The skeletons seemed to truly understand human speech.
They shuffled their broken bodies, struggling to line up in formation even while missing arms, legs, or heads.
What in the world was going on?
Yin Luan watched the scene before her in astonishment.
One of the armored skeletons turned around, fixed its gaze on the Little Snake Demon, and rasped,
“You are… from the Great Zhou Kingdom?”
“Theoretically speaking, yes.”
Yin Luan nodded.
She had no idea where she had actually been born. All she knew was that she had opened her eyes in the Great Zhou Kingdom. By Little Snake’s own reckoning, that made her a citizen of the Great Zhou Kingdom.
If push came to shove, Du Xuan could always pull some strings to get her registered…
The skeleton’s eye sockets, brimming with white mist, shifted to the box cradled in her arms.
“You are… from the Great Zhou Kingdom Royal Family?”
“This one?” The Little Snake Demon hoisted the box, which bore the Demon Subduing Division’s badge. “It belongs to my friend.”
The Demon Subduing Division badge had two sides. One featured the Great Zhou Kingdom Royal Family’s emblem, a mark of their direct oversight by His Majesty.
“It’s not safe here,” the skeleton said slowly. “Something’s on the mountaintop. Very powerful… Hurry and leave.”
A powerful entity? That had to be the Mystic Master.
“My friend got caught in the fog and headed up the mountain alone,” Yin Luan explained. “I need to go find her.”
“This mountain… very dangerous,” the skeleton warned. “Many people turned into resentful spirits. Filled with rage. No reason left.”
“Did that powerful one do it?”
Yin Luan frowned.
The skeleton nodded slowly.
“Then I have to find my friend even more,” the Little Snake Demon said earnestly. “She’s only half-baked. She’ll be in real danger up there by herself.”
Destroying resentful spirits and malicious ghosts was no easier than dealing with living corpses—especially for a “human” like Du Xuan.
A physical body could barely harm an intangible soul, yet soul attacks were nearly impossible to guard against. Only someone with special powers like Yin Luan could turn the tables.
“Here,” the skeleton said, pointing at the ground. “Many bewitched people too. Up ahead… someone will attack you.”
The graveyard was still a good distance away, and Little Snake couldn’t fly. There was no escaping this trial.
“Thanks for the heads-up,” she said with a nod. “But I’m still going to find her.”
After a moment’s thought, she ventured,
“Your state like this… it must be pretty rough, huh?”
The dead should rest in peace, returned to the earth.
Any remnant clinging to the mortal world was torment for the departed.
That was what the Demon Subduing Division Lord had taught her.
These “things that should have died” either devolved into chaotic spirits driven only by destruction and slaughter or withered away in endless self-consumption.
And in most cases, they had no say in the matter.
“Watching your old comrades… one by one lose their minds… turn into monsters… it’s agonizing…”
The Skeleton General’s voice carried a note of sorrow.
In life, it hadn’t led its soldiers home alive. In death, it couldn’t even let them slumber in the earth. No doubt it felt it had failed as a true general.
“It’s not your fault…”
Little Snake pitied their fate.
Loyal souls barred from their homeland, bones interred in foreign soil.
Worse, evil people had exploited them, denying them peace even in exile.
More skeletons were clawing their way out of the earth, drawn to the living presence—or perhaps answering some silent summons.
Farther off, another breed of “undead” stirred with a different aura, poised to erupt from the soil.
“You all… form up…”
The Skeleton General tried to command its “old troops,” but the skeleton soldiers’ wits were far dimmer than their leader’s. Some couldn’t comprehend the words; others understood but couldn’t rein in their impulses.
Such was the doom of “remnants.” Even without manipulation, they grew addled and forgot what mattered most.
Yin Luan’s slender brows knitted as she recalled Du Xuan’s lessons.
Not every rational “evil spirit” needed slaying. The right methods might grant them an easier release…
She flipped open the weapon box and retrieved several lengths of peach wood along with a palm-sized jar of wine.
Peach wood warded off evil; once ignited, it banished the malevolent Qi clinging to these skeletons. As for the wine—Blazing Sun Wine—it flooded humans with surging yang energy, rendering them impervious to devils and demons for a short while. Doused on evil spirits, it brought them excruciating pain.
As if sensing the properties of these two items, the Skeleton General turned its head and watched silently.
The Little Snake Demon took out the fire starter, lit the wood, set the jar of wine to the side, then stepped back a few paces and drew a deep breath.
Then, she began to sing.
“La la la~~ La la la~~”
She shifted to a different tone.
Compared to her song back in Earthstone City, this time her voice was even clearer and more resonant, like the tolling of a morning bell rousing the sleepy from their slumber.
“La la la~~ La la la~~”
The scattered skeleton soldiers fell quiet. They ceased their aimless movements and futile struggles.
They listened in silence, letting the smoke rising from the burning peach wood waft over their bodies.
Even the white mist flickering in the Skeleton General’s eye sockets seemed to settle into a peaceful calm.
The Little Snake Demon sang for a moment, and the skeletons listened for a moment. When she fell silent, a neat and orderly formation had already taken shape before her eyes.
“Your voice… it reaches straight into the heart…”
The Skeleton General nodded to her, approached the fire, and half-knelt to pick up the jar of Blazing Sun Wine.
“Thank you… for seeing us off on our final journey…”
He rose to his feet, uncorked the jar, and drained it in a single gulp.
A surging wave of heat erupted from the Skeleton General’s body. The white mist in his eye sockets blazed as if aflame, and his entire presence seemed to transcend time and space, surging back to its absolute peak.
“Now, it’s our turn to see you off!”
A soaring wave of fervor burst from the General, spreading to every skeleton soldier clawing its way out of the earth.
“Brothers, form ranks—charge!”
“Oooh!”
The skeleton soldiers could make no sound of their own, yet through the graveyard echoed the faint, stirring roars of battle cries.
The General, now naught but bone, led his maimed soldiers onward without a trace of fear.
Ahead, the restless bone remnants—twisted into evil entities—burst from the soil to bar their path.
The two forces collided in a primal clash of bone on bone.
“Kill!”
“Kill—!”
Though it was merely skeletons grappling in the dirt, the air rang with the clash of steel on steel, the ring of crossing blades, the whistle of arrows, and the thunder of galloping warhorses.
The Skeleton General wrenched a rusty curved saber from the ground and cleaved the Evil Bone before him in two. He turned to Yin Luan and said, “Go—find your friend.
“If you can, have your friend tell His Majesty this: In the forty-seventh year of Great Zhou, the Dongli Army never fell back!
“Right here, we held the territory of Great Zhou Kingdom!”
