Chapter 68: Joining Forces
After finishing his warning, the Bone-Picking Child turned around and drifted into the air on his own.
Lin Huai let out a long, shaky breath, her heart still racing. For a moment, she had genuinely believed she was about to be killed on the spot by an NPC.
Before she could fully settle her nerves, a sudden gust of wind swept beneath her boots. A soft, glowing white light wrapped around her feet, lifting her into the air. Gently suspended above the chasm, she followed the Bone-Picking Child down toward the massive mound of bodies filling the sinkhole.
When they touched down at the very peak of the corpse mountain, the light beneath her boots remained active, keeping her feet hovering just above the shifting skeletons.
The Bone-Picking Child looked back at her, holding out a small, half-skeletal hand. “You’re down here now. Where are the crystals you promised?”
Lin Huai quickly retrieved twenty Yin energy crystals from her inventory and pressed them into his cold palm.
“See? You’re the Bone-Picking Child, Little Bone, and my nickname is Bone Ashes, which makes me Little Bone too,” she said with a bright smile. “It feels like we were destined to meet! How about we become friends?”
The Bone-Picking Child accepted the crystals, his pale, milky eyes shifting suspiciously. “You living humans are the best at tricking children. Are you trying to butter me up so you can steal from me?”
Lin Huai laughed softly.
Even though she was standing across from a terrifying, half-rotted spirit child, his childish suspicion carried an odd innocence that made her soften her voice. “Little Bone, I genuinely just want to be your friend. That way, whenever I visit the Mass Grave in the future, I can come see you more often.”
The child tilted his head to the side, as if his stiffened neck made thinking a slow, difficult chore.
“A man came by before and said he wanted to be my friend too,” he muttered, his voice raspy. “But he was a liar. He stole three unbroken spirit bones that I cherished, and he dragged away a huge pile of corpses to refine them for himself. Are you in league with him?”
A sharp thought flashed through Lin Huai’s mind.
She probed carefully, “That man… do you remember his name?”
The Bone-Picking Child nodded. “I do. Whether they walk as living dead or lie as rotting corpses, I can read the life and name of every soul down here.”
His milky eyes darkened with spite. “His name was Chen Feng. He was an evil, greedy man. Just like you, he carried a coffin on his vehicle, though his coffin was nowhere near as fine as yours.”
Hearing Chen Feng’s name spoken aloud by an NPC made Lin Huai’s heart hammer against her ribs. It felt as though she had stumbled upon a terrifying, hidden truth of this world.
A cold bead of sweat trickled down her spine.
Back in the arena, she had verified with her own eyes that Chen Feng did not possess a coffin in this life. Furthermore, throughout her entire previous life until the day she died, she had never heard of a second spirit coffin existing in the game.
Forcing her racing pulse to steady, Lin Huai stared at the child, her voice tight with tension. “That Chen Feng you mentioned… when did he come here to steal from you? Was it a few days ago, or a month ago?”
The question seemed to strain the boy’s clouded mind once more.
He tilted his head, staring blankly into the distance for a long time.
Suddenly, his pale pupils rolled back toward the sky. “I seem to… not know Chen Feng after all… In my head, there are strange, tangled memories…”
As he spoke, he turned his small frame and reached an open palm toward the edge of the pit above, where the green jade coffin rested beside her hearse.
A tremendous pulling force erupted from his hand. With a low whoosh, Lin Huai’s jade coffin was yanked across the void, floating steadily beside his fingers in mid-air.
The Bone-Picking Child reached out, pressing his bony knuckles flat against the smooth stone lid.
The instant his fingers made contact with the jade, his dazed, empty look vanished, replaced by an expression of pure, shadowy fury.
“This coffin belongs to you!” he hissed, his voice trembling with rage. “Chen Feng took your coffin and brought it here to trick me! He even dodged the cycle of reincarnation and forced his way back into this game!”
His small fists clenched tightly. “It makes me so angry! He never gave me the skull he promised in our pact! I will never let him get away with it!”
Lin Huai stood in absolute shock. Touching her coffin had triggered the child to remember events from her previous life!
Seeing his furious glare, Lin Huai’s anger flared alongside his. “You’re right! He cheated you, and he betrayed me too, Little Bone! I can help you track him down. I can personally bring his skull right to your hands! Why don’t we team up?”
The Bone-Picking Child looked up at her, curious. “How could we team up? I am bound here; I cannot leave the Mass Grave. Only when I sense that his life is about to end can I manifest at his side to claim the skull he owes me.”
Lin Huai let out a cold chuckle. “I’m free to drive anywhere. Once I leave this place, I will hunt him down, beat him within an inch of his life, and wait for you to arrive and rip his skull clean off.”
The child gave a firm, solemn nod. “Good. Then I accept you as my friend. We will join forces and take our revenge together.”
With that, he held out his hands, offering back the crystals she had just given him. “Since we are friends now, I’m returning these Yin crystals to you.”
Lin Huai gently pushed his cold hand back. “Keep them, Little Bone. I have plenty of these. In fact, as long as you can help me with one small favor, I’ll be able to gather even more Yin crystals.”
“What kind of favor?”
“Let’s set up a regular trade,” Lin Huai offered. “You help me gather the stray corpses from the Mass Grave and load them into my coffin so I can haul them away. In exchange, I’ll pay you in pure Yin crystals.”
Little Bone agreed without a moment’s hesitation.
He waved his small hand, and the heavy jade lid slid smoothly aside. A thick cluster of broken remains rose into the air, floating straight from the pit into the dark interior of the casket.
“The Mass Grave will never run out of bodies,” Little Bone murmured indifferently. “These are all unclaimed dead. They were ordinary and unremarkable in life, and their bones carry no special power in death. You can take as many as you want.”
Lin Huai had not expected him to be so generous.
She promptly pulled out ten more Yin crystals and handed them over. “Those first twenty were a gift to celebrate our new friendship. These ten are payment for this coffin full of bodies.”
The Bone-Picking Child stared at the gleaming pile of crystals in his hands, surprised by her generosity. Not only had she not tried to cheat him like the other man, but she had also paid him handsomely.
A rare hint of bashfulness showed on his half-rotted face. “Sister Lin… would you like to come visit my cave for a bit? I can show you my private collection! I’ve picked out a lot of beautiful, rare bones over the years.”
An unexpected invitation like this was a goldmine—how could Lin Huai possibly say no?
She nodded eagerly, reaching out to take his skeletal little hand without the slightest hint of disgust. “That sounds wonderful! Let’s go take a look right now.”
Lin Huai drifted alongside Little Bone through the subterranean air, the jade coffin trailing quietly behind them like an obedient shadow.
The Bone-Picking Child’s home was carved into a deep cavern set into the far wall of the sinkhole.
At the entrance stood a towering pyramid made entirely of stacked human skulls. Scattered across the ground nearby were various grim trinkets crafted from bone and sinew—human-skin drums, polished skull cups, and hollowed-out skull balls…
Little Bone led her past the morbid pyramid and into the tunnel, muttering, “Those toys out front are boring, Sister Lin. They’re just ordinary bones I put together whenever I was bored. All my real treasures are kept inside. Come in, hurry!”
Following him deeper into the cave, Lin Huai realized that the cavern opened up into an entirely separate underground realm.
The main chamber was vast and airy, filled with smooth, naturally formed stone grottos.
In the deepest alcove rested a small bed woven from hundreds of polished human femurs—evidently Little Bone’s sleeping quarters.
The surrounding grottos were lined with sturdy display shelves made from pale, gray-white shinbones. Resting inside each individual cubby was a single, carefully preserved bone of varying size.
Some glowed with a faint crimson sheen, others radiated a dull golden light, but the vast majority were pitch-black: delicate finger bones, curved vertebrae, and slender ribs, all gleaming in different shades of deep, dark jade.
