Chapter 1

Ang was awakened by the pecking sound. His soul slowly ignited, and the fluctuations radiated from his hollow eye sockets, touching and sensing whatever they encountered—this was how a skeleton observed the outside world.

His soul extended out, landing on the ribs of his chest, where the pecking sound was coming from. A small bird was pecking at the damaged area of his ribs, picking out the seeds embedded there and eating them.

Ang remained still in his original position, allowing the bird to clean his body. This was a good thing for him; if the seeds got wet and sprouted, they would expand and damage his bones.

After the bird flew away, Ang got up from the ground and examined his body.

It's damaged a lot more, I need to replace it...

After a winter of hibernation, Ang's skeleton was more damaged than it was last year. If he didn't replace it, it might affect his mobility.

But every time he thought about this, Ang would turn his head in distress and look at the palace behind him, which loomed like a mountain. Over the years, only the king's palace had well-preserved bones, and he would need to go inside to find replacements. This was something that troubled him.

Even though the Undying King had been missing for a thousand years, the lingering authority in Ang's soul still made him reluctant to approach the palace.

I'll just make do this year, and think about it next year... Ang dismissed the idea of going to the palace to find replacement bones and walked toward the nearby fields.

The place where he had risen was a hay stack, which served as his home for hibernation and shelter from the sun. In the past, during the daytime when the sun was intense, he couldn't withstand the sunlight and would hide in the hay stack to rest, waiting until the sun set before coming out to work. Nocturnal activity was the norm for undead beings.

In the past, when he had companions, they would burrow into the hay stack and crawl out covered in dry grass at dusk.

Ang found this to be problematic; the hay stack was damp and dark, which would breed insects and corrode the bones.

So, Ang would bundle the hay into stacks, creating a semi-enclosed space, and then burrow into it. This way, he would be protected from rain and sunlight, and his bones would be in much better condition than his companions'.

In recent years, he had become less concerned about the sun, but the habits he had formed still influenced him, keeping him in the routine of resting during the day and working at night. It was now dusk, and it was time for his hard work to begin.

Ang was a small skeleton farmer responsible for tending to fifty acres of farmland near the Palace of Rest. He had been doing this for 1,100 years.

In the past, the entire farm had sixty skeletons like Ang, each responsible for fifty acres of farmland. Ang was just one of them, with the only special thing about him being that he had lived longer than the others.

Most skeletons did not maintain their bones, liked to drive away birds, and enjoyed burrowing into hay stacks. As a result, their bones would deteriorate and become unusable after a dozen or so years, collapsing on the ground.

Occasionally, a higher-level undead being would pass by in the sky, notice that a field had become abandoned, and realize that the responsible skeleton had decayed. They would report it, and a new skeleton would be assigned to the field after a few days.

Of course, the abandoned field would not yield any crops that year, but it didn't matter because undead beings didn't need to eat. The crops grown here were stored for the purpose of entertaining human envoys when needed.

However, with the poor relationship between the Undead Empire and humans, it might be centuries before any human visited.

But what did it matter? The cost was minimal, just sixty skeletons, and maintaining the farm's operation was effortless. The higher-ups in the Undead Empire had even forgotten about the existence of this farm, and it had continued to operate by inertia.

In this farm that had been maintained by inertia, no one had ever noticed Ang, the skeleton who had lived much longer than the others. Higher-level intelligent undead beings rarely came by, and since he hadn't decayed, no one had come to dispose of him. Moreover, he had discovered a method to extend his lifespan.

Some skeletons would decay and lose their mobility, but not all parts of their bodies would decay. Some would lose an arm, others a spine, but most would have their feet damaged.

Taking advantage of the fact that these skeletons were lying on the ground and unable to move, Ang would dismantle the still intact parts and replace his own decayed areas.

This went on for over a hundred years. His companions had been replaced several times, but Ang was still holding on, albeit in a dilapidated state. Then, in the 139th year, when he awoke from his winter hibernation, he found that the entire world had changed.

The surroundings had become absolutely silent, with no wailing spirits, no shrieking malevolent spirits, and no higher-level undead beings flying overhead. Even his companions on the farm were gone.

Ang didn't realize what had happened. He continued his routine of weeding, plowing, and sowing for a week before he noticed that the other areas of the farm were all abandoned.

Have more skeletons decayed?

Following the usual procedure, he immediately set out to find replacement bones. After searching through all the abandoned areas, Ang found fifty-nine skeletons that were not severely decayed, with their soul fires extinguished.

At this point, Ang finally felt that something was wrong, but as a low-level skeleton farmer, he couldn't figure out what. The discovery of fifty-nine intact skeletons made him very happy.

Using the method he had invented, Ang stored these skeletons in the hollows he had created with hay stacks. Over the next two hundred years, he managed to survive by replacing his bones with these skeletons.

During these two hundred years, Ang continued his work, sowing and harvesting. The crops he harvested were stored, with the seeds saved and the rest dragged to the edge of the farm and thrown down a large pit.

The pit was covered with necrotic soil, which could preserve crops for a very long time. The space inside was vast, and if it were up to Ang alone, it might take a thousand years to fill it.

Day by day, the bones eventually ran out, and the bones stored in the hollows also slowly decayed.

When the last reserve of bones was used up, one of Ang's legs broke, forcing him to limp out of the farm he hadn't left for three hundred years.

The entire Undead Empire was silent, with not a single soul in sight. The ground was littered with decayed and weathered bones, which had been dead for at least two hundred years.

Why is this happening? Ang walked through this desolate land in confusion, searching for bones to replace his own, eventually making his way to the palace.

The Palace of Rest was the supreme existence of the Undead Empire, the resting place of the Undying King, who governed souls and immortality. It exerted a natural pressure on lower-level undead beings.

Ang wandered around for several days before adapting to this pressure and entering the grounds of the Palace of Rest. The air here was thick with the scent of death, and the necrotic soil was deep, which could preserve objects for a longer time.

In the necrotic soil, Ang found some stronger and more durable skeletons. If Ang were a low-level dry bone skeleton, these strong and durable bones would have belonged to higher-level gray bone or white bone skeletons.

Unfortunately, these once-strong skeletons had lost their souls and were now just piles of bones. If not for being buried in the necrotic soil, they would have decayed like the others outside.

Ang collected a pile of bones, pieced them together into a complete skeleton, and transferred his soul to it, transforming into a higher-level gray bone skeleton.

Although he wanted to create a higher-level silver skeleton, he found his soul too weak to control it and had to give up.

Thus, Ang returned to the farm, continuing his routine of resting during the day and working at night, until his bones decayed again.