My Mother Has a System but Won't Use It

97  The Boy of Bones

Back in his room, the sword in Han Li's hands shone like a red pearl, as if it was burning with blood inside its ancient physical constraints.

Han Li sat there as a large amount of information streamed into his head.

Yang Wei.

He was a very normal kid of the Bone Clan.

A very, very normal kid—of the Bone Clan.

Bone Clan was only some weeks away from the Southern Lust City, situated under a gigantic gorge in a gloomy place called the Bone City—which was solely ruled by the said clan.

Having been born with the usual Life Dao Transformation Path Spark that all of the Bone Clan members had—The Bone Spark—he was treated like any other kid of the clan.

Which even made Han Li raise an eyebrow.

At the age of three, the pale-eyed youth was thrown into a dark room filled with the bones of his ancestors and required to get an appetite for them. And then, like all the other youths, the boy ate the bones daily to survive.

2 years he spent in the dark room. Only left out once every week to let his body be bathed by the sun so as not to let him lose health.

Or so the shadowy people had said, who the tender boy couldn't remember the face of.

After that, he was let out, alongside 30 other kids of the same batch as him. He, alongside the 29 others, was then told to walk through the 'path of hardship' by the age of 13, before they were to have their first Awakening.

A path laid by needles, one through hot oil, and the last one, a path that walked through a horde of centipedes.

Yang Wei walked past all of them in merely two more years.

He was a cold young man who didn't care for pain.

Only the first path took him time; most of the time, he fainted. But once he could endure it and all the last attempt's wounds were mended, he walked through the trials like a breeze and settled his name.

He was allowed to spend the rest of the years in normal training.

Yang Wei, named the beautiful hollow bone by the blurry-faced adults, was not allowed to eat the four foundational Resources to build a top-tier mortal body, and worked, wetting his bones, drinking his own coughed blood back—he trained.

Mostly, it was easy training. Just enduring the hot burns of the oil and so on.

He attained the perfect body for a mortal by age twelve, even though he had lost his ability to speak at this point and become a 'beautiful hollow bone' in all its meaning. He was hollow, the killing machine that the clan was slowly building up for a day to come.

19:51

At age 13, he was made to eat a weird-looking worm, and his Bone Spark Awakened for the first time. Like most of the Life Dao Sparks, it was just of Low Talent.

But eating the bones of the living was enough for him to improve his talent. He fed on the animals the family provided him—he ate their hot and raw bones as two men held the wolf or dog at bay.

It was the ability of all Life Dao Sparks, unlimited life potential. But for Yang Wei, it was a curse.

At age 15, he was a Sacred Talent of the Bone Clan. He was thrown into the city's brothel to learn resistance to seduction.

Twelve dead girls did the deed.

He no longer was prey for seduction either.

He also started to train in the path of spears. Spears made out of bones could jutt out from an Evolved Bone Clan Cultivator's body; it was to be taught early to stabilize their evolutions.

Their path ahead clear.

At age 18, he Awakened for the third time, and his vision expanded.

He became a Mortal Master at the way of Spears by age 21. His spear could react to anything and everything at his reaction speed, and he was like a feral beast as someone pushed him into the wolf den near the city—left there to train youths like him.

He ate 20 little wolves that day.

Age 25.

That was when he was called into a dark room inside the Bone Clan and given a dark piece of rotten flesh to eat. He didn't hesitate and ate it.

It was then that the Spirit of the clan's ancient ancestor, a woman with a voice bewitching enough to leave men moaning, entered his mind. What was she?

He didn't know.

Why was she inside him?

He didn't know.

But the more days passed with her inside him, the more emotions that started to build up in his hollow shell. He ate many things from then on.

Especially, the Bone Clan's amount of new infants reduced day by day.

The Spirit taught him the way of cultivation and guided him from inside. He became more proficient by the day. HE ate the four magical resources meant to improve the body to complete that last minor itch.

Since only then could he be entirely sure his body didn't lack.

At age 29.

He Evolved. He had a sound mind now, one unmarred by the devouring hollow deep within him. He was a boy full of confidence.

And the Spirit inside him?

It could only grow silent by the day.

It was being assimilated into the boy instead of the boy assimilating into it as was planned at the start. Someday soon, the boy would eat it.

Like he had done many before.

The Spirit was desperate, so it asked the boy in one mind the moment the boy evolved: "If you do not assimilate me and help me revive, I will give you the Transcendence Orb that I absorbed at my time. Nobody can take it out from others, but mine is different. I am not a human like you or the other Transcendents, I am of a different race. I am a Spirit Being. I will give my Orb to you!"

That, along with the mirrors the women had left behind all over the world before her death, alongside the rightful ownership to the masterless Bone clan that was 100% loyal to the spirit, was enough to convince him.

There, they became a team.

And on the same day… Han Li's red eyes shone with a profound glint as the information about the mirror and his other facts that led them to believe his weirdness was shown to him alongside the legendary beginnings of the Bone King Life Stealer Yang Wei.

"So that little mirror was the reason…" he murmured.

The anxious mother-in-law, sleeping Yue Li, and the rather tense Liyue who was looking at him with worry. All of them were wondering about the earlier drama.

Han Li looked at them as the final bit of information about the so-called Spirit and Yang Wei flashed in his mind. 'No wonder he was trying to touch me…' Han Li's smile grew casual.

An unknown enemy and an enemy he knew everything about was different.

His heart calmed down as all of Yang Wei's little weaknesses flittered through his head. It's like how he liked fighting without a spear taken out unless he was pushed to the limit.

Like how it was just a bluff that he could escape a Power Born.

But the information he gleaned was still from a third-person perspective instead of delving into the boy's thoughts and it was rather fragmented and only showed the important moments that changed his life's path.

So, he couldn't tell all of the information about him. But for someone as experienced as Han Li, and the frequent mumbles he heard in the records. Of the boy muttering Spirit that and this, it was enough for him to deduce.

But unfortunately, he couldn't tell what kind of Magic Power he was training. Updat𝒆d fr𝒐m nov𝒆lb(i)n.c(o)m

Unlike Ethereals, Transformation Path cultivators could only have one Magic Power throughout their lives. And that Magic Power could only evolve with the cultivator growing to higher Stages but it could never change.

If Yang Wei chose one Life Dao Magic Power at the Evolution Stage, that would be the power he would have all throughout his life.

'Now that I think about it, Yang Wei's Magic Power was never revealed last time. I wonder what it is… moreover…' Han Li began to grow serious.

The trials and tribulations the boy had gone through might have been impressive for a youth, even more than he had endured at that age in any of his lives, but for the current Han Li, those were child's play.

But one thing made him worried.

What was this… Spirit?

He had never heard of anything like that, ever.

And what is the Bone Clan creating such an army for when it was obvious that the world was currently in a peaceful era? And if it was for something later on, why hadn't he heard anything significant about them in the future?

They wouldn't be making an army with this level of rigidness to gain one or two decent evolved, right?

What was this mysterious Spirit's actual goal?

'Oh, Yang Wei,' Han Li smirked as the red light in the Life Sword vanished. He could feel Yang Wei was nothing normal.

But he smirked. He was quite an interesting boy to test his own talents against.