Ren Qing stopped paying attention once the Immortal Market had taken shape.
As for the children abducted from Furong Tower, they were all placed in the prison area, watched over by the courtesans, and for the time being, there was no need to worry about them.
According to his estimation, Old Coffin and the others should not need much time to complete their conversion to the Netherworld Heavenly Insect Method.
After all, both techniques originated from the same source, only that Old Coffin's cultivation would likely temporarily fall to the peak of the Foundation Establishment Stage; only after the Heavenly Dao Worm advanced could he gradually regain his original cultivation.
This was also the flaw of the Netherworld Heavenly Insect Method, cultivation was restricted by the Heavenly Dao Worm, and even one's own life was under its control.
Once Old Coffin and the others were free, his main body would return to Morning Street, and his consciousness could enter the Immortal Market, just in time to have them lead the children to enter the sect.
Each time he entered the Immortal Market, a portion of Nether Yuan would be absorbed by the Heavenly Dao Worm.
Ren Qing also examined the children and discovered that the insect-mimicking aberration of the Jingzhou people was very unusual, causing their bodies to develop far beyond that of the Xiangxiang and Gobi people.
Judging by the looks of it, it would only take a few years before the children fully matured.
He would then decide based on the situation in Qingyan Town, gradually taking the children to the outside world in batches.
After all, within the Prison Within the Abdomen, there was no True Yuan to absorb.
Ren Qing temporarily stayed in the coffin shop, sitting cross-legged and visualizing his techniques.
But tonight was destined to be eventful, from the direction of the District of Debauchery, several muffled sounds came, clearly Yinghu had discovered the anomaly in the cellar.
Ren Qing was still somewhat nervous, but he believed that with the Ghost Shadow technique combined with other arts, its concealment was flawless.
Moreover, although the Crescent Moon Layer was full of cultivators of the Yin Runner Realm, in truth, they only had cultivation in name, and the intelligence of the aberrations was not very high.
The Heavenly Insect Method leaned more toward a supportive type, primarily to nourish the Earth Immortal Heavenly Dao Worm, and was therefore far less comprehensive than the Restraint Officer Method.
He only opened the shop door at the third watch of the night to serve the townsfolk coming to purchase coffins.
The townsfolk were not surprised to see Ren Qing alone, after all, he had been helping in Three-Wood Alley for a long time, and they were already accustomed to it.
Ren Qing noticed there were several more corpses killed by Yinghu; they should have been workers from the shops around Furong Tower who met with misfortune.
As the number of deaths rose, under the conscious or unconscious guidance of the bereaved, rumors about Yinghu began to spread.
Ren Qing silently waited, knowing that matters would inevitably continue to ferment.
Sure enough, an atmosphere of panic spread above Morning Street, the number of townsfolk killed by cultivators by mistake grew ever higher.
They seemed to be probing the walls that surrounded Morning Street, attempting to escape.
Ren Qing also tested the barrier with his Ghost Shadow, but his methods were clearly much more concealed, maintaining utmost alertness at all times.
Yet he reached an absurd conclusion.
The city walls contained certain materials that blocked auras and isolated techniques, but aside from that, there was nothing particularly special.
The wall seemed merely a half-closed gate, there were no cultivators guarding it, and even mortals could leave through the cracks.
Ren Qing felt a deep sense of absurdity; countless conjectures surged in his mind.
In such a state, he could not maintain visualization of techniques, so he focused his attention within the Prison Within the Abdomen, building up the embryonic Immortal Market.
He placed all kinds of materials within the Great Dream Pavilion, even labeling their uses.
These materials had all been refined through the Flesh Furnace, their effects bizarre and varied, most of them rather mediocre.
However, the currency of the Immortal Market had not yet been determined.
For now, there was no rush, the Immortal Market was still in a beta state; the time for opening it to the outside world remained undecided.
Old Coffin and Yuan Si had nearly completed their conversion; the excess True Yuan within their bodies dissipated instantly, then was absorbed by the Heavenly Dao Worm.
Ren Qing secretly decided to let the Heavenly Dao Worm advance to the Nascent Soul Stage on its own; if danger arose, he would consider consuming two hundred years of lifespan.
He still had some confidence, as long as the Shadow Ghost Technique reached the Merging the Yin God stage and turned the Heavenly Dao Worm into a secondary art, he should be able to control it completely.
Once the connection between the Netherworld Heavenly Insect Method and the Heavenly Dao Worm's sustenance system stabilized, he could even consider advancing to the Spirit Division Stage in Jingzhou.
The Immortal Market and the sustenance system —
The Heavenly Dao Worm's ascension extended life, and together with the Immortal Market's life-prolonging effect, it was a broad and open road leading straight toward immortality.
Suppressing the distracting thoughts in his heart, he continued making coffins, as townsfolk came and went from the shop.
Ren Qing's actions were meticulous; as night was about to fall, his arm suddenly trembled for no reason.
The carvings on the coffin's surface appeared with a flaw.
"So, you've finally come... don't make me look down on you..."
At the edge of Morning Street, faint light flickered across the city wall, it was the projection of a hidden Soul Butterfly, unnoticed by others.
Ren Qing closed his eyes, shifting his consciousness into the Soul Butterfly's projection; three cultivators were approaching the wall.
All three possessed cultivation above the Foundation Establishment Stage, yet their clothes were soaked with sweat, their faces tense as they walked step by step toward the wall.
Ren Qing did not have the Soul Butterfly projection move closer, only observed from a distance.
He had long wanted to leave Morning Street, but for safety's sake, he decided to wait until other cultivators could no longer hold back and made their move first.
The three cultivators exchanged glances, all seeming somewhat hesitant.
The middle-aged, fat cultivator squinted, glanced at the sun about to set behind the mountain, and said, "What are you thinking about? Staying here is death all the same."
"You know how many cultivators are preparing to flee Morning Street, when the time comes and everyone charges at once, you can imagine the outcome."
"Huang Hao, you lead first," a companion urged impatiently.
Huang Hao swallowed hard; the courage he had just built up dissipated by half.
After hesitating for a few breaths, he still gritted his teeth, pulled aside a wooden plank, condensed all his True Yuan, and bent down to crawl into the crack.
The two outside stared anxiously at the fat cultivator disappearing into the darkness, their expressions uneasy, feet shifting restlessly.
Moments later, a sound came from within the crack.
It seemed Huang Hao had stood up, standing there blankly at the opening.
His companions waited for a long time, finally tapping the wall with their fingers, attempting to ask whether there was any danger outside.
What came instead was Huang Hao's terrified shout: "Run, run, there's—"
Before he could finish, silence fell beyond the wall again, followed only by faint sounds of heavy objects being dragged.
The two cultivators several times wanted to crawl into the crack but ultimately turned back toward the residential district, clearly frightened out of their wits.
Through the opening, Ren Qing could sense that the middle-aged fat cultivator was still alive, only taken somewhere farther away from the wall.
His conjecture about Qingyan Town gradually became clearer, but he still chose to continue waiting.
A few more days passed, the number of ordinary townsfolk killed by Yinghu decreased, yet the number of missing cultivators was noticeably rising.
One after another, cultivators could no longer endure it; already over a dozen had crawled through the crack in the wall.
Their reactions were all the same, mixed with murmurs of astonishment, as though they had seen something unbelievable in Qingyan Town.
Ren Qing finished making the final batch of coffins and entered the inner room of the shop.
Inside the Prison Within the Abdomen, Old Coffin and Yuan Si felt drowsiness surge and fainted, unaware that Ren Qing had already taken them outside.
Ren Qing forcibly imprinted the information about Yinghu and the method of entering the Immortal Market through dreams into their memories.
As long as they were cautious enough, they should not encounter danger for the time being.
As for leaving Morning Street, it would be up to Old Coffin and Yuan Si themselves, Ren Qing could not be bothered to interfere; as long as they could provide Nether Yuan, that was enough.
Ren Qing walked out of Three-Wood Alley, heading straight to the edge of Morning Street.
Without hesitation, he stepped into the shadows, and under the effect of the Yellow Spring Immortal Bone, his body merged completely with the ghost shadow.
"If I'm not mistaken, the Crescent Moon Layer..."
"...has already fallen."
Ren Qing slipped through the crack in the wall, feeling no resistance at all, as if the sealed Morning Street were a joke.
It did not take long before he passed through the several-meter-thick wall.
Sunlight shone on the wall, and Ren Qing's eyes suddenly widened.
The first thing he saw were rows of sentry posts, with many soldiers guarding the walls, but not to prevent people from escaping Morning Street.
They were there to prevent people outside Morning Street from entering within the walls.
Ren Qing still maintained his shadow form, but when he saw the full view of the town, he couldn't help but give a bitter smile, eyes full of helplessness.
He recalled the time when he had followed the laborer to the crack and spoken with the soldiers outside, and how that man had been swiftly executed.
At the time, Ren Qing had thought it was to prevent aberrations from spreading into Qingyan Town, but now it seemed...
The truth was the exact opposite, because Qingyan Town had already been overrun by aberrations, their number even more terrifying than imagined.
Ren Qing looked up.
It was a town where demons and humans lived together.
Aberrations with elephant heads and human bodies walked the streets, and the surrounding townsfolk revered them like immortals, their own mutations also taking on elephant-headed human forms.
Mist sprayed from the aberrations' trunks, and cultivators used magical tools to collect it.
Countless fleshly, tree-like aberrations stood in the town's center; the cultivators living upon them looked half-human, half-plant.
A flowing great river divided Qingyan Town north and south.
Whale-shaped aberrations tens of meters long leaped from the water, their translucent bellies packed with mortals, all still alive.
Above, the clouds drifted with massive turtle aberrations floating upon them, seemingly forming their own mountains and rivers.
There were also Heavenly Insect Method cultivators, though they made up at most one percent of the population.
No wonder Yinghu had come to Morning Street, with its strength, it truly couldn't make waves in Qingyan Town.
Though the aberrations took many shapes, Ren Qing felt they all seemed somewhat similar, perhaps all born from the same part of the Blood Moon.
And since there were no traces of Heavenly Abomination Stage beings, it meant that even Earth Immortals could not easily create entities above the Heavenly Abomination Stage.
Ren Qing shook his head in self-mockery.
But this proved that, whether in Xiangxiang, Shuize, or Jingzhou, the strongest thing about humanity was always its ability to adapt.
Perhaps during the decades that Old Coffin had been sealed within Morning Street, the catastrophe brought by aberrations had already broken out, leaving the Crescent Moon Layer devastated.
But the Jingzhou people quickly found a way to survive.
They cultivated by relying on aberrations, eventually forming a bizarre yet logical world, and a new order was reestablished.
And in the eyes of those outside the wall, Morning Street was perhaps a pure land that needed protection.
Ren Qing shook his head, this was not good news for the Earth Immortal Heavenly Dao Worm, as it meant that the situation was tilting toward the Blood Moon.
He no longer worried that the wool of the Netherworld Heavenly Insect Method would be discovered, since even the Earth Immortal Heavenly Dao Worm itself could barely protect its own existence.
Ren Qing felt a trace of confusion in his heart, but soon his resolve became firm once more.
The Blood Moon was also accelerating growth by force; cultivators' reliance had shifted from the Earth Immortal Heavenly Dao Worm to aberrations, yet he couldn't help but feel that these demon-like Jingzhou people seemed well-suited for the Restraint Officer Method...