Negris underestimated the desperation of the hungry people for food. Even though he specified a limit to the number of worshippers, the Undead Temple was still overcrowded with civilians who'd rushed to the news. When they heard that only fervent faith could receive the king's aid, everyone eagerly flocked to the altar, intending to show the king their devout belief in the Undead or their hunger.
The crowd nearly made the neglected temple collapse; even the desperate shouts from the Minotaur aunt's family could not maintain order.
The ever-sweeping Silver Skeleton grasped its broomstick backward, the broom's end wrapped in a black mist which transformed into a large double-handed ax. This is the uniqueness of Soul Armor - it can alter its form to serve different purposes.
If you're idle and interested in practicing, it's feasible to form around a hundred and eighty or so versions. With practice, one can shift between them rapidly.
Holding the ax, the Silver Skeleton jumped onto a stone pillar beside the altar, bowed its body, and let out a silent scream from its soul.
The hustle-bustle crowd was unable to hear this wail. They only felt an icy soul-freezing energy surge through their bodies, similar to a chill running down their neck, only tens of times stronger.
Most people froze, shivering.
With the Silver Skeleton's shriek, a fence made out of white bones emerged from the ground of the temple that originally didn't have walls. This fence enclosed the Undead Temple's perimeter.
After being enraged by the Silver Skeleton and encircled by the bone fence, the crowd was reminded that this was the Undead Temple, a resting place for the Undead, not a place they could recklessly create a ruckus.
They obediently formed a queue to worship individually at the altar. When they revealed their sincere faith in the Undead, Ange felt a connection between himself and the worshippers, using the Undead Fire as a bridge, forming a Soul Network.
At this moment, Ange could even hear the inner voices of the others. It was an extraordinary sensation.
Among these prayers, most were 'please give me food'; a few were 'let me live forever'; occasional ones included 'please kill the neighbor's cunning vixen,' 'make the Resting Wind disappear,' etc. This showed Ange how complicated the inner thoughts of Life Species were.
Besides hearing all these voices, the most crucial task for Ange was converting these Faith Elemental Forces. This gave him a feeling of returning to the underground city, guiding the energy into his own body relentlessly.
A Soul Crystal is a solidification of energy produced by an Undead's soul which can be reversed to supplement the soul. Other Undead could also use it, establishing its fundamental equivalence, allowing it to be used as a currency. Any Undead would recognize its value.
Ange could use these energies to supplement his own soul. Previously, due to the need to relocate food, Ange didn't dare use it at will. Having acquired so much now, with the food to Soul Crystal ratio having reached one to one hundred, he could use it freely.
As an endless stream of Soul Energy poured into him, Ange only felt his own rapidly growing strength.
Sometimes change is rather abrupt. The Soul Fire suddenly began to shrink violently. All the flames surged inwards, forming a pulsating sphere. In the process of expansion and contraction, purer streams of Soul Energy coursed through his entire skeletal structure.
Negris noticed Ange's condition and was taken aback. "Soul Heart? I knew your soul was too solid and not like an Ashbone Skeleton. Nearly reaching the Soul Heart stage, soon your skeleton will transform into a golden structure, making you the Golden Skeleton King."
The Golden Skeleton King? It seems pretty powerful. His creator, the City Lord, is a Golden Skeleton King. Does this mean he could create other skeletons like the lord?
...
The Undead Temple's rituals thus became the norm. Devout worshippers who could faithfully offer their Soul Flame were rewarded with one jin of food. They could come every day. Ange transferred around ten tons or twenty thousand jin of food, enough for the temple's consumption for a period.
Not everyone was devout, and not everyone truly believed in the Undead. Among these two hundred people, approximately one hundred could offer their Soul Flame. Those whose belief was not firm wouldn't come again.
After a round of screening, the regular believers amounted to around two hundred people. This was a rather considerable number given the total population of the underground city was just about five thousand people and excluding some races and groups that had their own beliefs, along with some Undead, the total was even less.
Regarding the sudden rise of the Undead Temple, the management level of the underground city had considerable dispute. The Succubus Rina even proposed to prevent believers from attending worship to avoid instability.
However, as soon as she stated this proposal, she was angrily rebuked by Aisike: "Are you mad? I am also a follower of the Undead. Are you going to seal me off, too?"
Aisike is a Necromancer. How can any Necromancer not believe in the Undead?
Rina's heart skipped a beat. She'd completely forgotten about this and what's worse, the identity of the City Lord. The lord is an old Witch and is an Undead himself.
Proposing to seal off the Undead Temple on Witch's territory, Rina thought she must have been mad to make such a proposal.
Feilin, who knew she didn't mean to, consoled her. "Rina had good intentions, merely fearing the sudden appearance of an unstable element that might disrupt the current stability."
Rina nodded like a pecking chicken. Having recently joined this underground city, she wasn't very aware of the Undead Temple. But now she's understood - the Undead Temple is a place to worship the Undead.
Feilin, who knew the inside story, said: "There's no need to worry. The reopening of the temple may well become the most stable pillar of the underground city. Plus, they're continuously distributing grains from the temple which can mitigate our food shortage. It's a fantastic thing. Just pretend it isn't happening and don't disturb them."
Klegg, who sat on the other side, revealed a smile that read 'just as I thought.' He knew it all along. Feilin suddenly brought back loads of grain a few days ago, and now with the sudden reopening of the temple and its distribution of food, anyone with a brain could link the two events. Only the brainless Succubus could be blabbering nonsense.
When everyone reached a consensus, Feilin changed the topic. "How's the idea of using Luminous Moss as a supplement light source for crops coming along?"
Aisike and Rina gazed at each other and lastly turned to Klegg.
Klegg replied: "It failed. It couldn't grow in the fields. Planting it too far would make the light from the Luminous Moss too weak to provide lighting. Only by planting it between two rows of crops can it survive due to its need for a wet environment, which it can't survive in ordinarily. Overwatering will result in root rot and the crops will get damp too. Master, I think this approach is unfeasible."
"Oh? Is that so? But, I've seen someone succeed with that." said Feilin.
"Impossible." The intelligent Goblin denied categorically: "Master, don't tell me you've been deceived by magic? Someone used magic to maintain crop growth temporarily to fool you. Master, you mustn't be fooled."
Facing Klegg's doubts, Feilin went to the temple first and secured Ange's approval, then took the entire management team to Ange's Luminous Moss field.
"So, that's how it works. By using different substrates and broken stone as a drainage system to drain excess water. My goodness, such a simple method allowing two distinctly humid-demanding things to grow in the same field. It really is remarkable," Klegg conceded, admitting defeat with admiration.
"Master Feilin, the owner of this field possesses farming techniques far superior to ours. Could he possibly be a druid? Can he come help us manage and improve our fields?"
"In your dreams," Feilin smirked in satisfaction and replied, "You all can't stay here for long, so take a good look, record the details and then leave. This area has already been declared a restricted zone by me. Without permission, even I cannot enter."
He really was clueless when it came to technology and was frequently stumped and silenced by Klegg's professional questions. Now, he had finally gained the upper hand. See, Klegg did not outshine everyone else in all technical aspects.
Everyone's nerves were on end after hearing that there were restricted zones in the Underground City, which even the City Lord couldn't freely access.
At this moment, a soldier ran over to inform Aisike, "Sir, a plague has broken out in the Upper City Zone. More than a dozen people have diarrhea and are vomiting. A corpse was found in the pond."
Hearing the words "Upper City Zone", Aisike's expression grew serious. He asked, "Has it been quarantined and sealed off? Where is the body?"
The Upper City Zone is a wealthy sector and is located at the top of the slope in the Underground City. Water flows downwards, meaning the higher the area, the cleaner the water.
In this dark, damp Underground City that has never seen sunlight, with its incomplete drainage system, human and animal waste, as well as various other types of sewage, flow freely. The lower one goes, the worse the sanitary conditions, with the risk of plague spreading increasing.
The Underground City already has a well-established emergency plan in place: to isolate and seal off the area, then have a mage treat those afflicted. This generally manages to control the epidemic within a short span of time.
What worried Aisike, though, was that the epidemic had broken out in the most hygienic part of the city, the Upper City Zone. The sewage from homes would naturally flow downhill toward the lower parts of the city. Only a dozen cases had been discovered now, but they had no idea of how many more were lurking undetected.
A group of people hurriedly arrived at the site in the Upper City Zone where the body had been found. A rotten corpse lay on the ground. Lena took one look and hurriedly turned away, nauseated.
Feilin examined the corpse closely and seemed surprised, "The time of death should only be two days ago, so why has the body decayed so much? There is also no trace of a soul left behind. Something's fishy."
Hearing Feilin, Lena boldly mustered up her courage to take a second look at the corpse. The sight forced her to ask, "My Lord, could you open up his abdominal cavity?"
Upon doing so, everyone's faces turned pale: "A Demon Knot? It's those bastards from Demon Valley."
The emergence of Demon Valley and the outbreak of the plague made the whole Underground City fall into a tense atmosphere. All living creatures were ordered to stay indoors, and nobody was allowed to leave their residence. Only the Undead could move around freely.
This was an even more effective measure than what humans would have done in their society. After all, the Undead couldn't get infected by the plague, which allowed the society to function normally.
Ange noticed that the temple has quietened down. All the people were quarantined in their homes and no worshippers were visiting. The Undead Temple had reverted to its former desolate state.
The Silver Skeleton continued its tireless cleaning. Everything within the boundaries of the temple was swept meticulously clean, without a speck of dust left.
The only thing that had changed was that ever since Ange began forming the Soul Heart, every time the Silver Skeleton encountered him, it would stop working, stand up holding the broom, lower its head and bow respectfully.
Ordinary Skeleton Zombies, upon encountering another of their kind with a more powerful soul, would run away – only those that were programmed with rules would act this way.
Ange attempted to communicate with it, yet he only managed to elicit very basic responses such as 'cleaning' and 'quiet'. Logically, the Silver Skeleton should have possessed a certain level of intelligence and should have been able to communicate much more than it was doing..
With no one coming over, Ange didn't mind as he preferred the quiet. Meanwhile, there had been major changes near the temple - the entire vicinity had been densely filled with Luminous Moss.
Initially, he wanted to plant the moss within the temple's boundary, but it would be swept away by the Silver Skeleton overnight.
Due to good care and a suitable environment, the Luminous Moss thrived and multiplied rapidly, quickly filling up all available space around the temple.
After the quarantine measures, Ange had more time to take care of the Luminous Moss. Unfortunately, there was very little soil near the temple. The minor amount that was available was an aggregation of dust with complicated components and didn't contain much nutrition; it couldn't be used to grow crops the way a proper soil field could.
But he didn't care, as long as he could grow the Luminous Moss, that was enough. After all, the Minotaur family even ate moss; the Luminous Moss could be considered a type of food, he supposed.
The Luminous Moss didn't require soil or sunlight, so Ange decided to bring in stone slabs, stacked them layer upon layer, and planted the moss in between the layers.
What the Underground City lacked was not stone slabs. Certain areas contained shale which, with just a gentle tap, would produce neat stone slabs.
After constructing a seven- or eight-layer rack, he planted Luminous Moss between each layer. These didn't require light to grow but just the right amount of humidity.
On these stone slabs, Ange planted the sturdiest, fastest-growing, and largest moss plants that had been specifically selected.
Selective breeding is a fundamental skill in farming. If he didn't even know this, Ange wouldn't have been able to farm for thousands of years, as the seeds would have degenerated a long time ago.
Just as Ange was quietly growing his moss, the sound of hurried footsteps approached from a distance. In the lead was a teenage boy, who carried a four or five-year-old girl in his arms. He was sprinting barefooted, with blood flowing from his foot where it seemed he'd stepped on a sharp stone.
However, the boy seemed to be oblivious to the pain as he ran towards the temple with all his might. Close on his heels were four or five skeleton soldiers brandishing weapons. They were about to catch up and cut the boy down, as their orders were to kill any living creature that moved around freely.
As the temple came into view, hope shone in the boy's eyes. He whispered, "Please save my sister, Undead Lord."
With his words, a Soul Flame, thicker by at least ten times than that of an average human, shot towards the distant altar.
However, with just faith alone, it was impossible to overcome physical limitations. Just as they were about to enter the temple's boundary, the skeleton soldiers caught up. One of them swung its sword at the boy's back.
Ange had been attracted by the thick Soul Flame. Seeing the boy on the brink of being hit, he subconsciously shouted out, "Roar!"
He wasn't quite sure why he chose to shout 'roar'. Maybe he had been influenced by spending too much time roaring at Little Zombie. All he wanted to do was halt the skeleton soldier's attack.
The roar, transmitting through the soul's vibrations, startled the skeleton soldier trying to strike the boy. It blitzed, looking at Ange in terror.
An undead king, who had formed the Soul Heart and was about to transform into a Golden Skeleton, was bellowing. It was more than enough to scare low-level skeletons out of their wits.
Not much slower than the sound, a figure rushed out, howling madly. It rammed into the stunned skeleton soldier, sending it flying. It smashed onto the ground, breaking into pieces instantly.</
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