Foreign Land Reclamation By a Vegetable-growing Skeleton - Chapter 1026

Chapter 1026: Chapter 595: Going to Exchange for a Starburst Array? Chapter 1026: Chapter 595: Going to Exchange for a Starburst Array? Hearing it was not the big cat, everyone instinctively sighed with relief. This adorably dumb big cat, if it were an evil god that even the Lord of Mourning wanted to follow, its deceit would be too deep. It absolutely needed to be caught, stripped of its fur, and interrogated thoroughly.

“Then why do you want to serve an evil god? What’s in it for you?” Negriss asked.

“Power!” Balu growled forcefully.

“Eh, you are already undead, what power could it possibly give you?” Negriss asked, puzzled.

Balu emitted an aura of bewilderment, “The power of mourning, it gave me that.”

Apart from Ange and a few heartless ones, everyone else instinctively gasped, “The evil god granted you the power of mourning???”

Balu nodded his head.

Everyone struggled to accept this news for a long time, it was simply too horrifying. If the evil god could grant the power of mourning to a skeleton, it was absolutely a being even more terrifying than the Undead King.

Not even the Undead King could bestow the power of mourning to others.

According to Balu, back then, he was still a Golden Skeleton when the evil god came to him, offering him a small purple flame and telling him, “This is the seed of the power of mourning, plant it within your soul, and you will harvest the Mourning Soul.”

Upon hearing this, Ange perked up, as he was particularly sensitive to words like ‘plant’ and ‘harvest.’ Could the Mourning Soul actually be planted?

However, Balu wasn’t at all sensitive. His first reaction was ‘yeah right,’ and he promptly snuffed out the small flame with a slap.

Not to say he didn’t believe in it, even if he had believed that the small flame could let him harvest the Mourning Soul, he would have slapped it away without hesitation. His loyalty to the Monarch was unwavering, and he even reported the incident to the Monarch.

The Monarch pondered for a while and told him it would be dealt with, after which Balu put the matter out of his mind.

It wasn’t until much later that Balu suddenly felt a change in the Monarch. The Monarch was no longer like the one before, although the aura was exactly the same, Balu felt it wasn’t the Monarch at all.

Balu wasn’t one to keep things hidden in his soul; he immediately started questioning, but was reprimanded. When he questioned a second time, he even got a beating.

No matter how stupid Balu was, he realized he had no power to reveal the true face of the impostor. It was at this moment that the evil god reappeared, offering him another small purple flame.

This time, Balu didn’t hesitate to plant it into his own soul, and from that day forward, Balu’s soul grew rapidly, becoming stronger day by day.

From then on, Balu continuously strengthened his soul, tempered his body… simply soaking in the Liquid of Breath of Death every day with his head out was enough.

Through such ‘arduous’ training, he successfully broke through the rank of Golden Skeleton and condensed the Mourning Soul.

The Monarch, very curious, approached him for detailed questioning, eager to understand why simply soaking in the Liquid of Breath of Death could condense the Mourning Soul.

Balu, however, didn’t answer the Monarch’s questions. Instead, he questioned him again as to who he really was.

As expected, he received another beating. He was newly reborn with mourning powers, yet the Monarch had long since been an adept practitioner of mourning.

After beating him and controlling him, the Monarch examined him closely, inspecting every single bone inside and out.

This time, the Monarch sensed an unusual aura remaining on the body.

“An unusual aura on the skeleton? Take it out and have a look,” Negriss exclaimed in surprise.

Ange took out the Purple Gold Skeleton, and everyone gathered around to have a look. Negriss even sniffed it and curiously asked, “Have you ever taken a bath? Is this flesh residue? It doesn’t smell like anything.”

Balu bewildered, “What is a bath?”

“Petrified after too long?” Feiti inquired with curiosity.

Being a skeleton himself, he often got covered in splattered flesh during fights, which could get stuck in various crevices and was hard to clean. If there were some fast and effective deodorizing cleaning method, he was highly interested.

“Doesn’t seem like it. There would be a smell even if it dried up. That’s right, the Lord had put it inside the Divine Realm…” Anthony said, suddenly with a bad premonition.

Negriss, not sensing any strange aura for the time being, talked excitedly with rubbing hands, “You guys are useless; seems like it’s time for me to step in.”

“You want to gnaw it away?” Durken said, taking a detour with the conversation.

It took a moment for Negriss to realize where that detour had gone. Kobolds gnaw on bones, so Durken was calling him a kobold.

“You’re the kobold, you asshole, just you wait, don’t let me catch the opportunity, I’ll piss in your toolbox,” Negriss fumed.

Durken’s face went pale. An alchemist’s toolbox was as precious as a fisherman’s fishing rod box, both treasured possessions. If someone dared pee in Roxy’s fishing rod box, she would certainly fight to the death.

“Misheard, misheard, my lord Negriss, you misheard. I meant to let the Black Smoke Ring summon a three-headed dog to gnaw it off,” Durken quickly said with an apologetic smile.

“Hmph,” Negriss, eager to show off, momentarily let him off the hook and turned to Ange, “Ange, hold me up in your hands, and infuse divine power?”

Ange picked up Negriss by the wings and held him aloft.

Negriss smacked him on the head, “You idiot, hold my true form, the Bronze Book!”

“Oh,” Ange tossed aside the Little Yellow Dragon, took out the Bronze Book, and channeled divine power into it.

The palm-sized Bronze Book suddenly flew up, expanding to the size of a door, and an aura spread out — the Enlightenment Aura.

The Little Yellow Dragon’s body had already been flopped down on the ground, and Negriss’s voice came from the book, “After withdrawing the Enlightenment Aura, I suddenly remembered a little spell, ‘Light’!”

With a casual remark, Balu’s body immediately lit up as if touched by an invisible light, with countless pieces of information exploding in all directions and merging into the souls surrounding him.

“Purple Gold Body, one meter sixty-nine? Weighs seventy-two kilograms, two hundred bones, bone age forty, gender male. Why even mention gender for bones, seriously…”

The haphazard burst of information amazed Anthony and the others, “Is this… the legendary Identification Art?”

In knight novels, when the main character’s team finds an unknown treasure, they would go to a wizard or a merchant, cast an Identification Art, and acquire all its information.

However, in reality, there was no such magic, and even if there was, it certainly wouldn’t be a minor spell.

To identify information about an unknown object required extensive knowledge, some analytical reasoning abilities, and even a bit of predictive ability, which were the powers of a Prophet Dragon.

The Bronze Dragon was a Prophet Dragon, but whether its predictive ability was stripped by Your Majesty or it had yet to awaken, it simply couldn’t use it.

But after regaining the Enlightenment Aura, it seemed that it could now use the Identification Art.

Unfortunately, there were no traces of any abnormal information in the burst of data.

“What’s going on? Could it have failed?” Negriss wondered aloud.

“It hasn’t failed. If it had, the height, weight, and dimensions couldn’t have been identified,” Durken analyzed.

Anthony sighed; he had a bad premonition just a moment ago, “Could it be that Lord placed it into the Divine Realm, and the Divine Realm wiped away the abnormal aura?”

Everyone looked towards Ange, who tilted his head in confusion.

“If the abnormal aura could be erased by the Divine Realm, does that mean the aura is ‘alive’?” Anthony quickly continued.

With Lord tilting his head like that, what else could they do? Best to change the subject and act as if nothing had happened.

The lead came to a halt here. Without detecting an abnormal aura, they couldn’t analyze anything. But from Balu’s vehement demeanor, the existence of the Evil God was real and truly possessed the ability to elevate undead creatures to the status of the Lord of Mourning.

“If he possesses such power, there should be more than one Lord of Mourning in the world. With such an easy method of cultivation, just soaking in the Liquid of Breath of Death would suffice,” Durken said in confusion.

“Perhaps he lacks the Liquid of Breath of Death?” Feiti hesitated.

Anthony and Negriss were invigorated by the thought, “Could it be that Your Majesty noticed the problem, so he collected all the breath of death? The deathly aura’s concentration post-death line is distinctly abnormal, much less dense than in the Resting Abyss, yet the number of undead creatures here is far beyond comparison.”

Then Anthony gasped, “Oh no, a surge of breath of death!”

Everyone internally cursed, realizing that if things were as they suspected, this current surge would increase the concentration of the breath of death on the surface, making it easier for the god with such power to gather the aura. If he could spawn a hundred or two Lords of Mourning…

Neegriss immediately grew anxious, “Quickly, find the switch to stop the surge of breath of death.”

Anthony, however, shook his head, “Find the switch, yes, but don’t stop it yet. Let the breath of death spread.”

“Why?” Feiti asked, perplexed.

“If the breath of death diffuses, but a certain area remains particularly thin…” Anthony stopped mid-sentence, but everyone understood his implication, their eyes lighting up with realization.

Having formulated a plan, Negriss looked at Balu and asked, “What do we do with him? Lock him up again? It’s a pity the Eternal Coffin is shattered.”

If Balu had betrayed the Monarch, they would have crushed him without hesitation, but from his performance, not only had he not betrayed the Monarch, he seemed fiercely loyal.

It’s just that His Majesty hadn’t informed him when shirking duties, leading him to believe that the king had changed.

Under such circumstances, he could not be killed, otherwise how would they explain it to His Majesty? But there seemed to be no good way to imprison him now– the Eternal Coffin was broken, and nothing else could contain a Mourning Soul.

Durken objected with dissatisfaction, “Lord Negriss, what do you mean by that? Are you looking down on me?”

Waving the Gold-touch Stick, he tapped the largest piece of the shattered Eternal Coffin, which immediately took flight, circling around the other scattered pieces, which in turn adhered to the larger piece, fitting together into a whole.

Still cracked, but now whole, the Eternal Coffin returned to Durken’s hands.

Anthony marveled, “Every time I see Lord Durken in action, it’s like watching magic, truly miraculous.”

Negriss scoffed, “What’s so miraculous? You find it amazing because you don’t understand it. He’s just picked up the pieces off the ground and put them back together, no different from assembling blocks, it’s not at all miraculous, and it’s not even fully repaired.”

Durken, unconcerned, said, “Alchemy is, after all, just arcane magic. A divine artifact can only be repaired by a god. Lord, please infuse it with Divine Power.”

The Eternal Coffin was a Divine Artifact of the Goddess of Redemption. In the hands of a deity, it would never be damaged because it was a creation of Divine Power; it functioned through Divine Power, not just as a stone coffin.

Ange carefully touched it with a finger, infusing Divine Power. The cracks on the divine coffin glowed momentarily and then merged together. When the light faded, the cracks had disappeared without a trace.

Ange suddenly realized, divine artifacts were indeed creations of Divine Power…

As for creations of Divine Power, Ange was not unfamiliar. In the Consciousness Space of the God of Light, he had already manifested many things. To some extent, they were also creations of Divine Power, albeit at a consciousness level.

But for the divine, to conceive is to create.

Using the Eternal Coffin, they re-sealed Balu and turned their attention again to the Body of Mourning.

“What shall we do with it? It’s worth a Starburst Array. Should we really hand it over to the Sorcerer Alliance in exchange for a Starburst Array?”

PS: This is a long chapter. Lately, there have been too many troubles; a lackluster effort might suffice to write a few thousand words. Bad luck through and through–I wish everyone good health. With a healthy body, even if misfortune strikes, you can still run, unlike me with my swollen foot–it’s been several days, and I can hardly run at all.