The Ten Thousand Bone Ruins.
On his second visit to the Ten Thousand Bone Ruins the sky was as dark as before, and the smell as sharp and suffocating as ever. Ye Tianxie had ridden south day and night for two days, and on the third he went back to the City of Stars after all, and returned here.
The first time he came, he had only just begun to get somewhere when the time ran too long and he was forcibly ejected. What made this visit different was that Ye Tianxie was no longer here alone. He had two companions — Yaoyao and Xiaobei.
Yaoyao’s attributes used to be far too fragile; a couple of careless touches from a monster and its fate was sealed. But since its abilities had suddenly grown at the Ice-Severed Wolf Den, not only had its attributes and healing gone through the roof, it had also acquired several extremely powerful protective skills. With the Wall of Vengeance and the Wall of Heaven’s Barrier on it, hurting it at all was a matter of whether Yaoyao felt like allowing it, and Ye Tianxie had no need to worry about its safety.
As for Xiaobei, over these two days it had risen to level 5 on monsters it disposed of without effort, its health had reached 1,500 and its attack power had climbed to 450 — a rate of increase strong enough to leave even Ye Tianxie a little envious.
Neither Yaoyao nor Xiaobei showed the slightest discomfort at the killing smell of the place. Both of them looked around instead, taking in the scenery with every sign of excitement, which left Ye Tianxie with nothing to say. He called out the Blood-Sweating Steed and rode for the Ten Thousand Bone Ruins ahead.
And immediately he met with something entirely unlike his first time in.
The first time he entered the Ten Thousand Bone Ruins, he had spent two full hours in scenery that seemed to repeat itself without end, and only in the final minute had he run into a group of Warrior’s Departed Spirits that appeared out of nowhere. That was when something had begun to dawn on him… find one Warrior’s Departed Spirit and defeat it, and more of them would wake, and wake angry. That was the only thing he had been able to make of it. A setup like that would not exist for no reason, and had to be connected somehow to the bones of the War God.
But, entirely against his expectations, before he had even started trying to provoke a single Warrior’s Departed Spirit — the moment he set foot in the Ten Thousand Bone Ruins — the ground all around him began to stir. Battered armor and weapons flew up out of the bone-strewn earth and assembled themselves, each set forming a magnificent transparent warrior clad in heavy plate with a blade in its hand.
Why are they appearing right at the start? Ye Tianxie halted, puzzled. And as he wondered, eleven Warrior’s Departed Spirits raised the weapons in their hands from every direction and struck at him.
“Meow!”
Ye Tianxie had not yet moved when Xiaobei went whip off the horse’s back. Before its feet had even touched the ground it had landed a Meow-Meow Fist in midair on the Warrior’s Departed Spirit at the very front, four damage figures overlapping into a total nearly enough to one-shot the thing twice over. The armor and weapons that had only just come together scattered instantly and fell back onto the damp, bone-heaped ground.
Xiaobei did not stop. The moment it landed it went whip to another Warrior’s Departed Spirit, sent that one flying with a Meow-Meow Kick, then moved like lightning to the next target and one-shot it with another Meow-Meow Fist. The Warrior’s Departed Spirits had appeared no more than ten meters from Ye Tianxie, and in the brief time it took them to close that ten meters, two of the eleven had been one-shot and one kicked away. The remaining eight closed in around him at last.
Yaoyao, lying quietly on the horse’s head, watched in silence as Xiaobei stole the show in front of their master, and then slowly stood up. Once a creature is a master’s pet, wanting that master’s affection quietly becomes an instinct. When Yaoyao had been the only one at his side there had been nothing to it; but now there was also Xiaobei, this strange cat with its violent attributes and a very strong capacity to compete for favor, and Yaoyao, bound to Ye Tianxie by that cruel Soul Blood Pact, could not help acquiring just a small sense of crisis. And so…
Sweeping the approaching Warrior’s Departed Spirits with a look that carried a certain contempt, Yaoyao did not spring off the horse, and did not use the Wall of Vengeance, its one skill with an offensive property. It simply cast, quite casually, a Mystic Spirit Cure.
White light blazed up on Ye Tianxie and Xiaobei, and two green recovery figures floated above their heads.
+1020, +1020.
And at that moment the Hour of Fate that Ye Tianxie had been about to swing stopped in midair, and open astonishment came onto his face.
-1020, -1020, -1020, -1020, -1020, -1020…
The white light had appeared not only on Ye Tianxie and Xiaobei but, for an instant, on every Warrior’s Departed Spirit closing on him. Inside that sudden white flash the charge stalled, and then every one of them scattered into mindless armor and weapons and piled up limply on the ground…
Eight Warrior’s Departed Spirits, all killed in a single instant — and the thing that had killed them was Yaoyao.
Ye Tianxie’s astonishment lasted a second, and then he understood. A Warrior’s Departed Spirit was without question an undead monster held up by a body after death, and undead things fear Light and Life skills. That fear was not limited to the attack skills of those two schools; it extended to their support skills as well… Yaoyao’s Mystic Spirit Cure restored an enormous amount of health to an ordinary living creature — and applied to an undead one, its effect was to strip that creature’s life away instead.
For these undead things, Yaoyao’s Mystic Spirit Cure was lethal — heaven knows how many times more terrible than Xiaobei’s violent attacks. And with that one cast, Yaoyao took every scrap of the limelight Xiaobei had just won. One of them fast as wind, taking down three in three seconds… the other one casual flick, and all of them were down.
“Meow?” With nothing left to attack, Xiaobei turned its head, tipped it to one side, its whole face a question. It plainly had no idea yet what had happened.
“In that case… Yaoyao, I’ll be leaning on you rather more this time.”
Ye Tianxie had barely finished speaking when the ground further out began to churn more violently still. Within his field of vision, in the band between ten and thirty meters out, countless pieces of armor and weaponry rose into the air and assembled into bodiless Warrior’s Departed Spirits… a full thirty of them.
Ye Tianxie had comfortably beaten the lavish lineup at the Heaven Soul Graveyard, a dozen or more level 20 BOSSes of assorted grades; he was hardly going to fear a batch of ordinary level 20 monsters. Without waiting for them to come at him, he drove the horse forward, and the moment he closed, Yaoyao’s Mystic Spirit Cure — its cooldown just reaching zero — went off and killed a dozen-odd Warrior’s Departed Spirits around him on the instant. Ye Tianxie wheeled at once and attacked another cluster, Dragon Rend Slash going out again and again, every strike landing and every landing a kill. Xiaobei charged in behind him. With 150 movement speed, a small body, and a Meow-Meow Step nobody could predict, it flickered left and right through the Departed Spirits’ attacks and put a Meow-Meow Fist in out of nowhere, its movements fast enough to dazzle even Ye Tianxie — let alone a crowd of Warrior’s Departed Spirits whose reactions were slowed by the death-consciousness governing them. Xiaobei one-shot five of them in a row without being so much as touched.
When the cooldown hit zero again, a dozen-odd Warrior’s Departed Spirits remained, and Yaoyao’s Mystic Spirit Cure one-shot all of them too. The skill’s healing range was a five-meter circle around the caster, and every Warrior’s Departed Spirit that came within those five meters had its life stripped away without mercy — an efficiency heaven knows how many times higher than Ye Tianxie and Xiaobei killing them one at a time.
Having no powerful area attack had always been a grievance and a standing weakness in Ye Tianxie’s own mind.
Rattle, rattle…
It was still not over. The churning sound came again, and another great company of Warrior’s Departed Spirits formed further out around him. Ye Tianxie’s eyes swept over them… and the number had grown to nearly double the last.
The first time he had faced a Warrior’s Departed Spirit there had been only one. The second time, a dozen or so. The third time, thirty-odd… and this time there were fifty or sixty!
Nobody had ever doubted how difficult the System Quests were, and a party of at most twelve facing a swarm this size coming at them all at once would be in very serious trouble… but would that number be the final one?
The undead here came in only one class — Warriors, uniformly melee. A mix of several classes would have been a great deal more troublesome to handle. Facing this many enemies at once, the correct approach, if your strength was not up to it, was to fall back as you fought, pulling one section at a time and breaking them up piece by piece. And the fastest way to fight was…
The Warrior’s Departed Spirits had formed at more or less the same moment and attacked at more or less the same moment. Looking at them coming in around him in what was very nearly a closed ring, Ye Tianxie did not move. He waited quietly where he was, waited for them to close…
Twenty meters…
Ten meters…
Five meters…
One meter…
Mystic Spirit Cure!!
The closing Warrior’s Departed Spirits had packed themselves into a solid black ring, jamming together as they rushed in on Ye Tianxie — and what met them was a sudden blaze of despairing white light.
A vast spread of damage figures came floating up around Ye Tianxie’s body, so dense that the eye could not sort them out or read them. And that single cast killed thirty-odd Warrior’s Departed Spirits on the spot.
“Ding… Your pet ‘Mystic Spirit Snow Fox’ has risen to level 13…”
“Ding… Your pet ‘Xiaobei’ has risen to level 6…”
With Yaoyao done cutting loose, Xiaobei finally charged out and worked its violent Meow-Meow Fist, one-shotting every one it caught. Five seconds later Mystic Spirit Cure came off cooldown, white light flashed, and the remaining Warrior’s Departed Spirits melted back into the Ten Thousand Bone Ruins. And at that moment a prompt sounded in Ye Tianxie’s ear:
“Ding… You have successfully defeated 100 ‘Warrior’s Departed Spirits.'”
(End of Chapter 215)