Chapter 438 – The Innocent Skeletons

Chapter 438 – The Innocent Skeletons

While Lilith and Vasida went to find the slumbering zombies, Mo Lan headed off alone to where the skeletons were gathered.

She was preparing to raise skeletons, and compared to zombies, skeleton maintenance and repair techniques were what she really needed to learn.

Unfortunately, Lady Ginia preferred zombies. The few skeleton squads in the zombie army were all logistics units.

They were either chopping trees to make coffins or planting trees. Either way, the chances of getting injured were slim.

Moreover, the tools they used were still quite new, as if they had been recently replaced.

To Lady Ginia, this group of skeletons probably had zero cultivation value. She didn’t need them to become powerful — they just needed to provide coffins for the zombie army to rest in.

Mo Lan inspected them thoroughly, and the only issues she found were a few logging skeletons whose shoulder bones had slight wear from carrying too many trees. It didn’t affect their movement at all.

And so her “medical ethics” briefly vanished. She manifested a huge pile of strong, fresh bones, several large vats of Bone Spirit potion, and a heap of metal materials.

Using the Amplification Spell, she announced: “Break your own bones and get brand-new, strong human bones! Plus free Bone Spirit potion and partial gold plating!”

Not a single skeleton could resist this temptation.

Even the dullest skeleton would engrave anything beneficial to its bone frame into its soul fire — this was survival instinct.

Strong human bones, potion, and gold ore were laid right out there, and this person was the “friend” their master had said they could trust.

“Crack!”

“Thud!”

“Snap!”

“Crash!”

……

The skeleton holding an axe swung it right into its own body. The skeleton carrying a bucket smacked a ladle against its own thigh. The skeleton with a planing knife started planing itself.

The most ridiculous part was the skeletons carrying trees — they all withdrew their Death Force in unison, positioned their necks right under where the tree trunks would fall, and let the unsupported trunks snap their necks clean off. Their skulls, still bearing their soul fires, went rolling right up to Mo Lan’s feet.

“!!!” The other skeletons saw this and swung their axes even harder, smacked their ladles until afterimages appeared, and planed themselves with even greater force.

Before long, Mo Lan was surrounded by numerous skeleton “patients” whose entire bodies were destroyed, with practically only their skulls still intact.

She immediately placed all the manifested adult male bone frames into the Bone Spirit potion vats. “Let me soak your new bone frames first. Once they’re ready, I’ll swap them in for you. In the meantime, I’ll repair your old bones so you can keep them as spares.”

The skeletons’ soul fires flickered with unbridled excitement.

Their master was right — the friend could be trusted!

Mo Lan gathered up all the skeletons’ ruined bones, repairing them one by one, honing her hands-on skills in skeleton frame maintenance and repair.

She placed the repaired skeleton frames in the Bone Spirit potion vats to soak as well — extra soaking was good for the bones.

Swapping in the new bone frames was much easier. She simply wrapped the soul fire with her soul-nurturing technique, extracted it from the original skull, and placed it into the new bone frame’s skull.

After all the swaps were complete, the skeletons followed her step for step, escorting her all the way back to camp.

“Go on back! Soak in the Bone Spirit potion more when you have time!” Mo Lan waved them off before stepping inside the camp’s defensive magic formation.

Walking toward her tent, she sighed with admiration. “Skeletons are so wonderfully innocent! Choosing to raise skeleton undead servants was definitely the right decision!”

Vasida and Lilith had returned from the graveyard before her and were getting ready to eat.

Vasida said, “I wrote a letter to Mom about everything we’ve been doing these past few days. Guess what she said?”

“What?” Mo Lan figured she must be happy that they had given her entire undead army — which she hadn’t had the energy or attention to maintain — a thorough deep-level overhaul.

“Lady Ginia said we’re practically the second coming of the Grim Reaper,” Lilith said with a strained smile.

“She also said she’s never seen anyone lure skeletons and zombies into self-mutilation with fresh corpse materials and then repair them afterward,” Vasida added.

“Wait, I didn’t do anything to the zombies — was that you two? You did that to the zombies?” Mo Lan asked.

Lilith and Vasida nodded, saying in unison, “We learned it from you.”

They couldn’t help it — zombies that had rotted so badly in their graves that they couldn’t even crawl out were the minority. After repairing just a few, the two of them had run out of subjects.

That was when they happened to see Mo Lan’s method, and boy did they learn fast.

Even now, they still hadn’t finished repairing all the zombies across the graveyard!

“……” Mo Lan didn’t know what to say. After a long pause, she managed: “We’re clearly living saints who give zombies and skeletons free upgrades, okay?”

“What’s a living saint?” Vasida asked.

“A very compassionate and kind deity. Undead creatures don’t feel pain, so it’s not self-mutilation — it’s a transaction! They don’t even know how long it’s been since they last got fresh corpse materials!” Mo Lan said.

These were undead servants left to roam free out here, just waiting for natural selection to pick out the strongest ones to bring back. They only got checked on once every several years and had never even had a major overhaul. Mo Lan considered this a win-win!

“Exactly! We provided the corpse materials for free!” Vasida and Lilith gradually grew more self-righteous.

“Let’s eat, let’s eat! After we’re done, back to the graveyard! There are still tons of zombies lying there waiting for us to fix them!” Vasida said.

The two of them wolfed down their food and dashed back out of camp.

Mo Lan walked briskly into her own tent.

The day before yesterday, Zhizhi had told her that the small skeleton’s soul fire had fully matured.

But at that time she still had a few skeletons left to repair, so she had Zhizhi keep nurturing it.

After all, growing the soul fire a bit larger had nothing but benefits.

In the living quarters, Zhizhi sat at the small table with its chin propped on its hands, head bobbing drowsily.

On the table sat an oil lamp and a magic alarm clock.

The soul fire on the lamp had turned completely pale green, and had even grown a size larger than before.

“Ding! Time to add essence!” The magic alarm clock sprang up and shouted.

Zhizhi jolted awake in an instant and grabbed the clock before it could leap up and headbutt it, pressing the button on its top. Only then did the clock settle down.

It was about to add soul essence to the lamp when Mo Lan stopped it. “No need to add more. We’re about to move its soul fire into the bone frame to settle in.”

Zhizhi let out a sigh of relief and flopped flat on the carpet, immediately starting to snore softly.

It really had worked hard during this time, never getting a full night’s sleep.

And yet it had stubbornly insisted on not losing face in front of its future underling, determined to complete the task of tending to the small skeleton’s soul fire — which was why it had ended up this exhausted.

Mo Lan floated it over to the sofa to lie down, pulled out a small blanket, and covered the exposed belly of its sprawled, four-limbs-in-the-air sleeping posture.

Then she picked up the oil lamp and headed to the workshop.

The small skeleton’s bone frame was still soaking in Bone Spirit potion.