Weightlessness.
That was the last signal Mo Fan's brain managed to register.
Exactly three seconds ago, this miserable third-year graduate student had been hiking through the wilderness, desperately trying to escape his advisor's face—a face that might as well have had "FIRST DRAFT DUE MONDAY" tattooed across the forehead in blood-red ink.
As someone who'd spent years marinating in a laboratory on less than four hours of sleep per night, his body had long since degraded past some critical threshold.
He wasn't a student anymore. He was a husk running on caffeine and spite.
The rock beneath his foot shifted. The world inverted.
Wind shrieked past his ears. His internal organs lurched upward with the weightlessness, crushing against his heart. The cliff face became a gray blur. The sky traded places with the ground.
If I die like this, Mo Fan thought, squeezing his eyes shut.
His life didn't flash before his eyes—no childhood memories, no regrets, no loved ones. Just one absurd, glorious thought:
...Does that mean I don't have to write my thesis?
A shrill electronic beep pierced his eardrums.
[ Anomalous spacetime frequency detected. ]
[ Synchronous death signal captured. ]
Mo Fan's consciousness didn't scatter into oblivion. Instead, it felt like something had grabbed him by the soul and yanked him into a window filled with corrupted data.
His vision glitched like a dying graphics card, forcibly splicing in another feed:
Another cliff. Another world.
A young man in tattered cyan robes sprinted through a mountain forest, topknot half-undone, face twisted in pure terror.
Behind him, a wolf the size of a small cow gave chase—black fur bristling with bone spurs that jutted from its spine like serrated blades, eyes burning crimson, maw gaping wide enough to swallow a man's head whole.
The boy stumbled. Chose wrong. His foot found empty air instead of stone.
He fell.
"AAAAAAHHHHH—!"
The boy's scream harmonized perfectly with the sigh in Mo Fan's heart.
[ Assessment complete. Target A (Earth: Mo Fan) and Target B (The Mystic Realm: Lu Xiaoqi) have entered synchronized death state. ]
[ Triggering Emergency Intervention Protocol: Life Exchange Program initiated. ]
An ice-blue popup slammed itself directly into Mo Fan's consciousness, as unreasonable and impossible to dismiss as a Windows Blue Screen of Death.
[ Option A: Reject Protocol. ] Consequence: Physical death. The End.
[ Option B: Accept Exchange. ] Travel to "The Mystic Realm." Assume control of Target B's body. Load hidden class module: Necromancer.
Mo Fan stared at the flickering countdown timer. His decision bypassed every neural pathway meant for rational thought.
A cultivation world? Sounds dangerous.
But... no thesis. No advisor. No goddamn deadlines.
"As long as I never have to revise another dataset, I'd accept a job as a corpse-hauler in another dimension."
Mo Fan mentally slammed the confirmation button so hard it should have cracked.
"B! GIVE ME OPTION B!"
[ Agreement reached. Initiating transfer... ]
"Hsssss—!"
Pain crashed through him like a tidal wave, activating every nerve ending at once.
Mo Fan's eyes snapped open. He found himself wedged at an extremely unnatural angle in the branches of a crooked pine tree growing horizontally from the cliff face.
Below him: a bottomless abyss, its depths swallowed by mist. Cold mountain wind sliced across his cheeks like razors.
This body... it was light. Weak. And several of its bones were definitely broken.
"I'm... alive?"
Mo Fan gasped for breath, trying to move his fingers. Before he could take stock of his situation, that cold system voice chimed in again—but this time, there was something almost sheepish in its tone.
[ System Notice: Exchange successful. ]
[ Warning: Transfer Error (Error 404). Due to cross-dimensional network fluctuations, Target B (Lu Xiaoqi)'s soul was lost during transmission. Failed to arrive on Earth. Current status: Adrift in spacetime turbulence. ]
Mo Fan froze. "What do you mean, lost? That guy's just... gone? So I'm..."
[ This constitutes unauthorized one-way immigration. ]
[ Calculating compensation package... Calculation complete. ]
[ You will inherit the "empty soul vessel" remaining in the original host's body, converting it into spiritual energy. ]
[ Reward applied: Your Mana cap has been permanently doubled. ]
"The guy's dead, and you're giving me a mana refill?"
Mo Fan's eye twitched. The System's bureaucratic approach reminded him of his university's administrative office.
"Look, I know you can't bring back the dead, but isn't this compensation a little... half-assed?"
Before he could complain further, a row of translucent pale-blue data panels unfolded across his retinas:
Name: Mo Fan
Race: Human (Mystic Realm Native Body)
Class: Necromancer (Lvl 1)
HP: 15/50 (Critical Condition / Multiple Fractures)
Mana: 400/400 (Double Compensation Active — Original Cap: 200) Soul Strength: 25 (Transmigrator Bonus)
Status: Impure Spirit Root (Extremely difficult to cultivate Immortal Arts)
"Four hundred Mana..."
Mo Fan stared at that blue energy bar stretching almost beyond his field of vision, and somewhere deep in his soul, his inner graduate-student-workaholic DNA stirred.
A normal Level 1 caster would be gasping for breath after two spells. But this number... this meant he could grind like a perpetual motion machine, working through the night without rest.
Just like the good old days.
"AWOOOO—!"
A blood-curdling howl shattered his thoughts.
Mo Fan jerked his head up. His scalp went numb.
Less than five meters above him, clinging to a rocky outcrop on the cliff face, was the bone-spur wolf from his "life flashing before his eyes" vision.
It had climbed down using the vines, and now it glared at him with those crimson eyes, drool dripping from its fangs. A glob of saliva landed on a leaf near Mo Fan's cheek.
Hsssss.
The leaf began to dissolve, edges blackening and curling as acid ate through it.
"Are you kidding me? Hell Mode right out of the tutorial?"
Mo Fan instinctively tried to channel the power inside this body, attempting to circulate Qi according to the muscle memory this body retained.
[ Warning: No Cultivation Base detected. Unable to execute Immortal Arts. ]
"System, you set me up! How am I supposed to fight without a cultivation base?!"
Mo Fan cursed as the wolf's hind legs coiled, preparing for a killing lunge.
But as a science student trained to analyze data under pressure, Mo Fan forced the fear down. If he was a Necromancer, his weapon wasn't a flying sword.
It was something else entirely.
His eyes darted across the cliff face.
This appeared to be a common site for fatal falls. Wedged in the cracks between rocks were numerous weathered bones—some animal, some unmistakably human.
The nearest human skeleton was jammed into a crevice about three meters to his left. Only half the body remained, but he could tell from the bone structure that this person had been powerfully built in life.
"Whoever you were—I'm borrowing your bones!"
The wolf launched itself, a blur of black fur and bone spurs hurtling toward him with killing intent.
Mo Fan locked his gaze onto those white bones. In his mind, that massive blue energy bar surged.
He didn't chant any Chuunibyou incantation. Instead, with the precision of operating delicate laboratory equipment, he drove his mental force into that pile of dead matter.
Skill Activated: Summon Undead!
[ Mana: -20 ]
A beam of gray-dark light struck the skeleton wedged in the stone.
In the split second before the wolf's claws could tear out Mo Fan's throat, the corpse's empty eye sockets ignited with twin flames of ghostly green fire.
CRACK!
A bone-white hand shot out from the crevice at an angle that defied physics, clamping onto the wolf's hind leg with an iron grip.
The wolf lost its balance mid-leap, slamming into the tree trunk with a heavy thud that nearly shook Mo Fan loose.
"YES!" Mo Fan's heart soared as he watched the skeleton rise unsteadily to its feet. "Kill it! Take it down!"
But in the next instant, the skeleton did something that made Mo Fan's jaw drop.
It didn't silently slaughter like undead in the movies.
Instead, it opened its jawbone—a jaw that had no tongue, no vocal cords, no flesh at all—and using the vibration of its Soul Fire, produced an earth-shattering, absolutely blood-curdling scream:
"AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH—!"
The shriek was saturated with despair, terror, and unwillingness. It was unmistakably the final sound a person makes while plummeting to their death.
Mo Fan: "...?"
[ System Notice: Due to a data-reading bug, low-level summons have unexpectedly inherited the final conscious fragment of the deceased (residual audio). ]
"What kind of bug is THIS?!" Mo Fan's mind short-circuited.
But the skeleton's movements didn't slow. Even as its jaws kept producing that horrific "AAAAHHHH" sound—like someone scared out of their wits—its hands moved with lethal precision.
It snatched up half a rusted, broken sword from somewhere, flicked its wrist, and carved an impossibly precise arc through the air.
Sword Intent.
This skeleton had been a sword cultivator in life. A master.
"AAAAHHHH! (SAVE ME!)"
Screaming, the skeleton drove its blade through the wolf's abdomen.
"AAAAHHHH! (I DON'T WANT TO DIE!)"
Still screaming, it followed up with a backhand slash that took off the wolf's ear.
The wolf was completely bewildered. As a ferocious beast, it had never encountered prey that screamed like a victim while fighting like a butcher.
The bizarre sonic assault combined with devastating swordsmanship drove it back step by step until, with a final pitiful whimper, it tumbled off the tree and vanished into the abyss.
Crisis averted.
Mo Fan clung to the tree trunk, staring at the skeleton still going "AAAAHHHH" while attempting to sheathe its sword into a scabbard that no longer existed.
A headache was forming behind his eyes.
"Buddy. Can you please shut up?" Mo Fan glanced at his mana bar—down 20 points, still nearly full. "Your auto-BGM attack style is way too embarrassing."
The skeleton turned its head. Empty eye sockets fixed on Mo Fan. The screaming finally stopped, replaced by a rhythmic clack-clack-clack of teeth chattering together, as if awaiting its next command.
But before Mo Fan could exhale in relief, the cliff top above lit up with an eerie green glow.
One pair of eyes. Two pairs. Ten pairs...
An entire pack of bone-spur wolves had been drawn by the skeleton's earth-shaking screams. They lined the cliff's edge, staring down at the precarious crooked pine tree with hungry, glowing eyes.
"..."
Mo Fan looked at the wolf pack. Then at his absurdly long mana bar. (380/400)
Fear began to recede. In its place rose something else—the hysterical madness of a lab rat pushed past its breaking point.
If The System had given him a workaholic's mana pool... if this world wasn't going to let him live peacefully...
"Fine."
A vicious grin spread across Mo Fan's face as he surveyed the countless scattered bones wedged into the cliff face—a graveyard of the fallen, stretching as far as he could see.
"If one skeleton isn't enough, then all of you can get the hell up!"
"I pulled all-nighters in my past life anyway... Tonight, nobody's getting any sleep!"
[ Mana: -20 ]
[ Mana: -20 ]
[ Mana: -20 ]
...
Gray light flashed across the cliff face in rapid succession.
And from the silent depths of the abyss rose a chorus of screams—different pitches, different voices, different dying words:
"AAAAAAHHHHH!"
"MY HERB BASKET—!"
"JUNIOR SISTER, RUN—!"
"I DIED WITH REGRETS—!"
A cacophonous, grotesque, yet terrifyingly massive skeleton army clawed its way out of oblivion under Mo Fan's command. Each one carried the resentment of their final moments and the madness of undeath.
The wolves' eyes flickered with something that might have been uncertainty.
Mo Fan's grin widened.
"Welcome to the night shift, boys."