The bull’s hoof smashed into Shao’s iron staff with cataclysmic force, causing the staff to push against Shao’s right shoulder, both arms, and abdomen. The force of the ki-enforced strike bent the iron staff and launched Shao several dozen cun away from the bull.

If the bull’s kick had struck his body, the blow would have dealt a lethal wound. As it was, Shao used the fraction of a second afforded to him by the speed of the attack to sacrifice the iron staff in order to protect his fragile body. The greater surface area of the iron staff allowed Shao to escape from the attack with little more than minor bruises across his body.

Shao rolled once on the ground before sliding back onto his feet. The iron staff broke into two jagged pieces as it crashed into the ground a few cun to his left. Shao did not allow himself to come to a complete stop, since he knew that doing so would leave him vulnerable to another one of the bull’s ki-projection attacks.

He transferred the momentum of his transit through the air into a wide semicircle as he turned back toward the brown bull. Once more, Shao approached the bull diagonally in an effort to stay away from its horns. Luckily for Shao, the bull’s size slowed it considerably, and it couldn’t turn its body fast enough to keep its horns interposed between Shao and its vulnerable flank.

As Shao ran, a smile appeared on his face. Something deep within his body was immensely gratified by the frantic resistance of the powerful opponent standing against him. Striking, blocking, parrying. It just felt… right… to Shao. It was like an art form that he expressed with his body. When Shao blocked the brown bull’s kick with the iron staff, he felt like he was painting a beautiful portrait on a pure-white canvas.

Shao reached the bull’s exposed flank. This time, however, he did not stop to launch an attack. Instead, he used his momentum to launch his body forward and cling to the bull’s back. Confusion and anger could be heard in the bull’s high-pitched bellow as it threw its blood-soaked head back in an attempt to see its attacker.

He tried not to think about the bull’s terrible smell as he unsheathed Bolin’s steel dagger from its scabbard. Now mounting the gargantuan bull, Shao realized that it could not keep its entire body in its sight at any one time. If it looked to the right, it could not see its left flank and vice-versa.

The bull bucked with such force that Shao was just barely able to hold on by clinging hard to the creature’s back with three of his limbs. At that moment when all of the bull’s hooves had left the ground, Shao took his knife and stabbed hard into the bull’s side. The bull screamed in pain as the knife pierced the vulnerable flesh between its ribs.

Shao began to scream in response to the bull’s animalistic screech. He had completely forgotten that Shen Jian was watching him fight. All that existed for Shao in that moment was his battle with the brown bull.

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The steel blade twisted as Shao altered his grip on the bull’s back. The dagger only shifted slightly before it completely locked in place. Shao took a second to test the dagger and found that he could not move it at all. He couldn’t twist it, push it in further, or pull it out. The bull’s ki-enhanced flesh kept the blade stuck in place.

The screaming bull threw its head to the right to get a better view on the object that had penetrated its hide. Using this opportunity, Shao formed his other hand into a claw and raked at the bull’s flank on the opposite side. Several deep troughs of ragged flesh formed in the bull’s side as Shao’s fingers dug viciously into its flesh. As the blow to the bull’s left side connected, the force holding Shao’s knife in place weakened, allowing him to tear more deeply into that side.

Shao’s wordless scream turned into manic laughter as he mercilessly continued his assault. He simply alternated his attacks one-after-another, and he never struck ki-enhanced flesh. Like that, Shao transformed predator into prey and brought low the divine bull.

After nearly a dozen of these alternating attacks, Shao’s attack penetrated deep into the bull’s chest cavity. He felt his fist connect with some ragged flesh deep within the creature’s body. He grasped this flesh and pulled fiercely, causing a low groan to escape from the bull’s mouth. The bull slowly wobbled on its hooves before it toppled over and crashed to the ground.

Shao rolled off the toppling bull and quickly sprang back to his feet. He looked down at his hand holding that clump of flesh. Grasped in his hand, Shao held a ragged clump of the bull’s heart. The remains of the organ flowed with power, and he felt the ki emanating off the heart like waves crashing on a beach.

Suddenly, Shao’s instincts began to shout one word at him. The instinct to kill he had been following ever since the fight began informed him of the next course of action, and the adrenaline running through Shao’s mind made him follow this command.

Eat.

Without hesitation, Shao forced the ragged meat he held in his hand into his open mouth. The bull’s heart was large, so even that portion of the heart completely filled Shao’s mouth. Despite this, he had no problem chewing and consuming the heart. It was as if a powerful hunger that he wasn’t even aware of had overtaken his body.

Just as this strange compulsion left Shao’s body and all that remained was the taste of rotting meat in his mouth, a pulse of energy suddenly began to flow through him. Something popped in his ears, and he suddenly felt like he could hear the chittering of the birds in the forest several li away.

Another compulsion gripped his body, guiding his body through a set of movements. Shao rose up onto his hind leg, then he crashed down onto his foreleg, bringing his head low to the ground. He brought his momentum forward just like the brown bull did before. Instead of using horns, however, Shao struck forward with his two arms, one fist pointed downward and the other pointed upward. Just as Shao’s fists reached the end of their arc, a powerful torrent of invisible energy was projected forward, digging a deep trough in the ground. The torrent of energy traveled for nearly a hundred cun, uprooting trees and destroying rocks as it traveled.

“What was that?” Shao asked himself a moment before darkness overtook his consciousness and he fell to the ground.