Another bony hand emerged from the ground; both hands only had their upper arms and were not attached to a body. These hands groped around before slowly propelling themselves towards the triangular skull.
This triangular skull, a remnant of some unknown desolate beast, emanated a faint glow from its eye sockets, like tiny purple flames flickering gently, seemingly controlling the flames.
The two hands reached the side of the triangular skull, and one hand clumsily searched before quickly grabbing the skull's lower jaw, lifting the skull into mid-air.
The hands continuously adjusted the skull's direction, allowing it to look around. The flames in the skull's eye sockets flickered again as if discovering something, and the other hand immediately crawled over, searching laboriously through a pile of bones, and dug out a connected spine.
The spine was straight, about a meter long; one hand dragged the spine back and then planted it into the ground. The other hand then mounted the triangular skull onto this spine segment.
A thin strand of purple flames flowed from the skull's eye sockets along the lower jaw, connecting itself with the spine.
The skull began searching around, incessantly directing the two hands to look for suitable bones in the swamp's bone piles. Soon, ribs, pelvis, leg bones... various bones were gathered, and quickly, the skull commanded its bony hands to assemble its skeletal body!
Xiang Beifei floated on a stone beside the swamp, observing this skeleton with considerable astonishment.
It was his first time witnessing a skeleton that had become sentient; indeed, all sorts of bizarre occurrences were possible in this foreign desolate realm.
"This guy, couldn't he be from the Si Hou species?"
Xiang Beifei grew increasingly intrigued by the skeleton, perhaps because he had seen various humanoid creatures—the half-tree, half-human Youmong, the stone-built Zhang Yu, and so on. Thus, seeing a skeleton built from different bones didn't strike him as strange anymore.
The skeleton was peculiar; although the bones it collected were from various sizes of desolate beasts, when assembled, they were arranged in a human configuration, resulting in a very strange sight.
The ribs were interspersed green and white, the two leg bones were mismatched – the left seemed to be from a large gorilla, while the other was an inch shorter and red. One shoulder blade was very pronounced, like a sharp bone spur, while the other was recessed.
The creature's body was like building blocks, pieced together from bones of different desolate beasts, yet it awkwardly tried to mimic a human skeleton, creating a bizarre creature. Yet, this hodgepodge of bones allowed it to move.
After fully assembling itself, the skull seemed dissatisfied with its body. It began walking around in the bone piles of the swamp, continually digging up bones.
Suddenly, the flames in its eye sockets flickered intensely, as if excited upon spotting two human leg bones. It quickly dug them out and broke off its own desolate beast leg bones to attach the human ones.
However, after attaching them, it realized it now had bow legs. It walked a few steps, perhaps feeling the bow legs were unsightly, and then stopped to forcefully twist its leg bones, finally managing to adjust the alignment of its joints after much effort.
The skull started walking along the swamp, pausing and resuming, searching for various bones like a scavenger; every time it found something suitable, it would stop to attach it to itself, spending a long time until it gradually started resembling a human.
Its head was still triangular, resembling some kind of serpentine desolate beast. It constantly touched its head, seemingly displeased with its own head. Just then, it suddenly spotted a human skull and the purple light in its eyes flickered anew!
Although the swamp was littered with various desolate beast bones, including human bones, intact human skulls were rare, either being only half a skull or being completely split open.
The skull had barely found an intact skull when the flames in its eyes flickered rapidly, appearing overjoyed. It hurriedly removed its triangular skull and then, using its hand bone, poked around the eye sockets, scooping out two balls of purple fire from its sockets and placing them into the human skull. Then, it reattached the human skull back onto its shoulders.
This action left Xiang Beifei completely dumbfounded.
"Is this the Head-Swapping Technique?"
Xiang Beifei found it incredibly bizarre; it was his first time seeing a skull swap bodies , scooping its eyes out and inserting them into another skull. The skilled maneuver definitely suggested it was an experienced hand, probably having done it numerous times.
However, Xiang Beifei also fell into deep thought because he noticed that the skull was constantly adjusting its bones to align more with a human structure, especially the two balls of purple fire in the eyes, which seemed very eerie.
Regardless of how its body's bones transformed, the most critical part had to be the two balls of fire in the eye sockets.
Did it really enjoy making itself look human?
At this moment, the skeleton had already started moving forward, and Xiang Beifei silently followed behind, curious about where the skeleton was heading.
It kept moving forward, and after about ten minutes, it finally exited the valley. However, there were mountains everywhere, and once it left one valley, it continued running along the mountain path. Oddly enough, despite being haphazardly put together, the skeleton moved swiftly, striding confidently through the steep woodland.
Xiang Beifei was quite curious, but since he couldn't locate Si Hou at the moment and wasn't sure if this creature belonged to Si Hou's species, he decided to see where it was headed first.
Along the way, he could see various desolate beast bones scattered throughout the mountain range. It seemed as though the area had once experienced a great battle with countless desolate beasts dying here, their bones piling up like mountains.
What puzzled Xiang Beifei was that the desolate beasts he saw along the way didn't seem very powerful, and even shrank back quietly when they saw the skeleton, seemingly unwilling to engage with it.
It made sense, considering anyone capable of assembling desolate beast bones was not someone living desolate beasts would dare to provoke, fearing their bones might be dismantled for parts accidentally.
But just then, Xiang Beifei suddenly sensed something off. He furrowed his brows, turned his head, and noticed a figure stealthily trailing the skeleton in a secluded woodland on the mid-slope.
He immediately recognized who it was.
It was Brain Deficient.