In the freezing night wind, two burly men and a flying sword were advancing like a turtle on the main path of Azure Cloud Sect, drawing frequent sideways glances from passersby.
On the sword blade, Zhao Ziwei was gritting his teeth dead tight.
His face was as pale as a corpse that had just been dug up after being buried in a mass grave for three days.
The Foundation Establishment spiritual energy in his body had been almost completely squeezed dry.
He could only let the biting, high-altitude cold wind scrape across his face like knives.
"Xiaoqi... you bastard..."
Shivering violently, Zhao Ziwei squeezed out fragmented complaints from between his chattering teeth.
"Next time... even if you put a knife to my neck, your father is absolutely not giving you a ride again..."
Behind him, Mo Fan was hugging that bag of premium black iron ore scraps weighing one hundred kilograms dead tight.
Not only did he not feel cold, but he actually felt a heartfelt sense of grounded security.
"Sorry for the trouble, Senior Brother, sorry for the trouble. Another day, when I get paid, I'll treat you and Eldest Senior Brother to the best spirit wine!"
Mo Fan drew a massive, completely insincere "corporate pie" (empty promise).
After surviving countless hardships and perils, this severely overloaded "broken cart" finally managed a difficult crash landing halfway up Hundred Forging Peak.
The moment they touched the ground, Zhao Ziwei couldn't even be bothered to retract his flying sword.
His entire being slumped limply onto a rock, gasping heavily for air in massive gulps, as if he had lost half his life.
"I can't anymore. Your Senior Brother has completely hollowed out his reserves today. Don't come looking for me for the next few days; I need time to recover!"
Zhao Ziwei weakly waved his hand.
"In a few days, after I catch my breath, I'll call Eldest Senior Brother over, and we'll have a proper get-together!"
"Take care, Senior Brother."
Watching Zhao Ziwei scramble and crawl back to his den, Mo Fan officially shouldered his heavy bag of ore scraps and snuck back home under the cover of night.
Having finished a full day of high-intensity, heavy manual labor, even Mo Fan felt a deep trace of fatigue at this moment.
Pushing open the wooden door of the stone house, Mo Fan casually tossed the massive bag of black iron raw ore scraps into the corner of the courtyard with a loud THUD.
Borrowing the moonlight, he looked at the courtyard full of various materials he had collected over these past days, and now this pile of pitch-black crushed ore slag.
Mo Fan suddenly froze for a moment, then burst into dumbfounded laughter, struck by a sudden realization.
"I finally understand why Senior Brother Ziwei's courtyard usually looks as messy as a garbage dump."
Mo Fan shook his head.
"No matter who it is, if they act like a scavenger picking up junk and bringing it home every day, this house could never possibly be clean."
After a simple wash with spring water, rinsing off the black soot and sweat covering his body, Mo Fan changed into dry clothes and sat cross-legged on his hard bed.
Although his body was exhausted, his spirit still maintained a sliver of hyper-arousal.
He closed his eyes, sank his consciousness down, and once again immersed himself in that vast and boundless [ Necrotic Realm ].
Within the high-dimensional space, it retained its dead-silent, profound appearance.
In the center of his hundred-square-meter territory, Summon No. 001 (Mo Yan), No. 003, and No. 004 were standing quietly or lying prone in the ocean of pure death-qi.
A few days had passed, and under the nourishment of the death-qi, the scars on these three skeletons were healing at a speed visible to the naked eye.
The cracks on 004's back armor had completely smoothed over; the bones in Mo Yan's arm had also regrown a dense layer of bone matter.
But when Mo Fan's gaze landed on Unit 003, he couldn't help but frown.
003's injuries were still severe.
Back then, to stall Venerable Miasma Dust, one of its hind legs had been forcefully blasted to pieces.
Although the Necrotic Realm possessed a powerful automatic repair mechanism, "growing" a thigh bone out of thin air obviously required an extremely long time.
"Looks like I still need to find an opportunity to import some high-end goods and perform an amputation and replacement surgery on it."
Mo Fan sighed.
What made him feel even more helpless and pressured was that, as he crossed into Tier-2, he keenly perceived the current bottleneck of these three skeletons.
Even being warmly nourished day and night in the Necrotic Realm, the strength of their bones remained dead-locked at the limit of the [ Qi Condensation Stage ]...
Utterly unable to produce that kind of qualitative hardness that could truly rival [ Foundation Establishment Stage ] magical artifacts.
"Sure enough, cultivation is a boundless bottomless pit."
Mo Fan smiled bitterly and helplessly in his consciousness.
"If I want my summons to rank up, just relying on passive HP regen isn't enough. I must continuously invest higher-level resources and top-tier corpses to see returns."
After confirming the skeletons were fine for the time being, Mo Fan withdrew his consciousness from the Necrotic Realm and returned to his physical shell in reality.
He slammed the premium storage bag at his waist.
With a swish, a heavy scepter—about four feet long, completely presenting a dull bone-jade luster, with its top shaped like a grasping white bone claw—landed steadily in his hand.
It was exactly the [ Pale Bone Scepter ].
Mo Fan stroked the scepter, his eyes carrying an intense anticipation.
Earlier in the Forging Hall, he had accidentally discovered that upon stepping into Tier-2, the System unlocked the detection function for [ Set Attributes ].
At that time, he was already full of curiosity about this scepter that used to display a row of garbled text.
However, because there were too many prying eyes around, he hadn't dared to look closely.
Now, it was time to unveil the mystery.
But before investigating, Mo Fan still couldn't resist letting out the most sincere curse at the System from the bottom of his heart:
"This scam of a System is simply a defective product!"
"If you don't actively ask, if you don't risk your life to figure things out, it just sits there and plays dead forever!"
"Whether it was summoning the Wraith back then or this heaven-defying Necrotic Realm, I fucking stumbled upon all of them by stepping on landmines myself!"
"If I didn't have nine lives, I would have died eight hundred times over by now!"
"Now, it doesn't even give a patch update for the equipment system; I have to check it myself!"
Complaints aside, the movements of Mo Fan's hands didn't stop.
"[ Death Vision ]. On!"
Hum—
The grayish-white world descended.
This time, what appeared on his retina were no longer those annoying black, garbled characters.
Rows of clear text finally popped up above the scepter:
[ Basic Weapon: Pale Bone Scepter ]
[ Quality: Average ]
[ Skills Not Loaded... ]
[ Attributes Unactivated... ]
The final line—the spot that originally read [ Unactivated █████ ]—had astonishingly transformed into four clear, bold words:
[ Unactivated Set: Pale Bone ]
"I knew it!"
Seeing the word "Set," Mo Fan felt as if a bolt of lightning had struck his brain.
His past life's gamer DNA twitched violently and fiercely in this exact moment!
Intuition told him that in any system with an equipment mechanic, the word "Set" absolutely represented having attribute bonuses!
"Since it's called a set, then there's definitely more than just one weapon!"
Mo Fan was so excited he leaped up from the bed, pacing back and forth in the narrow room, his eyes fanatical.
"There are definitely several other pieces! Helmet? Chestplate? Leg guards? Belt? Maybe even rings and amulets?"
"If I can gather a complete [ Pale Bone ] set, just how perverted would the activated hidden attributes be?!"
Following the wild joy, however, came the deepest headache and torment.
"But... how am I supposed to obtain the remaining equipment?"
Mo Fan halted his steps, scratching his hair in distress.
"I assembled this weapon myself using a late-stage Tier-1 bear leg bone and wind falcon ribs."
"Where the hell am I supposed to find the blueprints for the set? Am I supposed to just shoot in the dark, cobbling together every beast bone in the world to trial-and-error the remaining set pieces?!"
Facing this problem involving a massive cost of trial and error, Mo Fan tentatively called out to the System twice in his mind.
Unsurprisingly.
The System once again returned to that aloof, deathly silence, not even responding with a single punctuation mark.
"I should have known..."
Mo Fan cursed helplessly a couple of times.
Taking a deep breath, he forcefully suppressed the intense anticipation and anxiety stirred up in his heart by the "Set."
"You eat a meal one bite at a time, and you walk a road one step at a time."
"Since it was assembled, the worst-case scenario is that after I kill more high-tier beasts in the future, I'll just slowly test them out."
"The most urgent task right now is to convert the resources in front of me into Immediate Combat Power."
He placed the Pale Bone Scepter by the bed, his gaze shifting to that bulging premium storage bag.
Inside it lay a priceless piece of loot quietly.
The corpse of a peak Foundation Establishment cultivator—Venerable Miasma Dust!
Besides the corpse, there was also the pile of demonic path magical artifacts, jade slips, and secret manuals he had looted from the old monster's private vault waiting for him to process.
"The cultivation methods and artifacts are temporarily useless, and taking them out would easily expose me."
Mo Fan rubbed his chin, a trace of extremely cold rationality flashing in his eyes.
"First, I'll squeeze dry his final surplus value."
With a shift in his mind, he transferred the shriveled corpse of Venerable Miasma Dust out of the storage bag, throwing it onto the cold stone floor.
Looking at this peak Foundation Establishment corpse—which had once been insufferably arrogant and forced him into a desperate situation...
Mo Fan's brain began to spin frantically.
An extremely distant, yet incredibly clear memory suddenly exploded in his mind with a BOOM.
That was back in the Starter Village period, at the bottom of Abandoned Sword Cliff.
At that time, he had attempted to splice the walking legs of a Thousand-Legged Centipede onto Mo Yan's spine...
Wanting to build a multi-limbed, inhuman monster.
But that time, the System had rejected him with a ruthlessly cold, red popup window:
[ ERROR! Operation Denied! ]
[ WARNING: Host Soul Strength Insufficient! ]
[ Current Cap: 25. Minimum Requirement for Multi-Limb Coordination: 100. ]
[ Forced modification will cause Summon Logic Collapse and Soul Fire Self-Destruction. ]
"Minimum Requirement for Multi-Limb Coordination: 100."
Mo Fan slowly chewed over this sentence.
The corners of his mouth split open bit by bit, revealing an unfathomable smile.
Times have changed!
That rookie Necromancer from back then had now officially stepped into Tier-2, his level as high as LV. 13!
His current Soul Strength (CPU) boasted a terrifying value of a full 175 points!
And the three skeletons currently under his command (Mo Yan, 003, 004), fully accounted for, occupied a mere quota of 51 points.
This meant that he currently held a massive 124 points of "Free Computing Power" in his hands!
"The 100-point threshold... I crossed that a long time ago."
Standing in the dim stone house, Mo Fan looked at the peak Foundation Establishment corpse on the ground.
In the dark night, his eyes instantly glowed green, radiating a hair-raising, extreme fanaticism.
"Times have changed..."
Mo Fan slowly crouched down.
Blinding Necromantic Mana lit up at his fingertips like a scalpel, resting ruthlessly against the spine of Venerable Miasma Dust.
"Miasma Dust, oh Miasma Dust..."
Mo Fan's voice was hoarse and trembling, carrying an excitement suppressed to the absolute limit.
"Who told you... to mess with a Necromancer..."