[Lifespan: five hundred seventy-nine years]
[The Taotie Method (Food-Consuming Immortal Technique, Wine God Technique, Dao Dao Dao, Rebirth Technique), Avici Hell (Great Inception Flame, Stomach Contains Wine Sea, Jar-in-the-Stomach Daoist Grounds, Boundless Resurrection)]
[Divine Ability: Method of Modeling Heaven and Earth]
Ren Qing had just advanced the stomach world into Avici Hell when he felt the divine ability Method of Modeling Heaven and Earth completely change from a prototype into a complete form.
Method of Modeling Heaven and Earth could now semi-permanently fuse objects from the stomach world with the flesh of his own body.
Why say semi-permanent? Because even if he fused his internal organs with South Mountain, he could still forcibly separate the aberrant fetus artifact through the divine ability.
It would only result in permanent damage to the magical artifact.
Ren Qing temporarily did not consider using Method of Modeling Heaven and Earth to create an upper world, mainly because he was currently within Cishi. He would consider it after leaving danger.
On the other hand, South Mountain as an aberrant fetus artifact actually had rather ordinary potential.
Aberrant fetus artifacts possessed countless advantages, such as simple refinement, no need for special materials, and they could even be forcefully accelerated through blood refinement.
But the drawbacks were equally fatal. Aberrant fetus artifacts were limited by the main material used during refinement.
Whether the ghost ship or South Mountain, their upper limit was only the Yang Spirit realm, and they had to devour specific strange objects in order to advance.
If Ren Qing wanted to refine a subsidiary small world, he would likely need a deeper understanding of Moon Patterns, or obtain a main material of the Heavenly Aberration realm.
Wait, Heavenly Aberration realm...
Wasn't there the corpse of the Meat and Wine Daoist outside the Longevity Forbidden Zone.
Ren Qing forcibly suppressed the distracting thoughts, then used the stomach world to communicate with the Longevity Forbidden Zone. Soon he sensed the existence of the taboo realm.
However he did not attempt to exchange anything with it, instead looking toward the extremely distant Heaven Above Heaven.
In just a few hours, Heaven Above Heaven had already become a complete mess. Buildings had turned into ruins, and everywhere there were teeth marks from biting.
The hundreds of thousands of monks were becoming increasingly desperate in their hunger. After eating all the vegetation, they began targeting soil and bricks.
As for why they did not slaughter each other, Ren Qing guessed it was related to the Buddhist qi.
The monks appeared to be independent individuals, but in reality their souls had already fused with the Buddhist qi. The thought of cannibalizing their own kind could not arise.
From this perspective, the reason the Buddhist qi of Great Compassion Maitreya Bodhisattva allowed Heaven Above Heaven to become a human hell was because the benefits outweighed the drawbacks.
First, the monks' efficiency in cultivating Maitreya White Bone Sutra and Maitreya Skin-Sutra greatly increased, and corresponding aberrations even appeared in their appearances.
Maitreya White Bone Sutra was relatively mild, only causing the flesh to wither while the skin turned semi-transparent, allowing the golden bones within to be clearly seen.
But monks cultivating Maitreya Skin-Sutra had completely turned into moving Buddha statues, their skin bronze-like and their limbs extremely stiff.
Ren Qing also seized the opportunity to obtain the details of these two techniques, though they were somewhat useless to him and mainly served as references.
Corresponding to the rapid progress of the techniques, the number of monks entering seated death increased geometrically.
Within Heaven Above Heaven the number of dissociative identity disorder patients had decreased by seven or eight thousand, their corpses being sent into Bottomless Pit day and night.
Ren Qing could not distinguish the severity of symptoms, so he randomly pulled twenty thousand people.
Within the South Mountain Small World the evil thoughts would be frantically nourished, while the monks' daily greed for appetite did not decrease, allowing evil thoughts to slowly accumulate.
After the gluttonous feast began.
His lifespan, which had nearly been exhausted, began rapidly increasing again. This time the speed of lifespan extension was even slightly faster than the previous night.
By dawn, Ren Qing's lifespan had increased by twelve hundred years.
Although No-Birth Immortal required five thousand years and could not yet be broken through, achieving Multitude Yang Immortal with Avici Hell was more than sufficient.
After all, he had only stolen a few days of lifespan.
Bang bang bang...
The joy on Ren Qing's face disappeared, because outside the cave where his main body was located, the terrifying footsteps of the giant corpse Buddha sounded once again.
But after appearing for only a few breaths, the footsteps vanished again as if it had been an illusion.
Ren Qing used Dream Flower to inspect Bottomless Pit with confusion, but it was still empty. He became more convinced that a drastic change was about to occur in Cishi, likely involving Great Compassion Maitreya Bodhisattva.
While preparing to withdraw, he also spent some attention observing Heaven Above Heaven.
Heaven Above Heaven could no longer show any of its former glory. Buildings had collapsed, houses were ruined, and even the chanting of scriptures had become slurred.
If refugees arrived again, they would certainly not dare enter the city.
Ren Qing adjusted the somewhat chaotic Moon Patterns on the ghost ship. Its speed increased by at least twenty percent, and the noise during sailing became smaller.
Before long night arrived.
He stood on the deck of the ghost ship, ready to withdraw northward at any moment, then pulled the evil thoughts of tens of thousands of monks into the South Mountain Small World.
Unlike before, even before the severed limbs appeared, the evil thoughts had already transformed into grotesque thousand-armed flesh pillars.
They no longer chanted scriptures, but frightened the South Mountain artifact spirit into trembling.
Through the ghost shadow's transformation between illusion and reality, the ghost ship passed from solid rock walls into Bottomless Pit and gradually accelerated deeper inside.
Ren Qing was not greedy at all. While Three Inches of the Human World stole lifespan, he was already traveling and escaping.
Mainly because after the stomach world advanced to the Yang Spirit realm, the influence range of the South Mountain Small World had expanded. Otherwise he would have had to stay honestly within the cave dwelling.
The South Mountain Small World continuously manifested severed limbs in batches. The evil thoughts devoured them ravenously while muttering neurotic whispers.
Ren Qing felt his scalp go numb watching it.
At that moment he noticed an anomaly through Dream Flower. Inside Heaven Above Heaven the houses opened their doors and the sound of wooden fish percussion echoed.
The monks walked out with empty eyes, moving like walking corpses toward the streets.
They simultaneously emitted the aura of imminent seated death, causing the Buddhist qi of Great Compassion Maitreya Bodhisattva to surge violently.
The monks arrived beside Bottomless Pit.
Then they used blades to peel their skin and pull out their bones. Even though the pain twisted their faces, their movements did not hesitate in the slightest.
The corpses jumped into Bottomless Pit on their own, swept southward by the fierce wind.
Tens of thousands of corpses fell like a torrential rain. Such a spectacular scene left even Ren Qing stunned.
One corpse Buddha after another crawled out from Bottomless Pit. With the help of the monks who had not yet died, they pasted Buddha skin onto their bodies and smeared Buddha bones across themselves.
They rushed to merge into the mountain range, as if afraid there would be no space left.
Shock arose in Ren Qing's heart.
No matter how he looked at it, the corpse Buddhas were formed from souls absorbed by Buddhist qi. Yet why were they so eager to seal themselves within the mountains?
Why did they behave this way?
Was it voluntary sealing, or were they fearing something?
Soon the corpse Buddhas among the mountains began chanting scriptures. The noise was so loud that even Ren Qing's main body could clearly hear it.
Ren Qing glanced at the information flow. His lifespan had already reached nearly two thousand two hundred years. By dawn it would probably reach two thousand eight or nine hundred.
Yet upon seeing this he decisively expelled the more than twenty thousand evil thoughts from the South Mountain Small World.
Ren Qing did not want to be entangled in the layout of Great Compassion Maitreya Bodhisattva for merely a few hundred years of lifespan. He might not even know how he died.
The speed of the ghost ship suddenly increased.
Countless corpse Buddhas crawled within Bottomless Pit, but their target was clearly not the ghost ship. Instead they were drawn toward Heaven Above Heaven.
Only the hundred-meter corpse Buddhas could resist the restraints from Bottomless Pit. Ordinary corpse Buddhas would end with their souls completely dispersed.
Ren Qing felt chills down his spine. Hundred-meter corpse Buddhas were undergoing seated death and sealing like an assembly line.
Within half an hour, thirty to forty corpse Buddhas had already become part of the mountain range, and the hundred-meter corpse Buddhas continued climbing endlessly.
Out of the hundreds of thousands of monks only a little over ten thousand remained. The rest had become nourishment for the corpse Buddhas.
Through Dream Flower Ren Qing could clearly feel the Buddhist qi acting unscrupulously, like a tantrum-throwing child driving the monks into seated death.
He decided to destroy Dream Flower voluntarily, completely severing the final connection with Heaven Above Heaven. But out of curiosity he first controlled the dream artifact to quietly arrive outside the city.
One mountain peak after another entered his sight.
Ren Qing carefully counted the number of peaks. After realizing there were already more than seven hundred, he dared not harbor any luck.
Dream Flower flashed faintly and instantly turned into nothingness.
Ren Qing no longer cared about what would happen in Heaven Above Heaven. He focused entirely on controlling the ghost ship while maintaining the Disaster Dispelling Method.
He traveled continuously for several days before the pressure in his heart finally eased somewhat.
The ghost ship had already reached a very deep location within Bottomless Pit. The pitch-black darkness was like being immersed in ink.
Ren Qing did not dare maintain high speed anymore and instead proceeded along the rock walls at a steady pace.
Boom rumble!
Air waves suddenly erupted, causing the ghost ship to stagger.
Heavy footsteps approached from afar. It was clearly caused by that nearly thousand-meter giant corpse Buddha.
However the footsteps came from Heaven Above Heaven. The distance should be thousands of li away, so it could not catch up with the ghost ship in the short term.
Ren Qing came back to his senses.
Could the purpose of the Buddhist qi be to revive Great Compassion Maitreya Bodhisattva?
More precisely, perhaps it was a certain Great Compassion Maitreya Bodhisattva who had died before. However the latter strongly resisted, so the Buddhist qi sealed all previous Buddha sons to forcibly compel its emergence.
Ren Qing remembered the two times he sensed the giant corpse Buddha near his cave dwelling, but it vanished into thin air. It probably merged back into the Buddhist qi.
Thinking of the giant corpse Buddha's enormous size far surpassing others, the cultivation of that Great Compassion Maitreya Bodhisattva in life must have been extremely terrifying.
Perhaps already at the peak of Earth Immortal?
Then where was the current Great Compassion Maitreya Bodhisattva?
The giant corpse Buddha let out a roar, shouting deafeningly.
Her intelligence had already blurred. Under the erosion of the Buddhist qi she could not maintain her original mind and eventually became one of its puppets.
"Found you!
"Otherwise cannot rest!"
Ren Qing suddenly realized something.
The "you" in her words certainly did not refer to him. Most likely it referred to the missing current Great Compassion Maitreya Bodhisattva.
Could it be that the current Great Compassion Maitreya Bodhisattva escaped the fate of being devoured by Buddhist qi? And thus forced the Buddhist qi to revive the former Great Compassion Maitreya Bodhisattvas?
And Heaven Above Heaven was actually a layout created by an aura equivalent to an Earth Immortal.
The giant corpse Buddha seemed to be enduring some pain and shouted indistinctly:
"Not dead, not dead, she is not dead!"
Ren Qing was immediately shocked by the words of the giant corpse Buddha. Whether it involved Dead Man's Forbidden Zone was uncertain, but at least there was now a clue.
After all, a Yang Spirit realm forbidden zone being able to stand within this world must have some special aspect.
The Longevity Forbidden Zone was not as famous as Dead Man's Forbidden Zone. Even in remote Xiangxiang, stories about the Dead Man's Sutra circulated.