Night deepened, and the clamor of the servant quarters had long since subsided.
Clutching the wooden token still warm with body heat, Mo Fan didn't head straight back to his ramshackle hut. Instead, he took a detour to Old Lü's doorstep.
That scrawny little figure was still there, just as expected.
A-Song sat hugging his knees like an abandoned kitten, curled up on the stone steps before the door. He wasn't sleeping—perhaps from nervousness, perhaps from fear of the future. Those stark black-and-white eyes stared vacantly at the ground.
"This late and you're counting ants?"
Mo Fan's voice cut through the silence, startling A-Song so badly he nearly tumbled off the steps.
"S-Seventh Brother?"
A-Song scrambled to his feet, dusting off his rear, looking at Mo Fan with awkward uncertainty. He wanted to ask whether those two "eyeballs" had been delivered, but didn't dare open his mouth, terrified of hearing bad news.
Mo Fan said nothing.
He simply fished out that gold-embossed wooden token from his chest like it was worthless scrap wood and tossed it over casually.
"Catch."
A-Song caught it in a fumbling panic.
By moonlight, he made out the character "Approved" carved on the plaque, and on the reverse, though written crookedly, the three characters "Li Hansong" were unmistakably present.
This was an admission ticket.
The spirit root testing qualification that the Er Gou family had traded three Spirit Chickens for, begging and pleading on their knees.
A-Song's hands began trembling violently. He gripped the token with white-knuckled intensity, his eyes instantly reddening. He opened his mouth, seemingly wanting to kneel or utter some heavy oath about "working like an ox or horse."
"Alright, stop."
Mo Fan waved his hand impatiently, cutting off the casting animation before it could complete.
"Skip the empty theatrics. I helped you simply because you called me 'brother,' nothing more."
"If you really want to repay me, then show some backbone. Three months from now, don't test out with trash-tier Spirit Roots and embarrass me."
With that, he didn't spare A-Song another glance and turned to leave.
"Go to sleep. Still gotta work tomorrow."
Mo Fan walked with hands tucked in his sleeves, his shadow stretching long beneath the moonlight—looking somewhat desolate, yet somehow inexplicably towering.
He didn't look back.
But he knew that in the darkness behind him, the boy was staring fixedly at his retreating figure. It was the kind of gaze that carved itself into bone marrow.
Though the System provided no favorability notifications, Mo Fan understood clearly that the seed called "Loyalty" had been thoroughly planted tonight.
As for what kind of tree it would grow into, that depended on the kid's fortune.
Returning to that mildew-reeking little room, Mo Fan barred the door and threw himself onto the hard plank bed.
Despite completing a beautiful angel investment, he felt little excitement.
The real problems remained severe.
He summoned the System Panel and stared at the experience bar that, though now at LV. 2, remained mostly empty. His brow furrowed.
[ Level: LV. 2 (5/1200) ]
"1200 experience points..."
Mo Fan rubbed his temples. At the previous efficiency rate of 1 point per rat, he'd be grinding until the end of time.
Worse yet, there was an even more lethal problem—Ecological Collapse.
After several days of Summon No. 001's locust-swarm-style insane grinding, every rat, rabbit, venomous snake—even that sole elite monster, the Demon-Eye Rabbit—within several kilometers of the back mountain had been exterminated.
The outer perimeter of the back mountain was now eerily silent.
If this slaughter continued, the ecosystem would completely collapse and definitely attract the attention of patrolling disciples.
"Why isn't there even a bird call in this area?"
Once someone raised that question and came down to investigate, discovering the ground littered with shattered bones and that deformed skeleton, this Necromancer would die horribly.
"Can't go to the back mountain anymore."
Mo Fan made his judgment. That was suicide.
But this also meant his experience source had dried up.
"Need to change maps. Find somewhere with lots of monsters, lots of corpses, and no supervision..."
Mo Fan closed his eyes, fingers rhythmically tapping the bed frame. His mind flashed through memories like film reels, rapidly searching through the original Lu Xiaoqi's recollections, trying to locate such a perfect grinding spot.
Suddenly, his movements stopped.
An image froze in his mind—the bottomless abyss he'd seen when he first transmigrated.
The bottom of Abandoned Sword Cliff.
"Talk about looking right under your nose."
Mo Fan's eyes snapped open, lips curving into a maniacal arc.
Previously, he'd been so focused on how to climb up from below, how to escape that hellhole, that he'd overlooked the value of the place itself.
That was where the Azure Cloud Sect dumped its garbage.
Not only were there discarded pills and scrapped magical artifact remnants accumulated over thousands of years, but countless unfortunate souls like his predecessor Lu Xiaoqi who'd fallen to their deaths or been secretly executed and tossed down.
To the living, it was an inauspicious mass grave.
But to a Necromancer? That wasn't a garbage dump—it was clearly an All-You-Can-Eat Buffet with diverse menu options and no bill!
Most importantly—it was hidden.
Aside from corpses and trash, no normal cultivator would be bored enough to wander down to the cliff bottom.
"As long as I don't venture into the deepest mist zone, just the outer perimeter's poison insects and scavenger rats that grew up eating carrion should be enough for No. 001's current training needs."
Target locked.
Over the following days, Mo Fan didn't rush into action.
Like a genuinely honest servant, he stayed holed up in his room each day, supposedly "recovering from his injury."
In reality, under the constant nourishment of Necromantic Mana, his broken leg healed at an alarming rate. That tingling sensation of bone growth vanished by the third day, replaced by newly formed, solid bone tissue.
Though he still deliberately limped with uneven steps to avoid suspicion when walking, only he knew that now, he could run faster than a rabbit.
Beyond that, he poured all his energy into combat preparation.
He'd emptied the materials from that tree hollow supply station. Using the remaining scraps of Demon-Eye Rabbit fur and bone fragments, he performed comprehensive maintenance and reinforcement on No. 001.
Especially at the joints of those rabbit legs—Mo Fan used beast sinew for additional ligament reinforcement, ensuring it wouldn't fall apart mid-leap during those "cannonball-style jumps."
As for the remaining easily stored materials, he left them in the shadowy tree hollow.
When the small markets between villages opened in the future, he'd find opportunities to offload them and acquire some low-grade Spirit Stones or whatnot. But those were matters for later.
Right now, Mo Fan had only one task:
Make money in silence.
Finally, on a dark and windy night.
The entire servant quarters had fallen into slumber, even the most alert guard dogs curled into their dens.
A black shadow silently pushed open that dilapidated wooden door.
Mo Fan, dressed in black (actually old clothes he'd dyed), wore the bulging storage pouch at his waist and gripped that razor-sharp dagger in his hand.
He avoided the main road, slipping into the back mountain's dense forest like a phantom.
This time, he didn't linger, cutting straight through that forest he'd depopulated and arriving at the familiar cliff edge.
Frigid mountain wind blew up from the abyss below, carrying that familiar stench of decay.
Mo Fan stood at the cliff's edge, looking down into the bottomless darkness. Days ago, he'd been the victim thrown down like garbage, hanging from a tree all night in pathetic misery.
But now.
He patted the storage pouch at his waist.
With a ripple of spatial distortion, the two-meter-tall, long-armed, rabbit-legged Summon No. 001 materialized from nothing. The azure soulfire in its eye sockets burned fiercely in the night wind, radiating unusual excitement.
"Times have changed. Last time I stood on this cliff edge, 'I' was still Lu Xiaoqi."
Mo Fan gazed into the abyss, lips curling upward to reveal canines that gleamed bone-white in the moonlight.
"Scavenger Mo Fan, online."
No. 001 crouched down expertly, extending that massive long-armed ape limb. Mo Fan jumped onto its back, using pre-prepared leather straps to bind himself tightly to the skeleton's ribcage.
"Let's go."
No. 001's powerful rabbit legs explosively launched.
Whoooosh—
Man and bone, in a single leap, plunged like a Black Meteor into that endless darkness once more—this time with absolute resolve.