense this, right?’
It could have
‘Damn it… I almost got blown to pieces just now’
Luckily, it seemed like the pulse was subtle enough that it wasn’t noticeable to the sleeping bull.
Linfeng took a few moments to focus again and then took a few more steps. He had a clear shot on the side of the beast’s neck. One good hit, and he might not just puncture the jugular, but perhaps even sever vertebrae.
Whatever happened, he needed to make sure to strike with full force. The initial strike needed to be lethal or drastic enough that the bull wouldn’t be capable of fighting back, no matter what.
The cultivator took a stance, his gaze focused on the neck of his target. His muscles tensed up as he gathered the full extent of his strength…
One moment, there was only silence, and the next, Linfeng stabbed down with all of his strength. The root sank into the neck of the beast, stabbing through but coming to a sudden halt once it struck the bones inside. The root snapped in Linfeng’s hands, but the damage was already done.
The effect was immediate and violent. The Raging Bull rose immediately, thrashing around wildly without allowing Linfeng to properly react. With a sudden motion, the bull’s right shoulder tackled into Linfeng’s chest, and despite the motion lacking width or momentum, it felt as though the cultivator had just been hit by a cannonball straight to the chest.
The wind was knocked out of him, and he was sent flying straight through one of the thick roots and into another three.
He coughed uncontrollably, and with it came a concerning amount of blood.
Linfeng nearly thought that he had been damaged internally severely enough to cause this, but amongst the blood, he found a piece of his very own tongue. The shock had made him unknowingly bite down on it, and the pain radiating from his chest and spine was so great that he didn’t even feel it.
He pushed himself to his feet with a stumble, using the tree he had smashed into as support.
This had put him in a bad state, but the bull had it far worse.
It was still thrashing uncontrollably.
Right now, it was outside of its resting area, drowning in its own blood as it flailed around without any clear goal.
Its agony lasted more than ten minutes, but eventually, unable to do anything, it collapsed to the ground. Unmoving.
By then, Linfeng had wrapped around the bloody spectacle and received quick healing from Yen'mila. He would definitely have to take a few days to rest again... He might have sustained actual internal damage from this ordeal. Even without meaning to, the bull had managed to hit him exceptionally hard.
He didn’t dare to imagine how he would have ended up if that shoulder bash had been intended as an actual attack instead of an accidental bump.
‘What a powerful creature…’
Linfeng had thought himself pretty good in terms of strength, but his confrontation with the imitator and now this Raging Bull demonstrated quite clearly that there were still many things that could make him look like the wretch he used to be.
Yen'mila summoned plants to drain the blood of the bull. Sensing the forest coming to life following the demise of the owner of this territory, the trio retreated swiftly before they had to face anything, leaving the husk of the Raging Bull behind.