Projection of the Heavens: I prove my immortality through slaughter.

The interior of Bone Mountain was not solid as one might imagine, but rather a labyrinth of passageways and enormous hollows. The rock walls of these passages were inlaid with ghastly white skulls, their eye sockets flickering with eerie blue phosphorescence, casting shadowy shadows on the path ahead. The air was thick with death energy, a gray mist so dense it was almost tangible; each breath felt like inhaling shards of ice, freezing even the soul. Ordinary creatures here would be stripped of their life force in moments, their flesh melting away, becoming new members of this kingdom of bones.

Lin Xuan followed the intense pull, traversing the intricate network of bone passages. His heavy iron boots crunched on the bone-strewn ground, the sound particularly clear in the deathly silence. Along the way, he encountered even more powerful undead creatures—swift, skeletal assassins whose finger bones glowed with a ghostly green light; rotting corpses wreathed in plague-laden mist, leaving corrosive marks with every step; and even translucent phantoms formed from countless vengeful spirits, emitting silent shrieks that whipped up a chilling wind as they passed through the bone walls.

These undead seemed to be summoned by the energy source deep within the bone mountain, converging on the core area like a pilgrimage. There was also naked slaughter and devouring among them, with the victors greedily absorbing the scattered soul fire and death essence of the losers. The skeletal bodies made a tooth-grinding sound of reassembly in the eerie light, becoming even larger and more ferocious.

The law of the jungle, where the strong prey on the weak, is manifested even more nakedly and directly in this land of the dead.

Lin Xuan didn't get involved in these pointless battles. His goal was clear: to reach the source of the energy. With a combat awareness far surpassing that of the original owner of this Death Knight's body, and an increasingly refined control over the power of death (he was trying to apply the understanding of cultivators regarding the precise manipulation of spiritual power), he could always avoid or resolve obstacles in his path with minimal cost. Once, facing an attack from three skeleton assassins, he didn't fight them head-on. Instead, he precisely guided the power of death to erupt beneath his feet, shattering the ground and using the collapsed pile of bones to temporarily trap them, allowing him to escape unscathed.

The deeper one ventures, the higher the rank of the undead creatures. Bizarre reliefs carved from complete spines begin to appear along the sides of the passage, depicting ancient death rituals. Some mid-ranking undead with simple intelligence emerge, such as liches wielding bone staffs inlaid with amethyst and capable of casting "Bone Prison" and "Weakening Curse," and terrifying knights riding skeletal warhorses with green soulfire burning in their eyes, clad in heavy black armor and radiating a terrifying aura. They patrol the main roads, possessing absolute dominion over the lower-ranking undead.

Lin Xuan had to be even more careful. He applied the principles of the Concealing Breath Technique to the suppression of the power of death, minimizing his own soul fluctuations, becoming like a true ghost, silently lurking in the shadows cast by the skeletons. Several times, he almost brushed past patrolling terror knights, clearly seeing the deep battle marks on their armor and the heads of trophies hanging beside their saddles, still dripping black slime.

Finally, after passing through the last narrow passage filled with sharp bone spikes, resembling the ribs of a giant beast, the view suddenly opened up before us.

This was a colossal underground domed space, seemingly hollowed out from the entire mountain of bones. The dome was supported by countless intersecting, massive wing bones, casting spiderweb-like shadows. At its center stood a tiered altar constructed from hundreds of enormous, intact skulls of unknown creatures, each skull's eye sockets burning with pale flames, as if watching over all intruders. Above the altar, suspended in mid-air was an irregularly shaped, multifaceted crystal, roughly the size of a human head.

The crystal was a deep, dark black, with a gray galaxy slowly rotating and flowing inside, emitting a powerful suction force like the heartbeat of an ancient behemoth! The dense death energy within the entire Bone Mountain seemed to revolve around this crystal, forming a huge, visible gray energy vortex!

"Death Crystal?!" Lin Xuan found information about this object from the fragmented memories. It was a treasure formed from extremely pure death essence under specific conditions over thousands of years. For undead creatures, it was an unparalleled sacred object. Devouring it was enough to allow a low-level undead to instantly break through the bottleneck and evolve into a high-level being! It could even awaken ancient memory fragments and obtain lost power.

Dozens of powerful undead of various forms had gathered around the altar. They stood scattered, maintaining a wary distance from one another, their eyes filled with greed and apprehension as they stared at the death crystal above the altar, yet dared not approach rashly. A silent threat and restlessness permeated the air. Clearly, everyone wanted this treasure, but whoever made the first move would inevitably become the target of everyone's attacks.

Lin Xuan's arrival didn't attract much attention. His death knight form wasn't particularly outstanding among these beings, who were at least mid-level undead. He concealed himself in the shadows cast by a cluster of massive, mammoth-like ribs at the entrance, calmly observing the situation. The energy fluctuations emanating from the death crystal were driving his body's instincts to fervently crave it, causing his soul fire to throb violently. But what concerned him more was the pure "death" principle it contained—a manifestation of the law of the end of all things, of returning to nothingness.

If this item could be obtained, not only would it greatly increase the strength of this projected body, but it would also allow him to deeply analyze the essence of the power of death, thus enriching his understanding of the Dao of "birth and death" in his true cultivation body. This is countless times more precious than simply accumulating energy.

Just as this tense standoff was taking place—

"Buzz!"

The death crystal above the altar shuddered violently, and the swirling gray galaxy within it suddenly accelerated! The suction force it emitted instantly increased several times over! The dense death energy around it converged wildly like rivers flowing into the sea, even forming a gray energy storm! The eerie light on the crystal's surface became even deeper and more dazzling, like a miniature black sun!

The time has come! This crystallization seems to have reached a certain active cycle!

"roar!"

The skeleton lord closest to the altar, standing over three meters tall and wielding a giant bone axe, was the first to lose control. Soul fire burned fiercely in its empty eye sockets, and it let out a soul-shaking roar. Its massive skeleton stomped the ground and charged toward the altar with unstoppable momentum!

This movement was like igniting a powder keg!

"Hiss!" "Hehehe!"

In an instant, all the undead stirred! The lich brandished his bone staff, chanting obscure incantations, summoning countless bone spears shimmering with green light, which rained down on all rivals like a storm; the terror knight raised his lance, crackling with black lightning, and launched a death charge, the skeletal warhorse's hooves pounding the ground with thunderous roars; the ghosts let out deafening shrieks, invisible sound waves spreading like a tide, disrupting the stability of the souls of all the undead…

A chaotic battle erupted instantly!

Bone spears clashed and annihilated with death magic, lances tore through decaying torsos, and the shrieks of souls mingled with the clash of weapons. Soul flames flickered and died out like candles in the wind, and hardened bones shattered under the violent energy surge, sending flying bone fragments like a barrage of bullets. In their quest for the crystallized remains of death, these undead showed no hesitation in slaughtering their former "comrades," creating a chaotic and brutal scene.

Lin Xuan did not immediately join the battle. Like a calm hunter, he lurked in the shadows, his aura completely concealed. Only the flickering soul fire in his eyes showed that he was calmly analyzing the battle situation, searching for the attack habits and weaknesses of each undead, waiting for the best opportunity.

The melee continued, with powerful undead falling one after another. The skeleton lord who charged forward first was incredibly brave, able to shatter several low-level undead with a swing of his bone axe. However, under the combined attack of a lich's "Curse of Aging" and a terrifying knight's flanking charge, his massive skeleton finally succumbed to the pressure. The knight's lance pierced his skull, and his soul fire instantly exploded.

Around the altar, the number of the dead was rapidly decreasing, and the ground was covered with a thick layer of bone fragments and broken armor.

Finally, when only three powerful but also heavily wounded undead remained on the field—a lich with torn robes and a broken bone staff, a terrifying knight without his mount and with a dented breastplate, and a gloomy banshee composed of countless pained faces—a brief standoff ensued. All were seriously injured, their auras weakened considerably, and they stared at each other warily, none daring to make the first move.

It's now!

Lin Xuan's soul fire suddenly leaped, like a ghostly blue flame being ignited! He no longer concealed himself, and with a powerful push of his feet, his body covered in rusted armor shot out of the shadows as if shot by a crossbow bolt, so fast that it left only a black afterimage in the air, his target being the death crystal above the altar!

"Jehovah!!!"

The wailing banshee was most sensitive to soul fluctuations and was the first to discover him. She let out a sharp screech containing endless pain and resentment, and the invisible soul sound waves were like countless cold poison needles, concentrating on piercing Lin Xuan's soul core!

If it were the original consciousness of this body, it would probably have been instantly shattered by this powerful soul shriek, reduced to a mindless remnant. But Lin Xuan's consciousness was essentially the indestructible soul of a cultivator, tempered by the origin of the world! Its resilience and refinement far surpassed those of these undead driven by instinct and negative emotions!

He only felt a slight ripple in his consciousness, like a gentle breeze blowing across a lake, which quickly subsided and his sprinting speed did not decrease at all!

At the same time, he pointed his fingers like a sword, not using the stellar spiritual power that could not be invoked in this world, but rather compressing the death power accumulated in his body into his fingertips with unprecedented precision, according to the supreme methods of "condensation" and "sharpening" in the "Star Finger"!

A highly condensed, gray-black fingertip radiating an aura of destruction and annihilation suddenly lit up, and the surrounding light seemed to be swallowed up by this fingertip!

"Death Pointer!"

With a flick of his finger, the target was not the most threatening wailing banshee, but the lich next to him who was trying to reassemble death energy in preparation for casting a powerful curse!

The lich clearly hadn't expected that this "weak" death knight, who had been lurking all along, could completely ignore the banshee's soul attack, let alone that his attack was so swift, so unpredictable, and so precise! In his haste, he only had time to lift his broken bone staff and barely managed to mobilize the remaining necromantic power to condense a seemingly thick bone shield in front of him, which was shimmering with runes!

"puff!"

The death finger, refined to its extreme, was like a red-hot knife cutting into solidified grease. It encountered almost no resistance and instantly pierced through the bone shield, precisely embedding itself in the center of the lich's withered, wrinkled forehead!

The fiercely pulsating soul fire in the lich's eye sockets suddenly froze, filled with astonishment and disbelief, before quickly dimming and extinguishing like a candle being extinguished. Its bone staff clattered to the ground, its body swayed a few times, and it fell backward like a collapsing mountain, scattering ashes everywhere.

Sold out instantly!

This sudden turn of events stunned the remaining Dread Knights and Banshees! They had never expected that this seemingly unremarkable Death Knight would possess such terrifying strength and combat wisdom!

Using the recoil from that finger strike, Lin Xuan made a subtle adjustment in mid-air, his speed soaring once more. Like a ghost, he rushed to the edge of the altar, his skeletal right hand, covered in iron armor, firmly grasping at the death crystal that was so close yet exuded an alluring yet deadly aura!

"Roar!" The Dread Knight snapped out of its shock and let out a furious roar of provocation. It even abandoned its broken lance, gathering the last remaining death power in its body into its fist. The fist was wrapped in thick, inky dark energy, and with a will to crush everything, it slammed it hard into Lin Xuan's unsuspecting back! This punch was enough to smash steel into dust!

The howling banshee went completely mad. It no longer held back, its body swelled up, and it stretched out dozens of translucent ghost claws made of extreme resentment, grabbing at Lin Xuan from all directions, trying to tear him apart. At the same time, the chilling soul shriek rose to its peak, like a demonic sound piercing the brain!

A priceless treasure lies within reach, while a deadly trap looms behind!

A fierce glint flashed in Lin Xuan's eyes as he made his decision. He neither dodged nor evaded, but instead unleashed all the remaining death power within his body, pouring it into the armor on his back like a tidal wave, to withstand the terrifying knight's enraged attack. At the same time, his right hand, with unwavering resolve, swiftly grasped the dark black death crystal!

"Clang! Sizzle—Snap!"

The terrifying knight's heavy fist slammed into the armor, producing a deafening metallic clang. Although the armor's special material prevented it from being completely pierced, the terrifying impact and corrosive death energy it contained still caused Lin Xuan's body to tremble violently, and the bones in his back cracked with a teeth-grinding sound! The immense force caused him to stagger forward.

At the same time, the Banshee's dozens of ghostly claws seized his left arm and shoulder armor. The mad resentment and cold death aura, like countless venomous snakes, instantly burrowed in, trying to corrode and freeze his soul and tear his body apart!

But at this critical moment, with his body damaged and his soul impacted, Lin Xuan's right hand, like an iron clamp, firmly grasped the crystal of death!

Upon touching him, he felt an extreme chill that pierced his soul. The next moment, the vast and pure essence of death, like a volcano that had been accumulating for thousands of years, found its outlet and transformed into an irresistible torrent, instantly rushing into his body!