The wretched wail scattered on the wind through Hundred Forging Peak's empty ravine...
Startling a few crows dozing on the branches.
Mo Fan stood alone before his broken gate, clutching his head with both hands, sunk in a state of utter impotent rage.
Just a little bit! Just that tiny bit of experience!
After stomping around and venting for a while, Mo Fan finally accepted this cruel reality.
He let out a long breath, releasing the pent-up frustration from his chest...
Rubbed his throbbing temples, turned, and walked back into the stone hut.
Since Lin Dong wasn't going to be back anytime soon, it also meant that for the foreseeable future, the nerves he'd kept strung tight for so many days could finally relax a little.
Mo Fan sat cross-legged on the bed, poured himself a cup of cold tea, and drained it in one go.
As his emotions settled, his over-hyped brain began to sort through the massive gains of this period.
A shift of his mind—and the pale blue System Panel unfurled across his retina like ripples on water.
Looking at the dazzling, freshly updated data on the panel, all of Mo Fan's earlier resentment vanished in an instant, the corners of his mouth curling upward uncontrollably.
Bearing the brunt was the metric directly tied to the scale of his undead army—soul intensity.
After swallowing a few mouthfuls of that impossibly pure prehistoric beast remnant soul...
His soul intensity had surged to an unprecedented degree, skyrocketing straight to a terrifying 260 points!
That was a number that would drive any Necromancer mad with envy.
And his current CPU load—counting every single minion—occupied a mere 151 points.
His gaze drifted slowly down, landing on his base attributes.
Level: LV. 19 (4800 / 7000)
After entering the high base-value bracket of the second tier, the experience required to level up snowballed to ever more absurd amounts.
But Mo Fan wasn't discouraged—after all, the growth in his power was rock-solid and tangible.
Under the day-and-night marrow-cleansing, bone-cutting augmentation of the [ Pale Wood Body Forging Art ]...
His body-cultivation realm now stood steadily at Foundation Establishment.
Not only had it purged massive amounts of black-sludge impurities from his body...
But his flesh had become as smooth and warm as jade—yet far harder than refined iron.
An HP cap of 1,300 points meant that with pure physical strength alone...
He could now shove aside a boulder weighing thousands of pounds with one hand...
And repelling an ordinary Foundation Establishment cultivator with a single punch was no trouble at all.
As for his Mana, under the System's double compensation, the total cap had reached a terrifying 2,700 points.
Although 600 of that had been permanently sealed inside the [ Pale Bone Scepter ] to sustain the inscriptions of those three high-tier skills...
...his 2,100 points of usable blue mana still formed an abyss deep enough to plunge any peer in the field into despair.
Further down was that Skill Tree, every entry now flickering with the Tier-2 ghostly glow...
And the undead legion quietly dormant in his [ Necrotic Realm ]—a force capable of sweeping the entire Outer Sect clean.
His main DPS warrior, Unit 001 (Mo Yan), wielding a cold-iron longsword, had even grasped a sliver of the Form-Intention Fist's force-generation techniques in live combat.
His aerial assassin, Unit 003 (Six-Limbed Thunder-Winged Panther)—the first multi-limbed heterogeneous unit. It merged the wings of the Bat King, the scythe-legs of the Venomous Centipede, and the spine of the Demon Tiger. A born killing machine through and through.
His main tank, Unit 004 (Heavy-Armored Bulwark), with composite bone armor, a Wall of Sighs worthy of the name.
His artillery mage, Unit 005 (WTF), gripping the Pale Bone Scepter inscribed with three ultimate killing moves, raining down wild carpet bombardments.
Add to that the large-scale siege unit with built-in acidic decay toxins, as well as the Necrotic Venomous Centipede currently still hibernating.
"With a lineup like this, I could probably steamroll same-tier disciples flat."
Mo Fan closed the System panel with immense satisfaction.
He noticed he still held one idle Skill Point (SP) in his hand...
But at the moment he hadn't run into any hard-to-solve weakness, so there was no rush to blow it.
He decided to keep it in reserve as a trump card.
"Time to stretch. I should go handle some real business."
Mo Fan hopped off the bed, worked out his joints, then suddenly smacked his forehead...
Remembering the fatal flag he'd planted for himself earlier.
"Right, that mad dog Huang Yun's been dealt with. Time to make good on my promise and go check on that kid A-Song."
He patted his chest.
Tucked inside were not only a big stack of Spirit Stones...
But also the one thousand Sect Contribution Points he'd extorted out of Huang Yun.
He was now, in the truest sense of the phrase, filthy rich.
Since he had money in his pocket, he could bring A-Song some good stuff too—couldn't let this cheap big-brother title go to waste.
With that thought, Mo Fan tidied up quickly, pushed open the door, and stepped out of the small courtyard.
His method of travel, however, left him a bit helpless.
Sure, his mana-absorption rate was now absolutely terrifying, but his colander constitution hadn't changed one bit.
Spiritual energy simply wouldn't stay inside his body.
This also meant that, to this day, he still couldn't use the cultivation world's most basic "Voice Transmission Jade Slip" to contact A-Song in advance.
As for flying? Mo Fan glanced up at the howling astral winds over Hundred Forging Peak...
And his mind irrepressibly recalled the consequences of accidentally barging into Sunset Peak back then.
"Forget it. Best to keep both feet on the ground."
Mo Fan extremely obediently abandoned the idea of flying over.
Fortunately, with his current physical body, the explosive power in his legs rivaled that of a demon beast.
This seemingly endless mountain road was, for him, more of a warm-up.
Mo Fan's legs surged with sudden force.
His entire body shot forward like an agile cheetah, drawing streaks of cyan afterimages along Hundred Forging Peak's rugged mountain paths.
Wind screamed past his ears.
Even without drawing on a shred of spiritual energy, a pure physical sprint carried him along as fast as if he were flying.
After some time.
As his field of view suddenly opened up...
The towering, majestic core of Azure Cloud Sect, piercing straight into the clouds—the [ Dao Asking Palace ]—finally appeared before Mo Fan's eyes.
As the center where the entire Sect's spirit veins converged, its luxury and heritage were simply beyond anything the Outer Sect could compare to.
Mo Fan merely stood on the white-jade stone steps at the outer edge...
Without deliberately trying to perceive it, the Heaven and Earth Spiritual Qi, dense to the absolute extreme, rushed at his face like a tangible mist.
He subconsciously activated [ Death Vision ].
Under the filter, the spiritual energy above the Main Peak was thick as a boiling ocean, radiating blinding halos of light.
An environment like this, paired with A-Song's High-Grade Wood Spirit Root physique... no wonder that kid managed to successfully reach Foundation Establishment in just a few short months.
Even as he smacked his lips in silent amazement, Mo Fan followed the route A-Song had described...
Groping his way toward the residential palaces where the Sect Master's lineage disciples lived.
Inside the Main Peak, pavilions and terraces were arranged in picturesque disorder.
Exotic flowers and rare herbs were everywhere, and those coming and going were all official disciples wearing Inner Sect attire, moving with hurried expressions.
Thanks to his plain cyan shirt and deliberately restrained aura, Mo Fan actually didn't draw much attention.
"It should be just through that white-jade corridor up ahead, right?"
Mo Fan looked at a corner ahead, carved with dragons and painted with phoenixes...
Mentally calculating how he'd exchange pleasantries when he met A-Song in a moment.
But the very instant he stepped past that corner—
THUD!
Since both of them were moving fast and had just been in each other's blind spots...
Mo Fan's shoulder slammed solidly into a figure walking straight toward him.
With Mo Fan's current physical intensity rivaling refined steel, an ordinary person taking a hit like that would absolutely have snapped tendons and shattered bones.
But the other party merely swayed slightly—clearly an expert with a deep foundation.
"Are you blind, you dog?! This is a restricted area of the Main Peak—do you not grow eyes when you walk?!"
Before Mo Fan could even open his mouth to apologize, an extremely severe reprimand, laced with the majesty of a superior, detonated over his head.
Mo Fan frowned and lifted his head.
The first thing that met his eyes was an extremely exquisite, luxurious brocade robe, embroidered with hidden cloud patterns in gold thread.
And as his gaze continued to move upward—the moment he clearly made out the other party's face...
Mo Fan's pupils constricted abruptly. His previously relaxed heartbeat, in that instant, seemed to skip half a beat.
This face—he had not only seen it before, the memory was still fresh!
It was deep in the abandoned middle-layer mine pit.
That mysterious figure who had scolded Xiao Hai with a face full of disgust, ordering him to find the "Styx Bone Lotus" within half a year at all costs!
Lord Li!