The moment Mo Fan's consciousness linked with Summon No. 001, there was no satisfying sense of a soul returning home.
Instead, there was only a profound, nauseating wrongness.
Like a trucker who'd spent twenty years behind the wheel of an eighteen-wheeler, suddenly crammed into a paper toy car. His perspective lurched downward. The world warped behind a grainy blue filter, crackling with static like a cheap security camera feed.
But the worst part was the gravity—or lack of it.
This body was too light. No muscle tension pulling at the joints. No blood pumping through veins. No rise and fall of breath. Just... hollow emptiness, held together by monster sinew and desperate craftsmanship.
"DODGE!"
Mo Fan's mind screamed the command, envisioning a slick combat roll to the side—something straight out of a Dark Souls playthrough.
What he forgot was that No. 001's body didn't operate on human logic. The neural impulse traveled down to those mismatched leg bones—one too long, one too short, scavenged from three different corpses—and translated into something else entirely.
No. 001 lurched sideways like a grandmother who'd stepped on a banana peel, limbs flailing in four different directions, and face-planted directly into the mud with a wet splat.
WHOOSH—
A gust of fetid air ripped past where his skull had been.
Ugly. Humiliating. But somehow, miraculously, effective.
The Demon-Eyed Rabbit's killing blow—those steel-piston hind legs that could crush stone—slammed into empty ground. Dirt and gravel exploded outward like shrapnel.
Fast. Too goddamn fast.
Mo Fan didn't have time to feel relieved. The first-person perspective turned what should have been an exciting monster fight into something far more primal. This wasn't a boss battle viewed from a comfortable third-person camera. This was prey's-eye-view. This was watching death come for you in high definition.
The rabbit twisted mid-air with impossible agility, its massive body corkscrewing like a gymnast's. Those blood-red eyes—each the size of a tennis ball—carved twin afterimages across his blue-tinted vision.
It was already coming again.
Mo Fan tried to aim, tried to track the creature's movement, but in his current state of perception, the Demon-Eyed Rabbit wasn't an animal anymore.
It was a red lightning bolt with teeth.
CRACK!
Claws raked across No. 001's chest. Ribs shattered like dry kindling, the sound grating against Mo Fan's consciousness like nails on a chalkboard. The System filtered most of the pain, but the vibration of bones breaking traveled up the spine and buried itself directly in his soul.
Can't keep up—I can't fucking keep up!
Panic clawed at the edges of his mind. No. 001's Agility stat was trash. Trying to kite this thing with fancy footwork? That wasn't a strategy. That was suicide with extra steps.
New plan.
Mo Fan watched the rabbit land, muscles coiling for another lunge. Those crimson eyes locked onto No. 001's cervical vertebrae—going for the kill shot.
And something in Mo Fan's mind went quiet.
The soul-flame flickering in No. 001's eye sockets stopped its frantic dance. It grew still. Cold.
Calculating.
If I can't match your speed, I won't try.
If I can't aim, I'll make you come to me.
The Demon-Eyed Rabbit launched itself like a fur-covered cannonball. Its mouth gaped open, revealing two massive incisors the color of old ivory, each one capable of shearing through bone like butter.
This time, Mo Fan didn't dodge.
He stepped forward.
In the fraction of a second before those jaws snapped shut around his neck, he raised No. 001's left arm—that repurposed wild dog femur—and shoved it into the rabbit's mouth.
CRUNCH!
The bone lodged between those massive teeth. Cracks spiderwebbed across its surface as the rabbit's bite force threatened to pulverize it entirely. The sensation transmitted back through the skeletal frame was visceral and disgusting—like feeling your own arm being chewed in real-time.
Mo Fan didn't care.
If a skeleton could smile, No. 001 was grinning.
"Gotcha."
The rabbit's momentum was spent. Its jaws were locked. For one precious heartbeat, it was stationary.
And Mo Fan's right arm—that grotesquely long ape limb he'd grafted on—had been waiting for exactly this moment.
He raised it high.
Moonlight gleamed off the brass knuckles lashed to those pale finger bones. Four rat fangs jutted from the weapon's surface, their edges coated in a thin film of corpse toxin that glowed faintly green in the darkness.
This wasn't martial arts.
This wasn't cultivation technique.
This was street-fighting. Prison-rules. The kind of violence that didn't care about form or elegance—only results.
Like cracking a walnut.
He brought his fist down.
SQUELCH!
The toxic fangs punched through fur and flesh, burying themselves in the base of the rabbit's skull. Hot blood sprayed across No. 001's bleached-white facial bones, steaming in the cold night air.
"SKREEEEE—!"
The Demon-Eyed Rabbit's shriek was ultrasonic, sharp enough to feel like an ice pick in the brain. Its eyes blazed with crimson light as it unleashed its psychic attack—a wave of mental pressure that slammed into Mo Fan's consciousness like a tidal wave.
His vision shattered.
The blue filter flickered violently, black spots blooming across his sight like mold. It felt like someone had jammed a handful of red-hot needles directly into his frontal lobe. Every instinct screamed at him to let go, to disconnect, to run.
He didn't.
Instead, he used the left arm—still clamped in the rabbit's jaws—as a pivot point. He pressed down on the thrashing skull, pinning it in place.
And raised his right fist again.
SQUELCH!
The second blow splattered more blood across the forest floor. Chunks of something soft and grey clung to the rat-fang knuckles.
"Die—"
A third punch. A fourth.
Mo Fan became a machine. No thought. No hesitation. Just the mechanical rhythm of violence—raise, drop, impact. Each strike drove the toxic fangs deeper, carved new wounds, painted more of No. 001's bones in arterial red.
SQUELCH. SQUELCH. SQUELCH.
Gradually, the thrashing weakened.
The psychic assault faded to static, then silence.
Those terrible crimson eyes—the eyes that had paralyzed Mo Fan's soul, that had forced him to watch his own body get torn apart—dimmed. The bloody glow drained away, leaving behind only the dull, glazed grey of dead fish.
One final twitch.
Then nothing.
The Demon-Eyed Rabbit, First-Order Mid-Tier Spirit Beast, was dead.
"Hah... hah..."
Skeletons didn't breathe. But Mo Fan's mind was gasping, his consciousness stretched to the breaking point. The moment he confirmed the kill, something inside him snapped.
[ SYSTEM WARNING: Psychic link critically unstable. ]
[ Forced disconnection in: 3... 2... ]
"Hide..."
He managed one final command before darkness swallowed everything.
Bzzt.
Connection severed.
The Servant Quarters. A ramshackle hut in the mortal world.
"HURK—"
Mo Fan's eyes snapped open. He threw himself off the bed and barely made it to the edge before the dry heaves started.
Nothing came up—his stomach was empty—but the bile churned anyway. His vision spun like he'd spent the last hour inside a washing machine. Cold sweat plastered his robes to his back, and his face had gone the color of old paper.
Mental exhaustion hit different than physical exhaustion. Running a marathon just made your legs hurt. This? This felt like someone had taken a cheese grater to his soul.
He sat on the dirt floor for ten full minutes, waiting for the spots in his vision to fade. Then, with trembling fingers, he summoned the System interface.
[ COMBAT RESULTS CALCULATED ]
[ Target Eliminated: Demon-Eyed Rabbit (First-Order, Mid-Tier) ]
[ Cross-Rank Kill Bonus Applied ]
[ Experience Gained: +200 XP ]
Mo Fan stared at those numbers.
Slowly, color returned to his face.
"Two hundred..." He laughed—a ragged, exhausted sound. "One rabbit... equals two hundred rats..."
Fortune favors the bold, as they say. Or maybe: No risk, no reward.
The process had been ugly. He'd nearly fried his own brain. But the math?
The math was beautiful.
An hour later, the headache had faded to a dull throb. Good enough.
Mo Fan initiated the link again. He needed to confirm No. 001's status. Needed to make sure that priceless corpse hadn't been scavenged.
The connection stabilized—and relief flooded through him.
No. 001 had dragged itself back to the tree-hollow hideout. The skeleton looked rough: left arm nearly severed, hanging by a few strips of sinew; ribcage caved in on one side, several bones missing entirely.
But there, at its feet, lay the massive body of the Demon-Eyed Rabbit.
Mo Fan's gaze swept over the corpse with naked hunger. Through his [ Structure Analysis ], this wasn't just a dead animal anymore.
It was treasure.
[ High-Quality Biological Material Detected: Demon-Eyed Rabbit Hindquarters ] [ Grade: Excellent ] [ Application: Leg enhancement. Significant mobility upgrade potential. ]
[ Rare Material Detected: Bloodgorged Demon Eye (x2) ] [ Grade: Special ] [ Application: Unknown. Further analysis required. ]
"Jackpot."
Mo Fan severed the connection and collapsed back onto his bed, staring at the darkness of the ceiling.
This wasn't just experience points. This wasn't just a number going up on a progress bar.
This was hope.
Real, tangible hope. In the Mystic Realm's brutal cultivation hierarchy, this corpse meant more than getting stronger. It meant having the capital to survive. Maybe even enough to protect Old Lü and the others.
"Good work, No. 001."
The words formed silently in his mind. A quiet acknowledgment to his undead partner.
Then exhaustion claimed him, and Mo Fan sank into dreamless sleep—body aching, soul frayed, but for the first time since arriving in this hellish world...
Satisfied.