Chapter 84: The Bone Spirit Sigil

Li Yunfei recalled his flying sword, filled with awe. As expected of the Iron Citadel Formation—even without anyone controlling it, and only empowered by spiritual energy, it still swallowed up eighty percent of his cultivation before he managed to break through. If someone were to take command of the formation, infusing it with even a fraction more spiritual power, the array’s amplification could multiply the effect tenfold, twentyfold, or even dozens of times. There was simply no comparison between a formation with a master and one without.

Yet the Iron Citadel Formation, being a purely defensive array, was already exceedingly sturdy. To have breached it was a testament to the extraordinary power of his flying sword’s attack. Unfortunately, the spiritual energy expenditure was immense. No wonder one had to reach the Golden Core realm to perfectly wield a flying sword and achieve sword-flight. Though he could now barely manage to ride the sword, even with the Pig King Pill granting him a tenfold recovery speed, he would exhaust himself and plummet before long.

For now, the flying sword could only serve as a trump card; it wasn’t yet viable as a standard weapon in battle. Against ghosts and spirits, the money-sword, empowered by the Flying Sword Incantation, remained a better choice—less taxing and far more cost-effective.

The Golden Core realm—level fifty—did not seem so distant anymore. He had to quickly gather his spoils and move on to the next battle.

Li Yunfei extended his spiritual sense, covering a radius of over thirty zhang. With a single thought, everything within that area was swept into his system inventory. The thirty zhang radius spread out like a ripple, but if he focused his spiritual sense into a single line, it could stretch ten times farther—nearly four hundred zhang, about thirteen hundred meters. And this was only the Yin Spirit stage. Legendary sword immortals were said to be able to take a man’s head from a thousand li away, guiding their flying swords across hundreds of kilometers with their spiritual sense—that was truly terrifying.

There was little of interest among the items now stored in his system, except for those white-bone insignias; the rest were just materials for array-laying and talisman-drawing. In the future, he could arrange large talisman banners around his altar, setting up defensive arrays to guard against attacks from behind or the flanks. These banners could both defend and counterattack against ghosts, rapidly absorbing spiritual energy from heaven and earth to replenish themselves, and were much harder to break. However, while the large banner formations were effective against ghosts, they offered little protection against humans; in terms of physical defense, the Iron Citadel Formation was still superior. Yet in supernatural scenarios, the talisman banner formation was clearly more practical.

The triangular flags were indispensable for laying powerful arrays. With these, he no longer needed to bother with useless formations like the Heaven’s Net Array, which couldn’t even eliminate a black zombie. Instead, he could set up potent arrays such as the Seven-Star Demon-Suppressing Formation, the Eight-Directional Savage Thunder Formation, or the Demon-Suppressing Eight Trigrams Array.

As for blue talismans, he would draw ten of each type to sell to the system in a moment, ensuring a steady supply in the future.

At that moment, Li Yunfei focused his attention on the white-bone insignia. When it appeared in his hand, his expression turned peculiar. The bone spirit insignia was about the size of a palm, with two faces—one carved with a skull, the other inscribed with runes. Upon closer inspection, Li Yunfei realized it was a miniature Summoning Array.

The Summoning Array was recorded in the “Shangqing Secret Canon,” used to call forth ghosts for aid in battle. Weaker cultivators could summon wandering spirits; stronger ones could call ghost soldiers and generals. There was no mention of summoning anything else, so this insignia must have been a special item produced by the system.

Bone Spirit Insignia: Summons a skeletal warrior to fight for you. Minimum cultivation required is the Yin Spirit stage. The number of skeletons controllable depends on cultivation level; at the initial Yin Spirit stage, up to ten skeletal warriors may be commanded.

In essence, the skeletons summoned by this insignia were controlled much like external avatars, though with some differences. Once summoned, the skeletons would stand guard by their master’s side, attacking any enemy that approached within a certain distance. If their master needed them to perform a specific task, a single command sufficed, and they would carry it out before returning to his side. Alternatively, Li Yunfei could actively control a skeleton with his spiritual sense, seeing through its eyes as if it were an extension of himself. However, the skeleton could not stray beyond the limit of his spiritual sense; if it did, control would be lost, and the skeleton would either finish its task or return.

In contrast, an external avatar would simply stand idle without orders, unmoving. Once a command was issued and the task completed, the avatar would dissipate back into a talisman. If controlled by spiritual sense, the avatar was indistinguishable from the main body in everything but cultivation.

What truly made Li Yunfei’s expression odd was the very notion of summoning skeletons—it reminded him of a certain kind of summoner, fighting with battling minions. The skeletons would rush forward to draw fire, while he fired off talismans from a distance. The sense of déjà vu was overwhelming.

Damn it, I’m a Maoshan priest, not some summoner from a fantasy game! Li Yunfei was beyond words. What made him even more speechless was how fragile these skeletons were—a zombie could sweep away a whole cluster with a casual swing of its arm. In a graveyard scenario, where hundreds of skeleton monsters were common, what good were a mere ten skeletal warriors? To raise banners and boost morale? But skeletons couldn’t even make a sound!

Still, Li Yunfei decided to summon them to see what they were made of.

Sixteen bone spirit insignias had dropped in total; Li Yunfei sold six, gaining 120 grams of spirit stones. The selling price for each was twenty grams, while buying one back would cost seventy grams.

He injected a surge of spiritual energy into one insignia, activating the Summoning Array, then tossed it out. Ten bone spirit insignias landed on the ground, spaced three feet apart, all glowing a ghastly white. In the next moment, the insignias vanished, replaced by three-foot-wide summoning arrays. From the pallid light, skeletal warriors emerged, clawing their way up from the earth.

The summoning arrays and insignias disappeared, leaving only ten skeletal warriors in the clearing. No sooner had they appeared than they moved, swiftly encircling Li Yunfei in a protective formation, each facing outward or to the side, backs or flanks to him. They kept him half a zhang away, three in front, three behind, two on each side, forming an unbreakable guard.

The reason these skeletons bore the title “warrior,” unlike the generic “skeleton” monsters found in the scenarios, was that they possessed something extra—weaponry.

Indeed, while these skeletal warriors were otherwise identical to their scenario counterparts—pale bone frames, two points of ghostly green fire in their eyes—they each gripped a three-foot-long bone blade. Their offensive power was at least a little stronger than the empty-handed skeleton monsters.