Ren Qing guessed that it might be because of his method of absorbing Buddhist aura that Liuli Mountain disappeared from the Waning Moon Layer, its whereabouts unknown.
He pushed the Double Pupils in his eyes to the limit, trying to search for traces of Liuli Mountain, but instead seemed to discover something else, and could not help but draw in a sharp breath.
Far away to the north of Jingzhou, a black shadow was heading toward Liuli Mountain.
Even at such a great distance he could feel its enormity; the black shadow's size was probably at least several hundred meters, and the pressure it brought was extremely terrifying.
Frightened cries interrupted Ren Qing's thoughts. Liuli Mountain vanished cleanly without a trace, but left behind quite a mess.
Those cultivators who had been bewitched regained their clarity. They uncontrollably fell from the sky, their faces filled with deep terror.
And the Spiritual Response King also took advantage of this to break free. As large amounts of demonic aura surged into its body, its originally weak physique gradually recovered its strength.
Ren Qing appeared unhurried and unflustered, and the ghost shadow instantly arrived at the ground.
The Spiritual Response King crazily absorbed demonic aura. Its damaged flesh regrew, and its eyes were filled with a craving for blood and flesh.
Its gaze fell upon the cultivators descending around it. Its arms immediately spread open and grabbed toward them, at the same time revealing sharp fangs.
Shen Qiuteng's chest rose and fell violently. Instinctive survival made him forget fear.
Thin Nether Yuan spread outward. His arms swelled accordingly, transforming into over a meter in length and becoming covered in thick bone armor.
Shen Qiuteng used his arms to strike out several streaks of firelight, attempting to block the Spiritual Response King.
The other cultivators followed suit one after another. Techniques related to the Netherworld Heavenly Insect Method were unleashed, most of them being body-based methods.
Moreover, they had been imprisoned in the Temple of Spiritual Response for far too long. Their Netherworld Heavenly Insect Method had regressed rather than advanced, and was completely inadequate in the face of an aberration.
The mountain wind howled.
The Spiritual Response King did not take the cultivators' techniques seriously at all. It casually grabbed several unlucky avian demon beasts and stuffed them into its mouth.
Immediately after, it took a deep breath and forcefully spat, bone fragments shooting out like sharp arrows.
Shen Qiuteng was struck in multiple places. Fresh blood dyed his monk's robes red, and also made his falling speed even faster, as he was about to hit the ground.
At this moment, he discovered that the Spiritual Response King had stopped moving, its expression filled with incomparable fear.
This great demon seemed to be staring at the ground. Shen Qiuteng hurriedly looked over with the corner of his eye.
His pupils instantly shrank.
The ground was already covered by pitch-black ghost shadows, forming an incomparably huge dragon mouth, inside which were densely packed with several thousand teeth.
Roar!!!
The hundred-meter-long dragon head leaped up, swallowing the cultivators together with the Spiritual Response King in one gulp.
Ren Qing casually loosened his muscles. To deal with an aberration lacking demonic aura, there was no need to go all out; just the dragon-transformed ghost shadow alone was not something it could withstand.
He still floated in midair and swept a glance into the Eternal Prison.
The cultivators were all placed in the prison area, and as soon as the Spiritual Response King showed itself, it was targeted by the jailers. What awaited it was self-evident.
"I am the Spiritual Response King, take refuge... take refuge..."
The Ghost Wolf excitedly let out a shrill cry, nimbly tearing off chunks of flesh from the aberration.
The Blood Python coiled around the Spiritual Response King's limbs, forcibly injecting venom.
Kunpeng relied on spraying water pillars, having no intention of engaging at close range.
Even the Nether Crow was restless, wanting to share a portion after the Spiritual Response King died. Compared to fresh flesh, it preferred the rich stench released when corpses decayed.
Just as Ren Qing was about to shift his attention back to the outside world, he suddenly felt something strange and noticed the differences of the Spiritual Response King.
The Spiritual Response King's intelligence was only slightly higher than that of the mountain spider, and was still quite limited, repeating just a few nonsensical phrases.
What puzzled Ren Qing was that ordinary aberrations, once their demonic aura was exhausted, would gradually collapse in body, and the patterns within them would not last long either.
The Spiritual Response King was different.
Its demonic aura had clearly already been drained dry by the Eternal Prison, yet it had not died, only its aura had obviously become weaker.
Ren Qing gained some understanding. Could the role of Buddhist aura be to dispel the influence of demonic aura?
He hurriedly stopped the jailers from dealing a killing blow, then bound the Spiritual Response King with black ropes, planning to bring it back to the city to properly research its value.
Perhaps the Spiritual Response King could be used as a vessel to contain Nether Yuan, or even resolve the trouble of Daoist cultivators replenishing their cultivation.
With the current demonic aura concentration in Jingzhou, Daoist disciples could still barely endure it, but what about when the true opening of the Primordial Wilderness arrived?
Even if they dual-cultivated Restraint Officer methods, it would still only treat the symptoms, not the root.
After all, the physiques of Jingzhou people were naturally suited to cultivating the Netherworld Heavenly Insect Method. If they took Restraint Officer methods as their main path, their advantages would be completely lost.
It would be impossible to catch up to those Restraint Officers who had cultivated for ten or even several decades, and in the end they would inevitably become dependents of the Restraint Officers' Hall.
Ren Qing landed on the ground, and the ghost shadow reverted to its shadow state.
He looked around. Liuli Mountain left behind some residual Buddhist aura. From the barren land where not a blade of grass grew, one could vaguely see that there should originally have been a tall mountain here.
However, in a few days it would probably be covered with vegetation.
Ren Qing used Wu Deceit to restrain his sense of existence, and applied secondary techniques to the Double Pupils.
His field of vision continuously stretched northward. He did not know how many li it traversed before quickly arriving in front of that enormous black shadow.
Each step the black shadow took caused the ground to cave in. It seemed to have sensed the abnormality of Liuli Mountain, and thus rushed over quickly.
Within the rising mist, the shattered outline of a giant elephant could faintly be seen.
"Corpse Elephant?"
After not seeing it for a long time, the Corpse Elephant's size had grown by more than tenfold. Its exterior was covered with pustules, and the white mist shrouding its body was actually formed from corpse qi.
The Corpse Elephant gave Ren Qing the feeling not of a living creature, but of a walking corpse, its movements stiff, like a puppet devoid of intelligence.
Buzz...
The Corpse Elephant's long trunk let out a hiss, and ripples appeared in the air as if on the surface of water.
The shockwaves spread, causing countless leaves to fly. Several unlucky demon beasts were swept into it and instantly turned into minced flesh.
Ren Qing's heart pounded wildly as he retreated several steps. The state of the Double Pupils vanished completely.
"How is this possible? From such an unknown distance, it can still produce such power?"
When he had faced the Corpse Elephant before, he had not felt such great pressure.
Since the latter had undergone such earth-shaking changes, it could only mean one thing: the Corpse Elephant had crossed from the pseudo-Yang Spirit Realm into the true Yang Spirit Realm.
Moreover, aberrations were biological artifacts refined by the blood moon, and should logically remain in one place for long periods to transform the environment.
Why would the Corpse Elephant move about at will? Could it be that the arrangements he had made earlier had taken effect?
He even had a premonition that the Corpse Elephant had come for Liuli Mountain, only for it to suddenly disappear before reaching its destination.
Ren Qing did not know the hidden details. He then noticed many demon beasts surging toward this area, possibly coming to compete for new territory.
According to the Restraint Officers' Hall, once a demon beast's cultivation reached the Ghost Envoy realm, it would imitate aberrations by restricting its range of activity, thereby absorbing large amounts of demonic aura.
The Corpse Elephant took a few more steps, then turned around and left.
Ren Qing's thoughts stirred slightly.
Could it be that the Corpse Elephant wanted to use Buddhist aura to escape the shackles of demonic aura, or was it influenced by the blood moon and came to destroy Liuli Mountain?
Ren Qing shook his head and did not plan to linger.
Returning to Wuwei City as soon as possible to enter seclusion was what he should do. Demon beasts could never be killed off completely, and aberrations would descend endlessly.
Fortunately, the demonic aura concentration in Jingzhou could at most give birth to Ghost Envoy–realm demon beasts, indicating that there was still ample time before true Primordial Wilderness transformation.
Only, the appearance of the Buddhist sect, plus the Supreme Heavenly Demon Egg within the Waxing Moon Layer...
"There are too many variables."
Ren Qing released the husky from the Eternal Prison, sat cross-legged on the foolish dog's back, and sped toward Wuwei City like the wind.
He traveled through dense jungle. All kinds of living creatures caused the husky to stop repeatedly, and it only behaved after Ren Qing patted its head.
Demonic aura was like nuclear radiation from a previous life, able to stimulate plants and animals to grow wildly, though unknown changes would arise as a result.
This caused many plants and animals, after becoming demonic, to differ in both appearance and living habits.
Not long ago, Ren Qing had seen an ordinary mouse get grabbed by a bird, but unexpectedly the mouse's tail was connected to a giant underground worm, which directly swallowed the bird whole.
Or certain demonic trees, which could shed their bark like pythons, their trunks turning fleshy, even their roots forming rudimentary shapes resembling limbs.
Ren Qing could imagine what Jingzhou would be like in the future, a scene of rampant demons dancing wildly.
When demon beasts' intelligence grew higher and higher, they would definitely imitate cultivators by opening caves and gathering together to cultivate, great demons feeding on lesser demons to form one faction after another.
He did not know what the situation of human demon cultivators had been like back then.
Ren Qing glanced northward. Wuwei City's location was too remote, and he did not know what the current situation at Jingzhou's center was like...
The husky quickly left the range of Liuli Mountain.
The desolation left behind by Liuli Mountain had already produced tender shoots of grass and vegetation in a short time, and before long it would be completely covered.
Today's Jingzhou could only be described as changing with each passing day.
The activity range of the Restraint Officers' Hall was at most about fifty li around Wuwei City, nowhere near significant within vast Jingzhou.
Near the center of Jingzhou.
Song Zongwu gazed in the direction of Wuwei City, his thoughts surging endlessly.
He was already skin and bones. The extra two arms had both been severed at the root, and his bare upper body was covered with all kinds of scars of varying sizes.
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His six eyes closed in fatigue, yet his battle intent continued to surge.
The environment Song Zongwu was in was extremely harsh, with white bones piled into mountains, even trees over ten meters tall buried beneath them.
Several demon beasts rushed toward the bone mountain. The aberrations within the bone mountain used tentacles to devour their flesh and blood, then tossed them back up high.
Song Zongwu let out a cold laugh.
If nothing unexpected happened, with the surging demonic aura concentration here, this would become the first place in Jingzhou where a Rabbit-Toad cultivator descended.
He had already forced himself to the limit. What he needed to do was to break through that limit, let the embryonic divine ability born at the perfection of the Ghost Envoy realm fully take shape, and thereby break into the Yang Spirit Realm.
Song Zongwu had asked the Great Dream True Person. Only by using external forces to make all the aberrations within the body share the same hatred could one see that bottleneck of advancement.
"Perhaps the opportunity referred to by the relic is an enemy of the same realm in Jingzhou..."
He licked his lips, took out dried meat from his bosom, and began to chew.
Song Zongwu hid in a corner of the bone mountain, closed his eyes, and planned to recover to peak condition first; otherwise, how could he be confident in facing a Rabbit-Toad cultivator.
But just as he closed his eyes, a crystalline, translucent mountain peak appeared before him.
Song Zongwu's expression shifted between shock and doubt. Immediately after, he could no longer see the mountain peak, as if it had merely been an illusion caused by excessive mental strain.