Mo Fan stared at Celeia for a long moment.
He almost expected her to burst out laughing and tell him she was joking.
But no.
Those silver-gray eyes held nothing but sincere curiosity.
She really didn't know.
For a moment, Mo Fan genuinely had no idea how to respond.
Seriously?
You can command an undead legion like it's second nature, and you don't even know the basics of cultivation?
Still, looking at Celeia's perfectly earnest expression, he swallowed his complaints.
"Alright, let me explain."
Mo Fan cleared his throat and began with the basics.
He started with Spirit Roots, then moved on to the various stages of cultivation, explaining Foundation Establishment and Golden Core as simply as he could.
Celeia listened attentively.
Occasionally, she would interrupt with a question—sometimes so elementary that Mo Fan found himself wondering whether they were even talking about the same kind of power.
And the longer the conversation went on, the stranger things became.
By the time Mo Fan finished his explanation, both he and Mo You, who had been quietly listening from the shadows, had arrived at the same unsettling realization.
This lich, whose origins were clearly terrifyingly significant, knew virtually nothing about the cultivation world they currently inhabited!
Conversely, although Mo You had inherited the ancient legacy memories of the Formless Demon race and knew of the existence of the myriad worlds, he couldn't locate anything in those memory fragments that corresponded perfectly to a "lich" like Celeia either.
For a moment, the atmosphere in the hall turned exceedingly peculiar.
Mo Fan was completely in the dark about the [ Necrotic Realm's ] past and the System's origins.
Celeia was full of questions about the Mystic Realm's cultivation civilization.
And Mo You had no idea whatsoever what this suddenly-appeared lich woman's deal actually was.
Three individuals, each holding a piece of the information, each with a knowledge gap the others couldn't bridge, had inexplicably ended up gathered under the same roof.
And yet, precisely because Mo Fan existed as the core, there was no conflict of interest between them at all—they could even divide the labor and cooperate.
Sitting on the throne, Mo Fan glanced left at Mo You in the shadows, right at the elegantly standing Celeia, mulled it over for a long while...
And could only rub his temples helplessly and heave an internal sigh.
Great. His [ Necrotic Realm ] had officially become a shelter—every kind of freak and monster welcome.
Still, since Mo You remained in the critical phase of his transformation and reshaping, Mo Fan didn't plan to disturb him much.
He briefly instructed Celeia not to interfere with Mo You's seclusion while managing the space day-to-day, and Celeia naturally agreed to each point with perfect docility.
With that settled, Mo Fan finally relaxed completely.
Now that he had this top-tier housekeeper holding down the fort, the space's internal affairs no longer required his personal attention for everything.
As for exactly how many more abilities Celeia was hiding—as his own strength grew, there would naturally be opportunities to unlock and verify them bit by bit.
Before leaving, Mo Fan stood up and couldn't resist poking his head out for one more look outside the palace.
Those nine Gray Mist Bone Soldiers were currently laboring through formation drills under Mo Yan's supervision, with tremendous difficulty.
"Ahem, so... Celeia."
Mo Fan tossed out a somewhat uneasy reminder.
"The rookies have weak foundations. Go a little easy when you're drilling them. Don't go snapping them apart on day one of their recruitment."
Hearing that, Celeia covered her mouth with a soft laugh, those lovely silver-gray eyes curving into crescents, her voice gentle and pleasant:
"Rest assured, master. I know my limits."
Mo Fan: "..."
He always felt there was an inexplicable chill running beneath this woman's gentleness.
Shaking his head, Mo Fan didn't linger. A thought stirred, and he withdrew his consciousness from the [ Necrotic Realm ].
Hundred Forging Peak. Inside the stone house in the canyon.
Mo Fan, seated cross-legged on the bed, slowly opened his eyes and let out a long breath of turbid air.
Outside the window, the familiar mountain wind swept through the treetops, carrying the smoke-and-forge scent unique to Hundred Forging Peak.
The shift in perspective left Mo Fan slightly disoriented for a moment.
But he'd long since gotten used to it.
Hopping off the bed and stretching out his joints, Mo Fan didn't stay in the room grinding away at cultivation.
Earlier, while experimenting with [ Forge ] and crafting the Netherbone Sword in the space, he'd sharply noticed that the bone throne's logic for extracting material attributes seemed to share certain commonalities with the Mystic Realm's orthodox artifact-refining methods.
And that copy of the Hundred Forging Artifact Pattern Record he'd bought at the Cangqing City auction still contained plenty of details worth chewing over properly.
Since he happened to have nothing urgent on his plate today, Mo Fan pushed the door open and decided to go have a chat with Zhao Ziwei—and incidentally see what bizarre contraption his Second Senior Brother was tinkering with lately.
Following the rugged mountain path, Mo Fan arrived with practiced familiarity at Zhao Ziwei's chaotic stone courtyard.
He smelled the familiar scorched stench before he even reached the gate.
He pushed open the half-shut courtyard door and, sure enough, the yard was its classic self—scrap metal fragments and ore slag piled everywhere.
And Zhao Ziwei himself was squatting beside a small refining furnace, face and hair covered in soot, clanging away at a blackened lump of iron with a small hammer in hand.
Hearing footsteps, Zhao Ziwei looked up. The second he saw it was Mo Fan, he set down the hammer and grinned:
"Yo! If it isn't our very own busy man, Junior Brother Xiaoqi! What's the occasion—what kind of ill wind blew you over here, that you'd actually spare the time to visit your Senior Brother? You've been impossible to track down lately!"
Mo Fan looked at his pitiful state and laughed too, striding over, kicking aside a chunk of scrap iron at his feet, and sitting down on a nearby stone block.
"Come on, Senior Brother. I went to Cangqing City a while back to buy materials, and I've been in seclusion in my room ever since I got back. Where would I find the free time to go wandering around?"
With that, Mo Fan didn't bother standing on ceremony and steered the conversation straight to artifact refining, consulting Zhao Ziwei on several questions he'd come across in the Hundred Forging Artifact Pattern Record.
Zhao Ziwei might come off as a flake most of the time, but at his core he was a genuine refining fanatic.
The moment he heard Mo Fan voluntarily bringing up such specialized subject matter, his eyes lit up instantly and his whole demeanor came alive.
"Hah! Not bad, kid—you've actually started studying refining?"
Zhao Ziwei slapped his thigh, couldn't be bothered to wash his hands, and just grabbed a fire-poking stick off the ground to start sketching diagrams in the dirt as he explained.
Zhao Ziwei's thinking had always been wildly unconstrained, constantly throwing out heterodox and inventive ideas.
And while Mo Fan had no spiritual energy, he had [ Death Vision ], which gave him an exceedingly unorthodox angle on problems.
Once the two got talking, they genuinely struck quite a few sparks.
Before they realized it, the sun had drifted west.
Mo Fan digested the last of his remaining questions, figured the timing was about right, and stood up, brushing the dust off his backside, preparing to take his leave and head home.
"Alright, Senior Brother. I've learned more from this chat than I could from ten years of reading. I'll go mull it over for now, and we'll drink some other day."
"Go on, go on. Just don't let it get in the way of your cultivation."
Zhao Ziwei waved a hand and squatted back down, head bowed, resuming his rummaging through a heap of broken copper and scrap iron.
However—just as Mo Fan turned and took two steps, about to cross the courtyard gate—
Zhao Ziwei, still squatting on the ground, seemed to suddenly remember some trivial little thing.
Without even lifting his head, he mentioned offhandedly:
"Oh, right, Xiaoqi."
"Couple days back, while you were out, somebody apparently made a special trip over here asking about you."
The remark was delivered quite flatly, even with a touch of indifference.
Zhao Ziwei himself thought nothing of it at all after saying it, and went right back to focusing on the iron lump in his hands.
But Mo Fan, who already had one foot over the threshold, froze mid-step in that instant.
The evening wind blew through the courtyard, stirring up a few dead leaves.
The easy smile slowly faded from Mo Fan's face. He stopped, turned his head slowly, and looked at the squatting Zhao Ziwei with some surprise:
"Someone was asking about me?"