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

When the night mist rises from the surface of the Blackwater Swamp, the entire forbidden area seems like a lurking beast breathing slowly.

Dongfang Weiwo and his party traveled along the old trade route for three days.

During these three days, Chuan Ying made his final strike at the edge of the ancient battlefield, cleaving Wan Renyue's mount, the Fire Scale Lion, back sixty feet, along with the beast. After that, he made no further moves.

As he himself said, his meridians can only withstand a maximum of three cuts, after which he must stop.

Two of the three strikes had already been used—the first strike repelled Wan Renyue, and the second strike annihilated the remaining Yin Sha Sect forces that had been pursuing them.

He reserved his final blow for an even more dangerous enemy.

Yan Fei's weakened period lasts for four more days. During these four days, the strongest combat force beside Dongfang Weiwo is Chuan Ying, who can only strike once more, and himself, whose fusion rate has not yet exceeded 50%.

Lin Xiaoman did not rest during these three days.

During the day, she would gather seeds of Drynaria fortunei and Resurrection Plant from the edge of the Blackwater Swamp while traveling, and at night, she would use the remaining herbs to make a bone-protecting ointment.

The stock of the Bone-Suppressing Vine was completely exhausted outside the Bone-Changing Manor. She is now using an ordinary iron-lump tree that grows near the Bone-Suppressing Vine—due to the influence of the Bone-Suppressing Vine's root system, its medicinal effect is twice as strong as that of an ordinary iron-lump tree.

Although it is far inferior to the Guardian Vine itself, it is the optimal solution at this critical juncture.

On the third day at dusk, they arrived at the outer edge of the forbidden Blackwater Swamp.

The boundary between the forbidden area and the rest of the swamp was clearly visible to the naked eye—the water ahead was no longer dark green, but had turned completely black, like a piece of obsidian poured onto the swamp.

There was no mist on the water's surface; instead, a very faint, dark golden halo slowly swirled around it, like a sealed membrane covering the deathly aura.

Inside the membrane, even the air stopped flowing.

When the bone-rotting birds fly over the outer perimeter, they deliberately avoid the airspace above the forbidden area; not one dares to approach the layer of dark gold film.

The black leeches in the swamp retreated three feet outside the plastic film and burrowed deeper into the mud.

"The Forbidden Land of Suro." Lin Xiaoman unfolded the animal hide notebook in her hand, comparing it with the incomplete geographical markings on the map.

The ancient map in the notebook depicted the approximate area of ​​the forbidden zone—a body of water spanning more than twenty miles, with a solitary island surrounded by water at its center, on which stood an ancient altar that had mostly collapsed.

Thirty years ago, Lu Moshen went deep into that altar.

"The sixth fragment is on the north bank of the forbidden area, less than fifty miles from us, and it has stopped."

Dongfang Weiwo sat cross-legged on the root of a withered black willow tree, his bone domain perception projecting the distribution of bones within a ten-mile radius into his sea of ​​consciousness.

The moving fragments of light had indeed stopped moving, right at the edge of the forbidden area.

The person carrying the fragments was also showing signs of weakening heartbeat and breathing, but had not yet disappeared.

He stood up, leaning on his bamboo cane on the muddy ground, and walked step by step in that direction.

The muddy ground outside the forbidden area was getting softer and softer, and every step felt like stepping on highly absorbent rotten mud. Lin Xiaoman followed behind him, her short bamboo cane leaving a series of shallow indentations behind her.

Chuan Ying walked to the side, his sword still sheathed, his sword intent kept at the minimum threshold ready to erupt at any moment.

The three of them had walked less than five miles when they came across an extremely strange scene.

A middle-aged man dressed as a rogue cultivator knelt at the edge of the forbidden area, clutching a dark gold bone fragment tightly in his hands, completely motionless.

His face was ashen, and all his hair fell out in less than three days. His scalp was covered with dark gold patterns—like fragments of law imprints that had seeped into his body, turning him into a skeleton.

His body below the knees was completely ossified, the skin and flesh dried up and peeled away, revealing the bones filled with dark gold substance. There were more than a dozen cracks in the bones, and dark gold light slowly seeped out from each crack.

He was still breathing, each breath feeling like he was exhausting the last bit of strength in his lungs.

"To an ordinary cultivator, the fragmented imprint of the law is like holding a red-hot iron in their palm. They've held it for far too long."

Dongfang Weiwo walked up to the rogue cultivator and gently tapped the ground with his bamboo staff. The rogue cultivator slowly raised his head, and a faint glimmer of clarity flashed in his eyes, which had turned completely gray.

He opened his mouth, and the sound coming from his throat was like bones grinding together:

"...It's calling...the altar...it keeps calling..."

"I see."

Dongfang Weiwo stretched out his right hand and pressed it on the dark gold bone fragment.

The bone fragments trembled violently the moment they were touched by the aura of the divine and demonic skeleton, as if they had seen a kindred spirit who had been separated for many years.

The rogue cultivator's arms shattered inch by inch in the tremor, bone dust falling in a shower.

The moment the bone fragments detached, his entire body collapsed from the inside out—not from death, but from the loss of the laws supporting the bone fragments, his skeleton, which had long been assimilated by the dark gold substance, could no longer maintain its human form.

With a whoosh, it scattered into a pile of grayish-white bone powder. Inside the bone powder was a storage bag. Besides some dry food and a few spirit stones, the bag contained only half a yellowed animal hide map, which depicted a hidden waterway on the south bank of the forbidden area.

The sixth fragment rose from the bone powder, spun in the air, and fell into Dongfang Weiwu's palm.

The moment the fragment was acquired, the resonance network of the six fragments within the body was activated simultaneously.

Five pieces have been put in place, and the sixth piece is currently searching for a fusion point on the left wrist bone.

But he did not merge immediately—his Bone Domain Perception issued an urgent alarm. From the direction of the isolated island altar in the very center of the forbidden area, the dark gold light of the seventh fragment suddenly shone brightly, and the dark gold membrane covering the entire forbidden area also trembled violently, as if it had sensed that the sixth fragment had been taken away.

Immediately afterwards, the water began to churn. Black, decaying mud rolled up from the bottom of the forbidden area, darkening the water's surface.

The tranquility of the forbidden area was shattered as tens of thousands of black leeches burst out of the mud, forming a writhing black wave that surged toward the three.

Each black leech's carapace was covered with a very faint layer of dark gold light—they had lived in the forbidden area for too long, and their bodies had accumulated trace amounts of powdered remains of gods and demons.

Chuan Ying drew his sword. The third strike. He didn't aim for the black leech tide—that would be too wasteful—but instead slashed at the water's surface at the edge of the forbidden area.

As the blade's edge entered the water, its intent exploded beneath the surface. The pitch-black blade energy, like underwater thunder, spread towards the center of the forbidden area, creating a massive mud vortex at the source of the black leech tide.

Thousands of black leeches were shattered into dust by the blade's energy, and the dark golden bone powder scattered in the mud, like a layer of dark golden fire burning on the water's surface. The swarm of insects was temporarily halted.

"Charge in." After Chuan Ying sheathed his sword, the dark blade light on it completely dimmed, and blood gushed from both the old and new wounds on the backs of his hands.

His meridians had reached their limit, and after the third strike, his aura clearly weakened by at least 40%.

But he still held his thick-backed sword horizontally in front of him and was the first to step into the forbidden waters.

The dark gold membrane surrounding the forbidden area cracked open automatically under the pressure of his sword intent.

Dongfang Weiwo pulled Lin Xiaoman along, and the three of them quickly advanced towards the isolated island in the center of the forbidden area, following the hidden waterway marked by the half-animal hide map in the cultivator's storage bag.

The black leeches on the water surface disappeared after they entered the forbidden area.

The concentration of death energy inside the forbidden area is more than ten times that of the outer area, so much so that even black leeches cannot survive for long.

A thick, black film of oil floated on the surface of the water, with a few pale hand bones scattered about, like path markers pointing towards the isolated island.

These hand bones are relics from thirty years ago—marks made by Lu Moshen using the bones of swamp beasts he killed along the way when he entered the forbidden area.

Lin Xiaoman paddled across the desolate black water, using a plank salvaged from the wreckage of a small boat. Meanwhile, Dongfang Weiwo used his Bone Domain Perception to lock onto the direction and forcefully pressed the sixth fragment into his left wrist bone.

The fusion began and ended during the movement. The moment the sixth fragment merged into the skeleton, the fusion rate jumped from 48% to 49%—just one point away from breaking through 50%.

Six dark gold patterns within his body lit up simultaneously, one of which pointed directly towards the altar on the isolated island, creating an extremely strong resonance with the seventh fragment.

The isolated island appeared at the edge of the night fog. The island was no more than a hundred feet in diameter, and not a single blade of grass grew on it, only black mud and jagged fossilized bones.

The altar, mostly collapsed, sits in the center of the island. It is made of some kind of grayish-white boulder that is exactly the same as that of Broken Bone Ridge. The surface of the altar is covered with honeycomb-like holes, and each hole is embedded with a piece of bone the size of a finger joint.

In the very center of the altar stood a stone tablet, its surface covered in mud, but the two ancient characters on it emitted a dark golden light in the night—Suluo.

The ground in front of the stone tablet has collapsed, revealing a hole extending downwards.

Black mist, a hundred times denser than that on the water's surface, surged from the cave entrance. Countless tiny dark gold specks were mixed within the black mist, as if the deathly aura and bone dust of the entire forbidden area were being drawn to this cave entrance, converging below to form an unknown energy flow.

"The seventh fragment is below."

Dongfang Wei touched the edge of the cave entrance with his bamboo staff, and dark gold energy spread into the cave like ripples. A moment later, it bounced back from the bottom of the cave, bringing a clear message—the depth was about 100 zhang, and the bottom was a complete stone chamber.

In the center of the stone chamber was a stone platform, on which was embedded a dark gold bone fragment larger than any other fragment present.

The seventh fragment. The core segment of Lu Moshen's left radius bone, the largest fragment after his left arm was shattered.

However, the Bone Domain Perception also detected another presence—in the darkness outside the stone chamber, countless skeletal creatures were writhing. Their bone density and structure were unusually peculiar, completely different from the swamp beasts common in the Tianwu Continent, but rather exactly like the Ten Thousand Bones deep in the Shattered Bone Ridge.

These are bone puppets from the forbidden area, half-dead and half-alive creatures that have been awakened after being steeped in the aura of fragments of divine and demonic remains for many years.

They had been dormant for thirty years, but were now completely awakened by the resonance of the six fragments within Dongfang Weiwo's body.

"I'm going down. You two stay at the cave entrance."

Dongfang Wei handed the bamboo staff to Lin Xiaoman, and walked down the cave entrance with only the Reincarnation Sword Sheath and the dark gold longsword.

When Lin Xiaoman took the bamboo cane, her fingers were as cold as ice, but she did not follow. Instead, she leaned the bamboo cane against the stone tablet, took out the last half jar of bone-protecting ointment from her medicine bag, and drew a circle around the cave entrance.

She didn't know if the ointment would work on what was below, but it was the only thing she could do at that moment.

Chuan Ying sat cross-legged before the stone tablet, his thick-backed sword resting across his lap. Though he could no longer unleash a full-force strike, his sword intent was still enough to create a thin sword domain at the cave entrance. Any bone puppet emerging from the cave would first have to pass through him.

As soon as Dongfang Weiwo entered the cave, those dark golden light spots frantically converged on him.

The air was as thick as liquid bone meal; every breath felt like inhaling bone fragments that had settled in the forbidden area for thirty years.

The six lines on his body shone like stars, illuminating the darkness deep within the cave.

The fossilized bones on the cave walls gradually revealed their true form in the light—the cave walls, the floor, and the dome were all made of bones.

Huge and tiny, human and beastly, they were densely packed together, forming a bone passage leading underground.

This bone passage is strikingly similar in structure to the bone passage of Broken Bone Ridge, only smaller in scale and more recent in date.

The bone puppet has appeared.