As those words echoed through the canyon's biting night wind, lingering long after they were spoken...
The surge of wild ambition gradually settled.
And with it came the familiar, iron-fisted return of a mind that had been beaten down by reality and poverty more times than it could count.
Mo Fan slowly lowered his arms, turned away from the wind, and walked back into the rough-hewn stone dwelling.
He dropped himself into the chair—which was exactly as uncomfortably hard as he remembered—and rubbed his aching temples.
"Big talk is easy. Painting grand pictures is easy."
He laughed at himself, dry and quiet.
"But in a place like this cultivation world, wanting to walk the Grand Dao of Immortality without the power to back it up just means you're paving the road for someone else."
"You're just material. Expendable."
He took a slow breath, sank his consciousness inward, and pulled up the System panel he hadn't checked in a while.
[ Name: Mo Fan ]
[ Class: Necromancer (Tier 1)
[ Level: LV. 7 (Equivalent: Late-Stage Qi Condensation) ]
[ HP: 150 / 150 ]
[ Mana: 950 / 950 ]
[ Soul Strength (CPU): 55 ]
He scanned the numbers. His brow furrowed, slowly.
In just over a month since the Outer Court Grand Tournament, his strength had transformed beyond recognition.
And it was still nowhere near enough.
"If I want any standing in this inner sect—if I want to stop being the kind of ant that a Golden Core elder could crush by accident..."
"I need to break through Tier 1's ceiling as fast as possible. Reach LV. 10. Step into the realm that corresponds to Foundation Establishment."
Only at Foundation Establishment could he unlock the second skill tier.
Only then would the Necromancer's true qualitative leap begin.
But when his gaze shifted down to the CPU Load bar, a deep, cold anxiety flooded up through him before he could stop it.
[ Current CPU Load: 51 / 55 ]
[ Active Units: Mo Yan (Load: 20), Summon No. 003 (Load: 15), Summon No. 004 (Load: 16) ]
"Processing bottleneck..."
Mo Fan stared at those four measly points of spare capacity and exhaled.
Four points. Not enough to summon even the most basic human skeleton. At most, he could squeeze out something like Summon No. 002—a bone bird to use as a disposable scout.
If he wanted to recruit stronger units, or upgrade the ones he already had, the only path forward was brutally simple.
Grind experience. Level up. Raise Soul Strength.
But how do you earn experience out here?
There were no experience pills in the cultivation world. The System didn't support sitting in meditation and absorbing spiritual Qi to level up.
For a Necromancer, there was exactly one way to grow stronger:
Hunt living things. Harvest their remnant souls.
"Even the cleverest housewife can't cook without rice," he muttered.
Mo Fan stood and moved to the stone window. He stared out at the pitch-black wasteland of the abandoned mine and let his mind run at full speed.
First: going above ground is out.
This was the inner sect's jurisdiction. Hundred Forging Peak was remote, but overhead, sword-riding inner sect disciples and elders could pass by at any moment—bored, wandering, sharp-eyed.
The second he marched his white-boned skeleton army across open ground, he'd be classified as a demonic intruder who'd infiltrated the sect.
A flying sword would descend from the heavens and physically transcend him before he could open his mouth to explain.
Second: the terrain is unknown.
Hundred Forging Peak was large, but based on Zhao Ziwei's descriptions and Mo Fan's initial scouting during the day, the wild beast population here was laughably thin.
Most had already been snatched up by those eccentric senior brothers for experiments, or simply blown to ash by walking disaster Zhao Ziwei.
There had to be sizable beast clusters hiding deeper in the mountain. But he was operating completely blind.
Moving out to sweep the area before mapping the territory and understanding his neighbors would be stepping straight into someone else's trap.
"Going up is suicide. Going out is a minefield..."
Mo Fan's gaze drifted slowly downward. It settled on the hard, cold rock beneath his feet.
Something lit up behind his eyes—sharp. Feverish.
"Then the only option is..."
"Take root underground."
Dig deep enough, and he could do three things at once.
Perfectly conceal the death energy of an undead army. Build an absolutely secure subterranean fortress.
And potentially break through into Hundred Forging Peak's abandoned underground mine veins—finding new "experience packages" in a lightless world beneath the earth.
Decision made.
No more hesitation.
Hmmmm——!
He poured Mana without restraint.
[ Death Vision ] expanded to its maximum range in an instant, an invisible grayish-white hemispherical radar sweeping outward from him as its center...
Blanketing the entire U-shaped canyon and dozens of meters beyond in every direction.
He held it there until he was certain: nothing in range but a handful of insects. Not a single significant life signature.
Then Mo Fan moved.
"Alright, boys. Time to work."
He walked to the deepest corner of the stone dwelling—a hidden clearing he'd specifically cleaned out for this purpose—and let his Mana surge.
Accompanied by the teeth-aching grind of bone on bone, his proud skeleton crew returned to the world after their brief period of dormancy.
Mo Yan. Silent as ever, heavy cold-iron sword strapped across its back, every line of its frame radiating the aura of an unparalleled swordsman.
Summon No. 003—Heavy-Armored Bone Leopard. Sleek skeleton, long lean limbs, pale fire flickering in its eye sockets with predatory hunger.
Summon No. 004—Heavy-Armored Bulwark. Massive as a miniature armored vehicle, draped head-to-toe in thick composite bone plate, a walking Wall of Lamentation.
Mo Fan looked at his crew—mismatched heights, grotesque silhouettes, an assortment of bony horrors.
And the tension he'd been carrying since arriving in this unfamiliar inner sect finally, completely, let go.
Something warm rose in his chest. Something he couldn't quite put a name to.
In this Azure Cloud Sect where he had no allies and danger lurked at every corner, only these were family.
The kind that would never betray him. The kind that would always stand in front.
"Brothers, I'd love to catch up properly, but tonight we're short on time and heavy on work."
He let the warmth go. Snapped straight into ruthless-foreman mode.
He pointed at the rock floor beneath their feet and issued his order.
"Start digging. Target depth: ten meters underground."
The undead army instantly transformed into a merciless underground construction crew.
Mo Yan drew its heavy cold-iron sword.
Under Mo Fan's precise micromanagement, it compressed sharp sword Qi along the blade's edge—becoming the world's most accurate cutting machine.
Each stroke fell clean. The granite beneath them split like tofu, carved into neat, massive stone blocks.
Summon No. 004 deployed its siege-ram strength. Four pillar-thick legs planted firmly into the earth.
Its broad back plate lifted the thousand-pound stone blocks Mo Yan cut loose with casual ease, ferried them to the corners, then used its own sheer weight to compact and level the ground.
Summon No. 003 put its sharp instincts and claws to work.
Like an inexhaustible mining hound, it swept the perimeter—clearing rubble, expanding the edges, keeping constant watch for any shifts in the geological layers below.
No, this bone crew couldn't match the violent aesthetic of Foundation Establishment Zhao Ziwei's "one sword, cleave a mountain" raw output.
But they needed no rest. No breath. No sleep.
And their obedience to Mo Fan's instructions was absolute.
To prevent the underground space from collapsing under excessive excavation, Mo Fan drew on every practical scrap of structural knowledge from his past life.
He directed Mo Yan to carve the cut stone blocks into precisely fitted mortise-and-tenon joints.
One by one, massive stone pillars were hoisted upright by Summon No. 004—planted at every key load-bearing point.
Their tops locked into the overhead rock layer through interlocking joints, not a single iron nail used.
The result: an indestructible weight-bearing framework.
No thunderous blasting. No clouds of rising dust.
Only the hair-raising shhhk shhhk shhhk of bone against stone.
Through an entire night of frenzied mole-like tunneling...
When the eastern sky finally began to pale to gray...
Ten meters below the canyon floor, spanning over a hundred square meters, supported by eight enormous mortise-and-tenon stone pillars...
The skeleton of an underground base announced its completion beneath the rock layers of Hundred Forging Peak.
"Hah..."
The first thin light of morning filtered in through the ventilation shaft Mo Fan had deliberately left hidden.
He stood in the center of the underground base, wiped the sweat and stone powder from his face, and looked around at the rough but immovable rock walls surrounding him.
He let out a long, slow breath.
"Step one: store grain, build high walls. Done."
"With this underground city, even if the surface above me turns into a warzone, I have a place to stand."
The tension he'd held through the entire night finally unwound. A wave of exhaustion crashed over his mind.
He raised a hand to dismiss his tireless skeletons back into System storage and reached for the option to close [ Death Vision ]—planning to drag himself back up to the surface stone dwelling for a proper nap.
But then.
At the very instant his consciousness brushed the close option...
BEEP——!
At the absolute outermost edge of his Death Vision radar, something blinked into existence.
A single point of light.
Brilliant. Red. Vivid.
Not any ordinary beast. Not an underground insect.
That light was red bordering on violet—radiating a spiritual energy signature that was dense, refined, and carrying a depth that made his instincts go cold.
And it wasn't moving like a wild beast would.
It wasn't crashing or thrashing through the terrain.
It was strolling.
Steady. Unhurried. Like someone taking a casual walk through their own back garden—completely ignoring the complex landscape around the canyon's perimeter, advancing one deliberate step at a time into his warning radius.
Its heading was direct.
Aimed straight at this canyon.
At him.
Mo Fan's drowsiness was obliterated in an instant.
Every hair on his body stood on end, sharp as a static shock.
"Who's there?!"