With Venerable Miasma Dust dead and his Dao erased, the hidden array patterns that had once flowed across the stone door had dimmed to a dull luster.
Without their master's spiritual energy to sustain them, the formation's defenses were little more than decoration.
But even a half-dead array was still a wall Mo Fan couldn't easily walk through.
A proper Foundation Establishment cultivator would have needed only a hand seal or a pulse of spiritual energy to pull at the residual array core, and the stone door would boom open by itself.
But Mo Fan couldn't do that.
He was a funnel with barely a sliver of spiritual energy to his name.
"Guess we're doing this the old-fashioned way."
Mo Fan took a deep breath, pressed both palms flat against the cold, rough surface of the stone door, and dredged up every memory of training in the [ Azure Cloud Art ].
He pushed with everything he had—his physical body and that pitiful sliver of spiritual energy inside him—and pulled.
GRRRRRK—
With a grinding shriek that set teeth on edge, the stone door was forcefully scraped open—inch by agonizing inch—until there was just enough of a gap for a person to squeeze through sideways.
Huff... huff...
Mo Fan shoved himself through and stood there panting, fine beads of sweat already covering his forehead.
Doing anything that required the Mystic Realm's spiritual energy was somehow more exhausting than killing a handful of Tier-1 demonic beasts.
A few night-pearls were set into the ceiling of the cave—dim with age, but enough to see by. Mo Fan narrowed his eyes and took stock of this secret base.
Before pushing the door open, his imagination had helpfully supplied all sorts of possibilities: mountains of spirit stones and treasures, a luxurious bed carved from premium spirit-wood, walls hung with demonic-path artifacts radiating treasure-light.
After all, this had been a former mighty figure who'd spent a century squatting in a usurped nest.
What he actually saw stopped him cold.
The space was sizable. And almost completely empty.
A plain stone bed, its surface worn smooth from use. A crude wooden table and chairs—the bark hadn't even been properly stripped.
A few cracked clay pots in the corner for wastewater. Not even a decent meditation cushion.
The whole cave radiated a bleak, ascetic aura that made the outer sect's servant quarters look lavish by comparison.
Mo Fan stood there for a moment. Then a flash of realization appeared in his eyes.
Of course.
He ran a finger across the thin layer of dust on the stone table and murmured to himself.
"This old monster might have been infinitely glorious once. But for the past hundred years, he was living like a rat in a sewer."
Foundation shattered. Hunted by enemies.
He'd hidden himself in this remote corner of Azure Cloud Sect's territory like a startled bird, lingering on his last breath by sucking the essence blood of bottom-tier rogue cultivators with no background.
How could a person who spent every day terrified of leaking his aura and attracting an enemy siege have the mind to enjoy luxury?
Every scrap of his energy had probably gone toward maintaining that broken array and patching up his own leaky shell of a body.
Hateful. Yet pathetic.
Mo Fan shook his head and stopped dwelling on the old demonic cultivator's miserable twilight years.
He raised a glowstone for light and followed the cave's single passage deeper inside.
After passing through a narrow, cramped corridor, the space ahead opened up without warning.
This was a semicircular stone chamber, clearly carved by human hands.
At its center, suspended in the air, was a cracked and battered circular stone disc—ancient, radiating a deep, quiet presence that felt older than anything Mo Fan had encountered.
Around the disc, impossibly intricate array runes spread outward like the blood vessels of a human body, sinking deep into the bedrock below.
"This must be the hallucinogenic grand array that covered Linshui Village."
Mo Fan's attention sharpened. He stepped forward briskly. Miasma Dust's memory fragments had confirmed this thing was a bona fide ancient relic.
He reached out, full of anticipation, to examine the disc up close.
The moment his hand touched the faint defensive light shield at the disc's edge—
Hum!
A weak but stubbornly resilient repulsive force transmitted over, bouncing his hand away.
Mo Fan refused to accept that. He tried channeling his Necromantic Mana into it.
Zero reaction.
He stood there, staring at the disc with its quietly shifting halos of light, then looked at his own hands.
A strong wave of frustration and powerlessness crashed over him all at once.
He understood.
This ancient array disc required the Mystic Realm's orthodox Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi to activate.
And Mo Fan had none.
He held an ocean-like massive amount of Necromantic Mana—vast, deep, and completely useless here.
It was exactly like a three-year-old standing in front of a fully fueled, key-in-the-ignition top-tier supercar.
The car was right there. Tank full. Ready to go.
But the kid was too short; he couldn't even reach the door handle! Let alone sit inside, step on the gas, and speed off!
"Well. This is awkward."
Mo Fan exhaled a long, deflated sigh.
No Spirit Root. No Spiritual Qi.
Which meant that for a very long time in the future—possibly until he stood at the very peak of this world...
All those heaven-defying cultivation world arrays, all those white-robed sword-riding flying arts, all those inheritance secret realms of ancient immortals...
Was he just going to stand outside the door and stare blankly like he was doing now?
In the eyes of those high-and-mighty orthodox cultivators, he was essentially just a brute body cultivator who relied on raw force and "flying bricks with enough thrust."
This was an unavoidable shortcoming.
A cart will always find a way when it reaches the mountain. Since I can't touch this array now, I'll just hide it well first. There will be a day when I can pry it open.
Mo Fan wasn't the type to get bogged down in internal friction.
He scrubbed his face hard with both hands, dead-locking the anxiety about the future deep in his heart, and stopped fixating on the disc he couldn't take with him.
He hauled over several large chunks of broken rubble, mixed in loose earth, and carefully concealed the ancient array disc.
Burying it completely, disguising the site until it looked like nothing more than an ordinary collapsed dead corner. Showing no anomalies from the outside.
Done. Mo Fan dusted off his hands and swept his gaze around the stone chamber.
Although I can't take the array disc, this old monster couldn't possibly be truly penniless, right?
Just now when burying the array disc, Mo Fan's keen intuition had caught something—a faint wrongness in the rock wall.
He walked to the right side of the chamber and tapped the surface lightly with his knuckles.
Thud. Thud. Hollow.
"Hidden door."
The corner of Mo Fan's mouth hooked up.
He took a half-step back, the muscles in his right leg abruptly tightening. Accompanied by a low shout, a heavy, powerful kick smashed viciously onto the rock wall!
Now this is my specialty.
The false rock face shattered explosively inward under the violence.
A cramped secret room hidden behind the rock wall appeared before Mo Fan's eyes.
This was True Lord Miasma Dust's true private vault used to hide his wealth!
Without an array to stop him, Mo Fan rushed in unceremoniously like a starving wolf crashing into a sheep pen.
The secret room wasn't large, but a few exquisite wooden racks were placed inside.
On them sat a scattered collection of magical artifacts flashing with bizarre spiritual light, and several jade slips that looked old enough to have witnessed dynasties rise and fall.
Mo Fan currently had neither the Spiritual Qi to drive these artifacts nor the Spiritual Sense to read the contents of the jade slips.
But he deeply understood the principle of "A thief never leaves empty-handed."
"Who cares what it is, as long as it looks valuable, pack it all up!"
Like a strong wind sweeping away fallen leaves, he brutally swept everything on the racks headlong into his premium storage bag.
Finally, his gaze fell onto a heavy iron box in the deepest part of the secret room.
Crack. Snapping the iron lock bare-handed, he threw open the box lid.
Instantly, an extremely dense, pure-to-the-extreme Spiritual Qi hit his face, causing the entire secret room to light up with a faint fluorescence.
Hiss—!
Mo Fan sucked in a breath of cold air, his breathing instantly becoming heavy.
He plopped his butt down on that worn-out meditation cushion Miasma Dust usually used for sitting, and like a miser, his hands trembling, began to inventory the loot in the box.
He wouldn't have known without checking. But checking made his heart jump wildly!
Besides several hundred ordinary low-grade spirit stones, stacked neatly at the very bottom of this box was a pile of stones as crystal clear as quartz.
Mid-grade spirit stones!
Mo Fan counted them one by one.
"Ten... twenty... fifty... eighty!"
A full 80 mid-grade spirit stones!
Combined with what he already had, his current total assets had easily broken through the one hundred mid-grade spirit stone mark!
According to the Mystic Realm's exchange rate, this was a massive fortune of exactly ten thousand low-grade spirit stones!
This was absolutely a terrifying windfall, enough to make any Inner Sect disciple go crazy or even murder to steal it!
"The ancients didn't deceive me..."
Mo Fan looked at the mountains of spirit stones in his storage bag and couldn't help but let out a heartfelt sigh.
"Crime really does pay. Although I was almost killed by that crusty old bastard this time, raiding a century-old cultivator's doghouse? Absolutely worth it. We are eating well tonight!"
After eating up and wiping clean all the physical wealth, Mo Fan calmed his excitement.
With the material rewards tallied, next came his true moment of harvest.
Mo Fan silently opened the panel in his mind.
Accompanied by a faint hum, the pale blue light screen unfolded on his retina.
Looking at the core lines of data on the panel, Mo Fan's eyes instantly went as round as saucers.
[ Name: Mo Fan ]
[ Class: Necromancer (Tier-2) ]
[ Level: LV. 13 (500 / 4000) ]
"Level thirteen?!"
Mo Fan let out an exclamation of surprise.
He remembered clearly that right after killing Miasma Dust, he was only Level 12.
It seems that when I devoured Miasma Dust's soul back then, that burst of Experience Points was enough for me to break through to Level 13.
Furthermore, aside from the rise in HP and Mana, Mo Fan's gaze was dead fixed on the bottom of the skill tree panel.
There, two golden plus signs flashed with dazzling light!
[ Available Skill Points (SP): 2 ]
"Skill Points!"
His heart pounded wildly against his ribs.
The System's notification chime rang out extremely thoughtfully and coldly in his mind:
[ Currently possess 2 SP ]
[ You may now choose: Unlock and learn a brand-new Tier-2 Necromancy spell in the skill tree. ]
[ Or: Advance and upgrade any existing Tier-1 basic skill to LV. 2. ]