Ghost Eye

"Heh heh, this trip really paid off. I actually got so much psychic energy!" Green had already made up his mind. There was no hurry about the rest. Once he gathered two thousand, he would upgrade the crypt first.

Green was still calculating when a stream of curses suddenly came from one of the rooms nearby. "Damn it, you guys are..." The voice had only gotten that far when the door was pushed open. Seeing the scene before him, the rest of his words were forcibly swallowed.

The man was covered in bulging muscles yet wore heavy makeup—yes, heavy makeup—and had an exceedingly effeminate air. Behind him followed a handsome young man. Both were disheveled, and their relationship was clearly more than ordinary.

Green turned his head at the sound and could not help frowning. He had been extremely careful just now, yet he had not noticed that there was still someone in that room. Luckily, these two were not very alert, and they had not figured out what was happening before coming out. Otherwise, if they had launched a stealth attack, they might have injured him or even threatened his life by catching him off guard.

But there was no time to think about it now. The instant the two appeared, Green issued a command with his mind. The Evil Spirit Maxim and Hard-Skin Ghoul charged forward madly, while the three nearest Gun Skeleton Soldiers raised their guns and fired.

"Bang bang bang~~~"

A burst of gunfire rang out. The muscle-bound sissy who had come out first was sent straight to his grave. One of the bullets struck him in the forehead and blew the top of his skull clean off.

With a thud, the corpse fell to the ground. The handsome young man was so frightened that he stood there dumbfounded, mouth agape, his face splattered with blood and brain matter.

Although the young man was also a Junior Apprentice Knight, he was a genuine rookie with absolutely no combat experience. Faced with such a scene, he was completely stupefied. He stared blankly at the muscle-bound sissy falling down, even forgetting that the enemy was still there.

In the next instant, with a wet ripping sound, the agile Hard-Skin Ghoul moved like the wind. After two leaps, it stepped across the ceiling and wall, flashed to the young man's side, and swiped its claws across his neck. At the same time, Maxim charged ahead, intending to kill the young man with a soul attack. Who could have expected that just as Maxim turned into a white streak and was about to pass through the young man's body, he suddenly screamed. A powerful suction force seized him, and he was unable to break free. In one motion, he was sucked into the pendant hanging against the young man's chest.

Almost simultaneously, the Hard-Skin Ghoul's claws snapped the young man's neck. The tremendous force sent his corpse flying like a battered doll, slamming viciously into the pile of miscellaneous items in the corner.

Green realized that something was wrong. He had intended to keep the young man alive for questioning, but it was too late. He could only give up and order a Skeleton Soldier to drag the corpse back.

In fact, the young man with his peculiar proclivities was nothing special. The only exception was the sapphire pendant he wore against his chest, which was a magic item. As soon as Green took possession of it, a prompt appeared: "Magic item: Ghost Eye. A magical artifact created by an ancient Necromancer using a young dragon's eyeball. It can contain souls and transform them into ghosts... Can be converted into 1,495 psychic energy!"

This was the first magic item Green had seen with such a long description, and his eyes lit up. When he looked at the price afterward, it had reached a new high as well. A single item was worth nearly fifteen hundred psychic energy, equivalent to killing two or three high-level apprentice Transcendents. However, the true value of the Ghost Eye did not lie in its psychic energy, but in its inherent properties: containing souls and transforming them into ghosts.

Green did not know how the young man had obtained this magic item, but one thing was certain: as a Junior Apprentice Knight, he could never have known the Ghost Eye's value to a Necromancer. By absorbing souls, it could produce a Tier Three unit—the Ghost. What kind of concept was that? It was practically a divine artifact. Moreover, judging from how the Evil Spirit had been sucked inside against its will just now, the Ghost Eye also restrained spiritual entities. Even an Evil Spirit, a tier above a Ghost, could not resist the Ghost Eye's coercive force.

Green naturally had no intention of converting it into psychic energy. Still, he kept his guard up and did not pick up the pendant directly. Instead, he ordered a Skeleton Soldier to carry the Ghost Eye pendant into the Graveyard.

The next moment, Green's consciousness entered the Graveyard. He found the Skeleton Soldier holding the pendant and watched, waiting for the Graveyard's psychic energy to seep into it.

This was the result of Green's long-term research into the Graveyard. No matter what entered from the outside, once it entered the Graveyard, it would be corroded by the Graveyard's unique psychic energy. For example, the enchanted rifles he had bought from Old One-Eye had originally been brand-new. After entering the Graveyard and being corroded by its psychic energy, they immediately became rusty and mottled. Yet their overall performance had not diminished—instead, it had grown even stronger.

Green had also discovered that the Graveyard's psychic energy possessed an extremely powerful corrosive force. Even hidden magic arrays and runes that could not normally be detected would be exposed by it. If the Ghost Eye contained any hidden secrets, they too would be corroded by the psychic energy and rendered ineffective.

Green was not being needlessly suspicious. The magic in this world was simply too sinister and vicious. Some so-called "fortuitous encounters," "blessings," and "pleasant surprises" were not necessarily good things.

The Mages Association had records of such a case. Four hundred years ago, the Archmage Gilkins Nant suddenly vanished. Before long, word spread that the spellbook he had spent hundreds of years studying had surfaced. Many soul mages regarded it as a treasure and rushed to fight over it. In the end, the spellbook was divided into six parts and obtained by six Formal Mages. Merely a century later, all but one of them, who had died unexpectedly, had used Gilkins Nant's spellbook to advance into Archmages.

Yet two hundred years ago, Gilkins Nant, who had mysteriously disappeared, suddenly returned. He had already advanced into a Magus.

At the same time, the five people who had studied his spellbook and advanced into Archmages all became stepping stones for his ascension. Their bodies were ground away, their souls sacrificed, and everything they possessed was turned into nourishment for Gilkins Nant's growth.

Reading this, Green suddenly thought of a novel he had read in his previous life. In it was an evil cultivation art called the "Nine Mother-Children Demon-Seeding Art," which was similar to this. The art was divided into a mother technique and a child technique. The cultivator of the mother technique released seeds of the child technique and distributed them among nine exceptionally talented youths. Once the youths completed their cultivation, it was time to reap the harvest. The mother technique specifically restrained the child technique. At that point, the butcher held the knife and the fish lay upon the chopping block—their fate had long been decided. When the youths first obtained the seeds of the child technique, they believed that destiny favored them. They treated rare treasures as theirs for the taking and embarked upon the protagonist's path, never realizing that from that day onward, they had begun making wedding clothes for someone else.

Thus, faced with the sudden appearance of the Ghost Eye, Green was exceptionally cautious, afraid that he had run into a trap.

This time, however, he had merely been overthinking it. After entering the Graveyard, the pendant was corroded, but nothing unusual happened. There were no additional soul imprints or abnormal psychic energy hidden inside. Instead, under the erosion of the Graveyard's psychic energy, the entire Ghost Eye burst into light and became even more dazzling!

Ghost Eye (2)

Unlike the enchanted rifles Green had bought before, which had immediately become mottled and old after being corroded by the Graveyard's psychic energy, the Ghost Eye seemed to shine with even more dazzling brilliance after being corroded. Perhaps it was because the magic item itself belonged to the Necromancy School.

Green checked again and discovered that if the Ghost Eye were converted into psychic energy now, it would be worth two levels more than before!

"Did this repair the magic item?" Green's eyes lit up. "I didn't expect the Graveyard to have an effect like this. Can magic items of the Necromancy School be repaired simply by entering the Graveyard? But that doesn't seem right. What about that bone flute back then... No, that bone flute never entered the Graveyard. It was consumed to restart the Graveyard."

Green was not certain, but he had no way to investigate further at that moment. With a thought, his consciousness returned. He summoned a Skeleton Soldier again and had it bring the Ghost Eye back to the surface.

Green took the pendant back from the Skeleton Soldier. The moment it touched his hand, he noticed something strange. When his magic power stimulated the pendant, it immediately radiated blue light. Green uttered a surprised sound and found his vision changing. It was as if a layer of pale-blue film had descended over his eyes, creating a cold, gloomy, and eerie atmosphere.

At the same time, countless light spheres of different colors appeared in the lobby of the Abandoned Tower, which had already been completely swept clean by the undead army.

Each light sphere represented a soul. They came in five colors—cyan, red, yellow, white, and black—symbolizing the five basic attributes of souls. The souls also varied greatly in strength. The souls of Transcendents were powerful, forming light spheres about the size of basketballs, while ordinary people were much weaker. Their light spheres ranged from fist-sized to billiard-ball-sized, floating and swaying in midair.

Green finally understood why the pendant was called the Ghost Eye. Possessing the pendant granted him the ability to gaze directly upon souls. This ability was a level above the visual power of Death Spirit Sight. At the very least, when using Death Spirit Sight, Green could not see these newly dead souls.

Near Green, two soul light spheres rose from the corpses of the muscle-bound sissy and the handsome young man who had just been killed. The former was about the size of a basketball, while the latter was slightly smaller, like a volleyball. Since they had died only moments ago, their souls had just broken free from their bodies and were drifting upward. They were not far from Green and happened to be within the Ghost Eye's range of control.

Without Green needing to control it deliberately, the Ghost Eye flashed blue, and the two soul light spheres were sucked inside.

As the soul light spheres were drawn in, Green subconsciously focused his attention on the Ghost Eye. In the blink of an eye, he seemed to enter a vast, fog-shrouded space.

The sensation resembled his first entry into the Graveyard, though it was far weaker and not remotely on the same level.

Green surveyed the space. He had experience manipulating the Graveyard, so this low-level magical space naturally could not stump him. With a thought, his viewpoint rapidly rose, instantly forming a bird's-eye perspective. The entire foggy space inside the Ghost Eye was then laid out before him.

It consisted of square compartments separated by fog. Each compartment was about five or six square meters, with four rows and four columns for a total of sixteen compartments. The Evil Spirit Maxim, who had just been forcibly sucked inside, floated silently in the first compartment without making a sound. The second and third compartments contained the two soul light spheres that had just been absorbed. All the other compartments were empty. The previous owner had left behind no relics.

Green first released Maxim. Then he tried to transform the two soul light spheres into Ghosts. According to the Graveyard's introduction, this was the Ghost Eye's basic ability.

However, when he released his psychic power and attempted to complete the transformation, the Ghost Eye merely trembled twice. Blue light flowed across its surface, as if it were operating, but after waiting for a long time, there was still no reaction.

Green frowned. "Could it be defective? But that doesn't make sense either. Even if it were truly damaged, entering the Graveyard should have repaired it. Could this be because there aren't enough materials?"

Faced with this situation, Green suddenly thought of the synthesis and forging functions common in many games. They seemed somewhat similar to the Ghost Eye. He immediately took action, circling the lobby and specifically picking up the larger floating soul light spheres to absorb them.

Soon, all sixteen compartments were filled. This time, when he tried again, there was indeed a reaction.

The Ghost Eye's blue light blossomed like a resplendent aurora, beautiful and dazzling. A tide of magic surged as it trembled slightly, continuing for a full minute!

Once the blue light subsided, Green swept his consciousness through the Ghost Eye. The sixteen soul light spheres inside had vanished, replaced by three spiritual entities similar to Maxim. However, these three spiritual entities were much weaker and more diffuse. They were precisely the Tier Three ordinary units—Ghosts!

"It worked!" Green was extremely excited. He immediately brought the Ghost Eye into the Graveyard again and released the Ghosts inside.

After being corroded by the Graveyard's psychic energy, the three newborn Ghosts were quickly certified. They appeared near the ruins of the Abandoned Tower, yet they were extremely fearful and did not dare approach the higher-grade Evil Spirit Maxim.

At the same time, Green discovered that the psychic energy stored in the Graveyard had fallen by forty-five points. That meant each Ghost consumed an average of fifteen points of psychic energy to receive the Graveyard's certification. Compared with the thirty points required to recruit one in the Graveyard, it was half the price. Moreover, Green had yet to build an Abandoned Tower that could produce Ghosts. Without the Ghost Eye, even if he were willing to spend psychic energy, he would not have been able to recruit any Ghosts.

Seeing the result, Green was overjoyed. Like a child flying a kite, he wandered around the lobby of the Abandoned Tower collecting soul light spheres, performing two more transformations in succession. Unfortunately, the remaining soul light spheres were far inferior to those from the first round. The two transformations yielded only three Ghosts, bringing their numbers above those of the Ghouls.

Ten minutes later, Green contentedly entered the entrance to the underground ruins.

Based on Maxim's earlier reconnaissance, Green estimated that most of the core members of the Tower of Yin Spirits were probably inside that ancient pyramid. Even David True, the pope of the Tower of Yin Spirits, might be there.

According to the intelligence he had obtained earlier, the pope and founder of the Tower of Yin Spirits was also David True, who mainly operated in Landon City and the nearby Nant County. The last time, his son had kidnapped Viscount Paul's daughter, causing an enormous backlash from Landon City's upper echelons. Most of the Tower of Yin Spirits' strongholds had been destroyed, forcing the organization into a state of panic. Some members whose faith was not firm and who had joined the Tower of Yin Spirits merely to obtain divine power granted by the Void Yin Spirit had begun to drift away. The debauched state of the people in this secret base was proof enough of that.

Under such circumstances, David True, as the pope, had to personally sit in the stronghold to stabilize the situation.

Soon, Green passed through the passageway and entered the underground ruins.

To guard against the pyramid's influence on undead creatures, Green recalled most of his undead, leaving only the Hard-Skin Ghoul and the Evil Spirit Maxim for protection. He wanted to try approaching the pyramid and see how great its influence on undead creatures was without remote control. If the influence was too strong, he would retreat. After all, he had already gained quite a lot this time. Moreover, ninety percent of his combat strength now lay in his undead army. If he could not summon undead, it would be like having his hands bound. Charging ahead regardless would be nothing but walking into the jaws of death.