The familiar Abandoned Sword Cliff.
The familiar figure.
Just like always.
"Mo Fan"stood quietly in place,eyes closed,spreading his arms wide in utter enjoyment.
Crisp,cold air poured through his nostrils into his lungs.Inside his chest,that strong,powerful heart was pounding away...
Each beat pumping warm blood out to his four limbs and every bone in his body.
"Whew..."
He exhaled a long plume of white mist and slowly opened his eyes.
In those eyes that had once belonged to Mo Fan,an indescribable elation now surged.
He raised both hands and squeezed them into fists,feeling that overwhelming physical strength.
"This is...simply exquisite."
He murmured to himself in Mo Fan's voice.
"Though this shell's durability falls far short of that Golden Core python, a human body brimming with infinite vitality and malleability...this is the perfect vessel."
He lowered his head,sizing himself up as though appraising a priceless treasure.
"We of the Formless Demon race are born of the void and raised in chaos."
"No fixed form.No true flesh of our own.Our only path of survival is to devour,absorb,adhere,assimilate."
He paced slowly along the cliff's edge,as though recalling an exceedingly long stretch of years.
"At birth,we are at our most fragile.A single gale of astral wind could scatter us.So we must instinctively seek out the finest'carriers'this world has to offer,parasitize them,and plunder everything they have."
His gaze fell upon the mist-shrouded abyss below the cliff.
"Down at that sunless cliff bottom,I lay dormant far too long."
"That Blood-Red Python was indeed strong enough.Its flesh could be called perfect.I exhausted every means trying to attach myself to it,even seizing the opportunity to invade when it shed that Peak Golden Core snakeskin."
"But..."
He shook his head,a flicker of grievance passing through his eyes.
"The python's cultivation was too high.That lingering demon beast will was far too domineering."
"Even with nothing left of it but a skin,after all these years of effort,I still couldn't truly complete the assimilation."
"All I could do was live like a parasite,day after day with nothing but those remnant souls for company."
He whirled around abruptly,threw his arms wide,and let out a low peal of laughter at the sky.
"Until...you appeared!"
"Down at that cliff bottom,I sensed with perfect clarity the powerful Spirit Root inside you!That was quite simply the most delicious bait in this world!"
"A peerless genius,the perfect host for my Formless Demon race!"
"So I decisively abandoned that snakeskin and chose you.And you didn't disappoint me.Your body...could be called perfect!"
Even as the Formless Demon smugly poured out the tale of his own achievements...
He was already closing his eyes,unable to wait a moment longer to properly savor that supreme Spirit Root that had him drooling.
However...
One second passed.
Two seconds passed.
On the Formless Demon's intoxicated face,the smile gradually stiffened.
His brows began to knit together,bit by bit,into a hard knot.
"Hm?"
Refusing to believe it,he gathered his focus and stilled his breath again...
Sweeping and probing madly back and forth through the dantian with his consciousness.
But...
Utterly empty!
The dantian was as parched as a stretch of wasteland.
Aside from the surging qi and blood in the meridians,not even the faintest wisp of spiritual energy from heaven and earth could be retained.
The thing was a busted sieve,plain and simple!
The Formless Demon's eyes snapped open.
In those cold,sinister pupils,genuine shock and confusion appeared for the very first time.
"Where is the Spirit Root?!"
He cried out under his breath in disbelief.
"Down at the cliff bottom,I sensed it with absolute clarity...That was the aura of a Heavenly Spirit Root,near enough to the Dao itself!"
"Why is there nothing in this body now...nothing to be found at all?!"
The whole thing struck him as beyond absurd.
"Could it be...something went wrong during the assimilation?"
The Formless Demon turned it over and over without arriving at any answer.
He subconsciously turned his head and glanced at the"fake Mo Fan"corpse on the ground beside him.
"No matter.I still have another card to play."
The Formless Demon quickly cast that doubt aside.
After all,parasitism was hardly the most powerful ability of his race.
What interested him most,in fact,were those several pale skeletons of varying builds...
Radiating frigid death energy and standing silently in the night.
This was the secret he'd found most incomprehensible ever since he first made contact with Mo Fan.
These dry bones had neither flesh nor blood.
Just how did they move about freely,and even unleash such terrifying combat power?
"Since I have now become Mo Fan..."
A greedy,cold smile hooked at the corner of the Formless Demon's mouth.
"Then his flesh is mine,and his memories are mine.These things,naturally,ought to belong to me as well."
He drew a deep breath and,mimicking Mo Fan's earlier tone and manner,issued a command to Unit 001 standing at the very front.
"Mo Yan."
"..."
Silence.
Dead silence.
Unit 001,Mo Yan,stood quietly in place.
The ghostly blue soul-fire in his eye sockets showed not the slightest fluctuation,the cold-iron longsword hanging low in his hand.
Like a lifeless statue,utterly deaf to the summons.
The Formless Demon frowned.
"Come here."
He hardened his tone and gave the order again.
Still not a single reaction.
And not just Mo Yan.
Unit 004 and Unit 003 beside him were also motionless,like dead objects.
The Formless Demon's expression darkened instantly,a flash of irritation and profound bewilderment passing through his eyes.
This ran completely counter to everything he knew.
Why?!
He roared madly in his heart.
I've clearly devoured his soul and seized his shell!I AM him now!Why won't these things obey my commands?!
He even tried searching the fragments of Mo Fan's residual memory for the incantation or spell used to control these skeletons.
But he found nothing at all.
The Formless Demon simply could not comprehend it.
Because he would never know that what these undead creatures truly served and depended upon had never been the flesh-and-blood shell called"Mo Fan."
Nor even that human soul fluctuation.
But rather...
The Necromancer System,rooted in a higher dimension and holding dominion over the laws of death.
He didn't hold the System's authority.
No matter how perfectly he mimicked Mo Fan,in the eyes of these skeletons,he was nothing but a strutting clown who had stolen their master's clothes.
And at this very moment...
Just as the Formless Demon was gesticulating at the skeletons in a fit of exasperated rage...
Hum...
Less than five paces away from him,inside that silently standing Unit 001 skeleton...
A faint mote of consciousness finally clawed its way back awake from chaos and darkness.
Mo Fan felt as though he'd had an exceedingly long,exceedingly suffocating nightmare.
In the dream,he'd fallen into a viscous swamp,wrapped tight by countless venomous snakes,watching wide-eyed as he was devoured bit by bit.
But when he finally tore free of the nightmare and recovered consciousness...
The first thing he felt was an absolutely extreme emptiness.
No breathing.
No heartbeat.
This feeling...
Mo Fan subconsciously lowered his head.
All that met his eyes was a pair of pale bone palms.
Mo Fan blanked for a full three seconds.
Only then did it click.
He hadn't been devoured by that eerie monster at all.
He'd ended up inside Mo Yan.
Come to think of it,in the instant before his soul was about to be entirely assimilated,Mo Fan had voluntarily abandoned resistance.
And slammed his origin consciousness into Unit 001,the nearest thing to him.
Discarding the shell that the monster had fixated on so relentlessly,he'd lodged his soul temporarily inside this undead body,like taking over the controls.
Except this time,there was no main body left.
This skeleton had instead become his main body.
Through Mo Yan's hollow eye sockets,he soundlessly sized up the situation before him.
On the ground lay the fake Mo Fan's corpse.
And standing not far in front of him,barking orders at him,was obviously that monster who'd successfully"taken over the nest."
This guy...looks like he can't get the undead to budge?
Watching the other's exasperated fluster,Mo Fan grasped most of it in an instant.
This idiot had no idea the System even existed,and was still standing here trying to command an undead legion by voice control.
There it is...
Deep inside Mo Yan's skull,a flicker of mockery passed through Mo Fan's mind.
He didn't immediately reveal the fact that he'd already woken.
Instead,he decided to play along.
Across from him...
The Formless Demon drew a deep breath,pressed down the vexation in his heart,and decided to try one last time.
He stared hard into Mo Yan's eye sockets,concentrated the whole of his mental force,and gave the order again.
"Come here."
This time...
A miracle occurred.
Clack.
Unit 001,which hadn't stirred a hair until now,actually lifted those pale bone feet.
With a crisp scrape of bone,he walked step by step,exceedingly obediently,toward the Formless Demon.
The Formless Demon blanked for a moment.
Then an irrepressible ecstasy erupted across that face belonging to Mo Fan.
"Hahahaha!I knew it!I just need a little more time to adapt to this body,and these things will submit to me in the end!"
He watched excitedly as the skeleton drew nearer and nearer,as though already seeing the glorious future in which he swept across the Mystic Realm.
To further confirm his control,the Formless Demon issued another command.
"Raise your hand."
Mo Yan exceedingly obediently raised his left pale bone arm.
"Draw your sword."
Shiiing...
Accompanied by an exceedingly grating metallic rasp,the rusted cold-iron longsword was slowly drawn by Mo Yan.
Cold light glinted.
Looking at that longsword gripped in the skeleton's hand,the Formless Demon finally let go of the last trace of wariness in his heart.
He even took a step forward,somewhat carried away with his own triumph...
And reached out a hand,wanting to feel that power of mastery over life and death.
He was already less than an arm's length from Mo Yan.
Exactly that distance.
In the split second before the Formless Demon's fingers were about to touch Mo Yan...
Without the slightest warning...
SHUNK!
That cold-iron longsword,drawn on the Formless Demon's own command,thrust violently forward with extreme speed and brutal force!
The cold,coarse blade punched straight through the Formless Demon's chest,through Mo Fan's body,without the slightest resistance.
It entered from the front with pinpoint precision and burst out through the back,dragging a long string of warm blood droplets with it.
One sword through the heart!
"Ghk..."
That ecstatic smile on the Formless Demon's face froze dead in place.
His eyes stretched wide,eyeballs all but bulging from their sockets.
With enormous difficulty,in utter disbelief...
He lowered his head to look at the blood-drenched rusted blade jutting from his own chest.
"Wh...why..."
He opened his mouth.
Great gouts of blood mixed with fragments of viscera surged up from his throat,choking off his last complete question.
He couldn't comprehend it at all.
Why had a puppet that had hung on his every word one second earlier delivered him a fatal blow the next?
Without any warning at all?
It made no sense!
None at all!
But Mo Fan clearly wasn't giving him any chance for explanations or answers.
The next moment...
Mo Yan's sword hand gave a savage twist.
Then he swept the blade outward with cold,absolute finality!
Shhrkk!
The second strike.
More brutal.
More resolute.
The cold blade,carrying the sharp ferocity unique to Mo Yan's swordsmanship,sliced straight across the Formless Demon's throat.
A dazzling line of blood sprayed out into the night.
The Formless Demon's body convulsed violently twice,and that borrowed head slumped limply to one side.
Right up until the moment he died,extreme confusion and incomprehension still lingered in those unfocused eyes.
He couldn't work it out even in death.
These skeletons that defied all reason...
This human...
Just what the hell was he?!
Thud.
With a dull sound of collapse...
That human shell truly belonging to Mo Fan crashed down onto the cold rock of Abandoned Sword Cliff,spraying out a great quantity of blood.
All life vanished from it entirely.
The cliff top fell back into dead silence.
Only the howling mountain wind remained,stirring up the thick stench of blood.
The skeleton stood quietly in place.
It slowly lowered its head.
The two motes of ghostly blue soul-fire in its hollow sockets burned dimly...
Reflecting the body that had once belonged to it lying on the ground.
It slowly raised the pale bone palm coated in his own blood,held it before its eyes,and studied it over and over for a moment.
"Tch."
"The feeling of killing yourself with your own hands..."
"Really is pretty damn surreal."