Venerable Miasma Dust hung in the air, eyes locked on the boy below—the one now wrapped in that ancient death-qi—and the cold sweat on his forehead broke out faster and thicker.
He couldn't make sense of what the boy was doing. He couldn't identify the source of that soul-shaking aura.
But he understood one thing perfectly: hesitation kills, and villains who monologue die first.
He wavered for only a fraction of a second. Then the terror in his eyes was thoroughly swallowed by an extremely ruthless ferocity.
"Cheap tricks! Whatever you are—you die here today!"
He roared in anger, no longer holding anything back, and viciously pressed both hands downward.
That dark red blood-sphere—brewed to its absolute peak—came down like a destructive meteorite from outer space.
Carrying a mournful, air-tearing shriek, dragging the surrounding berserk spiritual energy storm with it...
It smashed heavily toward the ruins of the courtyard!
If that strike landed solid, let alone a living person, it would shave an entire layer off the hilltop.
In the nick of time.
Mo Fan was still standing there. Motionless. Vacant.
As if his mind had truly been shattered by the Foundation Establishment pressure, turning him into a walking corpse that didn't know how to dodge.
But right in the final split-second before that dark red, blood-colored storm was about to swallow the top of his head—
Mo Fan's tightly shut eyes snapped open!
Those pupils, which had previously lost focus and turned grayish-white due to the massive influx of information, now restored their absolute clarity.
"[ Bone Armament ]..."
A low, hoarse growl crawled out of his throat, sounding as if it echoed from the abyssal depths of hell:
"Tier-2. Manifest."
BOOM!
Accompanied by this command, an extremely dense, even viscous-as-ink black death-qi spilled out from the surface of Mo Fan's body.
It didn't behave like the first-tier version. It didn't just form a thin membrane on his skin.
It moved like something alive—expanding outward and transforming into a powerful magnetic vortex!
Every bone fragment in the area responded. The shattered remnants of 004's armor. The ordinary dry bones scattered in the corners.
Even shattered bone shards buried underground for years.
In this instant, as if iron filings attracted by a super-magnet, they flew madly into the air, spiraling inward toward Mo Fan's body in a violent reverse collapse!
The reassembly was completed in a flash of lightning.
In the blink of an eye, the bones didn't just cover him—under the perfect adhesion and reshaping of the Tier-2 death-qi...
They fused into an extremely ferocious, heavy suit of bone mecha, with sharp, backward-curving barbs growing all over its joints!
RUMBLE——!!!
In the next second, the dark red blood-sphere smashed viciously onto Mo Fan.
An apocalyptic explosion detonated in the side courtyard.
The berserk shockwave completely leveled all the surrounding broken walls and ruins to the ground, kicking up a sky-piercing cloud of dust.
But in the very center of the explosion—
That layer of heavy death-qi covering Mo Fan acted like a bottomless quagmire.
Layer by layer, inch by inch, it forcefully peeled away and dissolved the devastating destructive power of the mid Foundation Establishment spell!
The howling gale blew past. The smoke and dust gradually cleared.
The ground where Mo Fan stood had been blasted into a massive crater several meters deep.
And at the bottom of the crater, Mo Fan still maintained the posture of having his arms crossed defensively in front of his chest.
Although the suit of bone mecha on his body was covered in dense cracks, and large chunks of bone were peeling and shattering with crackling sounds, he...
Stood tall and unyielding.
Relying on his physical body—repeatedly tempered by death-qi—and the Tier-2 Armament he gained after crossing into the new realm...
He had actually, forcefully, and using pure physical means, tanked a fully charged ultimate move from a mid Foundation Establishment cultivator head-on!
Of course, the price for eating this strike raw wasn't small.
That thick layer of bone armor had a massive chunk of its thickness shaved off, and a trace of fresh blood oozed from the corner of Mo Fan's mouth.
But he was standing.
In mid-air, Venerable Miasma Dust's eyeballs almost popped out of their sockets.
"How is this possible?!"
He let out an exclamation of raw disbelief.
You must know, the cultivation world had always been characterized by "glass cannons."
He feared that even he, a mid Foundation Establishment cultivator, would absolutely not dare to stand and eat his own fully-charged ult head-on without activating a magic treasure shield!
Yet this monster before him, wrapped in ferocious bone armor, actually blocked it?! And by the looks of it, he hadn't even broken a single bone?!
Before Miasma Dust could recover from this common-sense-shattering shock...
The System benefits brought by breaking into Tier-2 began to manifest fully within Mo Fan's body.
Mo Fan felt an extremely massive vitality surging wildly inside him.
The slight concussion injuries from tanking the ult, the congested blood in his internal organs, and even the stamina he had exhausted during the previous battles...
They were all regenerating in a straight line at a visible, terrifying speed!
It wasn't just him.
Hum! Hum!
Not far away, Summon No. 004, which had been on the verge of falling apart in the ruins, and Mo Yan, who was half-kneeling on the ground...
In their previously dim, nearly extinguished skeletal eye sockets, the ghostly blue soul-fire erupted with a BOOM, skyrocketing madly as if gasoline had been poured over it!
That flame was no longer the pure, hollow mechanical state from before.
It faintly carried a trace of the vividness and brutality belonging to a true "soul"!
Mo Fan, through that sublimated soul link, even faintly sensed that a few miles outside the village in the ruins, the lingering 003 was also beginning to rapidly splice its broken bones and recover its status under this enveloping aura.
But with a thought, he didn't order 003 to rush over and join the battle immediately. Instead, he issued the command to "continue lying dormant."
"Done already, old man?"
Mo Fan slowly lowered his crossed arms, extending the back of his bone-armored hand to casually wipe the blood from the corner of his mouth.
He raised his head. Those ghostly blue eyes stared dead at Venerable Miasma Dust in mid-air, and the corner of his mouth hooked into a wild, cruel, and savage grin.
"Now... it's my turn!"
Before his voice faded, Mo Fan acted like a heavy tank firing on all cylinders, stomping the ground violently.
BANG!
The rocks at the bottom of the crater shattered instantly.
Carrying his tattered yet still ferocious bone armor, Mo Fan launched himself from the ground...
Taking the initiative and charging fiercely toward Venerable Miasma Dust, who was descending from mid-air!
The horn of counterattack had officially sounded.
And in the instant of his charge, Mo Fan experienced an unprecedented, marvelous sensation.
He discovered with horror and ecstasy that he no longer needed to distract himself with issuing tedious micro-management commands like raise leg, swing sword, or raise shield to his skeletons!
After crossing into Tier-2, his skeleton underlings seemed to have... gotten smarter!
There was no need for Mo Fan to say a word.
Right at the same time Mo Fan launched into the sky—
ROAR—!
The battered 004 let out a silent roar.
Its massive body, like an insurmountable moving city wall, rammed directly into the path Venerable Miasma Dust was landing!
Facing a blood-colored bolt of silk casually thrown out by Miasma Dust, 004 didn't dodge at all. It face-tanked the spell's bombardment.
Immediately after, its massive bone claw scooped extremely intelligently into the ruins, picking up a bluestone the size of a millstone.
Like a catapult, it hurled it viciously toward Venerable Miasma Dust's landing spot!
"Scram!"
Although Miasma Dust didn't fear this kind of physical attack, the millstone-sized rock smashing over forced him to change his posture and dodge to the side.
Right in the fraction of a second when he was forced to dodge sideways.
A black phantom glided silently across the ground. It was Mo Yan!
It didn't need Mo Fan's prompting at all, seizing the visual blind spot created during Miasma Dust's dodge with extreme cunning.
That rusty cold-iron longsword, like a venomous snake that had laid in wait for a long time, slashed upward in an incredibly vicious arc...
Cutting straight toward Venerable Miasma Dust's ankle—which happened to lack the protection of Astral Qi at this moment!
This kind of fluid, autonomous tactical coordination simply left Mo Fan amazed.
"Audacious brat, you dare?!"
Venerable Miasma Dust turned pale with fright. After all, he wasn't a body cultivator; his physical flesh was incredibly fragile.
If his ankle was severed, he would be completely crippled for the rest of his life.
He was forced to forcefully mobilize the already chaotic True Qi in his body, detonating a burst of blood-light under his feet to forcefully blast Mo Yan back.
But right in this instant—his old force exhausted, his new force not yet born, and his attention entirely drawn by 004 and Mo Yan.
"Got you."
A Reaper-like whisper abruptly sounded behind his ear.
Mo Fan's heavy fist—covered in white bone mecha and radiating death-qi so dense it was almost visible—had already torn through the air.
Carrying the full explosive power of a Tier-2 Necromancer...
It landed solidly and without reservation, smashing ruthlessly into Venerable Miasma Dust's lower back!