Ren Qing carried the corpse of the Heavenly Dao Child on his shoulder.
As he drew closer to the hidden passage, the temperature of the corpse actually began to slowly rise.
At first it wasn't obvious, but very soon it had already surpassed normal body temperature.
This made him recall the description of the "Divine Possession Technique," which required using the body as fuel to ignite the soul's spiritual flame during cultivation.
Could it be that even fuel, when approaching the source of fire, would show abnormal reactions?
Ren Qing cursed under his breath.
At the moment he could still bear it, but the strength of the soul clone was already steadily diminishing, showing that the corpse's emitted heat was damaging the soul.
The main body quickly used the ability of Twin Nightmare Ghosts to stabilize the soul clone, and at the same time swallowed all the remaining eyeballs in one go.
Then he simultaneously visualized The Blindless Method and The Taotie Method.
Only under such conditions could he barely halt the collapse of the soul clone.
By the time Ren Qing reached the end of the hidden passage, the Heavenly Dao Child's corpse was already somewhat hot to the touch, and there was even a scorched stench wafting from the pores.
Unable to bear it, he threw it away. The corpse landed in front of the small shrine.
The corpse still did not move, but the ashen-gray skin now had a hint of blood color, as if it were in the process of reviving from death.
Ren Qing walked toward the small shrine, preparing to tentatively retrieve the Beast Pen technique.
But before he could approach, the corpse abruptly opened its eyes wide, its gaze blankly staring into the distance, like a puppet.
The temple doors suddenly creaked open.
That mortal statue walked out from within, its movements extremely stiff, and stone powder fell from the joints as they collided.
The statue's expression was abnormally crazed. It pointed both hands toward the sky and let out a hoarse shout with a strange tone: "Dao births Dao, Wuwei Dao..."
"I am the Heavenly Dao Child, who are you?"
"I..."
"I am the first seat of Wuwei Daoist Altar. Under my sect there are 7,564 disciples, 6,413 outer sect, 1,071 inner sect, and eighty core..."
Ren Qing's mouth twitched.
So the Heavenly Dao Child really had gone mad, seemingly asking questions, but in reality speaking only to himself.
Ren Qing took several steps back, warily watching the statue that chattered on and on, already considering whether to retreat.
In his view, the Heavenly Dao Child had most likely been awakened when the statue was lifted. Previously, it must have been in a near-death slumber.
To a Yang God realm cultivator who had lived over a thousand years, five years was but a fleeting instant.
The Heavenly Dao Child shifted his tone: "I founded the Wuwei Daoist Altar over eight hundred years ago and popularized spiritual roots throughout Jingzhou, allowing everyone to become immortals..."
"Why!!!"
"Why did it come to this!!!!"
The deafening roar caused the passage to show signs of collapse.
The surface of the statue cracked massively, and fragments continuously fell off.
Fortunately, Ren Qing had already removed the talismans. Otherwise, a chain reaction might have occurred, undoubtedly affecting the entire Hidden Treasury Pavilion.
In Ren Qing's eyes, although the Heavenly Dao Child hadn't released the slightest aura, it felt as if a great terror was about to be born.
It was as if the statue had only served as a seal, and now the true form was being revealed.
After just a few breaths, the statue became a pile of rubble, and dust rose once again.
A massive shadow loomed indistinctly under the shroud of dust. Even from afar, Ren Qing couldn't help but tremble all over.
Not from fear in the heart, but a primal reaction from the soul clone itself.
What made him most wary was that breathing sounds could be heard simultaneously from within the coffins.
This meant the Heavenly Dao Child could affect his surroundings.
Ren Qing had never seen soul aberration spiral this far out of control, or perhaps it was a side effect from cultivating the Divine Possession Technique.
He felt an illusory itch crawl over his entire body, but it affected only the soul clone; neither the main soul nor the physical body sensed anything.
Otherwise, how could Ren Qing still be standing here?
He would've already fled Wuwei Daoist Altar.
Once the dust settled, Ren Qing finally managed to catch a clear look at the Heavenly Dao Child's appearance, and instantly retreated toward the entrance of the hidden passage.
How to describe it... Even the word "grotesque" wasn't enough to cover it.
The Heavenly Dao Child's soul seemed to be an indescribable amalgam of three different creatures, with the human portion being the least.
The torso retained a humanoid shape, but the skin displayed characteristics of the Heavenly Dao Worm, pale, swollen, and undulating with each breath like the maggots in the pond.
The head was a blend of ox and sheep, cheeks covered in black fur, and atop the head were two spiraled, dark, hardened horns.
The forehead was covered in eyeballs, their pupils ceaselessly rotating.
Ren Qing gasped in shock.
Could the Beast Pen method refer to transforming the soul into a beast, abandoning the body to cultivate the soul alone? But to mutate like this...
Perhaps it had something to do with the so-called Supreme Heavenly Demon?
No wonder the information stream had shown no reaction when touching the statue, because it was the soul that was now the true body of the Heavenly Dao Child.
Compared to this, the soul aberration of the Restraint Officers trapped in Stomach within the Stomach was nothing but child's play.
"Mehh..."
It was a sound that couldn't be clearly identified, but definitely not made by cattle or sheep.
Listening closely only made one's skin crawl.
Under the influence of the strange sound, the corpses within the coffins suddenly sat upright.
Their bodies began sprouting fur, and bizarre ram horns grew atop their heads.
Even the corpses nailed shut were using their hands to continuously pound against the coffin lids.
Ren Qing backed up to the stairway of the hidden passage.
The Heavenly Dao Child's aura did not pursue, and instead, the area near the shrine fell into silence.
Seeing this, Ren Qing looked back.
He saw the Heavenly Dao Child grabbing that corpse and pulling it onto his body like putting on clothing, but it was disturbingly ill-fitted.
Still, that's exactly what he was doing, the corpse looked no different from an ordinary human, but its soul had mutated to the point that no resemblance remained.
As the soul fused with the corpse, the surrounding anomalies vanished.
The Heavenly Dao Child's expression grew confused, as if he had regained a shred of consciousness.
He walked to the coffin and, just as he must have done countless times over centuries, carefully placed the revived corpse back inside.
His face carried a reverence for life.
The corpse reverted to its original form, as if everything just now had been a mere illusion.
But this seemed to confirm that the body was merely fuel to ignite the soul, and immediately afterward, the Heavenly Dao Child's skin showed widespread ulceration.
Clearly, this corpse wouldn't hold out much longer.
Ren Qing surmised that the Heavenly Dao Child had left behind so many bodies because he foresaw that he would one day lose his sanity and need to resist soul aberration.
But now, this was actually an opportunity.
Ren Qing sped up and rushed toward the shrine. He quickly stepped inside and found the book that had been left beside the table.
He picked it up, didn't even bother reading it, and immediately stored it in Prison Within the Abdomen.
Just as Ren Qing was about to have the soul clone return to the main body, a figure appeared at the shrine entrance, it was the soul-body-fused Heavenly Dao Child.
The Heavenly Dao Child wore a dark gray Daoist robe.
If not for the constantly forming blistering burns on his body, he wouldn't look much different from a regular Daoist.
"Which hall are you a disciple of?"
His voice was gentle and refined, and his demeanor like that of a cultivated master.
Ren Qing didn't reply, he still vividly remembered the image of his neck being twisted off.
He knew the Heavenly Dao Child had already gone completely mad, so he gradually stepped away from him.
"How about this, you have Xiao Chenzi come here. I have something to say to him."
Ren Qing couldn't help asking, "What matter?"
"Hmm..."
The Heavenly Dao Child clutched his head.
His skull gave off sounds of unbearable strain. He tried hard to recall, and the temperature he emitted grew even hotter.
Even the surrounding air began to distort.
Ren Qing was already prepared to have his soul clone return to the main body, but at that moment the Heavenly Dao Child staggered toward the outside of the tunnel.
He muttered as he walked: "Who... am I? Why did I say... it's too late?"
Ren Qing trailed behind the Heavenly Dao Child from afar and quickly reached the outside of the Hidden Treasury Pavilion.
The Heavenly Dao Child looked at the corpses drifting in the pond.
His face showed a sudden realization, and his eyes held a despair that could no longer be suppressed.
"What... what exactly happened? How has Wuwei Daoist Altar already perished...?"
The Heavenly Dao Child's body melted like a candle at a visible rate, while the soul gradually separated from it, and once more descended into madness.
The pond boiled; the larval Heavenly Dao Worms didn't even dare surface.
Ren Qing decisively recalled the soul clone back to the main body.
Though the Heavenly Dao Child still lived, it was clear that he could only retain a sliver of reason through his corpses, there was no longer any possibility of meaningful communication.
Ren Qing's main body opened his eyes.
Wuwei Daoist Altar couldn't be entered again for now, at least not until the Heavenly Dao Child returned to dormancy.
Otherwise, no number of soul clones would suffice.
He closed his eyes to rest briefly, then took out the Divine Possession Technique from Prison Within the Abdomen.
Ren Qing began reading the technique. The contents recorded were fairly conventional, showing nothing outwardly different from other techniques.
However, on the final page of the book, he found handwriting that clearly belonged to the Heavenly Dao Child.
It lacked the brush style of the coffin inscriptions and looked more like childish scrawl.
This showed that by then, the Heavenly Dao Child's mind was already unstable.
"All lies, I'm going insane!"
"Whatever you do, don't cultivate it, don't cultivate it!!"
"Is it me who's gone mad, or the world!!?"
"Countless voices in my head!!!"
Ren Qing stared at the writing.
For some reason, his back was drenched in sweat, as if he could feel the bone-deep despair of this Yang God realm cultivator.
The information stream surged.
[Divine Possession Technique created by the Supreme Heavenly Demon. To cultivate, one must use the body as fuel to ignite the soul's spiritual flame and absorb the remains of the Heavenly Demon, abandoning the body to refine the soul in order to succeed.]
[After absorbing the Heavenly Demon's remains, the soul will permanently lose part of itself, which constitutes the Supreme Heavenly Demon.]
[By using the body as fuel, one can sever the gaze of the Supreme Heavenly Demon.]
Ren Qing's brows furrowed tightly.
Could it be that the Supreme Heavenly Demon was not a cultivator, but rather composed of fragments of countless souls?
[Can be mastered by consuming 5 years of lifespan, bypassing the cultivation cost]
The Divine Possession Technique required far less lifespan than the techniques of Wuwei Daoist Altar, but Ren Qing had no intention of cultivating it.
Just discarding the body was something he couldn't accept, it was equivalent to starting over from scratch.
The Heavenly Dao Child had likely hoped to use the Beast Pen Method's focus on soul cultivation to escape the control of the Heavenly Dao Worm, but ended up falling into the clutches of the Heavenly Demon instead.
The information stream could waive the cultivation cost, but it couldn't change the essence of the Divine Possession Technique, the body would still have to be abandoned.
Ren Qing shook his head.
He no longer considered the matter of the Divine Possession Technique and took out the other four techniques, intending to see if any were suitable.
And then, he found an unexpected harvest.