377: Chapter 377 Resurrection of the Bones

As soon as Su Mingyuan finished speaking, the reactions of the thirty people were almost synchronized.

No one asked a single extra question as to why.

The Fifth-rank Martial Artists automatically dispersed, the six people in the front row facing six directions, their spiritual energy already circulating to their palms and soles.

The two members of the research team in the middle were wrapped in the center of the formation.

The people in the back row stood with their backs to the center, their line of sight covering all blind spots.

Chen Rong and Lin Wan stood at the very front of the formation, three meters apart from each other.

A layer of fine blue electrical arcs had already surfaced on Chen Rong's arms, crackling and popping, as if snakes were slithering beneath his skin.

Lin Wan did not release her spiritual energy externally, but the temperature of the ground beneath her feet was dropping visibly to the naked eye, and a layer of white frost condensed on the broken bones around her boots.

Su Mingyuan scanned the team, confirming that everyone had entered their state of readiness.

Then he looked at Chen Rong.

"Chen Rong, go over and take a look."

Chen Rong did not hesitate.

Lightning-attribute spiritual energy surged from his Dantian, pouring into his legs and feet. His calf muscles tensed, and a tingling sensation came from the soles of his feet—it was the signal that spiritual energy was accelerating its circulation within his body.

He bent his knees slightly, preparing to launch himself out.

But he didn't have time to move.

Because there was no need to go over and look.

Fifty or sixty meters away, within that pile of bones, a skeleton was standing up.

Its movements were very slow.

First, its shoulders moved, as if it had been pushed from behind by something. Then, half of its body arched out from the bone pile, and broken bones slid off it with a rustling sound, making faint noises as they hit the ground.

It had no muscles, no skin, and no soft tissue whatsoever.

It was just a skeleton.

The gray-white bones still had a few dried-out ligaments hanging from the joints, like withered straw ropes, barely holding the bones together.

It was missing three ribs, its left hand only had its thumb and index finger left, and there was a crack on the tibia of its right leg that extended from the knee all the way to the ankle.

But it still stood up.

Its two legs supported it on the ground, wobbly and crooked, as if a gust of wind could blow it over.

The skeleton's head swayed, slowly turning in the direction of Su Mingyuan and his team.

It had no eyeballs; its eye sockets were two black holes.

But inside its cranial cavity—visible through the gaps of the eye sockets and nasal cavity—one could see a cluster of green light.

It was a flicker of flame.

Green, only the size of a thumb, floating in the very center of the cranial cavity, flickering incessantly.

The light of the flame was very weak, as if it could go out at any moment, but it was truly burning.

That cluster of green fire illuminated the entire inner wall of the skeleton's skull, shining out from the eye sockets and casting two swaying green lights on the gray-white bone surface.

The team was silent for about two seconds.

Then, several people spoke at the same time.

"What is this thing?"

"Has the skeleton become sentient?"

"What is that thing in its head? Green fire?"

The Fifth-rank Martial Artist who had just been laughing at Sun Lei for being timid was no longer laughing. He took half a step back, and his spiritual energy flowed into his hands unconsciously.

Sun Lei, on the other hand, did not speak. He just stared at the skeleton, his mouth agape, the muscles on his chin trembling.

Tao Zhe stood beside Su Mingyuan, squinting for a few seconds before saying, "The green flame inside the cranial cavity doesn't look like spiritual energy, nor does it look like crystal core energy. It's something else."

"Can you determine its Rank of threat?" Su Mingyuan asked.

"I can't determine it; I've never seen it before," Tao Zhe said.

Han Li was also looking at the green flame. She sniffed, and her brows furrowed.

"The smell in the air has changed," she said. "There's an extra bitter, burnt smell, like scorched medicinal dregs. This smell wasn't here just now."

Su Mingyuan did not wait any longer.

He looked at Chen Rong.

Chen Rong happened to look over as well.

Su Mingyuan nodded.

There was no need to say much.

The lightning light at Chen Rong's feet exploded, and his entire body launched forward.

A distance of fifty or sixty meters, for a Cultivator at the Foundation Establishment Stage, was just a matter of a single breath.

Chen Rong's speed was too fast; the broken bones on the ground were lifted by the air wave, raising a white trail behind him.

He raised his right hand in the air, and a fist-sized lightning ball condensed in his palm.

Electrical arcs darted across the surface of the lightning ball, crackling and hissing, and the smell of ozone permeated the air.

The skeleton was still standing wobbly, and the green fire in its head flickered.

It didn't even make any evasive movements.

Perhaps it didn't even know what evasion meant.

Chen Rong's lightning ball struck down.

Boom.

It wasn't a very loud sound. But the lightning light illuminated the surrounding dozen meters of the area until it was snow-white, and broken bones were blasted into the sky, the medicinal fragrance in the air instantly covered up by the smell of ozone and scorching.

The lightning ball hit the front of the skeleton, piercing directly through its chest cavity.

The skeleton's ribs, spine, and shoulder blades turned charred black in the lightning light. The entire frame was scorched black by the electric current, with a layer of fine cracks attached to the surface; some parts had already carbonized and would crumble at the slightest touch.

Chen Rong landed three meters away from the skeleton, one knee slightly bent, maintaining the posture from his attack just now.

He didn't retract his hand, his eyes fixed on that charred black skeleton.

One second.

Two seconds.

The skeleton did not fall.

It just tilted slightly; the crack on its left tibia widened, and its entire body leaned to the right by more than ten degrees.

But it was still standing.

On the charred bone surface, those cracks were healing.

It wasn't like a zombie growing new tissue, but rather the cracks themselves were closing—as if an invisible hand were smearing a layer of glue on the surface of the bone, sticking the fissures shut.

The carbonized parts were also recovering. The charred black was fading bit by bit, and the gray-white bone quality was exposed again.

Ten seconds later, the skeleton had returned to its original state.

It was as if that full-force lightning strike from a Cultivator at the Foundation Establishment Stage just now had never happened.

The green fire in the cranial cavity flickered twice, seemingly even brighter than before.

Chen Rong's expression changed.

It wasn't that he hadn't seen monsters capable of tanking attacks. The leader-level Giants of the Giant World could withstand rocket launchers, and the Fifth-Order Yao Beasts of the Yaowu World could take armor-piercing shells from mechs head-on. But after those things were hit, a wound was a wound, and recovery took time.

The skeleton in front of him was different.

It didn't have "fast recovery."

It "directly erased the damage."

Chen Rong did not retreat. He gathered power in his right hand again, preparing for a second strike.

But the skeleton moved.

It raised its right hand—the right hand with only two fingers left—and waved it in Chen Rong's direction.

This movement was very slow and looked completely harmless.

But the hairs on the back of Chen Rong's neck stood up.

He instinctively dodged to the side.

An invisible force swept past from the direction of the skeleton's fingers, flying past his left shoulder.

It hit nothing, but a pile of bones five meters behind him was pushed flat, and bone fragments flew more than ten meters away.

Chen Rong did not hesitate; the lightning light at his feet flashed, and he opened up the distance.

"This thing has long-range attack capabilities!" he shouted toward the direction of the team.

Lin Wan had already moved.

Her movements were not as fast as Chen Rong's, but her strikes were more decisive.

With a push of her right hand, a beam of ice-blue spiritual energy shot out from her palm, drawing a translucent trajectory in the air and slamming directly onto the skeleton.

The temperature plummeted.

Centered on the skeleton, dense ice crystals appeared in the air within a five-meter radius.

The broken bones on the ground were frozen in place, their surfaces covered with a layer of white ice.

The skeleton's legs were frozen, then its lumbar spine, and then its ribs.

The ice layer spread upward from the soles of its feet, wrapping the entire skeleton into a block of ice within three seconds.

The skeleton was frozen in place and could no longer move.

But the green fire in the cranial cavity was still burning.

Through the ice layer, that cluster of green flame was even more conspicuous, flickering incessantly, illuminating the entire ice block with a ghostly green light.

Cracks appeared on the ice surface.

The skeleton was struggling. The force wasn't great, but it was continuous, and the ice layer shattered under its bit-by-bit struggle.

"Hit the fire in its head," Han Li shouted from behind. "If that green fire isn't extinguished, the bones won't stop."

Chen Rong heard her.

He rushed up again. This time, he didn't use a lightning ball, but instead condensed spiritual energy onto the index and middle fingers of his right hand. He held the two fingers together, and a blue-white lightning glow lit up at his fingertips.

Precision strike.

His fingers tapped on the head position of the ice block, the lightning glow piercing through the ice layer, through the skull, and directly striking into the cranial cavity.

The green fire in the cranial cavity shook violently.

It became smaller.

But it still hadn't gone out.

Chen Rong's brows furrowed. He gathered power for the second time, and a second lightning beam struck in.

The green fire shook again and shrunk another circle.

It still hadn't gone out.

"Lin Wan!" Chen Rong shouted.

Lin Wan understood his meaning. She pushed out with both hands simultaneously, and a second layer of ice covered it, freezing the skeleton even more tightly.

Chen Rong attacked continuously. The third, fourth, and fifth lightning beams.

Every time one went in, the green fire shrank a little bit.

The sixth one.

The green fire was finally extinguished.

In an instant, the green light in the cranial cavity vanished, and all the "power" in the skeleton—that indescribable thing that allowed it to stand, move, and hit people—completely dissipated.

The skeleton collapsed.

Inside the ice, the bones clattered into a pile, like a block tower whose foundation had been pulled out, scattering all over the ground.

The ice block also shattered, ice shards and bone fragments mixed together, spread out on the ground.

Chen Rong stood in place, the lightning glow on his fingers not yet completely dissipated.

He exhaled and turned to look at Su Mingyuan.

Su Mingyuan nodded.

"Taken out."

Chen Rong withdrew his spiritual energy.

A Cultivator at the Foundation Establishment Stage, having outputted full force six times, plus Lin Wan's two freezing assists, only then managed to extinguish the cluster of green fire in one skeleton's head.

This consumption was not small.

Someone in the team let out a long sigh of relief.

"Resolved."

"What is this thing? Skeletons can actually hit people."

"It's a good thing we had Chen Rong and Lin Wan; if it had been us going up—"

The sentence was not finished.

Sun Lei's voice rang out again.

This time he didn't shout "What the hell."

He just raised his hand, pointing tremblingly to the front.

Everyone looked in the direction his finger pointed.

To the left, thirty meters away, seven or eight skeletons were climbing up from the bone pile. Their movements were the same as the one just now: first the shoulders arched up, then half the body drilled out, and broken bones fell down with a rustling sound.

To the right, more than forty meters away, there were even more. A dozen or so skeletons were already standing straight, wobbly and crooked, their cranial cavities full of green firelight.

Behind them, in the direction they came from, the bones on the ground were shaking on a large scale. It wasn't one or two; they were moving in large swathes. The sound of bone colliding with bone merged into one, rattling and clattering, as if it were raining bones.

Su Mingyuan stood in the middle of the team and turned around in a circle.

Three hundred and sixty degrees, all were skeletons standing up.

He scanned them roughly.

As far as his eyes could see, there were at least two hundred skeletons that were standing or had already stood up.

And the number was still increasing.

Further away, there were even more bones moving.

In the cranial cavity of every skeleton, a cluster of green flame was burning.

More than two hundred green fires lit up on the gray-white bone plain, as if two hundred eyes had grown out of the ground.

All of them looked at them without moving.