"Behave yourself for a bit."
Pressing down on the restless *Dead Sea Secret Scrolls*, Bai Zhou didn't dare let this mouse, which had stumbled into a granary, stir up any trouble.
Otherwise, if the "master" caught it, it would be turned into a roasted, dried rat!
The skeletal overseers in the distance were far from solitary. Before gauging their strength, someone as cautious as Bai Zhou naturally had no intention of acting rashly.
*Clang! Clang! Clang!*
Inside the mine, work continued as usual. Specially crafted pickaxes swung down with heavy momentum, piercing through the toxic mist to strike the ore's surface.
With every blow, the mysterious emerald-green ore spewed a puff of matching green toxic vapor.
The green mist blanketing the entire mouth of the cavern was nothing other than what these ores had exhaled.
Fortunately, the miners were skeletons.
Immune to poison, incapable of dying, never tiring...
They were outrageously "useful."
And yet...
*Ore that breathes toxic mist?*
Bai Zhou blinked.
He had never seen or even heard of such a thing!
This was clearly an extraordinary material of great rarity—perhaps a vital strategic resource even during the height of the Roman civilization, which would explain why they remained obsessed with it even after death.
Though he had no idea of its precise applications, Bai Zhou immediately thought of the simplest way to use it...
If one inlaid this emerald-green ore into a weapon, every clash would blast a cloud of toxic fumes right into the enemy's face—
The prospect thrilled Bai Zhou to no end.
In the quiet cavern, the only sounds that seemed to echo through eternity were the numb thuds of the undead, the sharp crack of the overseers' whips, and their grating slogans.
Such sounds had persisted for who knew how many years:
"Work hard! Make Rome great again!"
*Crack!*
"The sun of Rome never sets, and your labor shall never cease..."
"—Cut the endless mule-and-horse horseshit from your rattling bones!"
Suddenly, a resonant roar detonated in midair like a thunderclap.
Overseers and countless skeletons alike froze in place.
Tens of thousands of emerald-green flames snapped toward the source of the noise in unison.
A colossal skeleton roughly three meters tall descended from the sky.
Unlike the other ashen-white skeletons, its bones gleamed with a vibrant, boiling-blood red, as though covered by a translucent film of flesh.
Though its countenance was ferocious and terrifying, two golden flames—like miniature suns—blazed inside the dark hollows of its eye sockets.
Spreading its arms wide, it bellowed with fury:
"My children, your leader has returned!"
"Living up to all expectations, I have communed with the relics left by our late king, and at last won the gaze and favor of an ancient god!"
With that, having returned from completing some great mission, the blood-red skeleton clenched its fist tightly and thrust its arm into the air, shouting at the top of its lungs:
"Resist the tyranny of Rome!"
"The world belongs to the gods!"
The shout shook the air for miles around. The branches of the skeletal forest rustled, and a restless commotion surged from the depths of the mine.
*That skeleton...*
Concealed behind a distant tree, Bai Zhou observed with sneaky caution.
From the moment the blood-red skeleton appeared, the God-Chosen Mark on his left wrist had flared with scorching heat, as though resonating with something.
Bai Zhou's gaze locked onto the center of the skeleton's forehead.
In that prominent spot rested a minute rune brand.
Upon closer inspection, the minuscule design depicted a broken spear skewering a skull.
It was identical to the God-Chosen Mark on Bai Zhou's wrist!
The only difference was that compared to Bai Zhou's, the blood-red skeleton's mark appeared to be miniaturized by more than a dozen times!
*Is this...*
*Did I just run into an ally?*
To think he could meet one of his own in a godforsaken place like this?
Bai Zhou felt both astounded and a touch of warmth at spotting someone familiar in a strange land.
Now he understood what the skeleton meant by "the gaze of an ancient god."
Even so...
Watching this grandly appearing "Divine Envoy" and "Skeleton Leader" from afar—
Bai Zhou's first instinct was to pull his shoulders in and tuck his hands away, using the wide cuffs of his trench coat to conceal the mark on his wrist.
*Powerful! Immensely powerful! So strong that Bai Zhou couldn't gauge its depths at all!*
It hovered effortlessly in midair. Despite the vast distance separating them, the oppressive aura it exuded was not a whit inferior to that of the Statute Hall's Inspector who resembled the White Impermanence!
Bai Zhou didn't even dare stare for more than a couple of seconds, hastily averting his gaze for fear the being might sense his presence.
Fortunately, its attention lay elsewhere.
"Insolence!"
An overseer necromancer barked, snapping a bone whip through the air—
*Crack!*
"I seem to recall your spirituality was stripped away, leaving you to drag out a wretched existence!"
"A Bone Tribe chieftain wanted by the empire actually thinks he can make a comeback just because he gained a bit of momentum? You don't know the heights of heaven!"
The bone whip bore down like a rearing giant serpent, seemingly unstoppable. That single strike made Bai Zhou's heart tighten in the distance.
Yet, facing the bone whip, the crimson skeleton neither dodged nor deflected. It merely chuckled softly, tilting its skull upward at a precise forty-five-degree angle:
"Even if not a tenth of my spirituality remains, standing with hands behind my back, without raising a single finger bone against a mortal like you, I remain peerless beneath these skies."
"For you know nothing of divine power..."
With that, it pressed a hand to its forehead. Its jaw clattered open and shut at high speed, as if rapidly chanting some ancient, esoteric incantation.
With an expression of devout reverence, it roared toward the heavens:
"—Lord, aid me!"
A wondrous phenomenon manifested at once; celestial flowers tumbled down!
Golden petals drifted through the air, and space let out a mournful wail, as though something dreadful was passing through the cracks of the world.
Then, a rain of blood drifted down.
The scalding red droplets carried the stench of sulfur and iron. They splashed over the overseer necromancer, corroding its bony frame with sharp hisses.
Cries of pain and shrieks tore through the air. In the blink of an eye, the overseer vanished from the spot, reduced to a pile of shattered bone.
By this time, other overseers had rushed out from the depths of the mine, arriving just in time to witness their companion's gruesome end.
"We were once kin."
Gazing at the necromancers whose skull fires trembled uncontrollably, the blood-red skeleton's tone turned chillingly cold:
"Yet you aided the tyrant and betrayed your own people! You exploited your brethren even more savagely and cruelly than those Roman bastards!"
"Your manifold crimes could not be washed clean by all the oceans! Your sins are beyond counting!"
"—You deserve death most of all!"
The blood-red skeleton repeated the gesture, crying out once more, "Lord, aid me!"
Under the divine punishment, the overseers collapsed into heaps of white bones, no different from the skeletal carpet covering the dense forest floor.
Just like that, the skeletal miners were "freed."
Thousands of skeletons, donning yellow mining helmets and clutching pickaxes, marched out of the cavern.
They gathered in a dark, dense mass, all gazing up at the blood-red skeleton hovering in midair.
Their former chieftain, returning like a bolt of lightning, was now delivering a speech to them:
"I have a dream!"
"I dream of a day when, upon this land where we mined without rest, the undead may stand freely!"
"I dream of a day when our descendants no longer need to hide, and may bathe beneath the sun with heads held high!"
"Rome, which respects not even the gods, has incurred divine wrath! The embers of many civilizations have united to inflict fatal vengeance upon this damned Rome!"
"This is an opportunity, my brothers."
"I swear here and now that I will reclaim everything that belongs to our tribe!"
The blood-red skeletal chieftain clicked its jawbones, its raspy voice ringing out with immense conviction.
As it spoke, it gestured wildly, its exaggerated movements possessing a hypnotic power that stirred the skeletons below into a mounting frenzy.
Perhaps the miners had been suppressed for too long. With their leader's return and the initial triumph of the rebellion, they were driven to sheer delirium.
Before long, nearly every sentence the crimson skeleton uttered was met with deafening roars of jubilation from below:
"For the Bone Tribe!"
"*Ooh—!*" the skeletons cheered.
"For the gods!"
"*Ooh—!*"
"For freedom and glory!"
"*Ooh—!*"
*Clatter...*
Bits of bone showered the ground as the helmet-wearing skeletons raised their arms, wiggling their wrists and hopping ecstatically on the spot.
If they still had flesh on their faces, their eyes surely would have welled with hot tears.
At the conclusion of the speech, a hunched elder skeleton hobbled out from the crowd and asked in a low voice whether they needed a pre-battle divination.
Another skeleton immediately retorted without thinking:
"What is there left to divine? The gods are above us, and our leader has received divine revelation—success is assured!"
"Not necessarily..."
The prudent elder skeleton replied:
"The ancient gods guide our path from the end of destiny, but dispelling the fog along the way still relies on divination to illuminate our steps."
"For instance, taking action today might bring fortune, while doing so tomorrow brings calamity; morning might be auspicious, while afternoon turns disastrous—"
"This has been the tribe's tradition since ancient times."
Hearing this, the blood-red skeleton nodded slowly in agreement.
Yet it immediately countered, "There is no need!"
"Once Rome catches wind of our revolt, they will never sit idly by."
"Speed is paramount in war; delays invite disaster."
Pausing briefly, it added with solemn resolve:
"Only those willing to press on regardless of fortune or calamity are qualified to question heaven's will."
"I stand with you, and I... am the divine revelation!"
Its words fell.
The assembly of skeletons fell silent, yet the quiet carried far greater power.
Battle intent surged to its zenith.
Descending slowly into the throng, the blood-red skeleton extended a withered, bony palm:
"Give me a weapon."
It said:
"It will allow me to better channel the divine might of 'War'!"
"..."
The skeletons in mining helmets exchanged glances.
Then, the elder skeleton tremblingly presented to its king... a rusted pickaxe.
"?"
The blood-red skeleton fell silent for a moment. "Is this all there is?"
"We also have hoes."
The skeletons raised their "arms" in unison, sending another shower of bone chips scattering across the dirt.
A wide assortment of mining tools filled the blood-red skeleton's vision.
"...Let's stick with the pickaxe, then."
Something was better than nothing.
The blood-red skeleton reluctantly accepted the pickaxe.
Then, it hoisted the pickaxe above its skull like a drawn broadsword, pointing the tip toward the distant depths of the forest.
"Beyond these woods lies a Roman city."
"Come, my brothers."
"Beneath the gaze of the gods, I shall lead you to overthrow them and reclaim our ancestral land!"
"Yes! Long live our king—!"
A tsunami of roars surged to the skies, coalescing into a torrential wave of sound.
Thousands of pairs of green flames flickered feverishly as hoes, hammers, shovels, and pickaxes were thrust aloft.
The specialized tools meant to fracture mysterious ores had become the finest weapons for their revolt.
One skeleton had even managed to stitch together animal hides into a makeshift war drum, snapping off two of its own ribs to use as drumsticks, pounding out a thunderous rhythm.
And so...
With the gods above, the rebel army set out on their quest for vengeance with boundless confidence.
The ashen-white undead merged into a terrifying, surging flood, marching straight into the depths of the forest under the leadership of the blood-red skeleton.
"..."
After a long while.
Amidst the scattered debris, silence returned to the mine.
A stealthy little black cat poked its head out from the woods.
The quiet cavern lay right before him, and Bai Zhou could hear the rapid thumping of his own heart.
An ownerless supernatural mine?
*Jackpot!*
Though he didn't dare touch the unknown toxic mist, he didn't need to.
Near the cavern entrance sat two large baskets of emerald-green ore freshly gathered by the skeleton miners...
Inside each basket were two or three chunks larger than Bai Zhou's head, along with an assortment of smaller fragments.
Carefully dodging the swirling poisonous fumes, Bai Zhou swept both baskets of mysterious emerald ore into the Trojan Horse.
*Got it!*
The ore was remarkably heavy and dense. Beneath its translucent emerald shell, gases seemed to drift within, resembling an enclosed puff of green cloud.
Composition unknown! Principles unknown! Uses unknown!
Yet in the supernatural world, the more unknown something was, the more closely tied it was to danger and rarity.
Risk and reward went hand in hand.
Both the toxins released during mining and the guards stationed here proved how extraordinary this ore was.
But arriving early couldn't compare to arriving at the right moment.
An unexpected visitor no one could have anticipated—a black cat—
had cleverly bypassed the perils of the mine through sheer opportunistic scavenging.
Feeling quite fortunate, Bai Zhou looked back through the thick green haze, casting a deep glance toward the pitch-black depths of the cavern.
The winding tunnels led to places unknown. Bai Zhou had no way of telling whether even rarer materials lay deep within its bottomless reaches.
Toxic mist permeated the entire passage, growing so thick deeper in that it seemed almost solid.
*A pity...*
Evidently, this was not a place Bai Zhou could explore right now.
If he were about to leave immediately, he would have tried transforming into the Cursebound Colossus to see if it was immune to the poison.
Yet considering the Cursebound Colossus's cooldown, Bai Zhou had no intention of squandering his life-saving trump card just yet.
After all, the cooldown on his [Life Theft] had not expired either.
Besides, he had more important business ahead—
With that thought, Bai Zhou looked up and surveyed the billowing plume of dust rising from the nearby forest.
The undead host hadn't gone far.
*Rustle...*
The black cat darted across the bone-strewn woods, hurrying after the undead army.
Though a skeletal rabble armed with hoes and pickaxes looked somewhat comical and absurd...
they were actually formidable.
Setting aside the blood-red skeleton, even among the thousands of skeletons under its banner, there were plenty of experts whose strength Bai Zhou couldn't begin to fathom.
Catching the enemy off guard,
Bai Zhou reckoned that in this battle for territory, the Roman undead stationed in the neighboring city might truly fail to withstand this sudden uprising.
—The bitter harvest sown by Rome's tyranny would ultimately be reaped by their own hands!
As for Bai Zhou...
*This works out perfectly.*
The black cat crept along, trailing quietly behind the undead army as they advanced toward the Roman Empire's nearby outpost.
*A city...*
Emerald eyes glinted in the shadows.
Rome, mules, horses... none of it concerned Bai Zhou.
The more fiercely both sides clashed, the better.
He practically wished they would knock each other's heads clean off.
—Because he happened to need the head of a Roman soldier as an offering to pass his trial!
When he had no idea how deep Rome's waters ran, someone had willingly stepped up to serve as his vanguard. What more could he ask for?
How generous of them.
Praise be to the God of War!
What did it mean to fish in troubled waters and snatch chestnuts from the fire?
When dead men fought...
the cat stood to gain!
Chapter 107