The cemetery was no longer safe. The guards had swept through it twice more as the day wore on. Lin Feng watched from his hiding place, the cold of the earth seeping into his bones. He needed walls. A door. Shadows that didn't move.
A new prompt flickered in his vision, the text a softer blue, almost thoughtful.
[Advisor Protocol Activated.]
[Analysis: Permanent operational base required. Historical data suggests ancient cultivation clans often constructed secondary, clandestine burial sites for politically sensitive remains. Probability of local instance: High.]
[Suggestion: Utilize Death Sense at maximum sensitivity near oldest structures. Seek not for the dead, but for the silence that hides them.]
It was the first time the System had offered more than instruction. It had offered strategy. A ghost of a smile touched Lin Feng's lips. He had an advisor. A bone sage, in a sense.
He waited for full dark. The moon was a sliver, hiding behind clouds. He called his first skeleton from its grave. It emerged, silent and obedient, the rusted sword still in its grip.
"We search," Lin Feng whispered.
He closed his eyes and pushed his Death Sense outward, to its limit. The cemetery became a constellation of cold, faint lights. Most were dim, old. He ignored them. He searched for a different pattern—a gap. A place where the dead should be, but weren't.
He moved to the oldest part of the grounds, near the great stone wall that bordered the wild mountains. Here stood the mausoleums of ancient clan leaders, their stone doors sealed for centuries. His sense washed over them. He felt the strong, dull echoes of powerful bones within.
Then, he felt nothing.
Behind a lesser mausoleum, one dedicated to a branch family that had died out, the ground didn't just feel empty. It felt hungry. It drank his sense like a void.
He walked to the spot. It was covered in a landslide of rubble from a collapsed section of the mountain wall. Weeds and small trees had grown over it, weaving a natural veil.
"Here," he said.
The work was brutal. He and the skeleton moved stones in the dark. His Qi Condensation Stage 1 strength made it possible, but his muscles, Lin Feng's weak muscles, screamed in protest. The skeleton worked without pause, its bony fingers prying at rocks no man could lift alone. Dirt filled its joints. It didn't care.
For hours, they labored. Just before midnight, the skeleton's hand pried free a large, flat stone, and a black opening yawned beneath it. Not a natural hole. A squared-off tunnel, choked with dirt and roots, leading down. A stale, dry breath of ancient air whispered out. It was thick with the taste of dust and deep, undisturbed Death Qi.
[Forbidden Catacombs Discovered.]
[Status: Clan record expunged. Last entry: 212 years prior.]
[Designation: Burial site for traitors, exiles, and those erased from history.]
Lin Feng took a dried-up torch from a rusted sconce nearby. He focused a trickle of Death Qi into his palm, not for warmth, but for a cold, phosphorescent glow. A pale, blue-white light emanated from his hand, illuminating the descent.
He ordered his skeleton to go first.
The stairs were steep, carved directly into the mountain rock. They descended for a long time. The air grew colder, drier. The sound of the world above vanished.
They reached the bottom.
Lin Feng's makeshift light revealed a vast, low-ceilinged chamber. It was a ossuary. Bones were not neatly buried here. They lay scattered across the floor, piled in corners, stacked against walls. Skulls stared from the dark. Ribcages lay broken. This was not a place of honor. This was a dumping ground.
And the Death Qi here… it was not the sharp, recent energy of the dueling ground. It was a slow, deep, subterranean river. A reservoir of silent resentment and forgotten ends. It pressed on his skin, eager to be used.
[Death Qi Density: Extreme. Cultivation speed increased by 300%.]
This was it. His base.
"Raise," he commanded, his voice echoing in the terrible silence.
He walked among the remains, his Death Sense flaring. He sought not the strongest echoes, but the clearest. The most distinct.
He found a skeleton half-propped against a wall, a broken longsword still gripped in its fingers. The echo from it was of swift, flowing movements, a technique that prized speed over power.
He spent the Death Qi. The bones assembled. A second skeleton soldier stood, taller than the first, and took up its broken blade.
[Skeleton Soldier #2 Raised.]
[Technique Detected: 'Swift River Sword Technique' – Mid-grade agility-based swordsmanship.]
He found another, smaller frame, curled around the remnants of a composite bow. The echo here was of patience, of long breaths and calculated trajectories.
He raised it. This skeleton stood, retrieved its decayed bow, and slung a crumbling quiver over its shoulder.
[Skeleton Soldier #3 Raised.]
[Technique Detected: 'Eagle-Eye Shot' – Foundation-level archery discipline.]
Near the chamber's center, he found a bulky skeleton, a massive, cracked oval shield still strapped to its forearm. The echo was defensive, stubborn, a technique of rooted resilience.
He raised it. This one was broader, heavier. It hefted its shield.
[Skeleton Soldier #4 Raised.]
[Technique Detected: 'Turtle Shell Defense' – Low-grade protective stance art.]
He stood in the center of the catacomb, surrounded by four silent, skeletal soldiers. A swordsman, an archer, a shield bearer, and his original vanguard. A blue, diagrammatic interface overlaid his vision, showing four faint dots connected to his core.
[Squad Command Interface Unlocked.]
[Direct Command Limit: 4. Radius: 100 yards.]
He had an army. A tiny, bony, silent army.
He explored deeper. The main chamber branched into smaller niches, each piled high with grim remains. At the very back of the catacomb, the rock wall was smooth, worked by tools. Set into it was a door.
It was not stone like the rest. It was a slab of dark, metallic ore, shot through with veins of silver. Thick chains of silver-iron, each link as big as his fist, were wound around it and sealed with a colossal padlock that glowed with a faint, righteous light. The light repelled the Death Qi, creating a bubble of empty, sterile air around it.
Behind that door, his Death Sense recoiled. Not from emptiness, but from an oppressive, dreadful presence. Something was in there. Something that had died with such immense, concentrated power that its echo was like a screaming sun of ice. It promised strength. It screamed of danger.
The System flashed a warning, bright red.
[Severe Hazard Detected. Seal Integrity: 98%.]
[Recommendation: Do not approach. Do not touch. Cultivation Base Required for further analysis: Core Formation (Minimum).]
Lin Feng took a step back. That was not for him. Not yet. It was a promise. A threat. A goal.
He returned to the main chamber. His skeletons stood motionless, guards in a tomb of their own. He was exhausted, not just in body, but in spirit. The constant chill, the oppressive silence, the weight of his new reality—it was a drain.
He needed to eat.
He left the catacomb, ordering his skeletons to stay, to hide among the other bones. He crept back to the surface, replaced the rubble over the entrance as best he could, and moved like a ghost through the sleeping clan compound.
He knew the routes the kitchen servants took. He knew the storage cellars. He was a ghost, and ghosts are not seen.
In the shadow of the great kitchen building, pressed against cold brick, he heard voices. Two off-duty guards were sharing a stolen jar of wine near a side door.
"…pushing hard, he is," one grumbled. "Every day since the funeral. 'The young master's effects must be properly inventoried for the clan records.' What a load of horse dung."
"Lin Tao?" the other asked.
"Who else? He's got a few elders in his pocket. Says it's to prevent the mother's grief from causing… what did he call it? 'Improper allocation of resources.' I saw the list. Mostly trinkets. But he circled one thing. That green jade pendant Young Master Feng always wore. The one the Matriarch gave him."
"The Spirit-Gathering Pendant? That's a high-grade treasure! Helps focus Qi for cultivation."
"Exactly. Useless to the young master in life, with his blocked meridians. But now? Lin Tao's at the peak of Qi Condensation Stage 7. That pendant could help him break through to Foundation Establishment. He's not after inheritance. He's after a key."
The first guard spat. "Vulture."
"Quiet. He's your future clan head if he gets his way. Drink up."
The guards moved off, their voices fading.
Lin Feng stood in the dark, his hand instinctively going to his own neck. It was bare. The pendant had been on his body. In the coffin. He'd been too panicked, too focused on survival to notice. It must have fallen off in the soil, or been taken when they prepared his body.
A cold fury, sharper than any he'd felt yet, cut through the ever-present chill inside him. Lin Tao had poisoned him, buried him, and now he was picking his bones clean before they were even cold. That pendant was his mother's love, given to a son who could never use it. It was a symbol of everything he'd lost twice over.
He scavenged some hard bread and dried meat from a pantry and slipped back into the night.
He returned to the catacomb, to the silence of his army. He sat against a wall of bones, chewing mechanically. The food tasted like ash.
His eyes went to the faint, glowing threads in his vision connecting him to his four skeletal soldiers. Then they drifted to the far wall, to the sealed door that pulsed with dormant menace.
Lin Tao was upstairs, scheming for power, picking at the scraps of his life.
Down here, Lin Feng was building a different kind of power. A wrong kind. A forbidden kind.
He finished his meal.
"Soon," he whispered to the dark, to the bones, to the sealed door. "He wants a treasure? I'll give him a treasure. I'll bury him in it."
In the cold dark, his four skeletons stood sentinel. They did not breathe. They did not blink. They simply waited for his will.