Page 261
Page 261
The elderly bone spirit pondered for a moment, then smiled and said:
“I can sense that you have the ability to fuse with bone, and that several spirits reside within you. Her idea is... since I am no longer able to continue, and she has no intention of continuing the journey alone, she would rather give you her bone to help you, and I will merge with her soul and reside within you together.”
He turned to look at the seemingly endless Sankturi Mountains and said:
"In that case, we can enjoy the scenery along the way and the magnificent view from the mountaintop together."
Latis felt a slight tingling sensation in his heart. He knew that this would allow him to easily enjoy the speed boost brought by his talent, but faced with such determination, he was at a loss for words at this moment.
He opened his mouth, about to speak, when he suddenly noticed that the other teammates of the Elder Bone Spirit had unknowingly stood around him, forming a small circle, looking at him expectantly.
Latis was stunned for a moment, feeling the determination and atmosphere of sharing joys and sorrows and going through life and death together in this team. His eyebrows suddenly twitched, and an unbelievable idea immediately appeared in his mind.
"Wait, you guys..."
……
The skeleton of the demon wolf still wanders the plains with an unknown purpose. You seem to have changed something, yet you seem to have changed nothing.
You carry a bright lantern, running across the plains. In the distance, it seems that fellow travelers have seen your radiance, and a strange sense of exhilaration draws them towards you.
[The planet of Starry Night hangs directly overhead; is it waiting for those who will summit Mount Sankturi?]
You paused, then turned around to look.
That sudden, resounding boom was the tide of this world!
Chapter 266 He is the third extraordinary story on this land
The old spirit said, "If one cannot understand death, the praise of life is meaningless." After saying this, he and the lantern-bearing skeleton transformed into the spirit that resides within you.
[The rest of the people, whom you can't quite distinguish yet, have already become a part of you. They had already made their decisions during the discussions, so they didn't waste your time at all. It's just that you'll need to spend some time understanding them as you run along this path.]
[At this moment, your body length has reached over five meters, your height has reached three and a half meters, and the wingspan of your bone wings is nearly seven meters. Too much bone cannot be fully retracted into your body and can only be attached to your body.]
[Your originally robust body appears small in the face of this exoskeleton, but fortunately your bone armor compensates for this. The imposing and heavy bone armor complements your already massive physique perfectly. At this moment, your aura of power is no less than that of ten Great Tree Knights going into battle together.]
[In the ravine you encountered, countless strange birds were startled into flight by the overwhelming sound of your footsteps. However, they could no longer hinder your path in the slightest. They could only be swept up in your wake, spun around a few times, and then fall back to the ground dizzy. They were no longer the beings that posed a threat to you.]
As the lingering wolf moved out of your sight, you turned and saw a white figure appear above the cliff you had come from.
"I hope the bards can still get through this White Moon smoothly." This thought flashed through your mind before you turned your gaze back to Mount Sankturai.
Now, nothing on this plain can stop you!
You run headlong, letting Sai Leng control your direction. The spirit girls within you are already used to this kind of running. They channel your soul power, transferring your immense strength inch by inch to the muscles and bones at the farthest reaches.
The tips of your bony wings crackled like whips as you ran, but those were the faintest sounds, for your body had long since begun to roar like countless stacked engines, from the dense clatter of your joints to the rumbling wind tunnel formed between your bodies, and then to the sound of your footsteps slamming into the ground like a giant hammer…
[This sound, symbolizing absolute power and speed, was left behind in an instant; it was so deafening that it completely drowned out the sound of the torrent of white moonlight cascading down the cliff.]
However... that's not all there is to you!
The lantern's light shone upon you, and the overwhelming blessing momentarily made you stumble. Then you immediately realized that it was the spirits residing within you who, as the recipients of the blessing, had transferred all the power to you!
You can no longer calculate how many times more power you've gained; you only know that you're now confident you could shatter the Earth's core with a single punch!
In just a few jumps, you've covered a distance that would have previously taken hundreds of steps to run. Even you can't help but exclaim, "Holy crap, what kind of numerical inflation is this?! League of Legends designers!"
The unrestrained running makes you involuntarily grin, and in this state, you're almost certain that climbing Mount Sankturai is a piece of cake! With your experience climbing Mount Sisyphus, conquering this mountain is now far too easy for you!
The rushing sound of the white torrent made you instinctively turn your head to look. The overwhelming flood had already obscured the cliffs in a vast expanse of white. This torrent was much faster than you had imagined; it was like a formatted liquid eraser, sweeping straight past everything you had passed on your way here.
"It's time to go..." you murmured to yourself, but just as you were about to turn away, your gaze suddenly froze, fixing on a few skeletons that were too small to be seen in comparison to the overwhelming torrent of water.
They ran, driven by the torrent behind them, stumbling and leaping across the ravine before them, only to be easily swallowed by the white flood.
You glanced at the Sankturi Mountain, which was now almost within reach, and before any thought could even form in your mind, your body had already rushed back.
The world has given you so much; you must give back to them! Nothing, no matter the danger to your life or anything else, can stop you!
Regardless of whether the creatures of this world will ultimately vanish without a trace in the white moon, and regardless of whether they have long since grown accustomed to it, you still wish to extend a helping hand to them in the face of eternal death.
The lantern before you shines ever brighter; it is the spirit maidens within you telling you: this is what they also desire!
Soon, you pass the first skeleton that has been following you. He has already run tens of thousands of steps under the guidance of your light. In this frantic sprint, his toe bones are completely worn down, his arches are bent and embedded in the ground, and his knees are cracked, revealing sharp bone fragments.
The heavy hooves landed in front of him. He looked up, but before he could see your face, your hand was already outstretched in front of him.
In a fraction of a second, without needing to think further, he grasped your hand in the lamplight.
What was the skeleton thinking at that moment? You didn't consider that question, and perhaps even the skeleton itself didn't think about it. It was simply thrown onto you, and then, in the resonance of the spirit, its already smiling skeletal face grinned even wider, and without much hesitation, it transformed into the bones within you.
[You didn't notice this change because you had already set your sights on the next target. Only Seren, in his unspeakable excitement, heard the resonance of the spirit, helping you write a new chapter on the little gray flag.]
[You are unaware of this change, just as you are unaware that the will of the spirit has gathered within you into a new torrent. To the skeletons, the resonance of this will is far more deafening than the clamor of the white moon; it is like a super megaphone on this land, proclaiming the message of life to all fellow challengers.]
No, they might no longer be the so-called challengers... You recall the old bone spirits' squad, such a united team appearing before you at the very last moment before you reach the summit of Mount Sankturui, as if this land were teaching you its final lesson.
Challengers should ultimately reach the summit together!
[The thought flashed through your mind, and you suddenly felt a strange surge of exhilaration.]
The reason previous challengers had to fight individually was that only one ultimate champion could qualify to ascend to the Star Sea. Now, you can bring all your challengers with you!
This thought only lasted a few seconds before your attention shifted to the second skeleton you caught.
"Grab the bone spike next to me!" you roared, not having time to give any more instructions, you reared up on your forelegs, twisted your body, and ran towards the other skeleton.
Waves of the white moon surged in, the drop in the cliffs making the torrents even more turbulent. The damp air was already hitting your face. You gritted your teeth, seized the moment, and leaped towards a skeleton about to be swept away by a wave.
"Grab my hand!" you shouted in mid-air. The skeleton, rushing forward, didn't even have time to look up before it obeyed the call of the spirit and stretched out its hand towards you.
[Boom! The surging wave knocked him down. Your eyes widened, and you were about to shout in anger when, in the next second, the wave suddenly surged back, revealing the skull that had rolled several times before you.]
"What…" You were taken aback. Without time to observe, you tossed him onto your horse and turned back. On your way to your next destination, you looked back in the direction you'd come from, stared for a moment, and a look of shock slowly appeared in your eyes.
[It's a rift! The rift dug out by the demonic wolves has halted the relentless advance of the White Moon's tide! The once unstoppable torrent has slowed down with each such obstruction!]
A hint of confusion appeared in your eyes. This wasn't about yourself, the demon wolf, or even the current situation, but rather a reflection of your own feelings. If all the madness in this world were merely "lies"—living towards death, their true nature ripped away by time—then how could you possibly justify this journey?
The cry of the strange birds interrupted your thoughts. You looked in the direction from which the cry came, and saw a flock of strange birds flying out of the ravine where they lived, circling high in the sky before the white moon had swallowed them.
[And some of the strange birds, clutching skulls in their claws, cried out and then flew away from this land.]
"Wait!" Your expression changed drastically; you hadn't expected those unfortunate contestants to fall into the monster's ambush at this moment.
Just as you were about to flap your bone wings to take down the challengers, you suddenly noticed the strange birds' gaze. You followed their line of sight... and there stood Mount Sankturi.
You turn back, and the strange birds have already circled halfway around you. For a fleeting moment, your eyes meet theirs, and then you understand some facts that leave you bewildered.
"Wait for me there!" you changed your tune and shouted.
The strange bird's emotionless eyes swept over your figure, then turned its gaze back to Mount Sankturai.
Their claws have torn apart the bodies of countless skeletons. In those incomprehensible struggles, countless skeletons have died, only to be reborn with the arrival of the next white moon.
Scattered skeletal fragments fell from their claws; skeletons gripped by torsos or spines were frantically carried away into the distance amidst the sweeping white moon and steel-like claws.
You know, they'll land on the mountain, among the jagged rocks. Those strange birds, indifferent to death, always follow an unknown will, a will that compels them to hear even the faintest footsteps amidst the clamor of the tide, a will that compels them, with an almost cruel gesture, to snatch away these soon-to-be-defeated challengers, amidst retaliatory and fearful gazes.
This is all so confusing.
[As you think this, you are completely unaware that you yourself seem to have become such a creature—a lurking, malevolent wolf, a lurking, man-eating bird. What will you become in the bard's words? A galloping, winged centaur?]
[You know nothing of all this. The waves are raging, and you've only managed to save five or six fellow travelers. Perhaps it's time to return to your mountaineering path. For an ordinary individual who only arrived during this lull, you've already done more than enough...]
"Is that right?"
Latis stopped, asking himself a question. Mount Sankturai was not far behind him; he only needed to leap a dozen or so times to begin his ascent.
However, it seems something is still missing...
He stood in the tide that swept past his calves and asked Sai Leng:
"Sai Leng, you've waited for me for tens of thousands of white moons, haven't you ever thought about going out yourself?"
Sai Leng's voice came from his heart:
“Mr. Bones, I promised you that I would take you to the stars, and I must complete the journey we share. As for what happens after that, I will only consider it if you are still by my side.”
"Is the meaning of the journey to completion?" Latis continued to ask.
"I think it's the experience."
Sai Leng hesitated for a moment, then said:
"Its end is where the meaning of the next journey begins."
"I understand."
Latis chuckled, glancing at the boulders and bone fragments being swept along by the torrent. He thought for a moment, then scratched his crotch and muttered:
"This is the sun, it is me, and it is the source of life."
A full-face helmet suddenly covered his face. He took a deep breath and shouted:
"Brother Niu, charge!"
The debris and fragments from the torrent, powerful enough to shred any living thing, struck you with a crackling sound. Boulders, carrying terrifying potential energy hidden beneath their extreme speed, crashed down on you. You felt a jolt that robbed you of your senses, then calm returned.
Nothing can stop your invincibility. Even if the white moon washes away the flesh within your bone armor, it cannot take away even a trace of your will.
"Sailor, wouldn't you say this is a baptism by the Styx River before climbing?" you asked with a laugh from inside your helmet, which was completely sealed off from the outside world.
"...What kind of baptism is this! You're overestimating a little bone spirit like me!" Sai Leng exclaimed irritably.
She has taken your place as the eyes that watch over the outside world, controlling your direction. You can feel Bluebell using her soul power to alter her skeletal structure, shooting her bone spikes out like arrows, which then pull back several skeletons from afar.
You hear the moon's song leaving bubbles in the white moonlight. Those bubbles drift away with the surging waves, yet they seem to carry back the locations of the other skeletons in the exploding notes.
[You sense the merging of your soul with that of three spirit maidens. They have left their will within your soul, and this will has caused changes in your body. You feel as if you are a strange creature wielding countless claws, searching for drowning creatures in the waves.]
[You don't know whether, after being submerged by the white moon, what lies before you is pitch black or a blank expanse. The light of the lantern illuminates this torrent, brighter than the white of the moon itself.]
Inside the helmet where you can see nothing, you run with all your might, using your strong bone wings to stabilize your body, and then, just before the boulder about to crash into you makes contact, you shout out the safety phrase that makes you invincible.
"Brother Niu, charge!!!"
Chapter 267 White Moon... Soaring Through Space
The body is heavy... yet powerful.
The extended soul power was like a huge net of consciousness, projecting all its movements into Latis's premonition.
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