Hummm!
As the metamorphosis of the realm break formally began...
The first thing to undergo transformation wasn't Mo Fan himself,but the[Necrotic Realm]surrounding him.
That death-energy boundary of roughly a hundred square meters began to churn violently like ocean waves.
And then...
That nearly tangible boundary of darkness began expanding and pushing outward madly!
One hundred square meters...
Three hundred...
Five hundred...
One thousand!
More than a tenfold expansion!
The once cramped and oppressive Necrotic Realm had,in this moment,finally shed that sealed-in,narrow feeling.
Now...
The profound death energy above Mo Fan's head was like a firmament...
And the solidified shadows beneath his feet had become earth.
In the truest sense,the embryo of a world had formed.
And once the Necrotic Realm gradually stabilized...
The next moment...
Mo Fan's soul,lodged inside Mo Yan's skeletal body,was drawn out bit by bit under the pull of some inexplicable force.
And then...
Sank with pinpoint precision into that long-dead"Mo Fan"body below.
A long wait.
As though a century had passed.
And as though it had been only the briefest instant.
Sensation began returning,bit by bit.
First came the cold touch against his fingertips.
Then the real feeling transmitted through skin and flesh once more.
And then...
Thump!
Thump!
Thump!
That heart,which had been silent for so long,actually began beating again!
Once.
And again.
Stronger and stronger!
"Haaa...hah!"
As his chest heaved abruptly,Mo Fan's eyes snapped open!
He raised both hands almost on instinct,looking at that familiar skin,then squeezed them hard into fists.
Flesh and blood.
Warmth.
Sensation.
It had all come back.
He...
Was back!
And not only had his soul returned.
Even that fatal wound punched clean through his chest had fully healed under the power of the realm break,without leaving so much as a trace of a scar.
And just as Mo Fan was steeped in the joy of possessing a body once more...
Before his eyes...
System notifications,unprecedentedly,popped up all on their own!
[Tier-3 Breakthrough Complete!]
[Level Up:LV.20→LV.21]
[Class Tier:Tier-2→Tier-3]
[Unlocked:Death Domain(Basic)]
[Unlocked:Skill Advancement LV.3]
[Unlocked:Necro Constructs]
[Necrotic Realm Authority Expanded]
Looking at this whole string of notifications...
Mo Fan,who'd only just gotten to his feet,actually froze for a beat.
"Changed your ways?"
He rubbed his chin,muttering with a strange look on his face.
"Every other time I broke through,didn't I have to feel out whatever got unlocked bit by bit,all by myself?"
"And this time you actually send notifications?"
As expected...
In the face of Mo Fan's question,the System remained a stagnant pond,offering not a single response.
"Fine."
"Beats groping around blind,at least."
Mo Fan shrugged.
But before he could carefully study the several newly unlocked abilities...
A new notification surfaced again.
[Special Kill Settlement:Formless Demon Embryo]
[Massive experience reward obtained!]
[Level Up:LV.21→LV.22]
Mo Fan raised a brow.
Before he could open the panel...
At a certain moment...
He suddenly seemed to sense something and subconsciously turned his head,letting his gaze fall to the side.
There...
Another"corpse"still lay quietly.
Precisely the shell identical to Mo Fan that the Formless Demon Embryo had left behind after voluntarily withdrawing its consciousness.
However...
In the very same second Mo Fan turned to look...
That"Mo Fan"beside him,which should have been utterly devoid of life...
Actually slowly opened its eyes as well!
And then...
It braced both hands against the ground.
And sat bolt upright!
"Hold on?!"
Mo Fan was shocked,retreating several steps almost by reflex.
"How the hell are you still alive?!"
Just what kind of demon was this Formless Demon?
It could still resurrect after all that?!
However...
A moment later...
Mo Fan quickly sensed that something was off.
That"Mo Fan"sitting on the ground displayed no hostility whatsoever.
Not even the faintest trace of wariness.
It merely tilted its head slightly.
And gazed quietly at Mo Fan's true body with a pair of exceedingly clear eyes.
At the same time...
An exceedingly profound connection,impossible to put into words,quietly surfaced in Mo Fan's mind.
It was almost like a meeting of minds.
He could clearly feel it.
Between this"Mo Fan"before him and himself,there existed a connection close to instinct.
That feeling was like limbs to a body.
As responsive as his own arms and legs.
Without the slightest barrier.
And yet...
The other was precisely not a mere puppet under his control.
It had its own consciousness.
Its own thoughts.
It could even make judgments independently.
Except that consciousness seemed to have only just been born,like a blank sheet of paper,appearing utterly simple.
It was much more like...
"Another self."
Truly split off and extended from the depths of Mo Fan's own soul.
And just as Mo Fan stood there with astonishment written all over his face,trying to sort out this strange connection between the two of them...
BOOM!
An enormous,alien mass of memory suddenly poured madly into Mo Fan's mind along that invisible spiritual bond between them!
Formless Demon.
Parasitism.
Assimilation.
Devouring.
Fragment after fragment of broken memory buried deep in this body...
Along with certain racial inheritances that seemed branded into the depths of instinct,began surfacing rapidly.
As these memory fragments were digested bit by bit...
The expression on Mo Fan's face kept shifting.
Only in this moment...
Did he finally,truly understand.
Just what kind of unreasonable,terrifying thing it was that he'd run into at the bottom of Abandoned Sword Cliff.
And finally understand...
Just what kind of heaven-defying luck he'd had this time around!
What was truly terrifying about the Formless Demon had never been its mimicry alone.
It was that...
You would never know...
Whether that person standing in front of you...
Was it or not!
Within those broken inherited memories...
Mo Fan saw an ancient record concerning the Formless Demon.
Several centuries ago...
A great sect with deep foundations had once discovered a Formless Demon Embryo within its territory.
At the time,the embryo's cultivation was exceedingly feeble.
Yet the sect treated it with the utmost gravity.
They even dispatched a Nascent Soul patriarch who'd been in seclusion for years to personally hunt it down.
Three months later...
The patriarch returned to the sect safe and sound,a blood-stained treasure sword in hand.
And personally declared...
That the demon embryo had been executed.
And so the matter simply passed,uneventfully.
Until more than twenty years later...
When that patriarch's lifespan ran dry and he passed away in his cave dwelling...
While the disciples were clearing out the cave,they discovered,in its deepest recess...
Another corpse long since withered dry over many years.
And that corpse...
Was the real patriarch.
As for what exactly the"patriarch"who had presided over the sect for more than twenty years had been...
And when it had disappeared...
Nobody knew.
The memories turned over again.
Another blood-soaked record.
A great sect that dominated an entire region had once,on an exceedingly peaceful night...
Suddenly and without any warning activated its highest-grade mountain-guarding formation.
Sealing the mountain overnight!
There was no external enemy.
No demon beasts.
Yet a mere month later...
More than half of the entire sect lay dead or wounded.
The reason was utterly absurd.
Within the sect...
Two sect masters had appeared at once!
The two men looked exactly alike.
The aura of their techniques was exactly alike.
Even their cultivation matched down to the last fraction.
Both could recite sect secrets known only to successive generations of sect masters.
In the entire sect,from top to bottom...
Not a single person could determine which one was real!
In the end...
Under that panic of being unable to tell true from false...
Suspicion.
Distrust.
Soul searches.
Slaughter.
The entire sect descended into utter chaos.
And once that tragedy had truly ended...
Those two sect masters...
Both vanished on the same night,at the same time.
From then on...
Certain ancient inheritances of the cultivation world gained one additional line.
"Upon seeing the formless,do not seek to distinguish true from false.Kill them all."
Because attempting to determine which one was real...
Was,more often than not,where the disaster began.
And the last and most indistinct portion of the inheritance revealed where this creature's true horror lay.
At birth,a Formless Demon was exceedingly feeble.
Even an ordinary Qi Condensation cultivator might easily erase it.
Which was why...
They were called...
Demon embryos.
But once they endured through their weakest period and completed their first true Assimilation...
They would obtain a stable"form."
From then on...
Devour again.
Absorb again.
Assimilate again.
Each time more complete than the last.
Each time more terrifying than the last.
In one broken record...
The Formless Demon first discovered had been no more than Qi Condensation level.
Yet several decades later...
When it appeared before the world's eyes a second time...
It had already become a Nascent Soul True Lord whose name shook an entire region.
As for whether it had grown to Nascent Soul on its own...
Or whether,at some point nobody knew of...
It had already become a certain Nascent Soul...
Nobody knew.
Born formless.
It grows by chasing blood and qi.
It clings to the shed remains of the strong...
It observes their form.
It learns their conduct.
It traces their soul...
Mo Fan stood in place.
After digesting these vast,tangled inherited memories,he was speechless for a long while.
In the end...
Only one exceedingly clear warning remained in his mind.
"Should it have already taken human form,on no account gaze upon it at length,and on no account probe it with your divine soul,or you shall surely suffer the backlash of its assimilation!"
"..."
Mo Fan looked down at himself.
Then raised his head and glanced at that other"self"sitting on the ground,watching him with a face full of innocence.
For a moment...
He genuinely didn't know what to say.
Because those two absolutely forbidden things the inheritance warned against...
Down at the bottom of Abandoned Sword Cliff...
He hadn't just done both of them.
He'd done them exceedingly thoroughly!
"This..."
Mo Fan was silent for a moment.
In the end,all he could do was shake his head somewhat helplessly.
"Guess I really do have one hell of a charmed life."
Still...
Every danger had already passed.
And now...
This Formless Demon Embryo with its terrifying potential had,through sheer freak accident,become his external avatar.
At that thought...
Mo Fan walked over and slowly crouched down in front of the other.
That"Mo Fan"blinked.
And crouched down as well.
The two of them stayed like that,less than half a meter apart,looking at each other's identical faces.
The scene was,for a moment,indescribably eerie.
"Since you already have your own consciousness..."
Mo Fan rubbed his chin,thinking it over seriously.
"We may share the same origin,but I can't exactly have people calling you Mo Fan too,can I?"
"Sounds weird."
The"Mo Fan"across from him said nothing.
Just watched him quietly.
Mo Fan pondered for a moment.
His gaze swept around this dim,profound Necrotic Realm.
And finally...
Settled back on the other's face.
"Born of the formless."
"Companion to the netherworld..."
A smile gradually hooked at the corner of Mo Fan's mouth.
"From now on..."
"I'll call you..."
"Mo You."