The skeletons charged at us in seemingly endless waves. I began to wonder if the ruins had some way of summoning or creating them.

"We can't stay here or they'll overwhelm us," I shouted out.

"I clear path!" Meng Huo barked in response.

The ape slammed his fists into a nearby skeleton, crushing it into dust with a single blow. Then, he bellowed while beating his chest before charging directly ahead.

The skeletons swung their swords at him, but his momentum carried him through. Any of the undead unfortunate enough to be caught in his charge were smashed into dust while plenty of those on the sidelines were blasted away and stunned momentarily.

We all followed in his wake, escaping the encirclement using the path he'd created. On the way, we finished off any skeletons who'd managed to escape his wrath.

The walls of the ruins were tall enough that even the huge ape wasn't able to see over the tops. It meant we were advancing blindly. Even so, that was better than staying still and fighting without purpose.

I felt a powerful source of spiritual energy around the next corner, which I mentioned to the ape. He simply nodded and continued mowing down the skeletons in front of us.

Luckily they weren't very strong individually, which made clearing a path a simple affair. All of us were accumulating small cuts over time. Mine healed immediately, while the others weren't yet at a state where they required my assistance.

When we rounded the corner, what greeted us wasn't the treasure I'd expected but instead a veritable horde of skeletons. They all wielded broken swords and rusty armour.

Their eyes glowed red and the moment they spotted us, the entire horde rushed together at once. Meng Huo slid on his feet as he came to a sudden stop, smashing his fists into the ground to halt his momentum.

The rest of us spread out beside him, forming a line of our own to defend against the charging skeletons. "Don't worry about collateral damage, just smash them all," I yelled out.

I could always heal a nasty wound, but if we never defeated the army of the dead we wouldn't get the opportunity to rest. There was no way they were truly endless—there had to be a secret behind their animation which we could unravel.

As we fought, I used energy vision to inspect the skeleton's bodies. The bones were polished clean, no trace of rotten flesh remaining. Other than their glowing eyes and violent actions, there was no trace of life within.

However, every time one of the skeletons' skulls were smashed, as the light faded, a wisp of red would shoot towards a circle of stones located behind the undead horde. I thought back to the Great Garden Sage's energy body, giving me an idea.

Casting my senses further afield, I focused on that circle of stones. The red wisps returned to the circle each time a skeleton died, gathering in a pool of swirling and clashing red lights. Every so often, one of those lights would burst upwards, coming to a halt and hovering at about head height before advancing towards us.

"Every time we kill one of them, another is created to take its place," I shouted, informing the others of my discovery.

They grunted in acknowledgement but most were too busy fending off the skeletons to give me a proper response. Knowing that their efforts weren't getting them anywhere wasn't exactly an inspiring message.

However, I hadn't only brought them a problem. I had the solution. We'd already gained a little experience dealing with arrays and pesky immortal enemies.

Using what we'd learned fighting the sage and breaking into his cavern, I had an idea of how to take down these vicious skeletons. First, we needed to clear a path towards the circle that was bringing them to life.

A circle I assumed was an array, judging from the flowing lines of spiritual energy that lined the stones. A few of the red wisps would occasionally try to break out of the pool, but each time they crashed into a wall of energy that originated from the stone circle.

The longer we fought, the more ferocious our enemies became. Each death seemed to send the skeletons further into a berserker fury. The longer we waited the worse our situation would become.

"Meng Huo, I need you to clear a path again! If you take damage I can heal you, but we have to reach that circle," I shouted at the huge ape who was currently pounding two skeletons into the ground over and over.

He tossed the remains of their corpses at their allies before letting out a bellowing roar that stunned the closest skeletons. In that moment of hesitation he charged forwards, his arms swinging and blasting skeletons into the sky and the stone ruins each time.

He was a truly dependable locomotive. Following his lead, I ran through the now empty path towards the stone circle. The closer we got to the source of the skeletons, the fiercer they fought to repel us.

However, their brittle bones were no match for the powerful fists of our glorious ape leader. Every swing of his fists exploded one or two of them into dust.

The circle was reanimating them quickly, but it wasn't as fast as our efforts to demolish the undead. As we ran, the other members of the group cut down those skeletons who'd recovered enough to charge back into the path Meng Huo had formed.

We finally reached the circle. "I need you to defend me while I inspect the array! It won't be as easy as the last time," I told him, kneeling down and switching to energy vision.

The array appeared as a series of spiritual energy nodes, each with a different function. It was the same as the security array, which led me to realise this was simply how arrays appeared to my senses.

The various inscriptions served to create these nodes, each with a smaller function that formed the greater array and its purpose. Now I only needed to figure out which nodes would allow me to sever the cycle of reincarnation for the skeletons.

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Each time one of the wisps attempted to escape, there were two nodes which lit up alternately, depending which side of the net they tried to break through. Those two were the containment nodes, then.

Breaking them would allow all of the wisps to escape, hopefully stopping the array from forcing them into the skeletal bodies it was forming in the centre of the stone circle. How it was creating matter from nothing was another mystery, but one that I was less concerned with solving. Especially with our lives on the line.

Were these wisps souls? Or just clumps of energy given a purpose? I spotted three separate nodes that were constantly active, feeding energy into the circle every time a wisp was dragged upwards to be reborn.

I had two options for breaking the array. If I was a skilled formation master I would be able to do it with the proper methods, but I was no master. I could either break the containment and free the wisps or I could destroy the nodes which reincarnated them.

I decided to go with the first option. It might be less decisive, but if these trapped wisps were truly the souls of living beings, then I wanted to free them from their torture.

No one deserved to be trapped into such a pitiful state after their death. Previously I'd relied on the tortoise's precise energy attack to destroy the node. This time I wanted to attempt it myself.

Seeing the finesse with which the beasts controlled their qi made me rather envious. My control was better than my peers—healing required a more delicate touch than destroying—but it still had a long way to go.

Unlike the security node of the previous array which remained inert most of the time, only activating when it needed to protect the array, the containment nodes were constantly active.

They used more energy when a wisp attempted to break free, but there was a constant stream entering and leaving them to form the walls of energy keeping the wisps in. I gathered some qi, forming a sharp blade before piercing the stone circle and cutting into the node.

It split cleanly in half, offering no resistance. I saw the faint field of energy surrounding the wisps flicker. Two wisps immediately shot towards the opening I'd created, attempting to escape.

To my dismay, the moment I'd broken the node, a node which I'd ignored previously as it seemed to serve no function flared to life. A huge surge of spiritual energy exploded out from it and filled the node I'd cut, repairing it instantly.

The two wisps which had almost made it out found their path blocked by a solid wall, being shocked by the energy and tossed back into the swirling mass of wisps. That was a problem.

If the array had a self repair function, I wasn't sure I could destroy it. Not alone, at least.

Turning to my allies who were fighting viciously to defend me while I worked—a task made difficult by the fact skeletons would constantly appear in the circle behind their backs—I shouted out to the tortoise.

"I need you to help me with this. We have to destroy two nodes at the same time."

He nodded in understanding, stomping on the skull of a fallen skeleton before retreating to join me. I explained the situation to him and he stood on my right, preparing to strike the other containment node at the same moment I did.

I could've attempted to break the self-repair node, but given the sheer quantity of spiritual energy it employed I suspected that might cause an explosion big enough to kill or maim us all. I didn't want to take such a risk, so we were going with the—hopefully—safer option.

"On the count of three. When I say three, not before or after," I said, clarifying to prevent any silly mistakes. "One, two, and three!"

The instant I said three I cut into the containment node once again. In the corner of my eye I saw the tortoise firing a beam of qi at the other. I split mine in half as his disintegrated.

Immediately the faint sphere of energy which contained the wisps vanished. One wisp had been in the midst of an escape attempt and it met no resistance, shooting into the distance.

As soon as it left the area of the array the red faded to a gentle blue and the wisp began to float upwards. A sad smile crossed my face at that sight.

Sad because it confirmed my hypothesis that all of the wisps were souls trapped in this cycle of torture, but a smile because I had succeeded in freeing them. As soon as the other wisps realised that one of their comrades had escaped, they exploded outwards in all directions in a mad rush to be free.

A red wave shifted to blue as every single wisp was freed from the array. However, it was not truly broken. The self-repair node was only able to fix one node at a time, but after a few seconds it had managed to restore both containment nodes.

A few red wisps shot back into the prison as my allies slaughtered the skeletons still standing. I silently cursed.

"I was able to weaken the array quite a bit, but I don't think I can stop it completely without causing a huge backlash. Try to kill all of the skeletons as fast as you can. If I can free as many of them as possible the array won't be able to summon more," I called out.

Turning back to the tortoise, I said, "We need to do that one more time. That was perfect, but there are still too many skeletons left."

The beast simply nodded and waited for my signal. I watched as the horde of undead was whittled down rapidly through the combined efforts of our group. Not wanting to sit idly as they battled, I destroyed the skeletons which formed in the centre of the stone circle.

Unexpectedly, when the final skeleton was destroyed, the self repair node flared to life. Rather than a fix it sent a strand of energy to all of the nodes forming the reincarnation part of the array and they suddenly stopped working.

I wanted to scream. All of my effort had turned out to be pointless. All we had to do to deactivate the array was kill the skeletons? How simplistic…

Nonetheless I was glad that we'd managed to pass through yet another trial. "I guess it was easier than we expected," I chuckled, looking around at my allies who were recovering their strength.

I walked around the circle, reaching out a hand and healing their wounds in the blink of an eye. The gains in my cultivation were barely noticeable, but each time my dantian swelled a little, pushing at the edges of this realm.

"How do you do that?" Longma asked as I healed the antlered horse's cuts and broken rib. "I've seen the qi healing technique, but it is far weaker than this."

"Isn't it rude to ask another cultivator the secret of their techniques?" I chucked in response.

The horse snorted, half annoyed and half amused. "You are right, but I can't help but be curious with such an intriguing phenomenon right in front of me. Forgive my rudeness."

"It's fine." I dismissed his concerns with the wave of my hand. "If you're really that interested, then after we get out of here you should come and visit my sect. It's located on the border between the Cloudy Falls Sect and the Soaring Sword Sect, at a place called Million Flowers Celestial Peak. I welcome your visit."

"Perhaps I will take you up on that offer. A sect, you say? You grow more interesting with every moment," the horse-beast winnied.

"Well, now that the enemies are gone, we can search this place for treasures," Shuanghu said, gazing around the stone ruins with eager eyes.

After not gaining anything useful from our previous adventure, the white tiger was clearly excited at the prospect of finding better rewards. As was I.

My head was ringing a little from the strain of focusing so hard on the array. Each array was a complex working that required focusing on multiple areas of interest at the same time while working to break them.

I stood back up. All of the beasts and Wang Ren were healed and ready to comb the place for loot.

I took a step forward, using energy vision with less intensity so as not to worsen my mental fatigue, when a sharp whistle drew my attention upwards.

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