Ren Qing also did not know why the monster had manifested the appearance of six eyes and four arms. Could it be related to Song Zongwu? But thinking it through only made things more baffling.
The fishing line emitted a faint Buddhist aura, and after Ren Qing approached, it vanished without a trace.
Qingzhu immediately recognized Ren Qing and could not help but weakly say, "Senior."
"That might have been my father..."
Before she could finish speaking, she saw Ren Qing directly grab the fish demon's head. No matter how desperately the latter struggled, there was no intention of letting go.
The fish demon widened its eyes and stared fixedly at Ren Qing with a dull gaze.
"Amitabha, I am sending this benefactor early to the Land of Ultimate Bliss. Why must you intervene and obstruct me? Do you not know the suffering of the world..."
"Do you recognize Song Zongwu?"
"I am the Spiritual Response King..."
The fish demon continued chattering on. Ren Qing felt a slight headache from listening and suddenly exerted force with his palm.
Crack crack crack.
Under Qingzhu's dumbfounded gaze, Ren Qing crushed the fish demon's head. Pale green blood mixed with brain matter splashed everywhere.
Ren Qing glanced at Qingzhu and said, "If you had touched that thin thread just now, I figure you would've grown a fish tail out of the back of your head too, and been controlled by the demon."
Qingzhu opened her mouth. Before she could speak, she felt the world spinning, and then she disappeared from where she stood.
Ren Qing casually took Qingzhu into the Eternal Prison, to avoid her interfering with him.
Immediately after, he walked toward the Temple of Spiritual Response at the summit of Liuli Mountain. His speed did not seem fast, yet in a few flickers he had already crossed over a thousand meters.
The Temple of Spiritual Response looked extremely grand, clearly not something that could have been built overnight, and there were at least dozens of monks inside.
When those escorts arrived in front of the temple, their hands, feet, and foreheads were already worn bloody, and their expressions had sunk into a frenzied piety.
The fish tails at the backs of their heads drilled into the Mud Pellet Palace, making the escorts' consciousness grow hazy.
Ren Qing felt deeply puzzled. He raised his hand and brought the escorts into the Eternal Prison. After inspecting them, he found that the demon had not harmed their souls at all, but was merely controlling their bodies.
So why would the demon expend so much effort and even build such a massive temple? What exactly was it for?
Because of Ren Qing, this uninvited guest, the entire Temple of Spiritual Response boiled over. Large numbers of monks surged toward his location.
Seeing this, he directly used Wu Deceit to erase his sense of presence and openly walked into the temple.
Outside the temple, the air was still filled with dense demonic aura, but inside it was shrouded in Buddhist aura, leaving no space whatsoever for demonic aura.
Ren Qing noticed that the Temple of Spiritual Response was all show and no substance. Aside from its outward splendor, not a single piece of equipment could be seen inside.
Let alone the Spiritual Response King, it was as if it had suddenly vanished without a trace. Moreover, how could a demon possibly survive in an environment completely saturated with Buddhist aura?
After thinking for a moment, he chose to step into the main hall.
In Xiangxiang, the marshlands, and Jingzhou, Ren Qing had never seen any trace of the Buddhist sect, let alone a Buddhist temple formed on such a scale.
In the center of the main hall stood an ordinary Tathagata Buddha statue, but its material displayed a pale red hue, making it seem somewhat eerie.
The ghost shadow silently came into contact with the Buddha statue. According to the information stream, the material should originally have been very ordinary stone.
It had been formed by long-term erosion from mutated moonlight.
"Long-term?"
Ren Qing narrowed his eyes. In that case, it likely meant that the Temple of Spiritual Response had come from a deeper layer of Jingzhou into the Waning Moon Layer.
That could also explain why a temple had appeared out of nowhere on Liuli Mountain.
Ren Qing wandered around the main hall a few times without detecting anything unusual. After all, the interior was extremely simple, and he did not even see incense or candles.
He then walked out of the main hall, and the Temple of Spiritual Response returned to calm.
The monks seemed to be carrying out daily affairs within the temple according to some specific pattern, as if everything was deliberate.
Ren Qing frowned, always feeling that the Temple of Spiritual Response revealed strangeness everywhere.
If the demon stopped appearing only after he arrived, then why could not even a trace of demonic aura be detected?
All he wanted now was to find the demon called the Spiritual Response King and see if he could extract some useful clues from its mouth.
He moved quickly through the temple, yet still did not sense any trace of the demon.
Instead, in a side hall of the Temple of Spiritual Response, Ren Qing saw a Buddha statue with six eyes and four arms.
The statue's facial features were carved very vaguely. It was impossible to tell whether it was Song Zongwu himself, but the six eyes and four arms were unmistakable.
Ren Qing also could not contact Song Zongwu and did not know what the latter had encountered.
If Jingzhou truly gained a Buddhist faction intervening, the situation would undoubtedly grow more and more complicated, making it impossible to see the depths clearly.
Ren Qing could not help but look around, and suddenly an idea arose.
The monks earlier should all have been passing cultivators and escorts, who, under some inexplicable influence, had come to the Temple of Spiritual Response and turned into puppet-like existences.
On the surface, it looked like the monks were all bewitched by the demon, but could it instead be because of the Buddhist aura?
Ren Qing decided to test it. The ghost shadow beneath his feet immediately dispersed.
The ghost shadow roamed through the corners of the Temple of Spiritual Response, attempting to find the hidden Spiritual Response King, but still found nothing.
Yet that fishing line earlier had clearly originated from within the temple, meaning a demon must be hidden here.
Ren Qing placed a finger between his brows. The Kindling Dream Seed transformed into Double Pupils embedded in his forehead, causing the surrounding temperature to grow scorching.
And the Kindling Dream Seed connected to the Flesh Furnace within his body.
The Double Pupils Dream Seed turned into a vortex, pulling wisps of Buddhist aura into it.
At first Ren Qing was still restrained, but he quickly stopped holding back, and all the Buddhist aura contained in the Temple of Spiritual Response surged toward the Kindling Dream Seed.
He felt slightly regretful. If that blank Dream Seed had not fallen into the Longevity Forbidden Zone, he could actually have tried refining it into a "Buddhist Dream Seed."
The Buddhist aura struggled inside the Flesh Furnace like a living thing. It felt more bizarre than any technique aura Ren Qing had ever encountered.
It would probably need to burn for a long time, and he did not know what material it would eventually become.
As the Buddhist aura contained in the Temple of Spiritual Response grew thin, the monks all regained consciousness and looked around with expressions of disbelief.
Ren Qing had indeed guessed correctly. It was the Buddhist aura that had caused the abnormalities on Liuli Mountain, and had even controlled others, turning them into ascetic monks.
He suspected that the Buddhist aura possessed a form of awareness. Though it was not capable of thought, it invisibly caused things to develop along specific trajectories.
The mountain peak began to tremble slightly, and spiderweb-like cracks spread across the ground.
From within the cracks emerged a bloodied fish-type aberration. Its appearance resembled an anglerfish, with a fishing-line-like organ on its head.
"I am the Spiritual Response King, quickly-"
It continued shouting with a twisted face, "Quickly take refuge in my Buddha."
The Spiritual Response King struggled desperately to break free from Liuli Mountain, large chunks of flesh being torn off.
Ren Qing could not help but freeze. The fish-type aberration should have descended into the Waning Moon Layer not long ago; the moment its body manifested, it became stuck directly within Liuli Mountain.
The Buddhist aura had already eroded the Spiritual Response King completely. Even the demonic aura it emitted was now faint and intermittent, teetering on the verge of collapse.
Ren Qing did not believe an aberration would commit such a low-level mistake.
Most likely, within the aberration's cognition, this place did not have this mountain at all.
Ren Qing's breathing grew heavy. The ghost shadow attempted to apply the information stream to Liuli Mountain, trying to figure out what exactly was hidden within.
But before the information stream could reveal anything,
The entire Liuli Mountain suddenly vanished into thin air, likely heading toward a deeper layer of Jingzhou.