146: A group of cute skeletons

"Crack!"

A dull cracking sound suddenly rang out, and a shocking fissure appeared on the pale skull.

Surprisingly, apart from this additional crack on the skull, the skeleton didn't seem to have suffered any other substantial damage.

Its movement of slowly crawling out from the ground was only interrupted for a brief moment by Qiu Yanhui's kick, and it soon resumed its actions.

"So hard!"

"It really digs into my foot!"

Qiu Yanhui muttered while shaking her right foot, which she had just used to kick the skull.

That hard, cold sensation still lingered on the sole of her foot, making her frown slightly.

"Ow, ow, ow..." she groaned softly.

She thought to herself: This thing looks dull and witless, without a shred of intelligence or any apparent special abilities.

But relying solely on these incredibly hard bones, let alone a first-stage rookie, even a cultivator with slightly higher cultivation might suffer a great loss if they weren't careful.

"Unbelievable, simply unbelievable."

Qiu Yanhui looked at the skeleton before her and couldn't help but shake her head in amazement.

This thing must have been buried underground for at least a hundred years. Logically, no matter how sturdy the bones were in life, after so much time of erosion and decay, they should have become brittle by now!

Was it because they had been nourished by exceptionally dense Ghostly Qi all this time, making them so 'hard'?

Or perhaps a so-called Ghost Tool... Could this actually be a little darling raised by Cheng Kangzi?

"Even if he raised them, there must be at least a hundred!"

"Shit!"

Qiu Yanhui's face suddenly changed color. She pushed off hard with both feet and leaped into the air.

Then, her body traced an arc in the air as she rapidly retreated over a dozen steps, kicking up a cloud of dust as she landed.

Sure enough, within Jinglian Temple.

The ground began to tremble violently, and pale skeletal hands sprouted from the earth like bamboo shoots after rain.

Qiu Yanhui looked down, and her heart sank.

With just a cursory glance, the skeletons churning the soil and emerging had already reached nearly a hundred!

One after another, they struggled to extend skeletal hands through the floor tiles, slowly lifting their skulls covered in cracks and dried blood.

Their hollow eye sockets were filled with filthy blood. Once they had completely emerged from the mire, they all locked their gaze onto Qiu Yanhui's direction.

"Jie jie jie... crack crack crack..."

A burst of eerie, terrifying laughter intertwined with the sound of bones grinding together.

It echoed through the silent temple, making her scalp tingle.

"Dummy, what are you dazing for? Take your gun and blast them!" Niu Mengmeng's cute voice suddenly came through the earpiece, breaking the dead silence.

"Oh! Okay, Sister Meng." Qiu Yanhui snapped out of it and hurriedly grabbed the Type 95 Assault Rifle hanging around her neck, her movements skilled and swift.

She gripped the rifle with both hands, bracing it firmly against her shoulder, her right cheek pressed against the stock, her gaze focused and determined.

"Bang bang! Bang bang! Bang bang..."

With a series of gunshots, thirty rounds of 5.8mm small-caliber rifle bullets whistled out of the barrel like lightning.

Accelerated by the rifling, these bullets flew straight toward the skeletons' skulls with startling speed and precision.

Amidst a series of dull impacts, the skeletons' heads were instantly shattered, bone fragments flying everywhere.

Without hesitation, Qiu Yanhui removed the empty magazine, skillfully replaced it with a new one, and continued pulling the trigger at the swarm of skeletons.

"Bang bang bang..." The dense gunfire echoed through the temple once more. Every bullet carried the breath of death, ruthlessly reaping the skeletons... She repeated the reload as before, her movements fluid as she slightly adjusted her aim.

"Bang bang bang..."

Three minutes and forty-eight seconds later, five magazines were exhausted. Not a single one of the hundred-plus skeleton skulls was spared.

All were split in half in an instant, then carried by the bullets' remaining momentum to fly several meters away like kites with broken strings.

Qiu Yanhui raised the barrel, which was emitting wisps of blue smoke. Through her advanced night-vision goggles, after confirming that all the skeletons showed no signs of life,

Her tense nerves finally relaxed slightly, and she slowly lowered the Type 95 Assault Rifle.

"Sister Meng, this spiritual-power version of the Type 95, co-developed by the Underworld and the Academy of Sciences, is truly amazing!!!" Qiu Yanhui shouted excitedly into her earpiece.

"It consumes less than five percent of my spiritual power to take down over a hundred second-stage mid-tier skeletons without exception." As she spoke, Qiu Yanhui looked down at the Type 95 Assault Rifle in her hands, a hint of awe in her eyes.

"It's all thanks to this 'Type 95' this time. If I didn't have it, I probably wouldn't have been able to withstand so many powerful skeletons," Qiu Yanhui murmured with lingering fear.

[Fortunately, I was once the shooting champion at the Police Academy. Those skilled shooting techniques haven't grown rusty despite my logistics work.]

At that moment, Niu Mengmeng drew a large checkmark next to the Type 95 on her experiment sheet.

[Not bad, not bad at all!]

A calm and clear voice came through the earpiece: "Don't dawdle. Hurry up and clean up the battlefield to see if you can find anything useful."

Qiu Yanhui quickly nodded and replied, "You got it!"

Then she moved quickly, conducting a thorough carpet search of the shattered bones scattered all over the ground.

Suddenly, she noticed a faint glow on the remains of a skeleton. Her heart stirred, and she walked over quickly to squat down and investigate.

Upon closer inspection, she was surprised to find that the glow was coming from 'Ghost Crystals'.

"Ghost Crystals! A one-in-a-thousand chance, yet the drop rate here is so high?" Qiu Yanhui thought. "Maybe I can take them back for the Academy of Sciences to study."

"Hiss..."

She stood up abruptly as if struck by lightning, suddenly stepping on a pelvis.

Looking down, the pelvis was like an oval egg laid sideways, the iliac wings broad like spread wings, and the transverse diameter of the inlet slightly longer... these were undoubtedly distinct female characteristics.

She scanned the other skeletons one by one, cursing inwardly: "These bastards, just how many innocent women did they use!"

"Calm down, Yan Hui. Don't let the resentment corrode your mind," Niu Mengmeng said with a worried expression.

"Mm-hmm!"

Qiu Yanhui bit her lip, nodded calmly, and walked toward the central area of Jinglian Temple.

[Hu... hula la... So depressing!!!]