The outside world was terrifying.
Beyond his door lurked a lunatic elder who might drag him to the Main Peak at any moment to confront the "Purple Mountain True Lord."
And deep beneath the earth waited a horrifying abyss that could execute a mental assassination just by being looked at.
This cultivation world was an absolute minefield at every turn.
"No more scheming. No more networking, no more building connections—all of it is worthless."
Mo Fan wiped the cold sweat from his forehead.
"Raw levels and stats. That's the only thing you can actually rely on."
He forced himself to calm down, didn't linger in the stone dwelling above ground, and immediately turned and descended through the hidden passage...
Dropping ten meters down into his undead base.
Only thick layers of solid rock could give him any sense of security.
On the crude stone bed in the underground base, Mo Fan slept for a full day and night, replenishing every drop of energy and focus that the "extreme fright" had burned through.
When he opened his eyes again, his mind was running at full clarity. Time to get to work.
He crouched on the ground, picked up a sharp bone fragment, and—drawing on the blurry visual memories transmitted by the Skeleton Rat before its death—began sketching on the flat dirt floor.
A rough blind map of the outer mine tunnels took shape before him.
"The abyss sinkhole—absolute forbidden zone. Big red circle. Don't go within ten miles. Ever."
He drew a massive 'X' at the deepest point of the map, then shifted his attention outward.
"Those sections with obvious excavation marks and clean star-iron slag—that's where the senior brothers and sisters come to 'restock.'"
"Safe, but I need to avoid them entirely. Can't risk a chance encounter blowing my cover."
The bone stylus moved. Another large section of the map was crossed out.
Finally, the tip came to rest—pressing firmly—on a stretch of natural cave systems.
Winding, heavily branched, perpetually ignored. A labyrinth of tunnels that nobody bothered with.
Far from the abyss. Far from the senior brothers' mining routes. But teeming with low-tier demonic beasts: Mine Rats, Netherstone Bats, and Rotbone Centipedes.
"A perfect closed ecosystem. No uncontrollable high-tier great demons—just low-tier beasts crawling all over the place."
Mo Fan tossed the bone stylus aside, dusted off his hands, and let a slow, meaningful smile pull at the corner of his mouth.
"This is my new personal underground farm."
Farm selected. Time to harvest.
Mo Fan stood, swept his arm wide, left the underground base's defense to the ten meters of solid rock surrounding it, and summoned his full roster without hesitation.
"Everyone out. We're working."
Grayish-white light pulsed.
Summon No. 004—the Heavy-Armored Bulwark—hit the ground with a bone-rattling crash. Three meters of dense composite bone plating, built like a heavy siege engine.
It locked into position at the front of the formation—the immovable anchor, the absolute meat shield.
Mo Yan stood tall just behind 004's massive frame, half-concealed in its shadow, only the tip of a cold iron blade visible.
Poised and ready to erupt at any opening and deliver a single killing strike.
Summon No. 003—the Heavy-Armored Bone Leopard—moved like a black phantom along the formation's flank.
Fluid and silent, assigned to aggro management, battlefield splitting, and pursuit of fleeing targets.
The classic tactical squad, assembled once more.
But Mo Fan didn't rush forward.
Once bitten, twice shy. The brutal lesson of nearly getting his mind shredded at the edge of the sinkhole had drilled into him the absolute importance of intelligence and vision.
I'd rather have a headache than be blind.
Mo Fan gritted his teeth, pushed through the dull throb of his Soul Strength approaching its limit, and deliberately carved out another 2 points of CPU Load from his available capacity.
"Rise."
A palm-sized Skeleton Rat materialized at his feet, the faint flame of a soul flickering to life in its eye sockets.
"Go. Scout a hundred meters ahead."
Mo Fan closed his eyes and threaded a sliver of his consciousness into the Skeleton Rat's vision...
Letting this fearless, life-signature-free living radar maintain a constant position ahead of the formation.
It would cost him a steady drain of Mana and a persistent low-grade headache. But it guaranteed him a hundred-meter early warning window at all times.
No ambushes. No encirclements. Ever.
The art of playing it safe, on full display.
"Advance."
At Mo Fan's command, the undead squad moved like silent reapers into the natural cave network.
Less than one incense stick's worth of time into the winding, slick tunnels—the scout rat transmitted a sharp warning signal.
Mo Fan looked through the shared vision.
Covering the ceiling of a wide cavern ahead—hanging upside down in dense clusters—were creatures the size of washbasins, their bodies armored in gray stone-like scales.
Tier-1 mid-grade demonic beasts: Netherstone Bats.
These bats had spent their entire lives underground. Their eyesight was nearly nonexistent—functionally blind. But their hearing and spatial awareness were razor-sharp.
The instant 004's heavy footsteps crossed into their territory, the entire colony stirred.
SCREEEEE——!!!
A shriek like fingernails dragged across glass. Dozens of Netherstone Bats peeled from the ceiling and descended like a storm cloud.
They didn't dive for direct melee. Instead, they snapped their fang-lined jaws wide open in midair—a coordinated dual assault of sonic waves and venom spray.
Visible ripples of translucent sound energy crashed down toward the undead squad like a breaking wave.
Against an ordinary Qi Condensation cultivator, this combination of concentrated mental interference and area-denial venom would have caused instant disorientation—or worse, bleeding from all seven orifices.
But today, they had picked the wrong target.
"Parlor tricks."
Mo Fan stood at the rear of the formation, not even bothering to furrow his brow.
He was a man who had tanked an ultimate-tier mental assassination with his bare mind.
The sonic attack of a Tier-1 stone bat rattling against his repeatedly tempered, iron-hard sea of consciousness felt like a mosquito buzzing near his ear.
Irritating in theory. Completely irrelevant in practice.
And in front of him stood a wall nothing was getting through.
"004—shield up!"
The massive Heavy-Armored Bulwark let out a low grinding of bone-on-bone as its forelimbs surged upward, angling the broad bear-skull back-plate into the air like a raised fortress gate.
Ting ting ting—sssss——
The sonic waves crashed against the thick bone plating and dissipated into invisible ripples.
The bats' venom—potent enough to corrode iron and stone—splattered across the surface and left not a single white mark. The death-aura coating the bone armor neutralized it completely on contact.
Flawless defense.
"003—scatter them. Mo Yan—harvest."
Mo Fan's orders were cold and precise.
The moment the bat colony's first wave ended—momentum spent, the next not yet gathered—
The Heavy-Armored Bone Leopard lurking at 004's flank detonated off the ground like a black lightning bolt.
It didn't bother with the floor—it launched directly off the curved cave wall, ricocheting between both sides of the tunnel in rapid succession.
Raking through the dense bat formation with razor-edged claws that left streaks of cold light in the air, the tight cluster of bats exploded into chaos.
Shhhk——!
Simultaneously, the swordsman who had been waiting in the meat shield's shadow made his move.
The cold iron blade cleared its scabbard in a single motion, sword light unspooling like a ribbon of pale silk. Mo Yan used no flourishes.
Every swing was accompanied by a Netherstone Bat dropping—throat cut clean, or body split in two.
It was a one-sided slaughter with no suspense whatsoever.
But Mo Fan wasn't content to simply watch from the back.
He knew better. In the cultivation world, relying on external tools alone was a dead end. His own body had to be strong—that was the only truth that mattered.
The Body Forging Record's advancement demanded tempering in real blood and real combat.
As if on cue—one bat, noticeably larger than the rest, a Tier-1 mid-grade peak specimen, sensed Mo Fan's presence through the chaos.
It broke through the gap between 003 and Mo Yan, eyes blazing crimson, and dove talons-first straight at what it had identified as the most vulnerable target.
"Perfect timing."
Mo Fan didn't step back. A flicker of savage battle-hunger crossed his eyes.
No necromantic arts. Not a single spell.
A thought—and [ Bone Armament ] snapped into place across both arms.
He surged forward like a man-shaped beast, meeting the diving bat leader head-on, and simply reached out with both hands.
CRACK.
No spell detonation. Just the pure collision of force against force.
Mo Fan's hands—gleaming with the dark iron sheen of Bone Armament—seized the bat leader's talons mid-dive.
Claws that could shred metal scraped across his bronze skin and threw sparks. They didn't break through.
"Get DOWN."
Mo Fan roared, back and core muscles firing all at once, the terrifying Qi and blood of his body erupting like a furnace.
He swung the hundred-pound beast in a full arc through the air—and then, with a brutality that left no room for interpretation, slammed it into the cave wall with a full-force over-the-shoulder throw.
BOOM—CRACK.
Rock fragments sprayed. The bat leader's spine snapped with a sound that set teeth on edge. The creature hit the wall and stuck there, eyes spinning.
It hadn't recovered from the stun before Mo Fan was already on top of it.
Right arm muscles coiling high, he drove a completely unrestrained straight punch into the bat's skull—the whistle of displaced air preceding the impact.
BANG.
The demonic beast's skull—hard as stone—split apart like a watermelon meeting a sledgehammer.
Instant kill. Pure, unaugmented physical violence. Instant kill.
Mo Fan wiped the blood from his knuckles and, for the first time, truly felt the weight of what "unrivaled at the same tier" meant for a Qi Condensation cultivator.
Without a single summon or external ability—on the strength of this body alone, hammered into shape through a thousand grueling sessions—these outer-zone low-tier beasts couldn't touch the hem of his robe.
The rest of the night passed the same way.
Mo Fan led his undead squad through the area he had designated the "underground farm" in a systematic, total-clearance sweep.
By the time dawn broke above ground—
The underground cave network was carpeted in the remains of Netherstone Bats,.
Mo Fan—exhausted but running on a high that wouldn't quit—leaned against a clean section of cave wall, tearing into strips of dried meat to refuel, and pulled up his System panel.
He watched the experience notifications strobing in the corner of his vision like a ticker tape that wouldn't stop, and his grin spread all the way to his ears.
Between the substantial foundation he'd built up beforehand and one night of absurdly high-intensity grinding, the progress bar—once so agonizingly slow—had blown past LV. 8 with authority and was now sitting solidly at the LV. 9 .
"Hah..."
Mo Fan let out a long, slow breath, feeling the Mana pool swelling inside him again, the soul sea expanding wider than before.
After everything those Foundation Establishment senior brothers had put him through, his hunger for power had become something almost primal.
Nothing—nothing—was more reassuring than watching that experience bar tick upward, one point at a time.