That grand internal struggle between humanity and demonic nature lasted exactly 0.1 seconds inside Mo Fan's head.
Then he lowered his head and laughed—low and sudden, utterly out of place amid the blood and scorched earth of the ruins.
The laugh started suppressed. Then it opened up, spreading into something unrestrained.
Edged with sharp, biting mockery directed entirely at himself.
"Mo Fan, oh Mo Fan, you really are something pathetic."
He shook his head.
The last trace of Earth's shackles in his eyes shattered with that cold laugh, crumbling to dust.
"In a cultivation world that chews people up and spits out their bones... I've already dismantled more corpses than I can count just to survive and get stronger."
"And now, faced with the remnant soul of an old demonic cultivator who murdered without blinking and fed on the blood of mortals—I'm actually standing here wringing my hands with misplaced compassion like some kind of saint?"
"A rotten life that even the Heavenly Dao ignores—what exactly am I afraid to take?!"
Mo Fan stepped forward.
The uncertain flicker in his eyes—shifting between light and shadow—settled into something absolute. Cold as ice ten thousand years old.
He raised his scarred right hand, fingers curling into a claw, and aimed without hesitation at the highly condensed, luminous mass of soul-energy drifting in the air above Miasma Dust's corpse.
"Your soul. I'll be taking it."
[ Undead Sovereign · Devour! ]
BOOM——!!!
At the System's deep-level command, that mercury-dark, gloom-blue remnant soul convulsed violently inside [ Death Vision ].
Releasing a soundless, miserable shriek that only souls could hear!
Then it transformed into an extremely berserk gloom-blue torrent.
Like an angry dragon that had completely lost control, it crashed heavily and ruthlessly into Mo Fan's mind with zero cushioning!
"URGHHHHH——!!!"
Mo Fan's knees buckled.
He hit the blood-soaked, muddy rubble with a heavy thud, all dignity gone.
The sensation of siphoning this time was entirely different from absorbing the remnant souls of low-tier beasts. It was worlds apart.
If a Tier-1 beast soul was a cool, clear stream trickling through a forest—refreshing, gentle...
Then this massive remnant soul belonging to a peak Foundation Establishment cultivator was a dam-breaking flood that washed away everything in its path!
Transcendent soul elevation and the terrifying tearing sensation of being forcibly, brutally expanded...
They detonated inside his skull simultaneously, at their most extreme.
Mo Fan clutched his head with both hands—fingers digging deep into his scalp—every muscle in his body convulsing in a seizure of agony and ecstasy.
His vision went blood-red.
The System Panel on his retina looked as if it had been hit by the worst virus imaginable, flashing frantically out of control.
Popping out a long cascade of heart-stopping red gibberish.
And behind that chaos, his core attributes were undergoing an unprecedentedly wild surge.
[ Soul Strength (CPU): 150 ➜ 155 ➜ 162... ]
Every jump of the number came with the inhuman torture of his cerebral cortex being rawly torn apart and rebuilt from scratch.
Mo Fan clenched his teeth until they ground together, a low, animal growl forcing its way out of his throat...
He forcefully endured this limit-pushing experience of having his mind widened beyond its capacity.
However— Just as the scouring of this massive energy reached its peak, an anomaly occurred.
Hum!
His consciousness lurched.
He felt himself failing to completely digest this energy; instead, he was being pulled backward by a force, plunging into a bizarre, fractured world of images.
It turned out that during the process of a human cultivator's soul being forcefully ground up and absorbed by the Necromancer System...
Memory fragments were inevitably left behind and force-fed directly into Mo Fan's brain.
It was like watching a cinematic life-flashing montage sped up ten times, with incomplete frames.
Jagged, disjointed images strobed forcefully through his mind one after another.
He saw Miasma Dust from a hundred years ago.
At that time, Miasma Dust was a high-spirited half-step Golden Core cultivator.
But at the critical moment of his breakthrough, he was pierced through the heart from behind by his most trusted junior brother.
His foundation was entirely destroyed, his Golden Core shattered.
The image cut.
A blood-covered Miasma Dust, fleeing south like a stray dog running for its life—evading pursuit, until he finally plunged headfirst into these barren mountains at the edge of Azure Cloud Sect's territory.
Immediately following was the most crucial scene.
Gravely wounded and nearly dead, hiding deep underground in what would become Linshui Village...
Miasma Dust had accidentally touched a broken array formation covered in ancient restrictions and radiating eerie gloom-light.
The hallucinatory array runes spilling from that stone tablet had miraculously preserved his last breath.
Over the century that followed, he usurped the nest.
Based on this incomplete array, he established Linshui Village using the flesh and blood of mortals, turning this place into a perfect hunting trap.
He crouched in the center of his web like a spider, using various bounties to trick greedy low-tier cultivators into coming.
Converting them into blood-food to rebuild his foundation.
And amidst this chaotic, nauseatingly sinful memory...
Mo Fan abruptly caught an extremely crucial, hair-raising clue!
In Miasma Dust's memory fragments, that underground ruin he relied on for survival—the one he'd used to set up the hallucinatory grand array...
Was absolutely not the entirety of it!
Those array formations capable of affecting human cognition and minds were merely the tip of the iceberg!
They seemed to be merely a part of some extremely massive, ancient, magnificent structure buried deep underground for who knows how many epochs!
Miasma Dust's century of research and utilization hadn't even scratched the surface of that ruin.
Mo Fan's heart clenched abruptly. He wanted to search for more details in Miasma Dust's memories.
But unfortunately, the cinematic montage ended abruptly there.
The personal consciousness within that cluster of remnant soul was completely wiped clean and ground up, turning into the purest soul nourishment.
The tide finally receded.
Huff... huff...
Mo Fan snapped his eyes open.
Slumping in the muddy ruins, sweating profusely, he gasped heavily for air like someone just fished out after drowning in the deep sea.
On his retina, the frantically jumping System Panel finally stabilized.
Mo Fan glanced at that finalized ultimate number. Even though he was mentally prepared, he still couldn't help but suck in a breath of cold air.
[ Soul Strength (CPU): 170 ]
A full 170 points!
When he'd broken through to Tier-2, the System's compensation and upgrade bonus had pushed him to 150.
Merely absorbing the remnant soul of this single peak Foundation Establishment old monster had forcefully boosted it by 20 points!
"High risk, high reward."
Mo Fan rubbed his still somewhat swollen temples and stood up.
"Although my brain almost burst from being overstuffed, this wave was a massive win."
With the feast on the soul level wiped clean, the physical loot, naturally, could absolutely not be let go by a scavenger with professional integrity.
Mo Fan walked to old monster Miasma Dust's completely shriveled, lifeless corpse...
He squatted down unceremoniously, and yanked off the storage bag embroidered with dark red cloud patterns at the opponent's waist.
"The entire net worth of a peak Foundation Establishment cultivator; I hope you don't disappoint me."
Mo Fan wiped away the already dissipated mental imprint on it and sent his spiritual sense inside.
The space wasn't large, only a dozen or so square meters...
And inside, there wasn't a mountain of spirit stones and treasures as he had half-imagined.
Thinking about it, it made sense. This old thing probably used all his resources over the past century to linger on and repair his shattered foundation.
However, a starved camel is still bigger than a horse.
Mo Fan quickly scraped together over two hundred low-grade spirit stones, a dozen mid-grade spirit stones...
And a pile of bottles and jars radiating pungent, foul-smelling demonic path pills from the corner.
What attracted his attention the most was a black jade slip pressed under several broken magical artifacts.
Carved on it were a few seal-script characters exuding an evil aura: "Blood Soul Fiend Art".
Clearly, this was the vicious cultivation method Miasma Dust practiced to absorb human essence blood.
"If I took this thing to Wanbao Pavilion to sell, I'd probably be executed on the spot by the enforcement squad as an evil cultivator the moment I took it out."
Mo Fan curled his lip in disgust, but he didn't destroy it. Instead, he casually tossed it into the deepest part of his storage bag to gather dust.
Skills don't weigh you down.
Although he disdained sucking living human blood, studying the concepts of "soul and blood-qi" manipulation in this demonic path method might yield miraculous, analogous insights for him in the future.
Looting complete.
A morning breeze carrying the chill of dew blew past, sweeping up a few scraps of debris on the ground.
Mo Fan raised his head, looking toward the distant horizon.
Without realizing it, a night of terror and slaughter had passed.
A gray fish-belly white gradually appeared in the sky, and the first faint ray of morning sunlight struggled to pierce through the ever-present mist of Linshui Village...
Spilling over this devastated, blood-stained ruin.
"It's finally dawn."
Mo Fan let out a long breath of turbid air mixed with the heavy stench of blood.
His back, which had been locked rigid for a day and a night, finally relaxed slightly at this moment.
The Linshui Village instance—this perilous chain-killing trap that even hid a peak Foundation Establishment old monster—had finally been thoroughly and completely cleared by him single-handedly.
Not only did he survive, but he made a fortune, and even completed a gorgeous metamorphosis into Tier-2.
"Time to head home."
Mo Fan dusted off his clothes, preparing to turn and leave.
However, just as his gaze swept over the few mud-brick houses that had barely survived the aftershocks of the battle, his footsteps halted once again.
A rustling sound came from behind those dilapidated wooden doors.
Several mud-stained heads with dull expressions were carefully peeking out through the door cracks, looking out with fear and bewilderment.
The villagers of Linshui Village.
Previously, under the control of Venerable Miasma Dust's hallucinatory grand array, they had displayed that unnatural enthusiasm, honesty, and fake, logic-defying happiness.
But now, the array core was destroyed, and its master was dead.
Although that layer of mist covering their minds had dispersed, decades of brainwashing and slow spiritual extraction had left the minds of these mortals riddled with holes and muddled.
They looked like a troupe of old wooden marionettes whose strings had all been cut at once...
Staring blankly at the village that had become a ruin around them, not understanding what had happened, with no idea where to go from here.
Mo Fan looked at these villagers, his brows locking tightly together.
The crisis had been resolved.
But right now, how should he handle this biggest mess sitting right in front of him?