In the shadowed hollow of the rubble pile, ghostfire flickered with an eerie pallor.
One man. One skeleton.
Their gazes met in a moment that could almost be mistaken for kindred spirits recognizing each other across the void—two souls forged in the same crucible of misfortune. Alas, the gulf between the living and the dead was simply too vast for such a romance to blossom.
Alright, it wasn't nearly that poetic.
Mo Fan was just on his hands and knees, scrounging through garbage for parts to give Summon No. 001 a proper set of finger-mounted weapons.
He sat on a blackite boulder, its surface stained with old blood that had long since oxidized to rust. In his hands, he worked a bundle of monster sinew that reeked of iron and rot.
Before him, No. 001 extended its grotesquely elongated ape-arm with the patient obedience of a client getting a manicure from hell.
"Hold still. This tendon's elasticity is garbage—I need to wrap it a few more times."
Mo Fan squinted, coaxing a thin wisp of blue Mana from his fingertips.
The energy behaved like industrial-grade epoxy in his hands, bonding the components together as he pressed several freshly harvested rat incisors—still trailing bits of pink gum tissue—into the skeleton's finger joints.
This was precision work.
As a man who had technically survived graduate school, Mo Fan retained certain academic standards.
He applied basic triangular force distribution principles, angling each tooth slightly outward. The geometry ensured maximum flesh-tearing efficiency on impact while preventing the teeth from snapping backward into the user's own metacarpals.
"Done."
The final thread of Mana solidified. What had been bare bone now bristled with four wickedly curved spikes.
In the dim light of the valley floor, the teeth gleamed with a sickly, phosphorescent green—the telltale glow of something that should not be touched.
[ EQUIPMENT SYNTHESIS: COMPLETE ]
Name: Crude Rat-Fang Knuckles (Inferior Quality)
Materials: Ape Bone, Ghoul-Rat Incisors, Monster Sinew
Attributes: ATK +5 | Piercing +3
Special Effect: ⚠️ Corpse-Toxin Infection (Trace)— Wounds inflicted resist natural healing.— Target experiences persistent, escalating pain.
"It looks like something a crackhead would craft in a sewer..."
Mo Fan admired his handiwork with genuine satisfaction. The weapon had a distinctly wasteland-punk aesthetic—all exposed sinew and jutting fangs.
"But that's the point. These babies are crawling with unsterilized bacteria and necrotic toxins. Anyone who catches a punch is in for a very bad week."
Summon No. 001 raised its newly equipped hand, seemingly fascinated by the upgrade. It swiped at the air experimentally—whoosh, whoosh—the crude claws cutting audibly through the still air.
"Alright, quit showing off."
Mo Fan dusted bone powder from his palms and pushed himself upright, favoring his good leg.
"The craftsman sharpens his tools before the work begins. Now that you're armed, it's time to get to business."
The valley floor wasn't just a garbage dump.
It was a mass grave.
Mo Fan dragged his half-healed leg through the debris field, moving with the patient, circling focus of a vulture scenting carrion.
His methodology was simple: skip the "paupers"—the picked-clean skeletal remains with nothing left to offer—and prioritize the "fresh inventory."
Intact corpses. Clothed corpses. Corpses that might still have pockets.
He passed three bodies reduced to moldering rags before spotting something promising in a recessed stone pit.
A middle-aged man in gray martial robes. His neck bent at a perfect ninety-degree angle, the vertebrae clearly snapped by something with very large jaws. Bone-Spike Demon Wolf, most likely. A quick death, all things considered.
But the neck wasn't what made Mo Fan's pulse quicken.
It was the palm-sized pouch dangling from the corpse's belt.
"A Storage Pouch!"
Mo Fan's eyes lit up with naked greed.
According to Lu Xiaoqi's inherited memories, these spatial containers were luxury items—affordable only to inner-sect disciples or wealthy rogue cultivators. Even the lowest-grade "Inferior Storage Pouch" might contain spirit stones.
He didn't hesitate. Didn't flinch at the tacky residue of dried fluids on the fabric. He simply grabbed the pouch and yanked.
A faint spiritual ripple clung to the bag's surface—the original owner's soul-imprint, a basic anti-theft measure.
For an ordinary mortal, this seal would be impenetrable. They could stare at the pouch all day and never access its contents.
Mo Fan was not ordinary.
"Qi... come on, Qi..."
He inhaled deeply, reaching inward for the pathetic trickle of spiritual energy that this trash-tier body could produce.
The sensation was uncomfortably similar to straining through severe constipation. His face flushed crimson. Veins bulged at his temples. Deep within his dantian, something finally stirred—a threadbare whisper of warmth flowing through clogged meridians.
Weak. Impure. Barely perceptible.
But it was Qi. True cultivation energy. Not the System's Mana.
Hummm—
The soul-imprint shattered. The pouch's drawstring loosened.
"Got it!"
Mo Fan gasped for breath, but his face split into a wild grin. This moment meant more than just loot.
It was proof.
This body's spiritual roots were garbage—a chaotic jumble of all five elements with no dominant affinity, the cultivation equivalent of rolling all 1s on every stat. But it was still a cultivator's body. He could still manipulate Qi, however feebly.
He was a man with dual-systems. Necromancy in one hand, cultivation in the other.
Eager as a child on Christmas morning, Mo Fan upended the pouch and shook its contents onto the nearest flat rock.
No cascade of gleaming treasures. No legendary artifacts wreathed in golden light.
Just a sad little pile:
Three spirit stones the size of thumbnails, their surfaces dull and clouded—clearly inferior grade.
One medicine bottle containing exactly two shriveled black pills, rattling around like forgotten vitamins.
A handful of unidentifiable mineral chunks and severed monster claws.
Mo Fan eyed the pills.
"Crude Rejuvenation Pills," the bottle's faded label read.
The color was wrong. The smell was wronger—somewhere between burnt rubber and fermented cabbage. Every hygienic instinct he'd carried from his previous life screamed at him to chuck these into the void and never speak of them again.
Then his leg throbbed.
He glanced at his Status Panel. His HP bar hovered at a level that could charitably be described as "one strong breeze from death."
Eat it, and you might die. Don't eat it, and you definitely die today.
There was really no choice at all.
Mo Fan adopted the solemn expression of a martyr facing the firing squad, shook out one pill, and swallowed it dry before he could think twice.
For a horrible second, nothing happened.
Then warmth bloomed in his stomach and radiated outward, flowing down to his shattered leg like liquid relief. The grinding, nauseating pain finally—finally—dulled to something merely excruciating.
Not poison, then. Good to know.
After sorting the miscellaneous junk, Mo Fan picked up the only jade slip in the pile and pressed it to his forehead.
[ DETECTED: Low-Grade Body Cultivation Manual ]
"Iron Bone Art (Incomplete Fragment)"
[ System Evaluation: Trash. ]Training process is extremely painful (requires abrading skin with iron sand). Cultivation ceiling is severely limited. Not recommended.
"So... it makes you tougher, but the process turns you into hamburger meat?"
Mo Fan snorted and tossed the slip into his pouch anyway.
"Whatever. Skills don't weigh anything. Maybe someday I'll be desperate enough to eat garbage."
Hopefully not soon.
Among the remaining debris, he found several crumpled sheets of paper. Newspapers, as it turned out—old editions of something called the Eastern Extremity Daily.
SHOCKING! Blue Cloud Sect's Outer Disciple Tournament Approaches—Full Betting Odds Inside! Who Will Be This Year's Dark Horse?
Zhao Clan Patriarch Takes 18th Concubine; City's Rogue Cultivators Celebrate (Read: Crash the Banquet for Free Food)...
"Huh. Turns out cultivators love gossip as much as anyone."
Mo Fan flipped through the pages idly—then froze.
Tucked between the news sheets was a separate page, illustrated with meticulous care. The artistry was genuinely impressive, each ink line flowing with practiced skill.
The title read:
[ Secret Spring Palace Records of the Hehuan Sect's Saintess (Classified Edition) ]
The illustration below was rendered in stark black and white, but the artist had captured every curve, every suggestive angle, every strategically placed shadow with undeniable expertise. The composition was... bold.
Very bold.
"Ahem."
Mo Fan's expression remained utterly neutral—the practiced blankness of a man who had once survived a random laptop inspection at work. With calm, deliberate movements, he folded the page neatly along its creases and tucked it into his robes.
"Don't misunderstand," he said to Summon No. 001, who stood nearby watching with empty sockets.
The skeleton, naturally, could not understand a single word.
"Paper is a scarce resource out here in the wilderness. And besides—" Mo Fan coughed. "Art demands critical examination."
No. 001 tilted its skull. The soul-flames in its eye sockets flickered once, twice—somehow radiating pure, undiluted judgment.
Supplies gathered. Leg functional.
Time to leave this hellhole.
But as Mo Fan turned to go, he found himself staring at Summon No. 001, and his enthusiasm curdled into concern.
The skeleton stood nearly two meters tall. Its mismatched limbs—one grotesquely elongated ape arm, one human-sized—gave it a lopsided, predatory silhouette. The fresh rat-fang knuckles gleamed wetly in the ghostfire's glow.
If I walk out of this valley with THAT following me, I won't make it ten kilometers before some "righteous hero" cuts me down as an evil cultivator.
The aesthetic was simply too villainous. No. 001 might as well have "FINAL BOSS" tattooed across its forehead.
But abandon it? Absolutely not.
Mo Fan had invested significant effort into grafting this thing together. It was his only combat asset, his golden employee, his—
His gaze drifted to the storage pouch in his hand.
Then back to the skeleton.
A thought began to form.
By conventional understanding, spatial storage pouches maintained a vacuum-like internal environment with unstable dimensional laws. Living creatures placed inside would suffocate, implode, or simply cease to exist.
Hence the universal rule: storage pouches only work on inanimate objects.
"But..." Mo Fan stroked his chin, a gleam of scientific mischief entering his eyes. "Skeletons aren't exactly alive, are they?"
The question wasn't philosophical—it was mechanical.
How did the System classify No. 001? Equipment? Creature? Furniture?
Only one way to find out.
Mo Fan stretched open the pouch's tiny mouth and beckoned to his skeletal minion. "Come here."
No. 001 obediently shuffled forward. Mo Fan lifted the pouch and experimentally pulled it over the skeleton's skull like a fabric hat—
[ TARGET ANALYSIS IN PROGRESS... ]
Life Signs: None detected.
Classification: Object / Construct.
Storage Compatibility: ✓ APPROVED
The skeleton dissolved into motes of pale light and vanished into the pouch. The fabric didn't even bulge.
"Yes!"
Mo Fan snapped his fingers in triumph.
"I knew it! No metabolism means the System treats you like furniture! You're basically a folding chair!"
He tucked the pouch safely into his robes, immensely pleased with himself.
Somewhere inside that pocket dimension, the soul of a corporate slave had just received the ultimate performance review:
Congratulations. You have been reclassified as office equipment.
Some things, it seemed, transcended even death.
A new problem presented itself. A distinctly physical one.
The low-grade storage pouch Mo Fan had scavenged had roughly one cubic meter of internal space—and a mouth barely wide enough to fit a watermelon. 001's skeletal frame was far too large to simply shove inside.
Mo Fan stared at the pouch. Then at the skeleton. Then back at the pouch.
"So, 001..." He smiled warmly. "I'm going to need you to make some sacrifices for the team."
001 tilted its skull, the flames in its eye sockets flickered with what might have been confusion.
Mo Fan got to work.
He approached the skeleton like a man wrestling an uncooperative beach chair. First, he grabbed 001's unnaturally long ape-like arms and folded them backward against the joint.
CRACK.
The sound was the auditory equivalent of nails on a chalkboard—the kind of noise that made your teeth ache and your spine crawl. Mo Fan didn't even flinch.
Next came the legs. With practiced efficiency, he detached both femurs at the hip sockets, bundled them together like firewood, and set them aside.
The ghost-flames in 001's eye sockets began flickering frantically. Its jawbone chattered in rapid staccato—clack-clack-clack-clack—like a telegraph machine sending an urgent distress signal.
"Stop complaining. This is for the greater good."
Mo Fan ignored the protest entirely.
He shoved 001's skull down into its own ribcage, compacting the whole assembly, then began cramming the bone-bundle into the storage pouch like he was stuffing an oversized sleeping bag into a compression sack.
Crunch. Crack. Squish.
Finally, only a single skull remained outside the pouch—two dimly glowing flames staring up at Mo Fan with an expression that could only be described as deeply aggrieved.
"What are you looking at? Get in there!"
Mo Fan raised his palm and brought it down on the crown of 001's skull with a satisfying smack.
Pop.
The last fragment of skeleton vanished into the pouch.
In theory, storage pouches maintained their external dimensions regardless of contents. But this was a bottom-tier piece of garbage—the cultivator equivalent of a dollar-store backpack.
With an entire skeleton crammed inside, the fabric bulged outward at several alarming angles, sharp protrusions threatening to puncture through at any moment. It looked less like a spatial storage device and more like a sack of angry firewood.
"Perfect."
Mo Fan tied the pouch to his belt, patting it affectionately. "You're my secret weapon now."
He braced himself against the rock wall and gazed toward the distant thread of daylight filtering down from above.
"Let's go, 001. Time to bring a little undead disruption to this stagnant cultivation world."
He struck what he imagined was a dramatic pose.
Three seconds passed.
Five seconds.
Mo Fan's expression slowly collapsed as realization dawned.
The skeleton capable of carrying him up the cliff was currently folded into a bag on his hip.
"...Ahem."
He coughed twice, then reached for the pouch with exaggerated nonchalance.
"Come out, 001. What's wrong with you, crawling in there on your own like that? Don't do it again without permission, understood?"
He grabbed the skull and hauled the skeleton back out, bones unfolding with a series of unpleasant clicks and pops as joints re-socketed themselves.
No. 001 stood before him once more, fully reassembled.
But something was different now.
The ghost-flames burning in those hollow eye sockets had changed. Before, they'd been dim, almost gentle—the resigned flicker of an obedient minion.
Now they blazed with an intensity that seemed almost... personal. Cold. Seething. The kind of silent fury that promised retribution at the earliest opportunity.
Mo Fan had seen that look before. It was the look of an employee who'd been asked to work overtime on Christmas, then had their bonus cancelled, then been told to smile about it.