"...Do I have to kill a person?"
This hoarse murmur echoed in the gloomy, cold underground karst cave, then was swallowed bit by bit by the endless dead silence.
Mo Fan didn't get an immediate answer.
He just sat dejectedly on 004's broad, cold back armor, maintaining the posture of looking down at his hands, motionless.
Time seemed to lose its meaning in this sunless underground.
Mo Yan stood quietly in the shadows holding its sword; Summon No. 003 lay prone on the ground resting its eyes. They were like tireless sculptures, silently keeping their monarch company.
An entire night passed.
During this long night of sitting quietly, Mo Fan's brain became a tragic battlefield.
The ordinary life of his past life on Earth, and the flying flesh and blood—the law of the jungle—he had witnessed since transmigrating to this Mystic Realm, were engaging in the fiercest collision and intertwining.
"I finally understand..."
After an unknown amount of time, Mo Fan's dry, cracked lips parted slightly, letting out an extremely bitter, self-mocking laugh.
"Actually, from my transmigration until now, in my subconscious, I've always treated this world as an immersive full-dive RPG game with a System panel."
He raised his head, looking at the Bat Lord's corpse not far away that had been drained of its remnant soul.
Because he had a System, because he could see HP bars and EXP values, he treated killing Spirit Beasts as "grinding mobs for mats," and summoning skeletons as "recruiting party members."
He had convinced himself that as long as he camped hard enough, as long as he hid in this underground farm grinding and leveling up step-by-step, he could avoid all karmic entanglements and peacefully step onto the Grand Dao of Immortality.
"Too naive, Mo Fan."
He rubbed his cheeks hard with his hands, which were stained with black blood.
That trace of weakness and confusion in his eyes was completely shattered and peeled away in this moment.
How could this place be a game? The pain, joy, and struggles of these past months were all living, bone-deep reality.
A-Song, whom he had personally hoisted into the clouds; Old Lü, who was still waiting at home for them to return; the earnest, slightly dim-witted Eldest Senior Brother Wu Kuan; the hyperactive Zhao Ziwei.
The people Mo Fan had encountered on his path of growth—they were not NPCs.
He finally figured it out. This was not a game. This was the Mystic Realm, real to the bone.
And since he was given a second life and chose this path to immortality, then by nature it was going against the heavens—fighting the heavens, fighting people, plundering the fortunes of heaven and earth to enrich himself!
Those high-and-mighty Golden Core elders and Nascent Soul patriarchs—which one of them hadn't climbed up stepping on mountains of corpses and seas of blood?
If he didn't even have the resolve to kill a person, if he couldn't even achieve the decisiveness to draw his blade and draw blood when encountering a crisis, then what were all his forbearance and efforts thus far worth?
His consummate Qi Condensation iron bones would sooner or later become a stepping stone on someone else's path to immortality.
Moreover, he was a Necromancer!
Once his abilities to manipulate death energy and play with corpses were exposed to the sunlight, in this territory of the Azure Cloud Sect that styled itself as an orthodox and righteous sect, he would instantly be branded with the label of "demonic heretic."
When that time came, facing those righteous cultivators holding high the banner of "enforcing justice on behalf of heaven" who wanted to kill him to gain clout...
Was he supposed to talk to them about the spirit of harmony and expect them to show mercy?
"If I don't kill people, people will definitely kill me."
Mo Fan slowly stood up, looking down at the System quest box on his retina that still radiated a dark gold light.
From those profound eyes of his, the last trace of weakness was completely extracted. Replacing it was an extremely rational coldness, like the tundra of the extreme north.
"I accept this quest."
Mo Fan made his final declaration in his heart to the System, and also to himself: "I will cross this hurdle. I want to truly integrate into this cruel world."
"However..."
He shifted the conversation, his tone revealing an absolute pride and perseverance belonging to humanity that brooked no tampering from the System's will.
"I will absolutely never degenerate into a bloodthirsty slave used by you to level up."
Slaughtering the innocent indiscriminately just to level up wasn't cultivating immortality; that was falling to the demonic path. That was a pathetic worm suffering backlash from power.
Mo Fan rapidly established his own "Hunting Principles" in his mind:
Do not kill mortals. Mortals are powerless; killing unarmed elderly, women, and children in exchange for EXP is the beastly act of preying on the weak.
Do not indiscriminately kill fellow disciples. This was not only because sect infighting involved karmic ties that were too deep, and shattered soul tablets would too easily attract thorough investigations from the Enforcement Hall, but more importantly, because there was no deep-seated blood feud between fellow disciples for now.
To brutally murder innocent martial brothers and sisters for a quest—his Dao Heart couldn't cross that hurdle.
"Since I won't kill mortals and won't kill innocent fellow disciples, then who will I kill?"
Mo Fan's brain spun rapidly.
Suddenly, a scarlet lightning bolt tore through the night sky of his memory.
He remembered the scene resembling purgatory he had seen through the crack of the inn window in Greenwood Town a few months ago.
That underground blood river formed by countless mutated Spirit-Devouring Rats and the life essence of ordinary people!
That withered old man stepping on the head of the blood-colored giant python, laughing maniacally as he prepared to drag an entire city of ants down to be buried with him!
"Devil cultivators."
Mo Fan's eyes abruptly lit up, like a lone wolf locking onto its prey in the dark night.
Those demonic path evildoers who used living beings as array components, stole the secrets of heaven, and used the essence blood of mortals and even low-tier cultivators to practice their arts...
In their eyes, ordinary people were worse than livestock, merely fertilizer to nourish their demonic seeds.
This kind of person, although wearing the skin of a human cultivator, perfectly satisfied the System's quest condition of "Killing a cultivator of the same tier (Alive)." But in Mo Fan's eyes, they were a hundred times more disgusting than the Bat Lord rotting in this gloomy mine shaft; their deaths would not be pitied!
"It'll be you guys."
A sinister sneer hooked the corner of Mo Fan's mouth.
"Killing this kind of devil cultivator who oppresses the innocent and treats human life like grass to practice my skills—not only will I have zero psychological burden, I'd be doing the world a favor."
"Since the blind heavens won't take you, then today, I, a Necromancer living out a second life, will go collect your rotten lives!"
Reason and bottom lines reached a perfect logical self-consistency. That moral shackle lying across Mo Fan's heart finally shattered with a boom.
However, Mo Fan didn't let the hot blood go to his head and become blindly arrogant. He conducted a highly objective pre-battle self-assessment.
That kind of Golden Core stage devil head capable of slaughtering cities and exterminating sects, who fought Elder Liu Yun in the sky—if he dared to join the fun now, that would be pure "inting," delivering them a free meal.
"My targets must be extremely clear."
Mo Fan drew a mental boundary around his hunting range. "Those low-tier devil cultivators fleeing around the edges of the Azure Cloud Sect's jurisdiction, or hiding in the corners of mortal towns, whose cultivation sits exactly at the Qi Condensation stage!"
"You guys are the foundation stones for my ascension into Tier-2."
Unknowingly, the sky outside had grown bright.
After a whole night of sitting quietly and dissecting his thoughts, Mo Fan's Dao Heart was unprecedentedly clear.
His entire temperament was refreshed, shedding some of his previous extreme caution, and gaining a deep and ruthless aura as profound as a still lake hiding an abyss beneath.
Crack... pop...
Mo Fan stretched his muscles and bones, the joints all over his body emitting a series of explosive popping sounds like roasting beans.
"Pack it up."
With a wave of his hand, he recalled all the skeletons entirely into the high-grade storage bag.
Subsequently, he took large, unhurried strides out of this underground kingdom that had witnessed the metamorphosis of his mindset.
Back in the stone cottage above the canyon, Mo Fan boiled a full barrel of hot water.
He completely took off the tattered clothes caked in the Bat Lord's foul black blood and the underground grime, and submerged his entire body in the hot water, meticulously washing away all the exhaustion and smell of blood.
Recuperation complete.
When Mo Fan pushed open the wooden door of the stone house again, he had changed into a clean coat.
The Shadow Leopard hide cloak was neatly folded and placed in the most easily accessible spot in his storage bag.
Hanging at his waist was the bronze identity token, and across his back, that deadly Pale Bone Scepter was bound tight with coarse cloth.
He walked out to meet the rising morning sun and took a deep breath of the air carrying the fresh scent of vegetation.
"Time to head down the mountain."