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The ultimate force blocking the proud high elves from reclaiming their homeland is the forbidden spell—the same power that once annihilated millions of elves and pushed the vast Elven Empire to the brink of destruction.

Although gifted, elves have low fertility and slow growth. An elf child takes nearly a century to reach adulthood. Therefore, even the loss of one elf is a significant blow to the race. At the height of the Elven Empire, the population never exceeded five million. After the disasters brought by the Great Demon King and the Twelve Sages, the elves have become even more scarce. Thus, even though they know humans can only cast a limited number of forbidden spells, and their power is far inferior to that of the Twelve Sages, the high elves still dare not start a war, fearing heavy losses to their people.

Thus, it became the consensus among the orc upper echelons that to achieve victory in the war and to get the high elves to take action, they must first eliminate the threat of the forbidden spells. To break the forbidden spells, they would need to enter the human world, assassinate the forbidden spell casters, and seize or destroy the necessary artifact for casting the spell—the "Forbidden Spell Mark."

The method was clear, but the question remained: who would go?

This was a problem.

In the past, the orcs and humans were at each other's throats, with a more antagonistic relationship than that between humans and elves. After the Great War, any orc appearing in the human world would be met with a collective attack. Moreover, humans protect their forbidden spell casters far more rigorously than their kings, with numerous guards and decoys. At the slightest sign of trouble, the casters vanish without a trace. Even the "War Saint" Leimen, when he swept through the human world, couldn't get his hands on a forbidden spell caster. It would be even more impossible now.

Chen Xuanfeng had been hesitant about taking on this plan due to the immense risks and difficulties, but it had to be done by someone. By rights, given his strength and experience, Chen Xuanfeng, the Snow Wolf leader, was the top choice of the orc alliance. However, if the mission succeeded, the biggest beneficiary would be Orc King Samanda, who led the entire alliance. This made Chen Xuanfeng, who had long vowed to overthrow Samanda, extremely reluctant. However, with Jin Luosha's request, he now had a reason to make up his mind. If no one took on this task and humans launched a counteroffensive, he would not benefit either.

"Well, I've recently made breakthroughs in my martial arts and was looking for someone to test them on. Going to the human world might not be a bad choice," Chen Xuanfeng said gently to the girl, who was smiling happily with satisfaction. "But there are many things that need to be arranged before we depart, especially a trip to... the House of the Undead."

The House of the Undead, the most terrifying place in the entire Fengdan Belo territory, was the mansion of the great lich, the "King of the Undead," Anthony Pinot de la Mirage Gretel Ritrix. It was a place jokingly referred to as a haunted house or ghost mansion.

Chapter Five: Haunted House Tales, Continuous Beads of Seven

In his previous life, Chen Xuanfeng was notorious in the martial world as "Copper Corpse," a man who spent years among tombs and corpses, practicing the Nine Yin White Bone Claw on living people. Naturally, he was considered an evil among evils. Thus, after reincarnation, he developed a fondness for the necromancer lineage, which also dealt with the undead. This was why he went to great lengths to recruit the powerful lich "King of the Undead," whose strength rivaled that of the Pope of the Radiant Temple.

However, Chen Xuanfeng soon realized he had made a significant mistake. He had assumed that the "King of the Undead" was hated by humans only because of his evil profession, but he did not expect that the lich, who had been infamous for two hundred years, possessed a personality even more nefarious than his profession.

The lich desecrated corpses, summoned skeletons, and practiced evil magic, but the orc shamans didn't mind; their divine arts contained similar practices. He enslaved souls, performed blood sacrifices, and extracted souls from the living, but these were expected behaviors of his profession. Even when the lich brazenly embezzled precious magical equipment and even used a crystal dragon captured from the Temple for experiments, Chen Xuanfeng gritted his teeth and endured it. After all, as long as the lich remained in Fengdan Belo, he could eventually recover what was lost from him. However, when the great lich's unrestrained enthusiasm for magic recklessly extended to the orcs, things changed.

To test the combat effectiveness of the undead knights, he launched sneak attacks on orc warrior camps at night, lured orcs of various races and professions into collapsed mines to observe their dying souls, set fire to towns to test their explosive power under extreme conditions, and released vicious plagues to record the collective behavioral characteristics of different creatures in times of crisis. In short, whenever the "King of the Undead" came up with a new idea, he would immediately conduct reckless experiments nearby without any regard for consequences, only stopping when he achieved satisfactory results. As a result, this golden skull-headed lich became a terrifying nightmare in Fengdan Belo within just half a year. Although the final statistics showed that hardly any orcs died as a result, countless poor souls suffered mental breakdowns. The entire Fengdan Belo territory fell into a "Lich Panic."

It wasn't until Chen Xuanfeng and Katherine could no longer bear it and joined forces to place the three epic divine weapons—the "Holy Sword Covenant," the "Divine Sword Divine Punishment," and the "Demon Blade Tiger Soul"—against the lich's skull that they managed to temporarily halt the frenzied actions of this great necromancer. After all, although he possessed the skill to transfer his soul and abandon his body, these three divine weapons each had magical abilities that could potentially slay the lich's spirit. At that moment, he was still enamored with the rich magical treasures and resources of Fengdan Belo and had no intention of moving elsewhere.

Thus, a truce under duress was established—though Chen Xuanfeng still hasn't figured out whose truce it actually was—stipulating that the "King of the Undead" could not conduct magical experiments outside his laboratory in the Fengdan Belo territory. Any experiments would require Chen Xuanfeng's approval and the accompaniment of the mermaid mage Hai Ruo. As compensation, Chen Xuanfeng allowed the "King of the Undead" to dismantle and modify the magic tower "Styx Tower" left by the Twelve Sages.

Thus, most of the "Styx Tower" disappeared, and a floating "House of the Undead" emerged in the sky. Legend has it that whenever the bright moon hangs high, the shadow of a castle with towering spires floats eerily in the moonlight, emanating an eerie green glow with endless, faint, and mournful wails. Phrases like "If I lie, may I spend a night in the 'House of the Undead'" or "If you resist further, prepare to settle in the 'House of the Undead'" have become the most popular oaths and threats in Fengdan Belo in recent years.