Xuan Cai's compensatory gift made Chen Zhou dislike him a bit less.
Although the man used underhanded methods, he at least understood the rules of the world.
Chen Zhou pressed the Spirit of the Dipper Constellation against his chest, and the bone carving gradually sank into his body.
【You have consumed one Wing Constellation Spirit】
【You can now summon a special Ghost Servant unit — Dou Mu Xie】
【Current bone material reserves are insufficient. Unable to summon special Ghost Servant.】
System prompts popped up one after another.
Chen Zhou glanced at them.
He had almost forgotten that when he summoned Wing-Fire Snake earlier, it had depleted most of the bone materials in his storage, and no new bone materials had been added to his inventory since then.
But this was the Graveyard of Ten Thousand Beasts.
Chen Zhou raised his head and looked toward the shore of the Celestial Maiden Spring.
There, countless skeletons lay densely packed.
There were at least a thousand of them, and every single one was top-grade bone material.
The corners of Chen Zhou's mouth curled up slightly.
If Xuan Cai had even planned this far ahead, specifically choosing to deliver the gift in the Graveyard of Ten Thousand Beasts, then he was truly incredibly thoughtful.
“You guys,” Chen Zhou said.
The skeletons immediately stood at attention, staring at him in unison.
“Go, bring all the skeletons on the shore over here.”
“Understood!”
The skeletons responded and rushed toward the bones on the shore, scrambling to carry them.
Chen Zhou was sifting through the fragments of the board, looking to see if he could find any more clues, when a sickening sense of being watched suddenly surged in his heart.
It felt exactly the same as the sensation of being tracked in the forest earlier.
Chen Zhou abruptly raised his head to look deep into the forest. The moonlight in the Graveyard of Ten Thousand Beasts seemed to have dissipated slightly due to the shattering of the board, but the forest remained pitch-black.
It was so dark that nothing could be seen.
Yet, Chen Zhou could feel that something was watching him.
That thing had previously been obscured by the vast expanse of moonlight, losing its target.
Now that the moonlight had dissipated, it had found him once again.
Furthermore, it was rushing toward this location at an extremely high speed.
“My Lord?” the Plague Rat noticed Chen Zhou's strange behavior and approached, asking, “What's wrong?”
Chen Zhou did not answer.
He stared deep into the forest, his brow furrowed.
The thing was moving incredibly fast, closing the distance at an unbelievable speed.
Just as Chen Zhou was about to tell the skeletons to speed up, a sharp shriek suddenly echoed from not far away.
“Aaaaargh—!”
The voice was high-pitched and filled with terror.
“What is that?!”
“Sisters, grab your weapons and charge!”
“Ah! My bones are being gnawed on!”
Chen Zhou's expression changed as he looked in the direction of the noise.
Under the moonlight, a blurry figure was rushing toward them.
It was moving so fast that it left a trail of afterimages in the forest.
Behind it, dozens of skeletons were in hot pursuit.
Those skeletons shouted as they chased.
“Don't run! Stop right there!”
“Give me back my senior brother, you bastard!”
As the figure drew closer, Chen Zhou finally got a clear look at it.
It was a youth, appearing to be around fourteen to sixteen years old.
However, his face was hideous, and his pale skin was covered in greenish-gray veins that crawled across his entire face like a spiderweb.
His mouth was filled with interlocking canine teeth, with two fangs protruding from both his upper and lower lips, dripping with thick saliva.
He had a pair of grayish-white canine ears perched atop his head that twitched constantly. Moving on all fours, he held a skeleton in his mouth.
Half of the skeleton's body had already been bitten off, with white bone fragments protruding from the dog-man's mouth, while the remaining half rapidly turned white in his jaws.
Then, the skeleton began to twist.
Its joints popped and cracked, its straight spine writhed, and its ribs snapped one by one before reassembling. The joints of its limbs reversed, and its skull split open, sprouting bone spikes from the cracks.
Within a few breaths, it mutated from a humanoid skeleton into a four-legged white beast.
It had no facial features, only a smooth, blank face. Its body resembled a lizard, with thick limbs and a tail covered in barbs.
The dog-man released his grip, and the beast dropped to the ground, pushing up on its four legs to stand.
The dog-man let out a low growl, and the beast immediately charged toward the group of skeletons.
“Holy crap, holy crap! Here it comes again!”
“Watch out, brothers! Senior brother has mutated, this thing is bizarre!”
The skeletons were alarmed, swinging their black coffins as they prepared to fight.
But the beast was too fast. In the blink of an eye, it lunged into the crowd of skeletons and bit down on one's arm.
Crack—!
The arm was snapped off, and the fracture instantly turned white.
The skeleton froze for a moment, then looked at its whitening arm and cursed, “Senior Brother, are you a dog?! Senior Sister, help me!”
A nearby skeleton hesitated for a second before slamming a coffin down, shattering the whitening arm to pieces.
But the beast had already lunged at its next target.
Its method of attack was simple: pounce, bite, and claw.
Yet with every strike, it left behind a patch of white wherever it bit.
Then that white patch would then rapidly spread like a virus, diffusing from the wound to the entire bone, and from the bone into the marrow.
The infected skeletons could only grit their teeth and tear off their own whitened parts, just as they had done on the board. Those who failed to do so in time quickly mutated into new white beasts.
The scene was both gruesome and comical.
“Senior Brother, my waist is turning white! Quick, smash it, I don't want to become a dog too!”
“Smash it yourself! I'm busy over here!”
“I can't reach it!”
“Then turn around! I'll smash it for you!”
“I can't turn! My waist is broken!”
“Then lie down!”
One skeleton lay on the ground, while another swung a black coffin, smashing it onto his waist.
Crack—!
The waist snapped, and the whitened part was shattered. Grayish-white death qi surged from the break, re-condensing into a new lumbar spine.
The dog-man on the side did not join the melee. He stood in place, tilting his head as his eyes locked onto Chen Zhou, saliva dripping from the corners of his mouth to form a puddle of white liquid on the ground.
Chen Zhou stared back at him.
He noticed a detail: there were no wounds on the dog-man's body.
When he ran through the forest earlier, at least dozens of skeletons were chasing him. With a divine technique-level Command Enslaved Ghosts, there was no way the skeletons wouldn't even be able to touch him.
Unless his speed was so great that attacks couldn't even graze him.
Or, he possessed some kind of ability to nullify attacks.
The dog-man stared at Chen Zhou for a long while. Seemingly having finally confirmed that this was his marked target, he opened his mouth wide and pounced at Chen Zhou.
Chen Zhou furrowed his brows and waved his hand. A bone spear shot out from the void, flying straight toward the dog-man's face.
The bone spear moved incredibly fast, carrying a sharp whistling sound as it reached the dog-man in the blink of an eye.
The dog-man did not dodge, biting down on the bone spear almost instinctively.
Crack—!
The bone spear was bitten into two pieces, fragments falling from the corners of his mouth.
The broken bone spear fell to the ground and began to turn white.
The two fragments writhed on the ground as if they were alive. A few breaths later, they transformed into two white beasts.
They were identical to the one from before.
The newly mutated beasts rampaged through the crowd of skeletons, making it even harder for them to cope.
Was the dog-man's ability tracking and contamination?
Could he turn anything he bit, whether living or dead, into his own kind?
The bone spear was condensed from death qi and had no life, yet it was contaminated and transformed all the same.
It was almost like rabies.
Chen Zhou took a deep breath, retrieved an ordinary iron sword from his system storage, and threw it at the dog-man.
The iron sword flew before the dog-man, who bit down on it again, snapping it with a crack and swallowing the shards.
The fragments of the iron sword fell to the ground, began to turn white, and then mutated into beasts.
That was the fourth one.
Chen Zhou's face darkened.
Not just death qi, but even ordinary, mundane objects could be contaminated by it.
This creature's ability was far too overpowered.
“Huaishuang, Plague Rat, stop for now,” Chen Zhou spoke.
Jian Huaishuang and the Plague Rat immediately halted their attacks and retreated to Chen Zhou's side.
“My Lord, what's wrong?” the Plague Rat asked.
Chen Zhou did not answer, turning his gaze instead to Wing-Fire Snake and Jiao Mu Jiao.
Transparent flames burned within the joints of Wing-Fire Snake's bones, while Jiao Mu Jiao was covered in viscous black scales. The two of them were helping the skeletons deal with the white beasts.
They were the only ones who, despite having some white spots on their bodies, had very small affected areas, and the rate of spread was extremely slow.
Regarding the Western Seven Mansions, Chen Zhou had already encountered six of them when crossing the realms.
If there were no surprises, the one before him should be Lou-Metal Dog.
What was his ability?
Marking and tracking, along with whitening contamination?
Possessing two incredibly powerful abilities, Lou-Metal Dog seemed far too overpowered compared to the other six mansions.
Especially this contamination ability—it was extremely troublesome, capable of contaminating and assimilating anything.
It seemed only Wing-Fire Snake and Jiao Mu Jiao possessed a strong resistance to Lou-Metal Dog's contamination.
Why?
There was no time to overthink. Chen Zhou ordered Jiao Mu Jiao to hold off Lou-Metal Dog first, while Wing-Fire Snake blocked the white beasts. The skeletons were told to abandon all attacks and focus on transporting the bones.
Wing-Fire Snake hissed and charged at the pack of white beasts. Transparent flames erupted from her bone joints, burning the beasts and making them shriek in agony.
Under the intense, scorching Starfire, more than half of the beasts were quickly incinerated, but Wing-Fire Snake's tail turned white.
The white contamination slowly spread, crawling upward from the tip of her tail, already reaching the second segment of her tailbone.
Jiao Mu Jiao stepped forward to confront Lou-Metal Dog directly, his black body shielding everyone.
In terms of individual strength, Lou-Metal Dog was still several cuts above Jiao Mu Jiao.
Jiao Mu Jiao's body blocked Lou-Metal Dog, but he was quickly bitten, leaving behind streaks of white marks.
Lian stood behind Jiao Mu Jiao, pressing her hands to the ground. Black slime surged from her palms, crawling along the ground onto Jiao Mu Jiao's body and injecting into his wounds.
The liquid melted from the black-spot monsters flowed into the wounds, clashing with the white contamination and pushing it back bit by bit.
Jiao Mu Jiao's recovery ability was exceptionally strong. With Lian's support, the white contamination was contained within a very small area, unable to spread.
The skeletons moved with great agility, fully aware of the urgency of the situation.
Under Jiao Mu Jiao's stalling, in less than half a cup of tea's time, over a hundred skeletons came running out of the forest, carrying all kinds of bones.
They piled the bones behind Chen Zhou, forming a small hill.
“My Lord! Is this enough?”
“If it's not enough, we'll carry more!”
Chen Zhou scanned the pile. There were about two to three hundred skeletons, which was more than enough.
【Sufficient bone materials detected. Summon special Ghost Servant — Dou Mu Xie?】
Yes.
Chen Zhou murmured in his heart.
Then, he felt his body rapidly drained.
A powerful suction surged from within him, ravenously devouring his death qi and the bones behind him.
The bones floated into the air, then shattered piece by piece, turning into white bone powder.
The bone powder condensed and spun in the air, forming a small vortex.
The vortex spun faster and faster, growing larger until it transformed into a massive white storm in the blink of an eye.
In the center of the storm, something was taking shape.
First was a majestic horn.
It was entirely silver-white, its surface covered in intricate patterns through which a silver-white light flowed.
Next was the skull—long and majestic, with two silver-white flames burning in its eye sockets.
Then came the spine, ribs, limbs, and tail—a complete skeleton slowly taking form within the storm.
【Summon successful】
【Special Ghost Servant unit — Dou Mu Xie has joined your faction】
Dou Mu Xie lowered his head, nuzzling Chen Zhou's hand with his skull, before turning around to face Lou-Metal Dog.
The silver-white flames flared up violently.
His four hooves stepped on silver-white light as he walked toward Lou-Metal Dog step by step. Wherever his hooves fell, a silver-white blossom of moonlight remained on the ground, lingering for a long time.
When Lou-Metal Dog saw Dou Mu Xie, his body visibly stiffened.
Dou Mu Xie stopped, lowering his head to aim the tip of his horn at Lou-Metal Dog.
Silver-white light surged from the tip of his horn, condensing above his head into a crescent moon.
Moonlight poured down, enveloping the entire battlefield.
Wherever the moonlight touched, everything was dyed silver-white.
The ground, the trees, the air, and even those white beasts were covered in moonlight.
As the moonlight shone on Lou-Metal Dog, his body began to tremble. He opened his mouth viciously and bit at the moonlight.
But the moonlight was not physical; he could not bite it.
He could only watch helplessly as the moonlight penetrated his body, suppressing his power.
The white beasts struggled under the moonlight. Once burned by Wing-Fire Snake's Starfire, their bodies rapidly melted, shrinking bit by bit until they finally dissolved into puddles of white liquid.
Lou-Metal Dog's body constantly emitted smoke under the moonlight. Having finished off the white beasts, Wing-Fire Snake immediately turned around to assist.
With a blast of fierce flames, the suppressed Lou-Metal Dog's skin began to crack, revealing the white flesh beneath.
He struggled frantically, trying to break out of the moonlight's coverage, but Dou Mu Xie's moonlight was like a cage, trapping him tightly inside.
The flames and moonlight intertwined, their power multiplying. Lou-Metal Dog shrieked repeatedly, rolling on the ground in an attempt to extinguish the fire, but the flames only burned brighter and fiercer.
Having been treated by Lian, Jiao Mu Jiao quickly got up from the ground. The previously contaminated parts of his body had already been suppressed by the moonlight. He shook his head and rejoined the battle.
A righteous three-on-one.
No matter how strong Lou-Metal Dog was, he could not withstand the joint assault of three special Ghost Servants.
His body burned in the flames, cracked under the moonlight, and shattered under the impacts. Finally, he collapsed with a loud crash, his body exploding into a cloud of white ash.
Chen Zhou walked into the middle of the ash, squatted down, and sifted through it with his hand.
There was nothing.
Chen Zhou furrowed his brows.
Logically speaking, the dissipation of a constellation would surely leave something behind, such as a constellation spirit.
How could there be absolutely nothing?
He stood up and looked around.
The forest fell silent. The moonlight slowly flowed above Dou Mu Xie's head, illuminating the entire Graveyard of Ten Thousand Beasts.
The white beasts had been completely cleared away. The skeletons were cleaning up the battlefield, recollecting the leftover bone materials.
Jian Huaishuang sheathed his sword and walked to Chen Zhou's side. “My Lord, nothing was found.”
Chen Zhou nodded.
He was about to say something when a sickening sense of being watched suddenly surged in his heart.
It was exactly the same as the sensation of being tracked in the forest earlier, but even stronger and clearer—as if something was staring dead at him across countless mountains and rivers.
Lou-Metal Dog wasn't dead yet?
This wasn't his true form!
Rate on N.U.
