Chapter Ninety-Eight: Maomao

At last the egg hatched without incident, and the way it did not split away from Li Ren after hatching proved that the hatching itself had gone quite well. Not only did it not turn against him, the two of them looked almost intimate together, as if they were made for each other.

The reason was simple: this tiny creature that emerged from the egg resembled Li Ren in build. Not in face, of course, but in physique.
Its whole body was made of bone. Whatever angle you looked at them from, the two could easily be taken for the same bloodline.

Yet there was one obvious difference—the little one had a pair of skeletal wings, and it looked comically threadbare, as though one could not know if it could ever really fly. Worse still, the absurdly long tufts of hair on its perfectly smooth, round skull made it look downright laughable.

No one could tell how those few hairs stayed attached to such a sleek little skull.
When Li Ren set this ridiculous creature on his shoulder, it stood there quite steadily. It was, by any standard, a small miracle.

He had already checked its attributes once when he first summoned it.

- Name: Unnamed
- Species: Unknown
- Type: Soul-Eater
- Level: 0
- Core Attributes: All at 1
- Evolvable
- Innate Skills: Soul Absorption (Level 1); Attribute Transfer (attribute points can be transferred between the creature and its master at no cost; transfer cooldown 30 minutes)
- Riding Requirement: Character Level 80; Evolution Level 3

After one fusion with Li Ren, even its original species had already changed. It had become an “unknown species,” and Li Ren could not help but laugh when he saw that, like him, it had started at Level 1 with all attributes at 1, and had somehow inherited his skill to absorb attributes.

The extra skill, Attribute Transfer, looked as if it had no obvious use. Li Ren thought about it for ages and could not figure out how to apply it, so he gave up on it. He had a mount now anyway, and it looked strange enough already.

He amused himself by playing with the little thing. Since it still had no name, he decided to give it one. He fiddled with those bizarre, laugh-inducing tufts of hair atop its head and called it Fuzzy.

The three returned to the Lord’s Castle. Most of the recent uproar had settled. This siege had given Li Ren the greatest immediate advantage, yet it had also given the whole player world a sharp power update.
Because of that battle, many players’ levels had surged to an unusual height, and the players’ overall strength was gradually catching up to their usual limits.

With a dossier on rare mounts compiled by Shadow, Li Ren saw that only Lania and Shadow lacked mounts. He told Shadow to choose two suitable ones, so both of them could each own one.

From Fuzzy’s attributes alone, it was obvious this creature would one day be an absolute powerhouse. A truly exceptional thing feels safer once it’s in your hands early.

After making careful plans, they found that obtaining the two mounts was not difficult at all. With Shadow’s and Lania’s strength, they were more than enough to handle those monsters. So the pair set out together to tame their own mounts.

Li Ren, too, could not sit in the lord’s hall all day like an NPC. His level had to rise quickly, and his own soul absorption had still not been properly used. Now was the time to push harder.

Just as he was preparing to leave, a surge of powerful dark force suddenly rippled down from above and swallowed him as if from nowhere.
Great black radiance flickered through the lord’s hall. Lantis, who had been resting at the back, was drawn in by that sudden force.

She appeared in an instant in the hall and, seeing the magic gathering above Li Ren’s head, looked both startled and suddenly clear-eyed.

This was no strange random event. It was the same wondrous force produced through absorption and transformation at the Woma altar, the one he had once controlled with Zhao Yun’s help in the Woma temples.

It can be called a kind of blood-spirit energy, though it is utterly different from blood-spirit. It contains tremendous attributes and experience, along with endless emotion and thought.

If one, without sufficient strength, accepted such energy recklessly, those thoughts and feelings could tear one’s soul apart. Even at best, one’s temperament might shift so violently that one became almost a different person.

Zhao Yun, at that time, had prepared in detail.
Before the radiance touched Li Ren’s body, it passed through a tiny circular band. The band drifted restlessly. On close inspection it resembled a small azure dragon, opening and closing its jaws. Each opening and closing shattered every emotion and thought in the energy into countless fragments, reducing them to their most primal form.

What reached Li Ren was only that primordial essence, burdenless. The little blue dragon, however, grew blurrier with each repeated bite-like motion of its mouth, until the energy fully vanished and the dragon dissolved into the air.

When Li Ren opened his eyes, he felt his body had undergone an astonishing change, though he could not pinpoint why. All he could sense was that the world around him now disclosed subtle insights, revealing things he had never been able to perceive before.

He dimly sensed the Woma altar, but that feeling was draining away at great speed. He understood well that this kind of blessing was unlikely to come again; the sense of connection to the altar faded gradually and at last became nothing.

He checked his current attributes.

Character Name: Bone by Bone
Level: 83
Race: Elite Skeleton Tribe
Attributes: HP 1,000,000 / 1,000,000; MP 1,000,000 / 1,000,000; Strength 18; Intelligence 18; Constitution 18; Agility 18; Bones 1,600; Luck 15; Souls Absorbed 185,411
Profession: Skeleton Warrior
Hidden Attribute: Free Advancement, Absorb Attribute (Level 1)
Upgradeable Skills: Blink (Level 8): Instantly teleport 500 meters regardless of terrain; cooldown 10 seconds; can transport other living species at the same time, up to five individuals at once.
Self-Created Skill: Half-Moon Slash.
Talent Skill: Summon Elite Skeleton Guard (the guard’s attributes are 50% of the owner’s main attributes); each summon costs 1,000 soul units, lasts 12 hours, max summons: 100, can be upgraded; convert blood essence.
Brutal Aura: all humanoid targets within the aura have all attributes reduced by 5%.