Starting as the heir of a marquis's mansion, I gained access to a summoning system.

The fifth fragment resonated with an unprecedented intensity within the sea of ​​consciousness.

The point of light was located on an unnamed ancient battlefield deep within the Bone Wasteland. Its dark golden light pierced through layers of bones, projecting a clear coordinate onto the map in the mind's eye.

However, the Bone Domain's perception also detected at least three unfamiliar auras converging on the ancient battlefield from the direction of the Bone Wasteland—reinforcements from the Yin Sha Sect and a flanking maneuver from the Ten Thousand Beasts Mountain.

Another large group of independent cultivators, attracted by the bounty jointly issued by the three forces, are gathering on the outskirts of the ancient battlefield.

"There are people everywhere."

Dongfang Wei steadied himself with his bamboo staff, and his bone domain perception clearly projected the distribution of friend and foe within a ten-mile radius into his sea of ​​consciousness.

"The twelve members of the Yin Sha Sect entered the ancient battlefield from the east. The leader was not Yin Wuji—Yin Wuji had not yet recovered after his right arm was severed by Yan Fei—but the Great Elder of the Yin Sha Sect, who was in the late stage of the Life and Death Realm and whose aura was no weaker than that of Blood Infant Granny."

Twenty riders from Ten Thousand Beasts Mountain surrounded them from the north. The leader was not Wan Renyue; Wan Renyue was still locked in combat with Chuan Ying.

The one who arrived was Wan Qilie, the head of the Law Enforcement Hall of Ten Thousand Beasts Mountain, Wan Qifeng's uncle, and a peak-level cultivator in the Life and Death Realm.

There were at least fifty independent cultivators, pouring in from the southwest. They had no unified command, but they were all looking for us.

How did they know we were on an ancient battlefield?

"Wanted Poster"

Lin Xiaoman pulled out three crumpled animal hide bounty posters from her medicine pouch. These were posted around the market by the rogue cultivators of Huan Gu Zhuang.

"The Yin Sha Sect offered 80,000 mid-grade spirit stones for your complete skeleton, the Ten Thousand Beasts Mountain offered 60,000 plus a fourth-tier exotic beast cub, and the Blood Bone Sect is the most ruthless—Grandma Blood Infant offered 100,000, wanting only the skeleton and not the person, regardless of whether they live or die."

The three families have offered a combined bounty of 240,000 mid-grade spirit stones, and the leader of the rogue cultivators from the Bone Changing Manor is already forming a team.

He said, "Two hundred and forty thousand spirit stones are enough to buy half of the Bone Transformation Manor."

Dongfang Weiwo took the bounty notice, glanced at it, and then folded the three animal hides and put them into his pocket.

He had no time for anger or helplessness, because his Bone Domain Perception suddenly detected an unusual signal deep within the ancient battlefield—the light spot of the fifth fragment was pulsating violently, not being moved, but being suppressed by something.

The fragments were trapped by some kind of restriction.

This restriction is identical to the bone pillar seal of the Yin Bone Tomb, but stronger and more ancient. When the Demon God Lü passed through the ancient battlefield, he must have sealed this fragment within a naturally formed bone array. Someone is breaking the array.

"Wan Qilie has arrived."

Dongfang Weiwo stood up from the barren hill, leaning on his bamboo cane, his gaze piercing through the gray-white mist rising from the thirty-mile-long wasteland.

Throwing towards the broken flag deep within the ancient battlefield—the ancient battlefield marker personally marked on the map by the Demon God Lü, a battle flag diagonally inserted into the skull of a giant beast, its surface fluttering in the morning breeze.

A piece of dark gold bone, which was glowing, was embedded in the flagpole.

The people of Ten Thousand Beasts Mountain are already breaking the last barrier.

Wan Qilie rode a crimson fourth-tier fire-scaled lion, wielding a long-handled warhammer taller than himself, its head densely engraved with the sealing runes of Ten Thousand Beasts Mountain.

He swung his warhammer, striking the bone array's core with each blow, causing the entire bone array to tremble violently with every strike.

Dongfang Weiwo picked up his bamboo cane and pulled Lin Xiaoman up from the ground.

"The people inside the ancient battlefield haven't discovered us yet. They think we're still fighting Yin Jiuyou in the withered willow forest."

"Now's the time; let's go around into the Bone-Shattering Gully from the south."

The two emerged from the barren hill one after the other, taking advantage of the lingering mist in the greyish-white morning light, and quickly traversed the Broken Bone Gully on the south side of the ancient battlefield.

The Broken Bone Valley is a naturally formed rift valley, with its sides piled high with fragments of the ribs of giant beasts from countless millennia ago. The bone fragments at the bottom of the valley are ankle-deep, and stepping on them produces a soft, crunching sound.

Occasionally, a few shadowy skeletons of bone-destroying birds would flit across the top of the bone trench, cawing as they flew toward the depths of the ancient battlefield—where fresher corpses awaited them.

As Dongfang Weiwo traveled, he expanded the coverage of his bone domain perception to its limit, making the position and movement of every skeletal light point in his sea of ​​consciousness clearly visible.

Wan Qilie's twelve followers were scattered around the outer edge of the bone formation. Two peak Yin-Yang Realm cultivators were on guard in the due north direction, three mid-Yin-Yang Realm cultivators were searching in the west, and the rest were assisting Wan Qilie in breaking the formation.

Inside the bone array, there was also the skeletal signal of another person—not from Ten Thousand Beasts Mountain, but a single individual with an unusually dense skeletal structure, emanating a strong aura of malevolence.

The Grand Elder of the Yin Sha Sect had already entered the bone formation ahead of everyone else and was vying with Wan Qilie for the fifth fragment in the formation's core.

"Dogs fight."

Lin Xiaoman whispered something, then crouched behind the ribs of the giant beast at the edge of the Broken Bone Gully, only revealing half of its head to observe the situation in the center of the ancient battlefield.

She saw Wan Qilie's warhammer strike the bone array's core once more, causing the entire bone array to rumble under the strain, and the restrictive runes at the core began to shatter in large areas.

The Grand Elder roared from inside the bone array, and baleful energy surged out from the cracks in the array's core, colliding fiercely with Wan Qilie's bone-sealing runes in mid-air.

Both sides are aiming for the fragments at the center of the formation, but neither is willing to let the other get them first.

Just then, a third figure appeared silently above the bone array—Grandma Blood Infant.

She came alone from another direction of the Bone Wasteland into the ancient battlefield, standing atop the spine of a giant beast, her blood-red bone robe fluttering in the wind.

Those bone-bead-like eyes looked down at the two forces that were breaking the formation.

She had been waiting for this moment for a long time—to let the Ten Thousand Beasts Mountain and the Yin Sha Sect make their move first, and then she would close the net at the last moment.

"All three parties are present."

Dongfang Weiwo gripped the bamboo staff tightly, and the fragment resonance network in his sea of ​​consciousness continuously emitted pulse-like fluctuations in the direction of the fifth fragment. Each fluctuation was like an urging—hurry up.

The fragments were right in front of us, but what was blocking our way was no longer just a single fragment.

Three fragments—the fifth fragment in the ancient battlefield bone array, the sixth fragment being moved across the wilderness by a rogue cultivator, and the seventh fragment deep within the forbidden area of ​​the Blackwater Swamp—if Yin Jiuyou hadn't broken free from Chuan Ying's control.

Before the three forces complete their encirclement, gather all three fragments, achieve a 50% fusion rate, break through the Life and Death Realm, and awaken the extraterrestrial laws of the God-Demon Skeleton to the point where they can contend with the Reincarnation Realm.

"Infiltrate the bone array from the south. There is a gap in the southeast corner of the array's core that was pecked out by a bone-rotting bird. Bone domain perception can pass through it."

He pulled Lin Xiaoman down the Broken Bone Gully silently, their bodies disappearing into a natural cave at the end of the gully, hidden by the ribs of a giant beast.

The cave was small, only wide enough for one person to bend over and pass through. The cave walls were covered with bone moss that emitted a ghostly green glow, and there was a thick layer of bone debris underfoot.

The two walked about two hundred steps along the cave wall when they heard the booming sound of the bone array's restrictions shattering and the Blood Infant Granny's shrill laughter from above—the three parties had finally made their move, and a chaotic shockwave of energy erupted in the center of the ancient battlefield.

At the end of the cave was a crack half-hidden by bone fragments, which led directly into the bone array—a circular space made of the ribs of countless beasts.

In the center of the space was a three-foot square bone platform, with a palm-sized triangular bone fragment embedded in it. The surface was covered with a very faint dark gold pattern, the density of which was higher than that of any of the previous four fragments.

The fifth fragment was a core bone piece peeled off from the ulna of Lu Moshen's left arm; it was not a fragment, but a complete bone segment.

The bone fragments were firmly locked to the bone platform by three intersecting ancient restrictions—one of which was a blood-red restriction from the Blood Bone Cult's tracking seal. Blood Infant Granny had found this place three days ago, but she dared not forcibly break the formation for fear of alerting the other two families.

The evil energy barrier was set up by the Grand Elder half an hour ago. Although he entered the barrier before Wan Qilie, he was unable to break through the triple barrier in a short time.

The final bone-sealing restriction was just placed by Wan Qilie, who forcibly hammered a hole into the outer wall of the bone array with his warhammer, layering his restriction on the outermost layer.

The three restrictions are mutually restraining, and no one can take away the fragment.

The gap in the southeast corner, pecked out by the bone-rotting bird, happens to be located in the blind spot of the overlapping three layers of restrictions—the area north of the Blood Infant Granny's restrictions.

The Grand Elder's restriction covered the west side, and Wan Qilie's restriction covered the area directly above the array's core. Only in the southeast direction was there a natural corrosion hole left by the Bone-Rotting Bird's nesting over the years.

The energy of the restriction shifted slightly here, leaving a gap no bigger than the palm of your hand.

The Bone Domain Perception accurately detected the existence of this gap.

Dongfang Weiwo instructed Lin Xiaoman to stay in the shadows of the inner wall of the bone array, while he silently moved along the bone wall to the gap in the southeast corner.

A dark golden light condensed at the fingertip into an extremely thin golden needle, which slowly probed into the gap of the restriction, touching the core node of the triple restriction—the Blood Bone Seal, the Evil Qi Restriction, and the Bone Sealing Rune. The three completely different energies were tearing at each other at this node, reaching an extremely fragile balance.

Instead of forcibly breaking the restriction, he gently pushed the three energies together with his dark gold energy, as if toppling a domino.

The balance was broken, and the three restrictions launched even more ferocious attacks on each other at the same moment—the Blood Bone Seal attempted to devour the evil energy, the evil energy corroded the sealing runes, and the sealing runes rebounded the Blood Bone Seal.

A chaotic flow of three colors of energy exploded in the center of the bone array. The three restrictions on the bone platform shattered simultaneously as they consumed each other. The fifth fragment was blasted away by the shockwave, drawing a dark golden arc in the air.

The three powerful figures in the bone formation were stunned for a moment.

Blood Infant Granny was the first to react. With a flick of her bone robe, she transformed into a streak of blood light and pounced on the fragments in mid-air.

The Grand Elder and Wan Qilie attacked almost simultaneously, their baleful aura and warhammer intercepting Blood Infant Granny from two directions.

The three were locked in a chaotic battle, and none of them noticed that on the bone wall in the southeast corner, which had been half-collapsed by the shockwave, a figure leaning on a bamboo cane had already reached out and caught the fragments falling from the sky.

Dongfang Wei did not fuse the fifth fragment in place.

The shattering of the restrictions inside the bone array had already alerted all three parties. Amidst the chaos, Granny Blood Infant glanced at the southeast corner, and her bone-bead-like pupils suddenly contracted—she saw the dark golden light in Dongfang Weiwo's palm.

However, Yin Jiuyou was not here at the moment, and Blood Infant Granny was facing a pincer attack from the Grand Elder and Wan Qilie, so she dared not be distracted to pursue them.

Dongfang Weiwo pulled Lin Xiaoman and quickly retreated through the crack they had come from. Under the cover of the roaring sounds of the three-way battle within the bone array, they retreated back to the edge of the ancient battlefield along the Broken Bone Gully.

The instant he left the bone array, Wan Qilie's roar came from behind him, shaking the ancient battlefield and causing the bones to tremble.

He began to fuse the fifth fragment beneath the ribs of a giant beast at the edge of the ancient battlefield.

The triangular bone fragment was attached to the ulna of the left arm, resonating simultaneously with the previous four fragments.

The fusion rate jumped from 45% to 48%, just two points away from the 50% required to break through to the Life and Death Realm.

The moment the fifth fragment returned to its place, the perception of the bone domain suddenly increased to a new level—the perception accuracy of all skeletal beings within a ten-mile radius changed from vague location markers to clear three-dimensional projections.

The condition, density, stress, and crack distribution of every bone were precisely presented in his mind as dark gold lines.

The passive fragment resonance has been upgraded to an active bone domain insight.

He closed his eyes and pushed the precision of his bone domain perception to its limit.

The location of the sixth fragment was instantly locked—it was not within the ancient battlefield, but eighty miles to the northwest of the ancient battlefield, and it was moving.

The fragment was carried by a rogue cultivator with low cultivation level, who was rushing towards the ancient battlefield.