Qian Jin watched, shaking his head more and more in dismay. The layout of the herbs here showed some insight; pairing different herbs certainly enhanced their medicinal properties. Yet, simply introducing a few mutated insects could boost the effects by at least fivefold, but they stubbornly omitted it.

“Does this person even know how to cultivate plants?” Qian Jin scratched his head. “Is introducing a few bugs really that difficult? Their vision is just too narrow. The cultivator probably isn't even at the level of a mysterious apothecary apprentice? And this soil—if the exterior sand were mixed into the roots of the Jianling Gourd, it would undoubtedly yield better results.” Turning two corners, the narrow tunnel opened into a vast, empty hall. This circular chamber spanned a radius of at least ten meters, its entire floor densely planted with all manner of mutated flora.

“I had originally planned to take time to collect various herbs slowly, cultivating them into mutated medicinal varieties, but now I’ve stumbled upon a marginally passable herb garden here.” Qian Jin surveyed the garden of colorful herbs before him, his attention quickly drawn to a stone throne at the farthest point.

The entire hall had no vegetation save for that one spot. The stone-carved throne exuded a rich, ancient, regal air of the Demon Race. A demonic skeletal figure, constructed from a pile of demon bones, held a slender, narrow longsword, sitting quietly, its two black hollows where eyes should be staring directly at Qian Jin’s position.

“A Fallen Angel bloodline Demon Martial Artist? Died at a minimum of Level Six Awakening?” Qian Jin gazed dazedly at the pair of complete wing bones behind the skull—all feathers and flesh long gone—remaining only as skeletal structures. “A Level Three Awakening produces one perfect wing; only a Level Six Awakening yields a pair.”

“This is at least a Level Six Awakening?” There were several types of bloodline warriors with wings, but the Fallen Angel Demon Martial Artist was unique. At Level Six Awakening, they not only began to generate a complete second wing, but a rhombic gem would also appear precisely in the center of their forehead—red, white, or blue, with black being the most common.

The massive wing bones, and the black magic gem shimmering with an alluring, dark light—this could only be the corpse of a Fallen Angel bloodline Demon Martial Artist!

“Uh…” Qian Jin cautiously approached the bones, his eyes fixed on the black gem embedded in the forehead of Lucifer Nihon. “The gem known as the Origin of the Demon Seed? Regardless of which bloodline power is pursued through dual cultivation of battle and magic, one cannot instantly cast spells like a Great Magus simply by entering the Bloodline War Body. They still require scrolls or magic tools to achieve it—but this is not entirely immutable! Especially for the Fallen Angel bloodline: after reaching the Sixth Level Awakening, if one has still not attained the realm of a Great Magus, the gem formed on their forehead becomes the guarantee for instantaneous spellcasting!”

A black magic gem could instantly cast certain levels of Dark magic; even pushing higher-level spells would see their power amplified due to the gem’s boost.

If a blue magic gem were formed on the forehead, it could instantly cast certain levels of Water magic, while other spells would still require external aids.

The Lucifer lineage called the gem condensed on the forehead the Origin of the Demon Seed.

“Under normal circumstances, when a demon of the Lucifer lineage dies, the gem shatters into nothingness.” Qian Jin stood before the skeletal remains of Lucifer Nihon and curiously reached out to touch the radiant black gem. “How is it that this one, dead for so long, still has its gem…?” Screech! A piercing roar erupted!

The corpse of the Fallen Angel bloodline Demon Martial Artist suddenly emitted a piercing shriek. A grand surge of Dou Qi burst forth from within the skeletal frame, and a small, black hexagram array bloomed upon the pale-gray skull cap.

The slender, narrow longsword suddenly shot toward Qian Jin’s throat like lightning, and dazzling red light flared from the empty sockets of the skull.

The thin blade moved like lightning and a viper, striking without the slightest warning. The air hissed as the sword pierced it, like a giant python flicking its tongue. Instantly, the hall grew cold, as if trapped in the polar night of the ancient, desolate desert, capable of freezing a man’s blood solid.

In a flash of lightning and fire, every hair on Qian Jin’s body stood on end! An icy chill rose at his throat, the sensation of being locked onto by a blade, as if already pierced, and his heart hammered dozens of times in a single second.

A terrifying sword strike! Terrifying Dou Qi! And even more terrifying was that a demon, supposedly dead for untold years, had suddenly moved?

Undead? He had only heard rumors of them before, only seen them in stories spun by bards—but he had never witnessed a dead body suddenly spring up to wield a blade and kill again.

Even in the Endless World, that place filled with the bizarre and divine, he had never seen a skeletal frame rise up and move.

Icy dread washed down Qian Jin’s back—this was not just surprise at the thin sword, but also panic at the bizarre sight before his eyes. No matter how bold a person, seeing someone long dead suddenly act this way would stir the mind.

In an instant, Qian Jin pushed the Dou Qi in his one hundred and eight Dou Apertures to their peak, his muscles vibrating rapidly, and executed the move [Ten Thousand Shadows], flashing to the side of the undead body. The thin longsword had already pierced the afterimage left where Qian Jin had been.

Hum! The red light in the undead warrior’s eye sockets immediately flickered. Its ankle joint twisted abruptly, emitting a spine-chilling, grating kacha-kacha sound, and the body pivoted to face Qian Jin again. The narrow longsword swept upward, aiming directly for Qian Jin’s chin.

Without needing any large-scale movement, simply by rotating the bones in its ankle joint to an extreme degree that no normal human body could achieve, it negated what seemed like a difficult speed problem.

What in the world was this? Before Qian Jin could fully stabilize his stance, he saw the astonishing rotation of the Fallen Angel bloodline Demon Martial Artist’s ankle. He flipped his wrist, pulling the half-shield that blocked the Destruction Demon Eye from his Dou Realm, and met the incoming sword strike.

Clang! Sparks flew as metal collided. The narrow longsword struck the face of the half-shield, and the tremendous impact instantly bent the blade into a crescent moon shape. The Dou Qi that penetrated the shield clashed with Qian Jin’s own, instantly shredding the sleeve of his recently replaced battle suit.

“Thank the heavens for Dou Heart Perception! Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to block the impact of that Dou Qi!” Qian Jin raised an eyebrow, observing the opponent’s eyes suddenly brighten. He immediately squatted down and reactivated Ten Thousand Shadows.

The opponent vanished. The undead warrior’s head kacha-twisted 180 degrees to face behind it. The bones above its waist and below its neck twisted almost simultaneously, also turning around, and the longsword stabbed again at the still unsteady Qian Jin.

Whoosh! The moment the longsword stabbed the illusion, Qian Jin, beads of sweat on his brow, materialized behind the Fallen Angel bloodline warrior. Ignoring the pain in his arms, he reached out from behind, gripping the arm bones tightly, and leaped, wrapping his legs around the creature’s leg bones, his entire musculature instantly swelling and exerting force!

Weakness! The arm holding the creature’s arm bone strained outwards, pulling! This Dou Qi was strong, but the bones of this Fallen Angel bloodline—which had not reached the power of a Level Six Awakening—had a massive weakness! The instant the longsword struck the shield, this weakness was fully exposed.

The Dou Qi was indeed incredibly powerful! If he hadn't had Dou Heart Perception, he truly couldn't have contended with this freakish thing! But it also had a flaw: strength! This thing had no muscle. Although its entire body could twist freely, immune to twisting until death, the lack of muscle meant its raw strength was only equivalent to that of an ordinary person. If not for the explosive destructive power generated by its Dou Qi, this monster’s lethality would be significantly diminished.

No muscle, the strength holding the skin, tendons, and bones together was like… Crack… Crack… Crack… The arm bone of the Fallen Angel bloodline Undead Warrior was being slowly pulled out from its body.

Screech! With a harsh, strange cry, Lucifer Nihon’s corpse launched a final counterattack. Its head snapped fully around, and the head bearing the black Origin of the Demon Seed lunged forward in a vicious collision.

Headbutt versus head? Qian Jin yanked his neck back and then forward, slamming heavily into the glowing black array on Lucifer Nihon’s head.

Bang! Kacha… A crack appeared on the stark white, somewhat aged skull. The crack rapidly spread outwards, turning into thousands of black lines in an instant, before finally shattering with a whoosh into countless fragments that tumbled onto the ground.

The skeletal frame, which had been ferociously alive just a second ago, trying to kill him with every swing, scattered into a pile of white bones the next moment.

Clatter… The narrow, slender longsword hit the ground with a ringing metallic sound, confirming to Qian Jin that this was no hallucination, but solid reality. He had just engaged in a fierce battle with a skeleton that had been dead for an unknown age.

“This…” Qian Jin looked at the scattered bones, gasping for breath in great gulps. Several battles in a single day, all while his physical injuries were not yet healed. If he continued fighting like this, even if his body recovered, he feared he would never reach a higher echelon in his lifetime.

What exactly happened? Qian Jin stared at the complex, black hexagram array on the shattered pieces of the cranium, struggling to decipher it. He realized that his existing knowledge of inscriptions was insufficient to interpret this strange magical formation.

“Record it. I must record it.” Qian Jin carefully pieced the skullcap back together and painstakingly used his fingers to draw the symbols of the magic array on the ground, noting their sizes.

Inscriptions were an incredibly complex and subtle discipline.

The same symbol, varying in size, changing its placement, or being used on different materials—each combination resulted in three completely different outcomes.