The howling wind shrieked past his ears.
The Soul Wings on Mo Fan's back were like two keen blades, cleaving through the thick fog that filled the air without the slightest resistance.
A soft thud.
Mo Fan's feet landed steadily in this once-utterly-familiar region.
Though the clouds and mist raged overhead, faintly seeping a restless, agitated aura of murderous intent...
This outermost fringe at the very bottom didn't seem to have been affected all that much.
He looked around, and in the faint light, one glance was enough to spot the broken beast bones, scorch marks...
And some tattered, weathered, faded scraps of clothing scattered in the pile of rocks not far off.
These were all the traces of daily life he'd left behind back when he'd trained here.
"Whew... they really are still here."
Mo Fan let out a long breath of relief in his heart, secretly congratulating himself on having hoodwinked A-Song into leaving.
If he'd really brought the kid along and he'd seen these familiar old clothes on the ground, it would've been hard to explain.
After several rounds of consideration, Mo Fan put away all those tangled thoughts, and his gaze turned cold and focused in an instant.
His mind reached out and connected with the vast [ Necrotic Realm ], and he murmured softly:
"You boys have been cooped up in there too long, haven't you?"
"Come on out and get some air."
Hummm——!
At the stir of Mo Fan's thoughts, this once death-still valley bottom turned bitterly cold as well, as if gusts of frigid wind were sweeping through.
Then, one after another, skeletal beasts of bleached bone—each of a different form, each radiating a terrifying pressure...
Descended without any warning into this gloomy expanse of heaven and earth.
Unit 001 (Mo Yan), Unit 003 (Six-Limbed Thunder-Winged Panther),
Unit 004 (Heavy-Armored Bulwark), the artillery mage Unit 005 (WTF),
and that huge-framed Necrotic Venomous Centipede—all made their appearance!
All this time, though Mo Fan had been acting like a good little boy in front of old man Lin Dong, behind the scenes he'd hardly been idle.
Over the course of all sorts of real battles, he'd secretly stashed away quite a few top-grade skeletons of Foundation Establishment demon beasts...
And had been using death energy day and night to perform deep reconstruction and nurturing on these old comrades.
By now, they'd long since undergone a bone-remaking, marrow-changing transformation!
Standing at the very front, Unit 001, Mo Yan—its cultivator's jade bones, warm and lustrous to begin with, had now been filled in and finely tuned by Mo Fan.
Its frame hadn't grown bloated; if anything, it had become even more slender and nimble.
The ghost-fire in its eye sockets blazed so vigorously it nearly overflowed...
And on that rusted cold-iron longsword in its hand, tempered day and night within the Necrotic Realm...
There had even come to coil faint, visible wisps of gray death sword-qi.
As for Unit 003, that went without saying.
Those streamlined bones fused with bat wings had long since become Mo Fan's most flamboyant flying mount.
But the most outrageous transformation of all belonged to Unit 004.
If the old Unit 004 had been like a heavy-armored pangolin crawling flat along the ground...
Then the current one—under Mo Fan's exceedingly bizarre flights of imagination—had instead turned into an eerie, upright colossus.
Having been through many bloody battles, Mo Fan had come to deeply appreciate the importance of mobility on the battlefield.
And so, with tremendous boldness, he'd discarded Unit 004's original crawling skeletal frame—
He reconstructed it into a "mobile bipedal shield": having no conventional head, sprouting only a few thick, pillar-like lower limbs...
Its entire upper body built up from layer upon layer of composite demon-beast bone plating!
As for that giant bear skull it had originally used as a battering ram...
Mo Fan, with great cunning, had concealed and fused it right at the absolute center of that enormous bone shield.
Of course, this exceedingly complex assembly had also sent Unit 004's Soul Intensity load surging up by a large margin.
But fortunately, Mo Fan's Soul Intensity was now more than ample, and this bit of drain was a breeze for him to handle.
As for WTF and the Necrotic Centipede, they'd been Tier-2 skeletons to begin with.
Under the nurturing of death energy, their bone quality had grown ever whiter and harder, their strength consistently up to par.
As these five colossi appeared all at once, the once fairly spacious safe zone at the cliff bottom instantly became cramped to the point of bursting.
Even the air itself had turned somewhat viscous from the terrifying density of death energy.
Just as Mo Fan was about to review his troops, his keen gaze suddenly caught a trace of something exceedingly abnormal.
"Hm?"
Mo Fan's brow arched slightly.
To his surprise, he discovered that without his having issued a single specific micro-command, these skeletons had actually taken up "little movements" of their own!
Unit 001, Mo Yan, stood in place, and with utter naturalness, gave its wrist a flick—swish—twirling a sharp, swordsman-worthy flourish of the blade;
While off to the side, the mage skeleton WTF, with its stark white skeletal fingers, out of sheer habit rested that [ Pale Bone Scepter ] in the crook of its arm.
A posture that was practically the spitting image of how the Miasma Dust had held his whisk while alive!
"This..."
Mo Fan stroked his chin, a flicker of undisguisable shock crossing his eyes.
In the past, as long as he issued no commands, these skeletons had been like unplugged puppets, not moving an inch.
But now, they were actually, in some unconscious way, displaying certain instincts and habits from their living days!
Looks like, as my Soul Intensity as a Necromancer keeps climbing higher and higher, what I bestow upon them is no longer merely the death energy that drives their bones—but also a sliver of the true spirituality that belongs to a "soul"!
Mo Fan marveled silently in his heart.
But right now clearly wasn't the time to be doing research.
The upheaval at the cliff bottom was the Sword of Damocles hanging over his head.
After briefly lingering and searching about this safe zone, Mo Fan hadn't turned up a single clue as to what was driving the demon beasts into their frenzy.
Which meant the true source of the danger lay hidden deep within that thick mist.
He turned his head and cast his deep gaze toward the ceaselessly roiling gray fog ahead.
Mo Fan's thoughts couldn't help but drift back to the scene of when he'd first explored this region.
Back then, out here on the fringe, it had been just a single Shadow Leopard at the peak of Tier 1 (in other words, the current Unit 003) that had nearly sent him off to meet the King of Hell with one swipe of its claws.
Now that such a violent upheaval had struck the cliff bottom—with even the fringe demon beasts turned savage beyond measure...
Then whatever existence lurked deepest within this mist had surely grown all the more terrifying, too.
At this thought, Mo Fan's expression couldn't help but turn a few shades graver.
"However, today is not like the days of old."
Mo Fan glanced at the army of bleached bone surrounding him on all sides, and a measure of confidence welled up in him.
After all, he now commanded what amounted to a full five combatants at the "Peak Foundation Establishment" level.
A lineup that would be rather staggering even if placed within the Inner Sect of Azure Cloud Sect.
At this thought, there was no longer the slightest hesitation in Mo Fan's heart.
His gaze condensed, staring straight ahead.
"Death Vision—open!"
Then he vaulted up onto Unit 003's broad, steady bone back.
Under the direction of his thoughts, this downright terrifying undead squad swiftly formed up into a perfect formation.
Unit 004, transformed into a mobile shield, held steady at the very front of the formation;
Unit 001, Mo Yan, and the mage skeleton WTF flanked Mo Fan on either wing, one left, one right;
While that huge-framed Necrotic Centipede, like a roving whip of death, wove and coiled swiftly through the rock piles along the formation's outer edge.
"Advance."
Mo Fan gave the order.
Rumble, rumble...
The sound of heavy bones trampling the earth echoed through the empty cliff bottom.
This legion of bleached bone, like a sharp awl, drove headlong into the depths of that violently roiling mist.
However.
Just as with what they'd encountered during his last exploration, almost the very instant they set foot inside the mist!
HUMMM——!
Within the sensory field of Mo Fan's [ Death Vision ], a piercing alarm abruptly went off!
Dozens—even over a hundred—red dots of light, each radiating an exceedingly scorching, savage aura...
Appeared without any warning at the edge of his perception range, like a dense shower of meteors.
And among them, several clusters of light were coming straight toward Mo Fan and his squad, at a truly terrifying speed.
"Here they come!"
Sensing the savage hostility within the mist, Mo Fan—seated atop Unit 003's back—far from retreating, drew in a deep breath of the frigid, bone-biting air.
His eyes glinted in the mist, and in their depths, a long-suppressed, maddened will to fight ignited.
"Come on then..."
Mo Fan murmured low in his heart.
"Just the right time to put it to the test, too..."
"My true strength, as I am now."