# CHAPTER 4: BLOODSTONE IN THE MARROW: THE AWAKENING > *"The blood is warm in the marrow of the bones, the wildness is rooted in the bones. The humiliation of the past suddenly turned into a fire that burned the heavens."* --- ### I. BLOODY GATE OF THE BONE PIER The sea wind roars like the howl of thousands of unjustly dead souls. Before Chu Ye's eyes, The Bone Pier appeared like a fortress made of bones and rotten ebony, towering across the only unique strait leading deep into the interior of The Savage Deadlands. Sharp wooden stakes up to three meters high were planted along the rocky reef, on each end of the stake was a dried human skull or the butchered bodies of fugitives as examples. Dried blood formed into black, fishy patches that rose under the poisonous purple mist. The turbid ocean waves crashed against the reef pillars, sending acrid salt water foam into Chu Ye's face. He stood behind a pile of broken wine barrels next to the broken wharf, his right hand clutching the Dog-Beater stick, his left hand holding the heavy iron crowbar. The wind that Old Guo wore on his body was blowing, revealing a chest full of wounds that were tightly bandaged with forest herbs. Thirty steps away from him, in the spacious stone yard in front of the rusty iron-covered wooden gate leading into the Barracks, a giant black shadow was sitting on a marble rock. That is **Dock Executioner Bone Remains**. He was a humanoid monster nearly two feet tall, his upper body was naked, revealing massive muscles as black as cold iron. Along both sides of his spine, gray bone spikes as sharp as shark fins sprouted. His face was covered by a rusty iron cage locked tightly around his neck, revealing only two red eyes that glowed with crazy bloodthirsty light. On both sides of his hands was a pair of **Double Palaces** made of obsidian weighing hundreds of pounds, with ax blades as big as doors, covered in human fat and steaming fresh blood. At his feet were the corpses of three exiles who had just been cut in half, their intestines scattered all over the stone courtyard. Every time he breathed, from the gaps in the iron cage on Executioner's face, streams of black smoke reeked of sulfur. He is the wall of despair on this coast. During the past three years, not a single exile has been able to step through the stone gate behind him with their lives intact! Chu Ye stared at Executioner's iron cage. He did not tremble, nor did he falter. His eyes just narrowed, observing every movement of that giant mass of meat. At this distance, he smelled an extremely special scent emanating from the nape of Executioner's neck: a rich, hot scent like burning embers at the bottom of the furnace, completely different from the rotting death air around him. At his third cervical vertebra, there was a bulging tumor the size of an adult's fist, rhythmically emitting crimson light through the cracked muscles. That is **Bloodstone**! The blood-soaked spinal stone Ancient Gods that Old Guo mentioned before he died! — "If you want to survive... you must get that stone!" Chu Ye let out a long, icy breath. He stepped out of the shadow of the pile of wine barrels and walked decisively into the empty stone field. --- ### II. ROAR OF STONE-BREAKING AXE & SAVAGE EVASION — *POP!* The sound of bare feet stepping on a pool of blood immediately alerted the giant. The iron cage above Executioner's head turned around. His bloodshot eyes locked onto Chu Ye's skinny body. He looked at the torn mat, at the ebony stick wrapped in animal tendons in his hand, then from his massive chest exploded a wild roar that shook the entire dock: — *NO G G G!* He stood up! The body, nearly two feet tall, stood tall like a black mountain, obscuring even the gloomy light of the purple sun. The pair of giants covered with black stone in his hands swung out, sweeping a storm that ripped through the mist! — *BAM! WHAM! WHAM!* Every step of Executioner makes the entire stone field shake. He rushed forward like an armored war vehicle, the right-hand giant swung down with a powerful blow, aiming straight at Chu Ye's head! The giant stone ax's blade had not yet touched the ground, but the force of wind carrying suffocating pressure forced Chu Ye's hair to fly back, sending sand and gravel under his feet flying everywhere! In that moment of life and death, Chu Ye did not raise his stick to block. He knew very well that fending off this thousand-pound blow with a piece of rotten firewood was tantamount to committing suicide! Right when the ax blade was only three hands away from the top of his head, Chu Ye suddenly bent down close to the ground, his right foot kicked hard into a crack in the stone slab, his whole body slid in a pool of blood like a catfish slithering through mud! This is the precursor of **Savage Dodge Roll** - the body crawling technique with an invisible moment of immortality that he created himself based on his instinct to survive in the dead! — *BAM M M!* The stone giant landed on the marble floor where Chu Ye had just stood. A deafening explosion rang out! The meter-thick stone slab was slashed and cracked into a deep trench several meters long, countless pieces of broken stone shot out like bullets, embedding into the surrounding wooden stakes! The extremely strong impact force caused Executioner's entire body to sag slightly for a moment. And Chu Ye appeared right on his left flank! — "Dog-Beater Broken Bones!" Chu Ye roared. He swung the iron crowbar in his left hand, using all his strength to smash straight into the giant's tree-like left ankle! — *KANG! CRACK!* The iron crowbar collided violently with Executioner's ankle bone, sending out dazzling sparks. A crisp cracking sound rang out, accompanied by a roar of pain that ripped through the monster's throat! A giant weighing hundreds of pounds, if one of his supporting legs is removed, his strength will be reduced by half! Executioner staggered to one knee on the stone floor. But the ferocity of the mutated monster immediately exploded: without even looking, the giant ax in his left hand swept across a bloodthirsty circle, ready to cut Chu Ye in half! --- ### III. COUNTER-KILL UPON THE MONSTER'S SKULL The second stone ax blade swept forward like a hurricane! Chu Ye didn't have time to dodge away. In a hair's breadth, the man jumped up high, stepping straight on the face of the sweeping stone ax blade, using the thrust of that slash to shoot up into the air! — *Swoosh!* The tip of the stone ax only grazed a piece of the shirt on his back. In the air, Chu Ye clearly saw a bright red crack in the third cervical vertebra on the back of Executioner's neck. The Bloodstone is pounding like a second heart, emitting boiling heat! — "Die for me!" Chu Ye fell freely, his legs clamped tightly on the iron cage above Executioner's head like a pair of pincers, his left hand dropped the crowbar, reached straight into his chest and pulled out **half a piece of broken ceramic bowl** covered in blood! Executioner roared madly, dropped his two giant armors, and his two hairy protective hands swung up to grab Chu Ye and tear him in half. But how can his hand be as fast as the desperate determination of a man who has already stepped one foot into death's door?! — *BANG!* Chu Ye held half a piece of ceramic bowl, plunging the sharp edge of the ceramic into the red flesh crack on the back of Executioner's neck! Black blood boiled like boiling oil and splashed onto his bare arm, burning his skin to the point of smoking. But Chu Ye never let go! He gritted his teeth, used both hands to grip the piece of ceramic, rotated it at an angle of three hundred and sixty degrees, and pried off the layer of cartilage and bone that protected the monster's cervical vertebrae! — "UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUY!" Executioner let out an earth-shattering scream. His giant body staggered forward, crashing into the iron-clad wooden gate of the dock, breaking a series of sharp wooden stakes. Chu Ye was hit hard against the wooden wall, his ribs broke with a cracking sound, and a mouthful of blood flowed out of the corner of his mouth. But the index and middle fingers of his right hand hooked deep into Executioner's spinal cord, reaching a block of rock as hard as jade, as hot as lava! — "OUT HERE!" Chu Ye mustered up the last bit of strength and pulled hard! — *WASH!* A dark red rock the size of a chicken egg was yanked out of Executioner's spine! Fresh blood from the back of the monster's neck erupted up to a height like a burst underground water vein. Losing the life-sustaining pill Bloodstone, the red light in Executioner's eyes immediately disappeared. The giant protector's body convulsed violently for a few times and then collapsed onto the stone floor like a collapsed citadel, stone dust and black blood flying in the air. --- ### IV. BLOODSTONE IN THE MARROW: HELLISH METAMORPHOSIS Chu Ye fell onto the rocks next to the monster's body. There was no intact part of his entire body: broken ribs, torn left shoulder, thirty-six Black Bone Needles marks on his body were throbbing with sharp pain as if they wanted to tear his soul apart. His vision was fading, the poisonous purple mist around him seemed to be about to swallow him into eternal sleep. But in the palm of his right hand, the **Primal Bloodstone** was still emitting fiery heat, vibrating like a living being. It is life. It is strength. It was his only chance to continue living! Remember Old Guo's words before he died: *"Inject it into an open wound... you will gain unparalleled power..."* Chu Ye did not hesitate one bit. He gritted his teeth and tremblingly brought the hot crimson stone to his chest. Aiming straight at the deepest wound — where a Black Bone Needles had just been shaken by an impact in front of its chest — Chu Ye used all his remaining strength, **smashing Bloodstone into the torn flesh!** — *SOOOO!* The sound of sizzling meat rising into burning white smoke! As soon as the Bloodstone pill came into contact with Chu Ye's blood, it immediately melted into streams of red lava, wriggling through his muscle fibers, penetrating straight into his spinal cord! — "A A A A A A!" A scream that tore through the wild night exploded from Chu Ye's chest! Painful! Ten thousand times more painful than the prison guards' whips! The pain was as if his entire skeleton had been crushed into powder and then re-formed with red fire! But in that excruciating pain, a miraculous and horrifying transformation took place: The blood flow of ancient beasts in Bloodstone was like a ferocious army pouring into the broken meridians of Chu Ye. Wherever that heat flow passed, the torn muscle fibers immediately closed their mouths, the broken bones creaking and reconnecting themselves! Most notably, the three Black Bone Needless stuck in his chest, under the burning of Bloodstone, were heated red, then slowly pushed back out of his skin, falling clangingly onto the marble floor! The pressure on Chu Ye's lungs suddenly disappeared. Instead, an unprecedented flow of savage, violent power flowed through all four limbs! His hair grew longer as far as the eye could see, black as a crow's wing. His eyes no longer had the tired look of a dying man, but glowed with a ferocious sunset red, as sharp as a blade that had just been tempered through thousands of layers of red fire! He has transformed! From a hungry beggar at the bottom of society, he officially stepped up the first evolutionary step of a predator: becoming a true **Poison Mud Bone Gleaner**! --- ### V. STEPPING INTO THE UNTAMED WILDS Chu Ye slowly stood up straight in the middle of the bloody battlefield. The sea breeze still burned his face, but now he no longer felt the bone-chilling cold. The hot blood in his chest was like a burning torch, dispelling all the harmful miasma around him. He bent down and picked up the Dog-Beater stick wrapped in animal tendons. After the battle with Executioner, the ebony log also seemed to be imbued with the beast's blood, becoming blacker and heavier. He bent down again and picked up half of the broken ceramic bowl - the first weapon that had accompanied him through life and death twice. The piece of ceramic is now coated with a layer of hard, dry plasma, sharp as an evil dagger. He carefully inserted it into the position right in the front of his shirt, where the Bloodstone was beating rhythmically with his heart. Chu Ye turned around and looked towards The Bone Pier's wooden iron gate. Executioner's impact broke the latch. The giant gate opened into a crack a foot wide, revealing a muddy trail leading deep into the purple mist ahead. From the other side of the gate, the putrid miasma of The Putrid Fens and the roars of all sorts of swamp monsters began to echo, signaling even greater dangers that awaited. But Chu Ye is not afraid. The smile on his lips was cold and arrogant: — "The bottom of the abyss of hunger and cold I have overcome... Let's see if this muddy place can hold Chu Ye or not!" He carried the stick Dog-Beater on his shoulder, strode boldly past the giant body of Executioner, straight through the bloody gate, entering Act II of his life in exile!