You Can Tell They're Good Bones Just by the Sound

Xu Chunliang gripped the spine saber and charged at the enormous skeleton before him, silently recalling the emotions he had felt each time he saw [Death].

Loneliness, coldness, serenity, madness, numbness...

The dimmed Kiss of Death on the panel quietly lit up, and Xu Chunliang's pupils instantly turned pure black.

The spine saber slashed.

Li Baiyi crashed heavily to the ground. Buddhist light flickered around him, sparing him most of the damage.

The instant he landed, he rolled, knocking aside a human insect that had lunged at him. He tapped the Elegant Heart Sword against the ground and used the rebound to propel himself toward Xu Chunliang.

"Brother-in-law! Don't be rash! Let's attack together!"

He leaped high into the air, then saw, to his astonishment, a streak of pure black appear before Xu Chunliang.

An indescribable chill and deathly intent churned within the blackness, invading his gaze the instant he looked at it.

"This is..."

The black light annihilated the towering, ghastly white skeleton.

The human insects scurrying across the ground all shuddered, then dropped dead at once.

Li Baiyi was about to burst into wild laughter when he saw Xu Chunliang's body tremble and slowly fall backward.

Watching the white skeleton being swallowed by the black saber intent, Xu Chunliang finally relaxed.

Though he felt utterly exhausted, his entire body covered in cold deathly intent and racked with unbearable pain, he could not help laughing.

He did not know why he was laughing, but he could not stop himself.

A finger bone flew up from where the white bones had perished!

The finger bone was the size of a little finger, with two pairs of pure white, translucent wings growing from its ghastly white knuckle. It flew straight at his chest.

It was almost identical to the finger that had just killed Li Baiyi.

A flash of disdain passed through Xu Chunliang's eyes.

Pfft!

The finger bone struck the center of his breastbone. Several cracks appeared, and Xu Chunliang's breastbone shattered.

Waves of Buddhist chanting arose as a strange aura, mingled with decay and the baleful intent of flesh and blood, flowed from the finger bone. It followed the cracks in his breastbone, invading Xu Chunliang's mind.

"Hahaha..."

"The aura of a Buddha, the aura of a Buddha. Abundant death, pure death..."

"Kṣitigarbha, it's Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva's fruition..."

"Severing the corpse of the worms to transform it into countless Buddha bodies-wrong! Wrong!"

"It's all wrong!"

"Stealing a Buddha's fruition is the true way, stealing a Buddha's fruition is the true way!"

"I've searched for five thousand years and been wrong for five thousand years. So this is the opportunity ordained by heaven! I've finally understood!"

"I've done it!"

Amid the aged, crazed roars, the white finger bone turned into a little white man. He was emaciated and slender, yet radiated an utterly mad Buddhist intent.

"How dare you!!!" Li Baiyi shot toward him, sword in hand, the tip of the Elegant Heart Sword aimed straight at the little man's face.

The little man smiled and murmured, "Today, I shall become a Buddha."

With that, he melted in an instant, turning into a stream of white liquid that entered Xu Chunliang's body.

In moments, he covered all of Xu Chunliang's bones and slowly seeped into them.

At the same time, he transformed his consciousness into a torrent of eerie force and sent it shooting through an unspeakable passage, straight into Xu Chunliang's mind.

He intended to use five thousand years of a mad Buddha's eerie intent to destroy Xu Chunliang's spirit.

Then he saw a monster.

Xu Chunliang's mind should have been as defenseless as a little boy in split-crotch pants, but instead it was utterly terrifying!

A gigantic, illusory, rusted steelyard stretching across the firmament like a bridge to heaven,

A strange, mountain-sized tiger with three eerie heads,

And a pitch-black rift looming in the endless sky above, with hidden tentacles and dormant eyes faintly visible within it.

And enveloping these strange things was an illusory Xu Chunliang, made up of overlapping layers.

Its entire body was black, its eyes tightly shut, like a gigantic translucent onion.

One layer, two layers... ten thousand layers...

"This?"

"What exactly are you?"

"What are all these things?"

The little man stared up at Xu Chunliang's illusory figure in shock, but received no answer.

Run!

It rapidly retreated.

Pfft!

A cold killing intent pierced its chest. Looking down, he saw a rusty iron hook impaling his spiritual body.

The little man died in an instant.

The iron hook slowly rose, suspending it high in the sky.

So cold, so painful, so hungry...

After an unknown length of time, Xu Chunliang groggily opened his eyes.

The first thing he saw was a beautiful starry sky...

"Brother-in-law, you're finally awake. Here, have a chicken leg." Li Baiyi squatted beside him and handed him a burnt roasted chicken leg.

Xu Chunliang took the burnt chicken leg and bit into it without looking. Only after his hunger had eased did he take a careful look around.

Grass, woods, a path, a campfire.

I'm... out?

"We're out," Li Baiyi said with a smile, seemingly understanding what he was thinking.

"Whew..." Xu Chunliang let out a long breath.

He hurriedly called up the panel.

Name: Xu Chunliang

Age: 16

Attribute points: 235

Level: Star Transformation Grade+ (200 points required to advance to the next level) (Bone level: Solar Halo Grade)

Skills: Eerie Tiger Saber: Eerie Tiger Descends the Mountain, Eerie Tiger Howls at the Heavens, Eerie Tiger Splits the Earth (Proficient)

Hidden skill: Kiss of Death (Random skill, probability: Unknown)

...

Current reset point: Grassland

Looking at the attribute panel, Xu Chunliang breathed a complete sigh of relief. It seemed he really was out.

"The attribute points are probably the reward for the white-bone Buddha, but what's with my bones being Solar Halo Grade?" Xu Chunliang held up his left hand and turned it around, examining it with curiosity.

"Baiyi, let me borrow the Elegant Heart Sword."

Xu Chunliang took the Elegant Heart Sword, turned his wrist, and drew the blade across the back of his hand.

Shhk.

The sharp blade cut through his skin, exposing the ghastly white bone beneath.

Ignoring the blood trickling out, Xu Chunliang tossed the Elegant Heart Sword back to the dumbfounded Li Baiyi and flicked the exposed bone with a finger of his right hand.

Crisp and loud,

You could tell it was a good bone just by the sound.

The corner of Li Baiyi's mouth twitched. "Brother-in-law, tell me the truth. Are you all right?"

Xu Chunliang casually pulled a blade of grass from the ground and roughly stitched up the wound on the back of his hand before smiling. "I'm fine. Do I look like something's wrong?"

He did not tell Li Baiyi that, for some reason, he had absorbed the finger bone and raised the level of his bones.

This would be a trump card of his at this stage, besides Death Reset. A trump card was only a trump card if nobody else knew about it, of course.

With these Solar Halo Grade bones, if he caught him off guard, perhaps it would not be impossible to kill Jin Jun, the flag officer of Fan City's Demon-Slaying Bureau.

"Brother-in-law, let's part ways here. I need to hurry back to the capital and consult some Buddhist scriptures to see whether there's anything wrong with the pearl I swallowed."

"I'll arrange for my sister to come meet you as soon as possible, brother-in-law. Hahahaha..."

"Take good care of her when the time comes. Don't bully him..."

"Don't worry, I'll keep it secret that you entered the Ruin Realm too. We don't know each other and have never met. My sister just came to Fan City for a visit, happened to see you, and fell in love with you. How's that...?"