Inside the tree hollow, the strange golden wave of light gradually subsided.
Mo Fan's body underwent a transformation unlike anything he'd experienced before.
It was a sensation of pure, unbridled relief.
If his body before had been a rusted machine—every movement accompanied by the grinding shriek of metal on metal—then now, finally, someone had poured oil into the gears.
Mo Fan instinctively reached down to touch his left leg.
The bone-deep agony that had been screaming beneath the bandages was gone.
In its place was a tingling, crawling sensation, like a thousand ants marching across his skin—the unmistakable signal of bone callus forming at an accelerated rate.
He braced one hand against the hollow's wall and pushed himself upright.
The leg still protested under his full weight. It still demanded caution.
But that terrifying fragility—that sense that one wrong step would snap the bone clean through—had vanished.
And his mind.
God, his mind had never been this clear.
It was like his first breath after surfacing from deep water. Pure oxygen flooding directly into his brain.
He could hear the wind rustling through leaves outside the hollow with crystalline precision. He could count the individual whispers of each branch swaying in the breeze.
[ SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: Level-up calculation complete. ]
[ CURRENT STATUS: LV. 2 ]
[ HP: 45/65 (Recovering) ]
[ MANA: 450/450 ]
Mo Fan drew in a deep breath.
He felt the energy thrumming through his meridians—or whatever the Necromancer equivalent was.
This tangible sensation of growing stronger was more intoxicating than any number on a screen could ever be.
And he wasn't the only one reaping the benefits.
Summon No. 001, still standing guard at the hollow's entrance, had apparently received a generous splash of hand-me-down fortune.
When one ascends to immortality, even the dogs and chickens ride the coattails to heaven.
Or in this case, when the master levels up, so does the skeleton.
The bone construct's frame had changed.
Where before its bones had been a sickly, cracked white—like chalk left too long in the rain—they now bore a deeper hue. A grayite sheen that reminded Mo Fan of weathered stone.
More notably, the soul-flame flickering in its eye sockets had stabilized.
What had once been a candle flame, guttering and dancing with every stray breeze from the entrance, now burned steady and unwavering.
Like the flame of a windproof lighter.
No. 001 lifted its newly-attached rabbit leg. It seemed puzzled by its own enhanced mobility, hopping twice in place.
Testing. Adapting.
"A little smarter," Mo Fan observed, watching the skeleton's experimental bounces with clinical interest. "But not by much."
He settled back onto the ground, crossing his legs.
He directed his attention to the notification still blinking at the edge of his vision.
This was the real prize of Level 2.
[ SKILL SELECTION AVAILABLE ]
[ DEATH VISION ]
Type: Reconnaissance/Support
Effect: Pierce the veil between life and death.
[ GRAVE CHILL ]
Type: Single-Target Debuff
Effect: Slow enemy movement and attack speed.
[ BONE HARDENING ]
Type: Passive Defense
Effect: Reinforce undead skeletal structure.
Mo Fan's gaze lingered on "Grave Chill" for exactly one second before sliding away.
For a solo player, that skill would be god-tier. It was the cornerstone of any kiting build.
But he already had No. 001, a Frankenstein's monster that combined tank, DPS, and crowd control into one shambling package.
What he lacked wasn't slowing power.
What he lacked was intelligence.
Information.
Eyes.
As for "Bone Hardening"—that was a Mana sink disguised as a defensive buff. At his current resource pool, running that kind of passive would bleed him dry faster than a cultivator with a gambling addiction.
"In a cultivation world crawling with Voldemorts," Mo Fan muttered, "having the bigger fist doesn't guarantee survival."
"But being blind? That guarantees a quick death."
He made his choice without hesitation.
"Option A. Death Vision."
[ SKILL LEARNED: DEATH VISION (LV.1) ]
[ Activation Cost: 5 Mana ]
[ Maintenance: 1 Mana/minute ]
As the skill icon flared to life in his peripheral vision, Mo Fan's eyes dropped to the green-tinted data at the bottom of his Status Panel:
[ SOUL STRENGTH (CPU): 27 ]
[ CURRENT LOAD: 16/27 ]
[ AVAILABLE PROCESSING: 11 ]
"Eleven points of spare processing power..."
Mo Fan stroked his chin thoughtfully.
"A standard adult human skeleton runs about 5 points. But that would just give me two infantry units. Too one-dimensional. No tactical flexibility."
His gaze drifted to the pile of refuse near his feet.
There lay the unfortunate Windchaser Sparrow from earlier.
Most of its meat had been stripped away—waste not, want not—but Mo Fan had deliberately preserved certain key structures: the membrane along the wings, the tail feathers, the lightweight aerodynamic framework.
"A pure skeleton bird can't fly. That's fantasy, not physics."
He picked up the palm-sized avian skeleton, turning it over in his hands. The bones were surprisingly light, yet possessed a fibrous density that spoke of supernatural reinforcement.
"Even in the Mystic Realm, you still need to respect some laws of aerodynamics."
A perfect specimen.
First-rank low-tier Spirit Beast. Light. Resilient. Functional.
"Wake up."
Mo Fan pressed his fingertip against the tiny skull.
Blue light pulsed from his touch, seeping into bone.
[ MANA: -20 ]
[ CONTRACT ESTABLISHED ]
Fwp.
Two pinpricks of ghostly green flame ignited in the bird's hollow eye sockets—each no larger than a grain of rice.
The skeletal sparrow jerked its head, producing a series of tiny click-click-click sounds as vertebrae realigned.
Then, with a rustle of half-bone, half-membrane wings, it lurched into the air.
The flight was unsteady. Crooked. Like a drunk trying to walk a straight line.
But it was flight.
The little undead bird hovered before Mo Fan's face, awaiting orders.
[ UNIT: 002 (Carrion Sparrow) ]
[ Type: Aerial Reconnaissance ]
[ Load Cost: 3 ]
"Excellent cost-efficiency."
Mo Fan nodded with genuine satisfaction.
Only 3 points of processing load. That left him with 8 points of buffer—enough headroom to handle emergencies without his mental CPU crashing.
"002, get airborne and maintain overwatch."
"001, back in the bag."
The sky was bleeding orange and purple as evening settled over the mountains.
Mo Fan cleaned up the hollow, erasing any trace of his presence.
No. 001 was folded—with some creative joint manipulation—back into the bundle.
No. 002 spiraled upward into the darkening sky, a tiny skeletal silhouette circling high above.
Mo Fan straightened his tattered clothes. He grabbed a branch to use as a walking stick.
He affected a convincing limp as he made his way out of the rear mountain.
Information security, he reminded himself.
The cripple everyone ignores is the cripple who survives.
He reached the servant quarters just as the dinner hour began.
Old Lü was squatting by the dormitory entrance, drawing on a pipe of rough-cut tobacco.
The old man's weathered face split into a grin the moment he spotted Mo Fan approaching—walking stick discarded, color returned to his cheeks, moving with noticeably less pain despite still maintaining the limp.
"Little Seven!"
The old man lurched to his feet, tobacco temporarily forgotten. "Where'd you run off to this morning? Nearly gave this old man a heart attack! And your leg—?"
"Uncle Lü!"
Mo Fan smiled warmly as he approached. The expression came more naturally than he'd expected.
"That bowl of spirit grass soup you brought—it really did the trick. I'm not ready to run any races, but walking doesn't feel like torture anymore. I just had to get outside and test it, you know?"
"Ancestors be praised, ancestors be praised!"
Old Lü's relief was palpable, his lined face crumpling with genuine joy. "Knew you were a tough one, boy. Knew it!"
Looking at this elderly man whose happiness was so sincere, so utterly devoid of ulterior motive, Mo Fan felt something stir in his chest.
Perfect timing, he thought. Test subject acquired.
"Let's try out the new skill."
He narrowed his eyes slightly, keeping his expression casual.
He silently willed the activation.
[ Death Vision: Activate ]
Hummm—
Five points of Mana evaporated instantly.
A sensation like ice-cold mint drops—the expensive kind, the ones that made your eyes water—flooded his eye sockets.
Then the world shifted.
Color drained from existence.
The warm sunset glow that had been painting the village in shades of amber and rose vanished.
It was replaced by a stark monochrome rendering.
Buildings became gray outlines. Trees transformed into charcoal sketches. Stone walls faded to graphite smears against a colorless sky.
It was like stepping into an old photograph, one left too long in the sun.
But within this dead gray landscape, something burned.
Red.
Flames. Dozens of them. Scattered across the village like scattered coals in ash.
The fire of life.
Old Lü's chest housed a dim, flickering ember—dark red, almost maroon, like a coal on the verge of crumbling to ash.
The signature of age. Of a body winding down toward its final rest.
But over there—the group of children chasing each other between buildings—their flames blazed bright and fierce.
Vivid crimson. Full of years yet to be spent.
"So this is what life looks like..."
Mo Fan was about to deactivate the skill when something in his peripheral vision made him freeze.
A corner of the compound.
A scrawny boy, sitting alone, scratching patterns into the dirt with a stick.
He was the most withdrawn child in the servant quarters—the one who never spoke, never played, never did anything to draw attention to himself.
But in Mo Fan's Death Vision, this unremarkable child was anything but ordinary.
Yes, the red flame of life burned in his chest, same as the others.
But beside it, around it, through it—
A spiral.
A whirlpool of energy that pulsed with slow, hypnotic rhythm.
And its color was green.
Pale. Almost translucent. But impossibly pure.
In this black-and-white world, it shone like a firefly trapped in a jar of ink.
Mo Fan's breath caught.
He forced himself to look at the other children, comparing.
Most of them carried only murky gray vortexes in their cores—the mark of no Spirit Root, or roots so damaged they were worthless.
A few showed faint, chaotic swirls of color: muddy browns, sickly yellows, dull blues all mixed together. Mixed-element roots. Marginal talent at best.
But that boy in the corner. Only that boy.
Pure. Single. Concentrated wood-element affinity.
[ SYSTEM ANALYSIS: High-purity wood-attribute Qi affinity detected. ]
[ ASSESSMENT: Mid-grade (possibly high-grade) Wood Spirit Root. ]
Mo Fan's heart skipped a beat.
He'd assumed [ Death Vision ] was a utility skill—useful for finding corpses, reading enemy HP bars, basic tactical reconnaissance.
He'd been thinking too small.
This System didn't just digitize cultivation.
It could see the quality of one's very potential. The "heavenly talent" that determined who would rise and who would remain forever groveling in the dirt.
In the Azure Cloud Sect, testing Spirit Roots required specialized Spirit-Testing Stones and supervising Elders. A whole bureaucratic production.
Mo Fan just needed to look.
What does that mean?
It meant that in this rigid, hierarchical world of cultivation—where birth decided destiny and talent determined worth—he now possessed something invaluable.
The eyes of a talent scout.
The vision to see futures before they bloomed.
The black-and-white filter slowly faded from Mo Fan's vision.
Color seeped back into the world like watercolor bleeding across wet paper.
But his gaze remained fixed on that oblivious child, still playing in the dirt, completely unaware of the treasure coiled within his chest.
Future genius.
Undiscovered.
Unclaimed.
Mo Fan stroked his chin, and a slow smile curved across his lips—the smile of a venture capitalist who'd just spotted an undervalued startup.
"What if I could find these future geniuses before the Sect does?"
"What if I could make them mine first?"
The smile widened.
The possibilities were delicious.