Huang Ziwang looked in terror toward the open window.
A gloomy wind brushed his face, and Lu Xiaoyu vanished along with it.
Cracks spread across the copper mirror artifact hanging in the room.
The houses closer to the flower field were already on the verge of collapse, and the residents within had vanished in their sleep.
The area of the calamity was gradually expanding.
At this moment, the morning sun rose over the horizon and then returned to stillness.
Shui Hulu opened his bloodshot eyes, his expression dark to the extreme.
Only a barren hill remained where the Other Shore Flower field had been in the distance.
Zhang Mu had likely been affected by the forbidden zone while transporting flower seeds, and the forbidden zone might have even planted hidden tricks inside the Other Shore Flower.
Shui Hulu quietly contemplated the phrase "The people take food to reach the heavens," and suddenly a thought struck him.
"Could it be the Food-Consuming Immortal Technique?"
The townspeople who mistakenly entered the forbidden zone could still be dealt with.
The greater problem was that dozens of people at the edge of town had been swallowed, among them were Restraint Officers.
Moreover...
Shui Hulu tore open his robe, and his chest and abdomen were covered in disorderly lines. In fact, the entire population of 20,000 in Annan Town was in the same condition.
What infuriated him most was that the half-dead Yu Dachuan had also been dragged into the forbidden zone.
After scheming for so long, Shui Hulu had ended up lifting a rock only to smash his own foot, his frustration was beyond words.
The only thing he could be thankful for was that the forbidden zone had not swallowed him, meaning it likely wasn't formed by a Yin Runner realm Supernatural Remnant, but merely a Ghost Envoy realm one.
He used his Blood Heart to contact the Restraint Officers' Hall, then took out a Nether Feather to inquire about the Food-Consuming Immortal Technique.
[Food-Consuming Immortal Technique]
[Created by the Meat and Wine Taoist. The entire body may be cooked. After being simmered with special medicinal primers for thirty-six hours and replanted into the body, it can be cultivated successfully.]
A mass of steam billowed from the Flesh-and-Blood Gourd.
Until the Restraint Officers' Hall took over, the townspeople could not be allowed to leave the town.
.....
Ren Qing's consciousness had fallen into slumber. When he next awoke, he found the environment around him had drastically changed.
It was extremely dim all around.
The cold ground was covered in a thick layer of straw, within which were interspersed countless white bones, sending chills down his spine.
Ren Qing clutched his head with both hands. His memory seemed to have fragmented.
He could only recall what happened before entering the forbidden zone. After that, there was no impression at all.
He closed his eyes tightly, trying to strengthen himself with Ghost Shadow Possession, but he couldn't sense the Ghost Shadow's presence at all.
Let alone Ghost Shadow, even other techniques besides Twin Nightmare Ghosts failed to respond.
Ren Qing forcibly suppressed the panic in his heart.
Fragments of memory flashed through his mind, and his expression turned pensive.
Upon careful inspection, he discovered his body felt unfamiliar, his flesh was fragmented, as though pieced together.
It clearly wasn't his original body.
Thankfully, the one controlling this body wasn't his main soul, but rather a subsoul, so even if it were lost, it wouldn't be a big deal.
Ren Qing guessed he had been dragged into the forbidden zone just like Zhang Mu.
Perhaps the subsoul had detached from the main body to explore the forbidden zone, but for some reason, couldn't communicate with the main soul.
Fortunately, Twin Nightmare Ghosts' power affected both main and subsouls simultaneously.
Ren Qing knew his main body was relying on the Wuwei Daoist Altar and the massive stockpile of eyeballs he had purchased in advance, there shouldn't be any problems in the short term.
Besides, according to the Heavenly Dao technique, advancing realms might very well have the effect of prolonging life.
However, since the Heavenly Dao Worm was parasitizing the Ghost Shadow, he couldn't be sure whether that effect applied.
Ren Qing sat up. He should now be inside a sealed-off cave. The surrounding walls showed signs of having been dug out.
He then discovered the cave entrance wasn't far from him.
Ren Qing used his Double Pupils to observe the interior of the cave but only found traces of wild beasts.
He slowly walked toward the cave entrance, increasing his vigilance in secret.
Bones lay scattered along the way, but what disturbed him most was that there was no stench of rot in the cave.
Even though many of the bones looked like they had died recently.
But this was a forbidden zone after all, naturally it would differ drastically from the outside world. It was likely related to the powers of various Supernatural Remnants.
Ren Qing soon reached the cave entrance.
He cautiously peeked outside, and his brows furrowed.
It was like he had entered a dark, damp kitchen, but everything was enlarged dozens of times. A regular short-legged stool looked like a mountain, let alone the stove.
It was indeed the forbidden zone seen previously along the main road.
He gazed at the steam rising from the stove, a nameless irritation surfacing within him.
Near the corner of the kitchen wall were a dozen similar cave openings.
Ren Qing guessed he wasn't the only one pulled into the forbidden zone, at the very least, those Restraint Officers should also be included.
However, they had likely suffered severe injuries and were most likely dead or worse.
Ren Qing didn't step into the kitchen. It was too open, and he could easily be exposed.
He planned to first figure out the reality of the forbidden zone.
Sealing the core Supernatural Remnant was far too difficult. Escaping the forbidden zone was more realistic, this had been Song Rong's plan back then.
Ren Qing waited a bit at the cave entrance and then felt the ground shaking violently.
A giant stepped toward the stove, moldy grains of rice constantly fell from its massive body as it moved.
In its hand was a cage holding dozens of shivering townspeople. Judging by their clothing, they were from Annan Town.
The rice giant hung the cage over the stove, then vanished.
From each cave came dense rustling noises.
Ren Qing turned and looked, dozens of pairs of blood-red eyes lit up in the darkness, accompanied by the hoarse gnashing sound rats made when hungry.
They were indeed rats, but their size far exceeded his expectations.
Each one was the size of an elephant, hairless, with exposed dark-green flesh.
Mushroom fungi of various sizes grew from their spines.
Squeak squeak squeak...
The rats charged forward.
Before Ren Qing could act, the rat horde swept past him, their target was the grain scattered across the kitchen floor.
He picked up a bone and hurled it. The explosive power surprised him.
It easily pierced through a rat's neck, and dark-green blood splashed out.
The other rats shrieked in fear and immediately avoided Ren Qing's location, instead dashing toward more secluded corners to eat rice.
They lowered their heads and wolfed down the grains, as if wary of a nearby predator.
Ren Qing dragged the rat corpse into the cave to examine it closely. He immediately noticed something suspicious and fell into brief contemplation.
First of all, the blood from the wound wasn't like animal blood, it felt slightly viscous to the touch and had a strange floral aroma.
Ren Qing froze for a moment and then realized:
"Plant sap?"
He immediately sliced open the rat's skin to expose the underlying flesh. There was no sign of muscle fibers.
It indeed resembled plant tissue.
Could it be that inside this forbidden zone, flesh gradually turned into plant matter?
At the rat's neck, he found marks from being tied with hemp rope, evidence that someone had once raised them as livestock.
Shortly after the rat died, its flesh began to dissolve, and the mushrooms on its back flourished.
In the blink of an eye, they grew to half a meter tall. Their semi-transparent caps revealed mouse embryos developing inside.
What kind of eerie forbidden zone was this?
Goosebumps erupted on Ren Qing's skin.
Then he noticed his fingernails had turned crystalline.
He forcefully broke off a piece, it resembled coarse salt. He placed it in his mouth and tasted it.
Indeed, it was rock salt.
Clearly, not even Ren Qing could avoid the aberration effects of the forbidden zone.
But he had no time to dwell on it.
From the mushrooms, juvenile mice began to emerge, each the size of a calf.
They ran out of the cave and joined the grain-feeding swarm.
The more rice they consumed, the more plant-like the rats became. Their backs sprouted crimson fruits, emitting a tempting fragrance.
Ren Qing's gaze remained fixed on the stove.
The rice giant's footsteps rang out again, this time, it had clearly come to harvest the fruit.
Many rats perished in the resulting tremors.
The rest fled in panic, rushing into the cave system.
A few rats lagged behind, perhaps by chance, or perhaps not.
Ren Qing leapt onto one of their backs, using them to move through the wide, bizarre tunnels that seemed to slope upward.
Since the rats showed signs of being domesticated, perhaps survivors of the forbidden zone could be found.
The cave passages grew wider, with multiple branches converging into a massive tide of rats.
When they reached the tunnel's end, they stopped, and hundreds of eyes locked onto Ren Qing.
The expression in their rodent eyes was uniformly strange and disturbing.
Ren Qing looked at the stone wall before him and touched it. A crack immediately formed and gradually expanded to about two meters wide.
Clearly wide enough for a person to walk through.
His expression grew dazed. Through the stone wall, his Double Pupils seemed to glimpse the outside world.
It was a remote mountain village, with residents tending melons and vegetables. All had disorderly lines covering their chests and abdomens.
Ren Qing immediately understood.
The forbidden zone was guiding him out, it was likely a means of extracting his soul.
The reason he couldn't sense his main soul was likely due to this body's blocking effect.
The stone wall was almost certainly the exit.
Under normal circumstances, if the main soul entered the wall, it would likely meet the same fate as Zhang Mu, becoming a puppet of the forbidden zone.
Others might have to search for their true body and reintegrate their soul, but Ren Qing was different.
He closed his eyes and carefully examined his soul. It was indeed a subsoul.
Then, using the power of Twin Nightmare Ghosts, he forcibly made the subsoul collapse.
He stepped forward without hesitation. As the body gradually decayed, the subsoul became more lucid.
Just before the subsoul dissipated entirely, Ren Qing finally understood how those mysterious paper slips had appeared.
[Divine Eye of Mind Perception]
[Created by an unnamed ascetic monk. Requires cutting off one's tongue and suspending it before a temple Buddha for three years of silence. Once cultivated, silently reading someone's name allows one to transmit thought.]
When Ren Qing next awoke, the physical sensations of his body gradually returned, and all techniques were back under his control.
After surviving the disaster of entering the forbidden zone, he finally grasped the sliver of life within certain death.
...
Upon hearing that Ren Qing had entered the Forbidden Zone of the Food-Consuming Immortal, Song Zongwu exuded a suffocating aura.
A large number of Restraint Officers were dispatched to locate the forbidden zone, but returned with nothing, as if it had vanished without a trace.
Just as all hope seemed lost,
A Nether Crow landed on Song Zongwu's shoulder. After spitting out a paper slip, it dissolved into a pile of meat mush.
This time, the slip no longer had disorderly lines, but instead depicted a mountain village.