Inside the dim, cavernous passage, thick gray fog crawled slowly, as though it were alive.
At Mo Fan's command, Unit 004 took the first step, crushing the silence ahead and striding into the unknown region.
Mo Fan himself walked at the very center of the formation, the remaining skeletons guarding him tightly on all sides.
The instant he stepped into the fog, Mo Fan keenly sensed the difference.
Although the environment here, like the [ Necrotic Realm ], was saturated with extraordinarily dense death energy—this death energy was violent, disordered, and carried a faint sense of rejection.
The gray mist churned endlessly in every direction, as if something unnameable lay dormant in the darkness.
Mo Fan didn't press forward recklessly. He stopped first.
This was the first genuinely unknown battlefield he'd faced since breaking through to Tier-3. He needed an absolutely clear read on his overall combat power.
A thought stirred, and the pale blue System panel unfolded across his retinas.
[ Basic Information ]
Name: Mo Fan
Class: Necromancer (Tier-3)
Realm: Foundation Establishment (Body) / Undead Mentor
Level: LV. 22
[ Core Attributes ]
HP: 3000
Mana: 5000
Soul Strength (CPU): 500
CPU Load: 151 / 500
[ Skill Slots: 9 / 15 ]
Recon & Defense
[ Death Vision ] LV.3, [ Bone Armament ] LV.3
Control
[ Grave Chill ] LV.2, [ Corpse Binding ] LV.2
Damage
[ Death Missile ] LV.2, [ Corpse Explosion ] LV.2
Command & Mobility
[ Death Frenzy ] LV.2, [ Floating Soul Wings ] LV.2
Support
[ Speak with Dead ] LV.1
Tier-3 Core
[ Death Domain (Basic) ]
Looking at the numbers on the panel, Mo Fan couldn't keep the corner of his mouth from rising.
Soul Strength all the way up at 500 points, while his current CPU Load sat at a mere 151!
Which meant he still had an enormous reserve to work with.
This skill composition could honestly be called perfect.
But what really gave Mo Fan his confidence was the core passive unlocked upon reaching Tier-3—[ Death Domain (Basic) ].
Mo Fan lowered his head, feeling the feedback beneath his feet.
Though the Death Domain's coverage currently extended only a few meters around him, as long as he stood here, the surrounding death energy would naturally converge toward him.
Within that radius, the tiny fractures across Unit 004's bones were being nourished and repaired, agonizingly slowly; the death energy within Mo Yan grew more condensed.
He could now genuinely be called the core of this undead legion.
"Come on then. Let's see how high the bar for this expansion really is."
Mo Fan closed the panel, eyes blazing as he stared straight into the dense fog ahead.
As the team pushed deeper, the surrounding gray mist suddenly stirred in an unmistakable way.
At first, it was only a faint sound.
Then a skeleton of exceedingly bizarre form came staggering out of the depths of the fog.
Mo Fan looked closer and found himself momentarily stunned.
The thing before him was a skeleton, yes, but its bones were assembled crudely and at twisted angles...
With large patches of withered, blackened rotten flesh still hanging off in places, and strands of gray mist coiled tight in the gaps between joints.
Especially those hollow eye sockets.
What danced inside them wasn't the pure, ghostly blue soul flame of undead like Mo Yan, but a clump of extremely dim, murky grayish-white fire.
"A... wild skeleton?"
Mo Fan raised an eyebrow, but before he could examine it properly—
Click. Clack...
Deep in the fog, the sounds rose in an unbroken chain.
One.
Two.
A dozen.
In the span of only a few breaths, dozens of ravaged, misshapen Gray Mist Bone Soldiers had surrounded Mo Fan's team completely!
There were no roars. The moment these Gray Mist Bone Soldiers detected the living, they lunged in, dragging their broken bodies forward like starving wolves catching the scent of blood.
"Engage!"
Mo Fan's expression didn't change. A thought moved.
Unit 004's massive bone shield slammed down into the ground, shattering the few bone soldiers charging head-on into powder.
Mo Yan became a streak of black lightning, cold iron longsword carving arcs that sent severed limbs flying in every direction.
Unit 003 beat its bone wings and dove from midair, ripping apart the enemies trying to flank from the sides.
Individually, these Gray Mist Bone Soldiers weren't particularly impressive—roughly early-to-mid Foundation Establishment at best.
Against the undead army, in only a moment, over a dozen bone soldiers were hacked into fragments scattered across the ground.
"That's it?"
Mo Fan was just starting to think this expansion quest was nothing special.
Then, in the very next second, the shattered remains lying broken on the ground—fully disassembled—actually began to reassemble, drawn together by the eerie pull of the surrounding gray mist!
Snapped leg bones forced themselves back into alignment. Scattered skulls rolled slowly back into place.
A few bone soldiers simply and brazenly snatched up their comrades' bones from the ground and jammed them into their own joint gaps, hauling themselves upright by sheer force!
What the hell, infinite respawns?
Mo Fan watched the scene, a flicker of surprise in his eyes.
He immediately activated [ Death Vision ].
Within his field of vision, he saw it clearly: the gray mist only served to pull the pieces together and bind them.
What actually drove these ruined bones back onto their feet was that clump of grayish-white soul flame hidden deep inside the skull!
So long as the soul flame burned, no matter how badly the body was broken, the mist could drag it back up.
Conversely, the instant the soul flame went out, the mist would immediately lose its target, and the remains would become nothing but dead matter.
So that's it.
The bones are just a shell. What you actually have to kill is the soul flame inside!
Having found the key to breaking the situation, Mo Fan immediately adjusted his tactical orders.
"Mo Yan, 003! Forget the bones—go for the heads!"
With clear instructions, his undead subordinates instantly changed how they fought.
Mo Yan's sword light abandoned its broad, sweeping arcs, striking instead like a viper's tongue, driving with pinpoint precision into eye sockets and shredding those grayish-white soul flames outright.
Unit 003's claws targeted nothing but skulls, crushing them one after another.
As clump after clump of grayish-white soul flame ruptured and dispersed into the mist—
Those endlessly reassembling bone soldiers finally collapsed like puppets with their strings cut, clattering to the ground in heaps and never rising again.
The battle, however, was far from over.
Quite the opposite.
After Mo Fan shattered several dozen soul flames in succession, the slowly drifting gray mist around them suddenly seemed to be utterly enraged, erupting into a violent boil and churn!
Within Mo Fan's Death Vision—
In the distance, grayish-white soul flames began igniting one after another, without pause!
More and more of them. The light growing denser and denser.
Fifty...
A hundred...
Two hundred...!
Until the entire view ahead was almost completely filled with packed, endless skeletal silhouettes!
These Gray Mist Bone Soldiers seemed to be answering some overwhelmingly powerful summons, surging from all directions out of the fog toward Mo Fan's position like a tide.
Thousands upon thousands of bones ground and collided against each other, producing a teeth-grating crack-crack-crack.
Heavy footsteps merged into one continuous sound, like muffled thunder.
Countless grayish-white soul flames flickered in the gray mist, like will-o'-wisps suddenly kindling across a dead wasteland—utterly horrifying.
Mo Fan stood where he was, watching this bone tide bearing down on him like a tsunami blotting out heaven and earth, and for a moment even his scalp prickled.
"Oh hell..."
Mo Fan couldn't help swallowing.
"Did I dig up these skeletons' ancestral graves or something?"
Facing numbers that would have driven an ordinary cultivator to despair—
Mo Fan did not retreat.
Instead, the fervor in his eyes was fully ignited in that very moment.
"Want to gang up on me?"
An arrogant, cold smirk curled at the corner of his mouth.
"Then let's find out!"
"004, shield up!"
BOOM——!
Unit 004's mountainous frame dropped hard, driving its enormous composite bone shield into the shadowed earth.
In an instant, it had erected an unbreakable wall of white bone, completely sealing off the frontal charge lane.
Mo Fan stood with perfect composure beneath 004's broad back, making sure the heavy fortress remained within his [ Death Domain (Basic) ] at all times.
As the bone tide slammed into the shield—
The sheer impact instantly cracked several hairline fractures across 004's bone plating.
But immediately after, the exceptionally thick death energy within the Death Domain latched on like rot clinging to bone...
Nourishing and reinforcing those fractures, leaving the entire defensive line as immovable as bedrock!
"WTF, fire support!"
Standing at the rear of the formation, the Skeleton Mage, WTF, raised the [ Pale Bone Scepter ] high.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
Densely compressed orbs of dark light traced lethal arcs through the air, dropping with pinpoint accuracy into the packed mass of enemies.
[ Death Missiles ] punched through in rapid succession, blowing the heads off the front rank of bone soldiers, soul flames snuffing out instantly.
And that was only the beginning.
Mo Fan looked at the remains strewn across the ground, withered rotten flesh still hanging off them, and a sliver of cold killing intent flashed in his eyes.
"You delivered yourselves right to my door."
"It'd be rude not to make use of you."