On Ye Tianxie’s fourth swing, under the corrosion of the light, the Undead Sovereign’s health bar finally emptied. It collapsed heavily to the ground and lay still. The gray mist that had wrapped its body stopped drifting and slowly dissipated, revealing the Sovereign’s unformed body — and a scattering of equipment on the ground, glittering in an assortment of colors.

“Ding… You have successfully slain the level 15 Lord-tier boss Undead Sovereign. Renown +15.”

“Ding… Your level has risen to 15. HP +10, MP +10. You have gained 5 free attribute points.”

“Ding… You have successfully slain the juvenile Undead Sovereign and completed the Unique Hidden Quest ‘The Guping Town Chief’s Commission.’ Please return to the Guping Town chief to claim your reward.”

The experience a Lord-tier boss handed out was obscene — it filled Ye Tianxie’s already 80%-full level 14 bar in an instant and pushed him straight to 15. Picking up the Lamp of Light where it lay slowly rolling on the ground, he could barely stop himself from throwing back his head and laughing out loud… A fight that should have been heart-stoppingly, teeth-grittingly tense had begun and ended in the most ridiculously simple way imaginable.

According to what the little girl had told him, the Lamp of Light had three minutes of glow left in it. And the light just now had lasted no more than half a minute. Ye Tianxie quickly switched off its light and tucked it back into his pack. For this “meritorious hero” who had just rendered such an enormous service, he now couldn’t bear to waste even one more second of its life. Because who knew — one day it might pull off another miracle just like today’s… especially against fragile undead creatures.

The Undead Sovereign’s body wasn’t in a skeletal state. It had already begun taking on a human form — at a glance, it looked like a child of three or four. Lord-tier bosses were extraordinarily rare, and after each one was killed, a long stretch of time had to pass — days, weeks, sometimes months — before the next would spawn. And for a special boss like the Undead Sovereign, who knew how many years it would take for another to appear. Because its true nature wasn’t that of a simple Lord-tier boss at all — it was only that, trapped in an unawakened juvenile stage, it could manifest no more than Lord-tier strength.

But every time one of these rare Lord-tier bosses died, it was invariably accompanied by a magnificent drop explosion.

There wasn’t a single coin, but scattered around the Sovereign’s corpse were two gold-tier and three silver-tier pieces of equipment. A haul this generous could only ever happen to someone who’d soloed the kill — and whose Luck stat was a towering 12, like Ye Tianxie’s.

Undead Cloak: Gold-tier item. Requirements: level 15, any class. Unidentified — cannot be used.

A cloak!

Cloaks were another of those equipment types that almost never dropped. In every weapon shop, in cities and towns large and small, you could buy blank-stat gear of every level — helmets, battle armor, battle trousers, battle boots, gloves, the lot. But there wasn’t a weapon shop anywhere that sold cloaks.

Turning the cloak over in his hands — black from end to end, veiled in a faint, barely-there gray mist — Ye Tianxie could only let out a helpless sigh. Never mind that it was unidentified and therefore unusable; he had no class, which meant he had no right to equip anything at all.

The other gold-tier drop was a long spear glinting with a faint golden light in the gloom — the Undead Spear.

Undead Spear: Gold-tier item. Requirements: level 15, Warrior class. Unidentified — cannot be used.

He read through the names of the remaining three silver-tier items, stowed all five pieces in his pack, and picked up a scroll lying on the ground, wreathed in a hazy gray vapor.

Skill Scroll — Netherfog: Upon use, you will learn the active support skill “Netherfog.” Once activated, it summons a mist of death that buoys the body, slowing the rate of descent.

A skill scroll… an unbelievably precious skill scroll, whose drop rate was as close to zero as a number could get.

Ye Tianxie’s mind went briefly blank. Sure, he had 12 points of Luck, more than any other player alive — but never in his wildest dreams had he imagined that after the Amethyst Battle Tiger in the novice village, the second Lord-tier boss he killed would also hand him a skill scroll.

What did a skill scroll mean? Potions were consumed and gone. Even the finest equipment would eventually be replaced. But a skill… once learned, it stayed with you for life. On top of that, no skill scroll dropped by a monster was ever a class skill you could have gone and learned from a class instructor. Which made a skill scroll’s value immeasurable — and which also determined just how vanishingly small its drop rate had to be.

Perhaps it was heaven’s way of compensating Ye Tianxie for never having been able to take a class at all, laying out before him an event with roughly the same probability as Mars (this Mars, not that Mars) slamming into Earth.

Although — this skill didn’t look like a strong one from any angle.

【Author’s note: Ahh… after “Frenzied Battle Intent,” that suicide-button of a skill, we now have yet another useless-looking scrub of a skill (Dora A-Mon: How come the only two skills the protagonist finally gets are both garbage? Dora B-Mon: Use garbage skills well and doesn’t that make the protagonist look even more badass? Dora A-Mon: Big bro’s still big bro, well said)… Fine, fine, just watch how our dashing protagonist takes this thoroughly-worthless-looking support skill and elevates it to something very, very good and very, very strong… Of course, once a certain Ye gets a flight skill, then this one’s truly done for.】

Ye Tianxie put the skill scroll back in his pack, crouched down in front of the Sovereign’s small, thin body, and used Gathering on its corpse.

“Ding… Your ‘Gathering’ has failed!”

Failed?

The system chime made him pause for a moment. What it had said, clearly, was not “there is nothing here to gather” — but that the Gathering itself had failed.

And there was only one reason for that… whatever was on the Undead Sovereign’s body was too high-level, and his own Gathering rank was too low to pull it out.

Ye Tianxie made his calculation and didn’t leave. Instead he cast Gathering on the Sovereign’s corpse again. And again. And again.

“Ding… Your ‘Gathering’ has failed!”

“Ding… Your ‘Gathering’ has failed!”

“Ding… Your ‘Gathering’ has failed!”

“Ding…”

With each cast, his MP ticked steadily down. After twenty consecutive attempts, Ye Tianxie’s face remained perfectly placid, without a trace of impatience or disappointment, downing mana potions one after another and casting Gathering over and over again.

“Ding… Your ‘Gathering’ has failed!”

“Ding… You have gathered the ‘Death Core.'”

“Ding… Your Gathering has risen to Advanced. You may now gather higher-tier items from monster corpses and special locations.”

The chimes pulled the corner of Ye Tianxie’s mouth into a grin — and at that exact moment, the Undead Sovereign’s corpse began slowly dissolving off the ground as though vaporizing. A monster’s corpse always lingered where it fell for a set span of time: one minute for ordinary monsters, doubled, tripled, and quadrupled for 1-star, 2-star, and 3-star elites respectively, ten minutes for a Lord-tier boss. Higher-tier beasts left corpses that never vanished at all.

But an Undead Sovereign whose Death Core had been taken would vanish immediately. Because it was gestated by the power of that Death Core — the Core was the nucleus of its power and its life, and once it was gone, the body scattered like smoke.

A small bead radiating a fierce gray glow sat in Ye Tianxie’s palm. It was no bigger than a fingernail, yet the strange power pouring off it made him feel as though a wind were pressing against his face.

Death Core: A core containing death-power of unmatched strength and purity. The Undead Sovereign is gestated from it. It forms only in places of the deepest yin. Function unknown.

This is…

Ye Tianxie’s gaze fixed on the little sphere, its description sending his heart hammering. He turned it over silently in his mind for a long while, then finally put it away in his pack.

Death-power of unmatched strength and purity — power capable of gestating an Undead Sovereign… it stood to reason that this Death Core was no ordinary item. But it was neither an item that granted bonus attributes nor a material that could be used in forging. So what, exactly, was it for?

The juvenile Undead Sovereign was dead. The purpose of this whole trip had been fulfilled to perfection — not only had it gone more smoothly than he’d expected, the haul had wildly outstripped his original predictions. He took one last look around at the damp, dark, grim chamber and, satisfied, pulled out a Guping Town Town Portal Scroll.

Every city and town, large or small, had its own Town Portal Scroll. So long as you were in a free state, crushing one would send you straight back to the corresponding city, town, or village.

“Kreeeeee—”

At the very instant Ye Tianxie was about to crush the Guping Town scroll, an enormous, ear-splitting shriek rang out — as though from beyond the sky itself — and the dark chamber shuddered with it. Under that cry, Ye Tianxie’s body rocked violently, his ears roaring, the blood in his veins churning wildly. Even his consciousness was nearly shattered outright by the sound.

Because that vast bird-cry was too close. So close it might as well have come from right beside his ear.

Rrrrrumble!

The ground began to tremble, the walls swaying with it, and the shaking grew steadily more violent, the sway wider and wider. Ye Tianxie was thrown back and forth, nearly toppling to the ground more than once.

What was happening…

That bird-cry…

Could it be…

BOOM!!!!

The roar swallowed the world whole. Under that colossal impact, the black wall abruptly collapsed, the ceiling caving in with it, and blinding light poured down from the newly exposed sky above, driving out every shred of darkness in the place.

Ye Tianxie backed up hard against a corner, dodging one falling stone after another as they came down like a plague of locusts. When the light poured in, his pupils contracted violently… Ahead of him, a vast blood-red shadow had appeared.

Three words flashed through his mind—

Blood Phoenix!

(End of Chapter 102)