Mo Fan dropped onto the battered meditation cushion and sank into deep thought, staring at his very pleasant problem.
Two whole SP (Skill Points) sitting in his hands. Precious resources.
Good steel goes on the blade's edge—not a single point could be wasted.
He pulled up his current skill tree in his mind:
[ Death Vision ]
[ Bone Armament ]
[ Grave Chill ],
[ Corpse Explosion ]
[ Death Frenzy ].
"Process of elimination."
He rubbed his chin and started breaking it down.
"First—[ Bone Armament ]. My subconscious already force-upgraded it to LV. 2 on its own, which proves its life-saving value is top-tier. Fair enough."
"Second—[ Corpse Explosion ]. Massive damage, but it's completely environment-dependent. Without enough corpses lying around, even the cleverest housewife can't cook without rice. I could upgrade it to Tier-2 and it'd still be useless. The Return on Investment is too low."
"As for [ Grave Chill ] and [ Death Frenzy ]—both solid utility skills, but under my current tactical system, LV. 1 is barely enough to keep up. Both crowd control and burst are manageable."
After eliminating everything else, Mo Fan's gaze locked dead onto the icon sitting at the very top of the skill tree.
[ Death Vision ].
In the cultivation world—whether you're exploring unknown forbidden zones or guarding against ambushes—intelligence and reconnaissance are always the first priority!
Mo Fan's eyes sharpened. He understood the advantage of an "information gap" better than anyone.
If he hadn't had Death Vision active back in that underground mine, the sonic death array would have ground him into meat paste.
No hesitation. "Allocate point."
[ 1 SP consumed. ]
A clear, crystalline chime rang through his mind.
The skill icon on his retina blazed with dazzling light—and [ Death Vision ] officially evolved to LV. 2!
Mo Fan couldn't wait. He shut his eyes immediately and let out a soft shout to activate it.
Hum—!
This time, there was no jarring, oppressive shift into a black-and-white filter. Mo Fan opened his eyes in surprise.
Reality's colors remained—but layered over everything at the bottom of his vision was an incredibly precise, dynamic data grid.
An all-encompassing qualitative change hit his perception instantly.
First: detection range.
What had barely covered a hundred meters now surged outward like a wild horse breaking its reins.
Sweeping in every rustle of wind and grass within several hundred meters in all directions.
He could even clearly "see" a deeply concealed venomous scorpion wedged in a rock crevice hundreds of meters outside the cave—the faint red glow of venom circulating through its body.
Second: control.
A single thought was enough to perfectly superimpose the energy halos over his normal vision, or pull them back entirely.
But what surprised him most was the dramatic drop in Mental Load.
Before, keeping Death Vision active always left a faint, persistent fatigue lingering at the back of his brain.
Now it felt as natural as breathing—a pure instinct. The drain on his concentration had reduced to almost nothing.
"Awesome! Best SP I've ever spent!"
Mo Fan closed the vision with satisfaction. The first point had gone very smoothly. But staring at the single SP he had left, he faced a dilemma.
Upgrade another Tier-1 skill? Or go shopping in the newly unlocked Tier-2 skill library for a new trick?
Since I've crossed into Tier-2, it's time to pick up some new methods.
Mo Fan opened the dazzling array of the Tier-2 new skill list.
Looking at the glowing blue icons, he felt exactly like a picky man at three in the morning...
Buried under his blanket, mouse wheel spinning endlessly on a certain channel, hunting for the perfect "video material"—frowning, dissatisfied, muttering picky complaints at everything he saw.
"[ Tombstone Crash ]?"
"Sounds a bit horrifying. Am I supposed to carry a gravestone around and smash it into people's foreheads? Like some pervert hauling a coffin lid? Pass."
He kept scrolling down.
"[ Corpse Swarm Assembly ]?"
Mo Fan sighed. "You'd need a massive ancient battlefield with thousands of dead to make this work. I currently have exactly three underlings total. Way too early. Pass."
A dozen skills later, nothing had clicked.
"[ Death Missile ]..."
Mo Fan rubbed his chin. "Sounds not bad, actually... Maybe worth keeping on the backup list."
Just as his eyes were glazing over and his patience was wearing thin.
One line of skill description, pulsing with a deep, gloomy light, suddenly seized his eyeballs in a death grip and refused to let go!
[ Floating Soul Wings ]
Mo Fan sat bolt upright. His breathing spiked instantly.
[ Skill Details: Relying on the Necromancer's formidable Soul Strength, condenses pure Mana at the shoulder blades to manifest a pair of semi-transparent, spectral blue feathered wings. The wings carry no physical bone structure—weightless and ethereal. Grants the caster the ability to hover in mid-air and perform low-altitude gliding. The wings' vibration naturally radiates a faint, extreme death-chill; living creatures that draw near will experience involuntary soul-trembling. ]
"A... a flying skill?!"
Mo Fan's eyes lit up bright, like two searchlights switched on in a dark room.
What human didn't dream of rising into the wind and soaring through the heavens?
Back at Azure Cloud Sect, he'd watched those high-and-mighty Foundation Establishment cultivators gliding through the clouds on their flying swords.
Lofty and untouchable—while he had to slog along the ground on two legs like a miserable peasant, even climbing those tens of thousands of Ascension Steps on foot as punishment!
He'd acted dismissive on the surface, but inside, he was already drooling with envy.
More importantly—this skill perfectly addressed his single biggest tactical weakness: Mobility.
Against monsters with absolute air superiority like the Stone Bat Lord, he'd been pinned to the ground the entire fight, frustratingly eating bombs and dirt. But with a means to stay airborne, that situation would be thoroughly reversed!
With this, he is never playing infantry again!
Mo Fan didn't deliberate for even a second.
With a grand wave of his hand, like a fanatic who had finally found a peerless treasure, he slammed the confirm button extremely decisively.
[ 1 SP consumed. ]
[ Congratulations, Host. Tier-2 skill acquired: Floating Soul Wings! ]
A flash of light. On the skill tree panel, four characters now radiated a quiet blue halo: [ Floating Soul Wings ].
The moment the skill registered, Mo Fan couldn't sit still for a single second.
The urge to eagerly experience flight—right now, immediately—made it physically impossible to control himself.
Taking large, meteor-like strides, he walked out of the stone cave and arrived at the sheer cliff precipice outside.
The early morning mountain wind was slightly cool, tugging at his battered and tattered robes.
Standing at the edge of the cliff, looking down at the bottomless sea of clouds below...
Mo Fan drew a deep breath and frantically gathered the Mana within his body, driving it backward toward his shoulder blades.
Soul Wings. Manifest.
He let out a low shout in his mind.
In an instant, an extremely condensed, icy-cold black death-qi erupted from both sides of his back.
It didn't dissipate. Instead, as if drawn by some high-level law, it rapidly intertwined and restructured—
SWISH—!
Accompanied by a soft sound that seemed to tear through the void.
A pair of semi-transparent, spectral blue phantom feathered wings violently burst open behind Mo Fan's back—unfurling like a butterfly breaking free from its chrysalis!
They lacked the burden of a physical skeleton, formed purely from the weaving of death-qi and soul-force.
The edges burned with wisps of ghostly blue soul-fire, swaying gently in the morning breeze—radiating a soul-trembling, extreme chill.
They're so light...
Mo Fan discovered, to his amazement, that there was no learning curve. No complex micro-management required.
The pair of soul wings felt like an innate organ he'd been born with, brimming with instinct from the depths of his soul.
He simply generated an "Upward" thought in the bottom of his heart.
The dual wings on his back fluttered gently.
WHOOSH—!
A shrill, sinister yin-wind whipped up from the flat ground, blowing away the morning mist at the cliff's edge.
Mo Fan felt the gravity beneath his feet vanish instantly. His feet left the ground.
Like a ghostly blue meteor, he shot up from the earth, rising into the blinding glare of the newly risen morning sun!
"HAHAHAHAHA—!"
Suspended in mid-air, Mo Fan let out a hearty, unbridled, maniacal laugh.
He controlled the soul wings to shuttle, hover, and glide through the sea of clouds beyond the cliff.
Feeling the wind howling past his cheeks, that ultimate thrill of truly breaking free from Earth's gravity made him want to let out a long, resounding roar.
"It's about time I said goodbye to this demon's den!"
Hovering in mid-air, Mo Fan turned his head for one final look at this abandoned cave dwelling hiding countless secrets and humiliations.
The ghostly blue wings on his back flapped backward violently.
His entire being turned into a blue afterimage, shooting straight into the firmament, speeding away toward the broader world beyond.