Published at 5th of May 2026 6:18 am

Chapter 2001: Bone Picking (3)

This chapter is updated by JustRead.pl

Su Yu started his search at the severed end of the river. With Xing Yu's token in one hand and Lan Tian to his side, he started moving forward bit by bit.

Each tributary was essentially a fake dao. He only needed to follow the thread of each tributary and check if it was connected to someone in the Dao Origin Land. If it wasn't, that would mean that the cultivator had left. Otherwise, the cultivator would still be somewhere in the Dao Origin Land.

He could also see the fusion rate of these tributaries. Those with a low rate of fusion belonged to Eternals, signifying that he wouldn't need to pay much attention to them. He only needed to focus on those with a far higher rate or near mastery.

These people would either be Daofuses, heavenly kings, or Venerables. Su Yu did not fear fake dao Venerables. In fact, he could even win against a fake dao Venerable after suppressing the dao of the Venerable. Thus, he had nothing to fear.

After a while, he reached his first fake dao. He tore a rift in space and stepped out with Lan Tian. But after a quick search, he shook his head and said, "Gone. This is probably a Daofuse, but the Daofuse is not here anymore. The dao is being projected to somewhere near the Chaos Mountain."

This fake dao cultivator, in particular, had departed the Dao Origin Land.

Su Yu continued his search.

***

Second fake dao. Third fake dao. They were all the same. The owners had all departed the place.

As for the fourth and fifth fake daos, both were too weak. The owners would barely be Daofuses or even weaker. He couldn't be bothered to pay much attention to the two. The two were weaker than even Great Zhou King's patient dao. It was unlikely that they belonged to heavenly kings.

And finally, Su Yu stopped. Before him was a relatively powerful tributary.

He exited the river with Lan Tian yet again.

***

They appeared on an ancient mountain.

After a look around, Su Yu frowned and sent a voice transmission, "Someone is here. That someone isn't dead, but the connection to the dao is cut off. This person might still be in deep slumber."

He looked at the mountain below him. It didn't look different from the other mountains in the Dao Origin Land.

A powerful being could be slumbering somewhere down below.

"Let's go down and take a look."

An expert who had cut off their connection to their dao would need some time to restore the connection. Su Yu did not fear such an expert. Both Su Yu and Lan Tian were capable of earth traversal. With a flicker, both dove underground.

The deeper they went, the firmer the ground was. This was a place where one might not find water just by digging deep enough. One might end up finding a large stone, or one might end up finding the realm barrier instead.

After an indeterminate amount of time, both Su Yu and Lan Tian withdrew their presence fully. Deep underground, a small stone room appeared before them. Inside the room, a humanoid being was seated cross-legged. The being looked withered, as though this were a corpse. No life could be felt from the being. In fact, a rotting aura surrounded it.

"A room built from sealing stones, capable of concealing one's presence. This is an expert in deep seclusion." That was Lan Tian's conclusion.

Su Yu focused on the unknown being for a while before saying, "Not a human. A divine, I think. I can feel some divine aura on him. He has cultivated the fake dao to the limit. At full strength, this person has the strength of a heavenly king."

A divine expert.

One who had remained in seclusion for an unknown amount of time.

"Do we make a move?" Lan Tian looked at Su Yu and asked, "You can suppress him with Xing Yu's token. He is cut off from their dao, and he isn't even awake. Under suppression, he will only be as strong as an Eternal. We can easily defeat someone like this."

In truth, a suppression in such a situation would reduce this divine into a Sunmoon. But as a heavenly king, even after being suppressed into the Sunmoon Realm, they would be able to fight with the strength of an Eternal.

"Why should we?" Su Yu smiled, "A fake dao cultivator who is desperate enough to enter deep slumber is not a threat to me. But for anyone else, someone like this is a true heavenly king.

"The three major races are sweeping through the Upper Realm, right? Let me add something to his dao. Something that will drive him crazy the moment he reconnects to his dao. What will happen when Venerable Moon discovers him? Will Venerable Moon kill someone from his own race who has gone mad? But can he even afford to spare a mad heavenly king?"

"You're such a baddie!" Suddenly, Lan Tian's voice turned soft, causing Su Yu to shiver. Damn it! Why was this guy doing this now?

Ignoring Lan Tian, Su Yu moved up again. Halfway, he stopped and left some power of laws around before saying, "I'm giving them a full service here. With this, they won't miss this person during their search.

"Venerable Moon will definitely be happy to sense some divine qi here. After all, this might be a forgotten powerhouse of his race. How happy will he be to find a missing heavenly king of his race out of nowhere?"

"Big Brother Yu is such a baddie!" Once again, Lan Tian spoke with the same gentle voice, giving Su Yu the urge to punch his head apart. Ignoring Lan Tian, Su Yu continued moving upward.

Behind him, Lan Tian asked, "What if they decide to suppress this person instead of killing him?"

Su Yu said, "Do you think I'll ignore this possibility? I'll add something to his dao. If they do suppress him, he will detonate himself. It's time for the myriad races to have a taste of madness."

"Will this work?"

"Don't bother asking. This won't work in the Lower Realm, but this will definitely work here."

Xing Yu's token was his biggest guarantor. The slumbering divine was already cut off from his own dao. Su Yu only needed to suppress the dao with Xing Yu's token and he would be free to do anything to this dao without discovery.

Unfortunately, this wasn't possible in the Lower Realm or he would have used this ability to openly steal from the myriad daos long ago.

***

Before long, Su Yu was back in the river. After suppressing the fake dao with Xing Yu's token, he started his work on the fake dao.

Madness. Confusion. Slaughter.

Su Yu had access to many forms of power. He was able to use them all without much trouble.

After a while, Su Yu stepped back and looked at his handiwork with satisfaction. Now, he only needed to wait. He prayed that the Venerables would be here faster. Strictly speaking, a heavenly king and a Venerable were both on the same level of cultivation. This could potentially result in a very good show for them.

***

After marking the place down in his mind, Su Yu resumed his search.

Before long, he found the second slumbering Daofuse. The slumbering Daofuse felt like a tier-three Daofuse to his senses. In short, this was a weakling. So weak that Su Yu couldn't even be bothered to mess with the fake dao of this Daofuse.

The myriad races had a lot of fake dao experts, but most had left the Dao Origin Land.

***

After nearly a day in search, Su Yu finally found the second heavenly king.

This heavenly king, in particular, was hidden deep under a large river.

Both Su Yu and Lan Tian were frowning. Deep under the river, a skeletal humanoid was slumbering silently. There was no presence around this skeletal figure, as though this was a corpse.

"A human?"

Lan Tian said uncertainly, "Feels like a human...Is this guy dead? He has zero presence and aura."

This person had been slumbering here for so many years that perhaps this wasn't even a river back then. A river had probably appeared sometime in the past, washing the figure out of his cave dwelling.

After a short observation with his Heaven Gate, Su Yu shook his head, "Not dead, but near death. He will probably die without any fanfare in a few years. His condition is so terrible that I'm not even sure he can wake up anymore. Back then, did humans cultivate the fake daos as well?"

This person had been here for so long that he could have been here for a hundred thousand years. Had humanity started cultivating the fake daos even during that time? What an unambitious fellow.

According to Stable Army Marquis, humanity would rarely cultivate the fake daos prior to the ninth epoch as the fake daos felt too unstable. That was also the suggestion given by every single human lord before this, including Hundred Battle King.

Lan Tian smiled and said, "Perhaps he did this to preserve his life since he was near death anyway. So what should we do with this guy? Why don't we remove him as well? He's as good as dead anyway."

"You sure are cold." Su Yu said, "No matter what, this is a human."

"But what if this is an enemy?"

"We remove him." Su Yu laughed and said, "But we don't know that. Not all ancient fossils are enemies. Even a fake dao heavenly king is a heavenly king. We shall see. I'll suppress this guy first and you'll capture him. Do it silently."

"Okay."

With that, Su Yu took out Xing Yu's token and suppressed the dao of the slumbering human.

Instantly, the skeletal figure at the bottom of the river trembled.

It was as though the figure was in the process of waking up. But before the process could be completed, the figure was wrapped in a large net by Lan Tian. With a grin, Lan Tian said, "This is the weakest heavenly king I have seen. This guy feels even weaker than Eternals."

He had never seen such a weak heavenly king before.

The eyelids of the skeletal figures trembled. After a while, they finally opened, revealing a pair of confused eyes. This was a sign that this was someone who had been in a deep slumber for too long.

After a while, a hoarse voice rang out, "Who...are you?"

Seemingly having noticed that Su Yu was a human, he asked, "Human lord...is Yue Gang still the human lord?"

Yue Gang?

Su Yu searched his memories for that name. That seemed to be the third human lord? Yes, that was probably the case. In that case, this fellow had been here for at least seventy thousand years. He was still stuck in Yue Gang's era.

"It has been tens of thousands of years since Yue Gang's death."

Confusion flickered in the eyes of the skeletal figure. Dead for tens of thousands of years?

What year...was it now?

"How...how about Minshan?"

"Dead not long ago."

"Dead?" The skeletal figure blanked out slightly before asking, "What...about Bing Ku?"

"Dead."

"Heavenly Sun Marquis?"

"Dead."

"Dan Yu?"

"Dead."

"North Pacifying Marquis?"

"Dead."

"Marquis Yuyang?"

"Dead."

"..."

Despair filled the eyes of the skeletal figure. "All dead?"

He felt as though everything had changed after this slumber of his. Everyone he knew was dead. Why? Why would things be like this?

With the same hoarse voice, he asked, "Are there...no survvors?"

Su Yu wanted to say that this fellow had not named a single person who was still alive.

"Stable Army Marquis is still around..."

"How is that possible?" The skeletal figure exclaimed in alarm, "How did that weak trash survive when so many experts are dead?"

"..."

Suddenly, Su Yu had a strong urge to drag Stable Army Marquis over. What a pity.

Just listen to that. How would Stable Army Marquis feel after hearing such words from a skeletal figure who was almost dead? Then again, the names mentioned by this figure were indeed incredibly powerful figures.

His shock was understandable. All those people had died yet Stable Army Marquis was still around. That was indeed hard to believe.

Su Yu said, "There's no helping it. Not long ago, humanity produced a powerful yet useless human lord. With over a hundred Daofuses under his lead, he fought the myriad races and lost everything."

"Powerful...yet useless? Lost everything?"

The skeletal figure was greatly shaken.

Su Yu nodded, "Yes. That trash was very powerful, but he lost everything to the myriad races. Almost all the names you mentioned had died under that trash's leadership."

"Who? Who is that...human lord?"

"Hundred Battle King."

"Trash! Cough, cough..."

In his agitation, the skeletal figure started coughing black blood. He couldn't believe it. Humanity had lost all its experts in one fell swoop?

"Hundred Battle..."

The skeletal was furious. "How can that happen? Then...who...who are you?"

Su Yu smiled, "We're the humans of the latest generation. Alright, you're almost dead so speak less. What a surprise. After such a long search, I end up with a human fake dao cultivator, one that might not be able to recover anymore. What a waste of time. Let's go, lan Tian. Be careful. Don't get this guy killed. Send him some source qi to preserve his life."

"Sure."

With a smile, Lan Tian sent some source qi into the skeletal figure's body. After wiping all traces of their presence there, Su Yu departed with the skeletal figure. He wasn't too bothered about the status of the skeletal figure. If the skeletal figure could recover, good.

If not, so be it. It wasn't like this skeletal figure could stay alive for much longer. This skeletal figure was greatly weakened. On top of that, he was a fake dao cultivator. He was probably quite poor as well. Thus, Su Yu did not see much value in him.

With the skeletal figure in tow, Su Yu continued his search through the river. For now, he had to complete his search for the fake dao cultivators. After spending another day, Su Yu found another fake dao cultivator. At this point, he was already near the other end of the river. This was probably be the last expert he would find here.

The last expert was not a human, but he wasn't from the three major races either. After a short observation, Su Yu noted that this was a sort of bird, but he was unsure which bird this expert was. He only knew that this wasn't a phoenix. Perhaps this was an expert from an extinct race.

The unknown bird was a heavenly king as well, so Su Yu did not hesitate to mess with the dao of this slumbering bird. As for who would be the one to suffer from his meddling, well, that would be up to the heavens.

All in all, he had found three heavenly kings and five tier-two Daofuses from the search. There were more, but the others were so weak he couldn't even be bothered to count them. It was likely that the rest of the fake dao heavenly kings had left. Su Yu didn't know the exact number of them, but he estimated that there were about five or six of them.

Including the six he had killed previously, the myriad races had produced about fifteen to sixteen fake dao heavenly kings over the years. That was actually a rather large number. By the time Su Yu was done with his search, the third day had arrived.

Just as Su Yu was done messing with the dao of the third heavenly king, he sensed the approach of several powerful auras.

The Venerables had arrived.

Su Yu had yet to even start searching for the real dao cultivators. Clearly, the Venerables were done moving the Human Mountain. They were going to proceed with their sweep now.

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