Mo Fan stared at the skeleton before him—premium specs, top-tier configuration, completely incapable of dealing damage—and felt his entire worldview quietly collapse.
In the dim stone room, the peak Foundation Establishment bone frame stood perfectly still in its oversized Daoist robe, horsetail whisk held with serene dignity.
Mo Fan refused to accept it. He rubbed his throbbing temples and pushed another round of directives through the mental link.
"Forward two steps! Turn left! Fall back!"
Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. Flawless execution. The robe's hem even billowed with a faint, ethereal grace as it turned.
"Attack the wooden table!"
"..."
System crash.
The ice-blue ghost-flames in its eye sockets stuttered for a moment. The skeleton became a wooden post again.
It could walk. It could spin. It could strike a pose. It just couldn't hit anything.
Mo Fan sank into a deep, bewildered silence.
"Did the System glitch again?"
Against his will, his mind drifted back to the first time he'd ever summoned skeletons—at the bottom of Abandoned Sword Cliff, right after transmigrating.
Those skeletons had retained the memory of falling to their deaths, and the moment they appeared they'd let out the most bloodcurdling, earth-shaking screams imaginable.
That horrifying image—skeletons shrieking "AAAAAH" while hacking at things—was still a psychological trauma he hadn't fully recovered from.
"This broken System is nothing but bugs!"
Mo Fan buried his face in his hands and let out a groan of pure despair.
"I burned through more than half my Mana—nearly got drained dry! I fed it a once-in-a-century Foundation Establishment corpse with built-in spiritual energy!"
"And what I got back is a marathon runner?! Are you KIDDING me?!"
But Mo Fan was a graduate student. He knew that screaming incompetent rage into the void solved nothing.
If the Miasma Dust skeleton isn't working, find a control group.
With a thought, he reached into the [ Necrotic Realm ].
Whoosh.
A ripple of spatial energy flashed, and Summon No. 001—Mo Yan, in the best shape of the three—materialized in the stone room.
"Mo Yan. Attack that wooden table." Same directive. Identical wording.
Zero hesitation.
BANG.
A single muffled crack.
Mo Yan moved like lightning—reverse-drew the cold-iron longsword from his back and brought it down in one clean arc.
The solid hardwood table split perfectly in two, splinters flying in every direction.
Mo Fan's confusion deepened.
He stepped back, rubbing his chin, and studied the two skeletons standing side by side.
On the left: black combat attire, longsword in hand, sharp and decisive—every line radiating the killing instinct of a swordsman.
On the right: wide Daoist robe, horsetail whisk, otherworldly bearing—the very picture of a cultivator who had transcended all earthly concerns.
Provided, of course, you ignored the two grinning, ghost-fire-lit skulls sitting on top of their necks.
"Appearance is fine. Directives are fine... wait."
Mo Fan's gaze swept back and forth between them, and finally locked dead onto their weapons.
One held a razor-sharp cold-iron longsword. The other held a soft, floppy horsetail whisk.
"Is it an issue with weapon classification hitbox detection?"
To test the theory, Mo Fan stepped forward, carefully took the cold-iron longsword from Mo Yan's hand...
Pulled the whisk out of the Miasma Dust skeleton's grip, and shoved the longsword into those white bony fingers.
"Try again. Attack the broken wood on the floor."
He fixed his eyes on the skeleton and pushed the [Attack] directive.
A miracle happened.
This time, the Miasma Dust skeleton didn't crash. It actually moved!
But when Mo Fan saw how it moved, his eye twitched violently. He had a strong urge to cover his face.
The skeleton gripped the longsword with both hands—not like a swordsman.
It looked exactly like an old farmer who had never touched a weapon in his life, white-knuckling a fire poker.
It raised the blade stiffly. Slowly. And drove it straight down toward the broken wood in a dull, mechanical stab.
Clunk.
The tip touched the wood. It didn't even break the bark.
Because the stance for exerting force was completely wrong, the blade slid sideways from the awkward angle and skidded off.
No technique. No force. No intent.
Compared to Mo Yan's fluid, sword-intent-driven instincts, this was the difference between a master calligrapher and someone who'd never held a brush.
"There it is!"
Watching this highly comical scene, the absurdity triggered a flash of clarity in Mo Fan's mind.
Everything clicked into place at once.
It wasn't a System bug. The skeleton itself had hard, unbreakable limitations.
What had Venerable Miasma Dust been in life?
A spell cultivator who'd spent over a century hiding underground.
For a hundred years, he'd fought exclusively through techniques and formations—pure ranged output.
Close-range combat instincts?
Those had probably rotted away sometime during his early Qi Condensation days and never came back.
There is no "melee physical attack" in his muscle memory. The option simply doesn't exist.
Mo Fan slapped his knee.
"That whisk wasn't a weapon—it was a casting implement!"
"So when I gave a 'physical attack' directive while he was holding it, the System had nothing to map it to and locked up!"
"And even after I forced a longsword into his hand and triggered the attack command...
He's a scholar with zero close-combat training in his bones. All he can do is poke at things like a complete layman."
Mystery solved.
"Hah..."
Mo Fan looked at the skeleton standing there staring blankly with a sword in its hand, and felt a complicated mix of amusement and resignation.
"But then... how do I get you to cast spells?"
His gaze drifted, almost involuntarily, toward the object sitting at the head of his bed.
The [ Pale Bone Scepter ].
The attribute readout he'd seen earlier surfaced in his memory:
[ Basic Weapon: Pale Bone Scepter ]
[ Skills Not Loaded... ]
Skills Not Loaded...
Mo Fan's eyes lit up like something had just ignited behind them.
He felt the shape of an extremely crucial mechanic snap into focus.
No point thinking. Time to act.
He crossed the room in three strides and grabbed the Pale Bone Scepter.
He closed his eyes, concentrated his mind, and drove his Necromantic Mana into the scepter in a full, unrestrained flood.
At the same time, he pressed his intent against it...
Forcing the only active offensive technique he currently possessed, [ Corpse Explosion ], into the scepter's structure like carving a seal into stone!
The pressure built.
Ding!
A crisp, pleasant System chime rang out in his mind.
The data on his retina refreshed instantly:
[ Skill Inscription Successful: Corpse Explosion (LV. 1) ]
The moment the inscription locked in, the skeletal claw at the top of the Pale Bone Scepter flared with a deep, dangerous pulse of green light—as though a soul of destruction had just been breathed into it.
"It worked!"
Mo Fan barely kept his heartbeat under control.
He stepped forward, pulled the ridiculous longsword out of Miasma Dust's hand and tossed it back to Mo Yan...
Then placed the faintly glowing Pale Bone Scepter into the Foundation Establishment skeleton's grip with deliberate, solemn care.
The moment those white bone fingers closed around the scepter, the ice-blue ghost-flames in its eye sockets instantly went completely still.
Like something had finally found what it was looking for.
"Too cramped in here. Can't spread out."
For safety's sake, Mo Fan brought both skeletons through the tunnel and navigated the familiar path deep into the outer reaches of the underground mine.
He spent a few minutes hunting down several unlucky low-tier mutant mine rats, piling their bloody remains against a rock face twenty meters ahead.
"Ready."
Mo Fan drew a slow breath, stepped back to an absolutely safe distance, and fixed his eyes on the robed skeleton ahead—the one in the Daoist robe, scepter in hand.
His expression was the look of a fanatic about to witness a miracle.
"Attack."
The directive hit the mental link clean and sharp.
This time— No crash. No hesitation. No fumbling.
Within a hundredth of a second of receiving the command, the ice-blue ghost-flames in Summon No. 005's eye sockets blazed violently to life!
The wide Daoist robe stirred without wind, snapping loudly.
With an extremely practiced posture that carried the unmistakable dignity of a spell cultivator in their element...
Unit 005 hoisted the Pale Bone Scepter high into the air.
Hum——!
The skeletal claw at the scepter's tip erupted in brilliant, sickly green radiance!
And then Mo Fan saw a scene that made his pupils shake.
Because when it cast—it wasn't only drawing on the death-qi stored in the scepter!
Through Death Vision, Mo Fan watched with absolute clarity as the faint spiritual energy vortex inside the skeleton's dantian bone cavity violently detonated!
An interwoven beam of cyan and green destructive light crossed twenty meters in an instant and buried itself accurately in the pile of mine rat corpses.
The next second.
BOOM——!!!
A deafening, terrifying explosion tore through the underground mine shaft—the kind of impact that sent tremors through the rock itself.
Amplified by the fusion and reaction of spiritual energy and death-qi, the blast was a full thirty percent more violent and terrifying than anything Mo Fan could produce casting Corpse Explosion himself!
A storm of blood mist, bone fragments, and highly corrosive toxic fire swept outward frantically in a radial pattern.
The berserk shockwave carved directly into the solid mine wall...
Blasting a jagged crater several feet deep into rock that had stood for centuries.
Debris flew like cannon-fire, hammering the surrounding stone pillars with a rapid series of heavy impacts.
Phew...
It took a full dozen seconds for the churning smoke, dust, and toxic fumes to begin clearing.
Mo Fan looked at the massive, smoldering crater ahead—scorched, pitted, still venting thin wisps of acrid green smoke.
Then he turned his head and looked at the skeleton.
It was still standing exactly where it had been, holding the finishing pose of its cast.
Through Death Vision, he could see that the spiritual energy vortex inside its chest—already small to begin with—had been reduced by roughly half after the cast.
It was slowly regenerating on its own.
Which meant, at full capacity, it could fire off two shots of that terrifyingly powerful Corpse Explosion back-to-back!
Mo Fan stood in the dark.
He didn't laugh maniacally in excitement like he usually did. He didn't pump his fist. He didn't make a sound.
He just stared dead at Venerable Miasma Dust—at Summon No. 005—in the vast, empty, death-silent underground mine shaft, for nearly a full minute.
When he finally moved, it was only to tilt his head back slowly.
And in the pitch-black darkness where you couldn't see your hand in front of your face...
With perfect, deliberate enunciation, Mo Fan spoke out two words:
"System."
"Go fuck yourself."