The earth did not tremble; it roared. A deep, tectonic song that vibrated not through the air, but through the very substance of the world. It was a rhythm of annihilation, written in hooves.
The Tyrant Ox was coming.
Lin Chen felt its approach not in his ears, but in his bones—in the very marrow now imprinted with the legacy of Wu Tian. The tattoo on his palm flared, a brand of white-hot purpose. Behind his ribs, the ember beat a primal counter-rhythm, a war drum answering the challenge.
The legion of undead Guardians, moments from overwhelming him, froze as one. Their advance halted, their skulls turned in unison toward the horizon, the black fire in their sockets flickering with something akin to dread.
Then, the sand surrendered. The crimson dunes rippled, then erupted as the earth beneath them split apart.
---
THE TYRANT OX
It was not a beast. It was a walking cataclysm.
Fifty feet of living, molten iron muscle towered against the bruised sky. Its horns were not mere bone, but crescents of captured lightning, arcing with crimson energy. Each step was a localized earthquake, cracking the Fleshlands like a dropped plate. Each exhale was a gale from a celestial forge, scouring the land with heat.
And its eyes—pools of molten gold, mirrors of Lin Chen's own—found him instantly. There was no animal rage in that gaze, only a vast, ancient recognition. It knew the scent of the First Flame. It had come to extinguish it.
---
The Guardians moved first, a tide of bone and black iron. Ten thousand chains lashed through the air, a symphony of shrieking metal. Spears of condensed shadow flew. Waves of corrosive Qi crashed against the Ox's hide.
It was like throwing pebbles at a mountain.
The Ox lowered its head and charged.
The sound was the end of the world. The front line of Guardians simply ceased to be, ground into a cloud of phosphorescent bone-dust. Chains meant to bind gods melted into slag, dripping from its shoulders like tears of iron.
Lin Chen did not wait. Valkyrie's Requiem materialized in his right hand, the greatsword humming with blue-white anticipation. Serpent's Embrace coiled around his left arm, a restless, silver serpent.
He leapt, a flicker of dark motion against the beast's colossal form, landing on the plateau of its back. The Ox's roar this time was a physical weapon; the pressure wave burst Lin Chen's eardrums, and blood trickled from his ears. He ignored it, the pain a distant echo.
He drove the greatsword down with all his strength.
The tip bit—a single, defiant inch into the beast's spine. It was like trying to pierce the heart of a continent.
The Ox bucked, a motion that tossed Lin Chen through the air like a leaf. He crashed into a dune, the impact driving the air from his lungs and painting the sand with his blood.
---
From the valley's edge, Abbot Tie Shan watched, his face the colour of ash. "The Array!" he bellowed, his voice cracking. "Now!"
The surviving living monks formed a desperate circle, palms slamming into the earth in unison. Across the valley floor, ancient runes ignited, bleeding a malevolent red light into the sand. The Ironbone Array—a prison of spirit and force—awoke.
Chains of pure, solidified Qi erupted, coiling around the Tyrant Ox's legs, anchoring it to the earth. The beast strained, muscles bunching like mountains, and for three heartbeats, the chains held.
Then, with a sound like a dying star, the array shattered. The backlash threw the monks through the air like broken dolls. Tie Shan's arm snapped with an audible crunch.
Lin Chen pushed himself to his feet. His body was a tapestry of pain—cracked ribs, a leg that screamed with every shift of weight.
But his eyes held the steady, terrifying burn of a supernova.
---
THE FIRST FLAME MANTRA: SECOND STAGE
Stage 2: Bone Forging
Draw the essence of the mighty into the marrow.
Temper the skeleton in the crucible of conflict.
Awaken the Bone Flame.
He sat. Cross-legged in the churned, bloody sand, as the Tyrant Ox turned its world-ending gaze upon him. The beast lowered its head for the final charge.
Lin Chen breathed.
The ember in his chest swelled, becoming a miniature sun. It did not draw in the ambient Qi, but the very essence of the Ox itself—its violent, untamed life force, the fury of its charge. This cataclysmic energy flooded his meridians and screamed into his bones.
His skeleton ignited.
A white, silent fire erupted from his pores. Beneath his skin, his bones became a glowing latticework, every crack and fissure seared shut, reforged in a heartbeat. The Ox's hoof, capable of flattening a fortress, came down.
Lin Chen's hand rose. A single, open palm met the descending doom.
The earth for fifty feet around cratered downward, but Lin Chen did not move. He did not flinch. His bones, once mortal, now rang with the resonance of dragonbone and star-iron.
The Tyrant Ox's golden eyes widened in primal confusion.
Lin Chen's grin was a flash of white in the settling dust.
"My turn."
---
He did not punch with muscle, but with legacy. The Bone Fang tattoo blazed, and a ten-foot-tall phantom of Wu Tian materialized behind him—a specter of primordial strength, clad in bone armor, its gaze as old as time. The ancestor's fist moved in perfect unison with the heir's.
The impact was not a sound, but an event. The Tyrant Ox's jaw, a slab of enchanted bone, exploded into a thousand fragments.
The beast staggered, a mountain brought to its knees.
Lin Chen was a blur. He leapt, landing upon its monstrous head, his fingers finding purchase in the base of one lightning-wreathed horn. With a roar that tore from a place deeper than his lungs, he ripped it free.
The horn, three feet of condensed power, became his spear.
He drove it down, through the golden, comprehending eye, and into the ancient brain behind it.
The Tyrant Ox's final roar was a sigh that shook the heavens. Then, the cataclysm fell, and the earth accepted its weight with a groan that seemed to last forever.
Silence. Dust settled like a shroud.
Lin Chen stood upon the corpse, the horn-spear in his hand dripping ichor that burned like liquid sun. The Guardians of the Valley knelt, their black fires guttering out in submission. The monks could only stare.
Abbot Tie Shan, cradling his broken arm, breathed a single, shattered word:
"Godslayer."
---
He took his tribute from the fallen titan. The Heart Essence, a crimson crystal that pulsed with a captive thunderstorm. The Marrow, liquid fire siphoned from the remaining horn. The Hide, tougher than tempered steel, was forged by his will into a chestplate and greaves.
And the Blood—he drank it. It was a river of fire down his throat, a purging, painful inferno that scoured his wounds and sealed them with threads of light. His ribs knitted, his leg straightened. The Bone Flame within his marrow settled, a steady, eternal forge.
Bone Forging: Complete.
He stood at the absolute peak of the Tempering Realm, the threshold to the Meridian Realm a palpable pressure before him. But the path was not yet clear.
---
Then, the sky broke. Not with storm, but with revelation. A pillar of golden light descended, covered in scripts so ancient they predated language. This was the Ascension Pathway, a relic from a time before the Veil.
It hovered above the Ox's corpse, and it spoke to him not in words, but in a memory-vision:
Wu Tian, the Ancestor, standing where Lin Chen now stood, victorious over the same Ox. The same Gate opening. A single, defiant step through… and then the shattering. The sealing of the Veil. The end of ascent.
The vision faded. The Gate before him was cracked, decaying, its light flickering. It was a dying door.
Abbot Tie Shan knelt. "Take it," he implored. "The monastery is yours. Lead us."
Lin Chen looked from the abbot's desperate face to the crumbling Gate. He shook his head, a final, quiet severance.
"Not yet."
He reached out and touched the glowing script. The Heavenly Curse Mark on his chest flared in agonizing protest, a black brand against the golden light. The Gate shuddered, and for a heartbeat, a crack widened just enough.
Lin Chen stepped through.
---
THE FLOWING EAST
The world dissolved into liquid light and reforming sensation. He emerged not in sand, but in water. The air, once thick with dust and blood, was now clean and heavy with the scent of lotus and fertile earth.
The Flowing East Continent.
Qi flowed in visible streams here, ribbons of liquid starlight weaving through the air. In the distance, pagodas and palaces floated serenely upon vast, placid waters. A farmer, knee-deep in a rice paddy, stared, his mouth agape.
A little girl pointed a trembling finger, her voice a shrill arrow in the tranquility.
"Monster!"
Lin Chen stood, dripping Tyrant Ox blood, the horn-spear casting a long shadow. He looked at his reflection in the water—a boy clad in the hide of a god, eyes of burning gold.
He smiled, a quiet, dangerous thing.
"No,"he said, his voice the only rough edge in this polished world. "I'm just getting started."
---
As the words left his lips, the Heavenly Curse Mark on his chest writhed. Black, thorny veins crawled up his neck, a vicious tattoo of divine condemnation. A voice, colder than the void between stars, ancient and utterly devoid of mercy, whispered directly into his soul:
"THE FIRST FLAME HAS CROSSED REALMS.
THE HUNTERS AWAKEN.
YOUR HEART WILL BE OUR VESSEL."
Behind him, with the sound of a million breaking promises, the Ascension Gate shattered into motes of dying light.
There was no way back.
Only the path forward, into a world of water, and the hunters who swam within it.
---