"A Gu Immortal... to become a Gu Immortal..."
That desolate lament, spanning the full length of ages, rolled through the depths of Lin Mu's soul like a muffled thunderclap, reverberating long after it had faded.
In the underground chamber, Lin Mu's eyes snapped open. He gasped for breath in great, ragged pulls.
His consciousness had withdrawn from that oppressive core space and reclaimed control of his body of flesh and blood.
On the cold stone table before him, beside the Pitch-Black Bone Plate, two faintly glowing Gu worms had appeared from nowhere — the Bookworm and the Photo-Audio Gu.
"So this is what a peak Rank 5 great figure is capable of."
Lin Mu stared at the two Gu worms that had been brought out, the shock in his chest refusing to settle.
But what unsettled him even more were two words.
Gu Immortal.
He turned them over slowly in his mind, feeling the full, mountain-heavy weight of them.
All this time, armed with a transmigrator's god's-eye view and foreknowledge of the original story's events, he had carved out a place for himself in the muddy depths of Black Blood Stockade — and had even begun, quietly, to feel a certain arrogance.
A sense that the heroes of this world were nothing so remarkable after all.
But now, the Black Bone King's despair — the despair of a man who had burned through his entire lifespan, exhausted every last resource, and still could not touch the immortal gate — drove into that pride like a sharpened blade.
"Have I been looking down on this world too much?"
A cold sweat seeped down Lin Mu's back.
"Fang Yuan ascended to Venerable because he had the Spring Autumn Cicada — a heaven-defying Immortal Gu. Because the Heavenly Dao watched over him in secret. Because multiple Venerables invested in him and paved his road."
"He carved a path drenched in blood through a game board crowded with gods and demons."
"And me?"
"In terms of identity alone, I am nothing more than half an Otherworldly Demon, same as Fang Yuan. In this brutal world of Gu, how many Otherworldly Demons have died nameless in the wilderness? Throughout all of history, how many have ever truly become Gu Immortals?"
"Can I really climb to the legendary Rank 9 — and contend with those ancient monsters who have lived through countless ages?"
For a moment, in that narrow, lightless chamber, a rare tremor ran through Lin Mu's Dao heart.
A shadow — one called fear, one called self-doubt — began to spread wildly through the depths of his mind.
"No."
In the instant before that shadow swallowed his reason, Lin Mu bit down savagely on the tip of his tongue. The sharp, salt-iron taste of blood flooded his mouth.
The pain snapped him back to clarity in an instant.
"What a formidable Demonic Path tyrant."
Lin Mu drew a sharp breath. His eyes turned cold and cutting as a blade.
"Dead for hundreds of years, and a single lingering thread of his will could still work its way into my emotions without my noticing — nearly dragging my Dao heart down into a pit of irreversible despair."
He shook his head and severed every thread of self-doubt from his mind.
"My goal is to contend with like Fang Yuan. The realm of Gu Immortal is a road I must walk regardless. I don't even fear death — so why would I let the resentment of a Rank 5 failure who never even touched the immortal gate shake me?"
Lin Mu drew a long, slow breath and brought his mind fully to rest.
He extended a finger. A thread of pale-red Rank 2 Red Iron Primeval Essence flowed from his fingertip and steadily entered the bamboo-scroll-shaped Bookworm.
A torrent of information poured into his mind like a rushing current, and a vast, sweeping map of the inheritance's structure slowly unfolded before him.
The Bookworm recorded the Black Bone King's inheritance in clear and comprehensive detail.
Just as Old Ma had said, the peak Rank 5 great figure's inheritance had been ruthlessly dismembered.
Head, limbs, torso — each part corresponded to a different inheritance treasure, each sealed separately across the mountains of the Southern Border within a radius of a hundred li.
And the Pitch-Black Bone Plate Lin Mu had dredged from the bottom of that swamp — the inheritance token buried deepest within Black Blood Stockade's territory — represented the Black Bone King's "Heart".
"I see."
Lin Mu scanned through the information rapidly, a flash of understanding crossing his eyes.
"The individual inheritance components have no hierarchy among them — no primary or secondary, no high or low. The only differences lie in the Dao Mark attributes each one contains."
"More importantly, there exists between each token a deeply hidden mutual resonance."
This meant that within this vast inheritance system, no one held absolute supreme authority.
To obtain the complete Rank 5 inheritance, one had to unlock one's own component step by step, build up strength, and then follow the resonance between tokens to engage in brutal collision, slaughter, and absorption with the other holders.
"Well played, Black Bone King. You weren't nearly as simple as your silhouette made yourself sound — just wanting to 'watch the scenery'."
A cold, mocking smile pulled at the corner of Lin Mu's mouth.
"This divided inheritance is a deliberate trap designed to ignite one blood war after another. He wanted to use this method of raising Gu — letting the inheritors devour one another — to cultivate the most vicious, most ruthless Demonic Path seed of them all."
Not that Lin Mu minded in the slightest.
Having grasped the overall framework, he continued deeper into the Bookworm's contents.
Beyond the overview, it also provided the specific method for unlocking the first layer of the "Heart" inheritance buried here in Black Blood Stockade's territory.
It was not some abstract riddle or philosophical trial.
It was a test of the most grounded, practical kind — Gu refinement.
The Bookworm required the inheritor to personally refine a specific Rank 2 Blood Path Gu worm: the Blood Attraction Gu.
"No death traps. No vague tests of character."
Lin Mu studied the requirement, his expression growing extremely grave. "The supplementary materials for the Blood Attraction Gu are not entirely extinct in the Southern Border — but they are extraordinarily varied in type, and without exception, every one of them is expensive."
To say nothing of the high failure rate inherent to Gu refinement itself, which would demand an enormous expenditure of both effort and wealth.
"No wonder..."
The image of Li Mang — patriarch of White Bone Stockade — surfaced in Lin Mu's mind.
"Seen in this light, Li Mang is a peak Rank 3 powerhouse and the master of his own stockade. He unearthed an inheritance token on his own territory — and still needed months, perhaps longer, emptying his clan's storehouses and sending people in every direction to scrape together materials, just to barely obtain that Bone Scepter."
Because this kind of inheritance trial was, by its very nature, a brutal drain on a Gu Master's accumulated resources.
"It seems that even as a transmigrator, there are no shortcuts. As a newcomer who has just entered Rank 2, I have no choice but to gather the materials one step at a time and throw massive resources at the Blood Attraction Gu to push its success rate high enough."
With the task clearly defined, Lin Mu carefully stored the Bookworm away. Then he channeled a thread of Primeval Essence into the crystalline, glass-clear Photo-Audio Gu.
In an instant, a series of breathtaking, grand scenes were projected into the air of the chamber.
In those scenes, the Black Bone King stood in his prime atop a peak that looked down on all mountains.
With a casual wave of his hand, the Earth Path's crushing weight split mountains and shattered the earth. With a reverse sweep of his palm, a tide of blood rose to drown the sky, leaving behind mountains of corpses and rivers of red.
Those ferocious Blood-Earth composite Killer Moves carried force enough to level a stockade and grind countless lives to dust.
It was the ultimate aesthetic of violence — the exclusive domain of peak Rank 5.
Any low-rank Gu Master who witnessed these demonstrations would likely lose their mind on the spot, desperate to imitate them immediately.
But Lin Mu remained entirely clear-headed.
"I can see it. I can't touch it." He watched those world-destroying scenes with cold eyes, his heart completely unmoved.
"Killer Moves are complex techniques requiring multiple specific Gu worms to be activated in a specific sequence with specific ratios of Primeval Essence. Right now, I don't even possess the most basic Gu worms this inheritance requires."
Only by following the Bookworm's guidance, advancing deeper into the inheritance step by step, and obtaining the sealed core Gu worms would these seemingly invincible Killer Moves ever see the light of day in his hands.
With that, the Pitch-Black Bone Plate had fulfilled its role as instruction manual and entry key.
It shed all its mystique and became a simple key and resonance compass, settling quietly into the depths of Lin Mu's Aperture and merging with the shallow sea of pale-red Red Iron Primeval Essence.
"Good."
Lin Mu rose to his feet in the chamber, his thoughts already moving forward.
"Since the first step is burning money on Gu refinement, I need to get my hands on the materials for the Blood Attraction Gu. And while I'm at it, I should comprehensively refine and upgrade my own Rank 1 combat system."
At the precise moment Lin Mu's consciousness fully withdrew from the Pitch-Black Bone Plate — the instant the faint Dao Mark fluctuation representing the "Heart" inheritance token settled into his Aperture and was fully activated.
That strange fluctuation spread outward like a single drop of water falling onto a still lake, rippling silently along the veins of the earth in every direction.
A hundred li away. Deep within White Bone Mountain.
Inside the bone-white great hall, pale ghost-fire drifted in the gloom.
Li Mang, patriarch and peak Rank 3 powerhouse, sat cross-legged on his throne.
His eyes were closed. Primeval Essence flowed steadily from within him into the Bone Scepter resting across his knees, feeding the daily ritual of tempering and nurturing.
Then — without warning.
Li Mang's tightly shut eyes flew open. His pupils ignited.
"Hum — hum — hum!"
The bone-white scepter in his hands — silent as a dead thing only moments before — now trembled like a venomous snake jolted back to life, emitting a series of low, faint vibrations that pulsed with a frenzied, ravenous hunger.
The scepter shook violently in Li Mang's grip.
Its sharpened tip, as though seized by some irresistible pull of fate, locked onto a fixed direction and would not move.
Li Mang followed the direction of that tip with his gaze. His line of sight pierced through the heavy bone-white gates, pierced through the endless shrouding mist.
It pointed directly toward the territory of Black Blood Stockade.
The distance was too great for the scepter to pinpoint a specific individual — it could only sense the general direction, somewhere deep within Black Blood Stockade's lands. But even that was more than enough.
"It appeared..."
The muscles of Li Mang's face — ordinarily as still as a dead pool — convulsed violently. His fingers clamped around the restless scepter like iron tongs.
From deep in his throat came a low, guttural sound that could no longer contain the savage, all-consuming greed and ecstasy surging within him:
"Another inheritance token... has finally been activated!"