Because Wuwei City no longer had gates for entry or exit, the Sand Ship could only dock beside the White Bone Glazed Canopy, waiting for cultivators to leap onto the deck.
The Sand Ship looked to be only around ten meters long from the outside, but due to the aberrant entity of the Taotie Method, its internal space could accommodate at least several hundred people.
The civilians one after another stopped the work at hand, raised their heads, and discussed the Sand Ship animatedly.
Even though aberrant fetus artifacts had already become completely widespread, large-scale aberrant fetus artifacts were still rare, especially since the aura emitted by the Sand Ship was fully at the Ghost Envoy realm.
Ren Qing had privately helped the Restraint Officers' Hall refine ten Sand Ships, while the Jar-in-the-Stomach Heads refined another three. Gradually, the total number had already approached twenty.
However, due to the difficulty of advancing aberrant fetus artifacts, there were only two Sand Ships at the Ghost Envoy realm.
In order to deal with aberrant anomalies, the Restraint Officers' Hall had dispatched a Ghost Envoy–realm Sand Ship from thousands of miles away to Wuwei City, clearly showing how seriously they regarded Jingzhou.
"Set out."
Li Tiangang stood at the prow and surveyed his surroundings. The cultivators had long since been itching for action and had already cast techniques, shrouding the ship in a thin mist.
The Sand Ship departed Wuwei City, moving in a grand procession toward the northeastern corner.
According to previous investigations, there was an aberrant anomaly there shaped like a pangolin, its body fused into mountain rock and constantly releasing demonic qi.
Around the aberrant anomaly were roughly twenty to thirty demonic beasts. They had previously attempted to attack Wuwei City, but had clearly returned in failure.
Afterward, the two sides kept to their own territory, with no conflicts in the past few years.
The mountain peak formed by the aberrant anomaly began to tremble violently, as if faintly sensing danger.
It wanted to break free from the earth's restraints and move as far away from Wuwei City as possible, but quickly discovered that the demonic beasts were trying to stop it.
Inside the mountain were demonic lizard beasts everywhere. Houses had already formed a certain scale, and in secret they had built a sacrificial altar to summon the demonic immortal.
The demonic beasts naturally refused to flee, since the altar was about to be completed.
Just as the two sides were locked in a tug-of-war, dense dark clouds covered the sky above, and part of the Sand Ship had already emerged from within the clouds.
At Li Tiangang's command, a large number of wood-aspect techniques descended from the heavens.
Vegetation immediately surrounded the mountain. Some of the plants bore human faces, while others were filled with serrated leaves and suction-tube roots.
The disturbance caused by the aberrant anomaly grew increasingly violent, triggering landslides and toppling trees.
"Suppress..."
Li Tiangang snorted coldly, took out a sheet of white paper, and pointed at it through the air.
The aberrant anomaly unwillingly tried to resist, but soon returned to stillness.
If this were before the drastic changes in Jingzhou, a solitary aberrant anomaly could indeed reach pseudo–Yang Spirit realm strength, and it would not have been so easy for Li Tiangang to deal with.
But now, aside from the Corpse Elephant, aberrant anomalies had all transformed into existences similar to spirit veins, their primary function being to constantly release demonic qi.
The current strength of aberrant anomalies left them completely at Li Tiangang's mercy.
An elderly lizard demon had a livid expression. By the time he realized something was wrong, it was already too late. It was obvious the other side had come prepared and did not intend to spare a single demon.
He spoke in a low voice, "Have a few thick-skinned great demons forcibly break through."
"Go seek support from nearby demonic beasts, that Tiger-Form Mountain..."
"Elder..."
The lizard demon swallowed, could not help but push the old lizard, and said, "Elder, Tiger-Form Mountain seems to have already arrived."
He pointed into the distance, where more than ten tiger beasts were charging toward the mountain.
"Are we saved..."
Just as the old lizard muttered to himself, the fur of the tiger beasts split open with countless eyes, the emitted light stabbing painfully into the eyes.
Tiger-Form Mountain was not far from where Zhang Yi was. When he sensed the aura of the Restraint Officer methods, he guessed that the demonic immortal intended to move against the group of lizards, so he hurriedly led the demonic beasts over.
Li Tiangang frowned slightly at the sight, clearly sensing traces of the Eyeless Method on the demonic beasts. The leading tiger demon had even reached the Ghost Envoy realm.
This had to be Ren Qing's doing, no wonder he wanted the demonic beasts captured alive.
However, he also noticed the potential displayed by the demonic beasts. The degree of aberration in many of the tiger demons would have already caused loss of control if they were Restraint Officers, yet the demonic beasts appeared completely unaffected.
Jiang Feng hesitated and asked, "Senior Li Tiangang, what do you think..."
"Let them through. Have them all prepare."
At Li Tiangang's signal, the techniques surrounding the mountain split open into a half-meter-wide path, allowing the tiger beasts to charge toward the lizard demons.
At the same time, cultivators rode their artifacts down.
Fortunately, due to the influence of demonic cultivators, the Daoist temple disciples mixed among them had already greatly changed their view of demonkind. Otherwise, they might have slaughtered the tiger demons as well.
The three-way battle was even more clean and decisive than expected.
The lizard demons attempted to resist, but faced with enemies superior in both number and strength, they quickly collapsed.
Seeing that the situation was already under the demonic immortal's control, Zhang Yi chose to remain far away at the foot of the mountain.
Li Tiangang glanced at the tiger demons, raised his hand to have cultivators treat the severely injured lizard demons, then sealed them all into sheets of paper.
After everything was handled, only devastation remained on site, and even the aberrant anomaly had disappeared without a trace.
Zhang Yi hurriedly shouted, "Immortals, follow me! I know the locations of aberrant anomalies within a hundred li. I'll lead you there now!"
With that, he ran toward the west.
The Sand Ship followed behind the tiger demon group, while Li Tiangang simultaneously guarded against Zhang Yi betraying them.
However, Li Tiangang was clearly overthinking it. After the three aberrant anomaly forces near Wuwei City were all sealed, the tiger demons quietly departed.
Zhang Yi planned to go support Hu Wen, helping more fellow demonic beasts escape from suffering.
After the Restraint Officers' Hall finished suppressing the aberrant anomalies, they returned to Wuwei City. More distant aberrant anomaly forces could only be left alone.
Li Tiangang continued the massive project of refining Wuwei City into an aberrant fetus artifact, and used bird-type aberrant beasts to deliver the papers sealing aberrant anomalies and demonic beasts to Ren Qing.
Through this, Ren Qing obtained three aberrant anomalies and more than two hundred demonic beasts.
He drew them into Eternal Shackles, drained the demonic qi from the demonic beasts, then directly distributed them among the various tribes, calling it transformation.
However, in order to improve the efficiency of demonic beasts extracting resources, Ren Qing also taught them the Netherworld Heavenly Insect Method, incidentally harvesting Nether Yuan.
Ren Qing did not know whether there would be enough time for the Nether Sea Breathing Art to break through to the Spirit Division realm, so he could only do his best to increase the speed at which the four-headed Heavenly Dao Insect absorbed Nether Yuan.
At the same time, there were still many matters he needed to handle.
Researching the patterns on the altar's surface, and stripping away the molted shell buried deep beneath Wuwei City, preparing for the Restraint Officers' Hall to withdraw from Jingzhou.
Ren Qing simply dug a dry well in the courtyard and arrived at the location of the molted shell underground.
The molted shell looked like a long, narrow snake skeleton, composed entirely of semi-transparent white crystal, radiating dense true essence.
"All things can undergo pseudo-dragon transformation. Even a molted shell should not be an exception."
Ren Qing stroked the molted shell, then sat cross-legged beside it, closed his eyes, and cast Dragon Roar Within the Casket, while using Spirit Division to ponder the structure of the altar.
The molted shell, like an aberrant entity about to revive, actually began to squirm slightly.
After reaching the Yang Spirit realm, Ren Qing could apply Dragon Roar Within the Casket with greater refinement, allowing the pseudo-dragon to be tainted with the characteristics of five techniques.
Naturally, he used the Nether Sea Breathing Art as the main focus, with the Shadowless Ghost as a supplement, to enlighten the molted shell.
However, since the molted shell involved an earth immortal, the progress of pseudo-dragon transformation was self-evident. Wanting to see results in a short time was unrealistic.
He also had to attend to cracking the altar.
The demonic beasts relied entirely on aberrant anomalies to set up the altar and had no understanding of the profound principles contained within.
As a result, Wuwei City was illuminated day and night. Everyone sensed that a storm was imminent, and they operated like cogs in a machine, participating in heavy and monotonous labor.
Time flew by.
Several months passed in the blink of an eye.
The changes in Wuwei City were actually not very great. At most, the bricks had been refined into a single whole, and the aura they emitted had instead become more restrained.
However, the cultivators guarding the city clearly sensed something amiss.
The number of demonic beasts attacking the city increased steadily, the frequency becoming denser and denser. A few days prior, there had even been scenes of several hundred demonic beasts arriving at once.
Even the cultivation of the demonic beasts was steadily rising.
Miscellaneous demons equivalent to the Martial Practitioner realm had become extremely rare. The demonic beasts attacking the city were almost all minor demons, occasionally mixed with great demons.
Fortunately, the city walls were such that even the Yin Messenger realm found them difficult to breach, making it not hard to repel the demonic beasts.
But only Ren Qing and the others knew that Jingzhou's situation was already grim. The Rabbit-Toad cultivator's period of recuperation was about to end.
Yet whether it was stripping the molted shell or refining Wuwei City, all of it still lacked a great deal, forcing the Restraint Officers' Hall to remain in Jingzhou.
However, they had already begun evacuating ordinary civilians. A full twenty thousand people were to head to Yellow Sand City to temporarily settle, waiting for the right moment to go to Xiangxiang.
Ren Qing even had an inexplicable feeling that the nature of the demonic beast attacks on the city had changed.
Originally, it should have been probing by aberrant anomaly forces toward Wuwei City, but nearby aberrant anomalies had already been sealed. Logically speaking, demonic beast attacks should have decreased.
Wait... could it be deliberate?
Ren Qing's heart pounded wildly. He immediately summoned all Yin Messenger realms, including Song Zongwu, to the narrow courtyard.
As soon as the others sat down, Ren Qing opened his mouth and said, "The Rabbit-Toad cultivator has very likely already learned of the existence of the Restraint Officers' Hall..."
The Rabbit-Toad cultivator had the demonic beasts attack the city not out of fear of Wuwei City, but to consume demonic beast numbers, allowing more demonic qi to return to heaven and earth, increasing the concentration of demonic qi in Jingzhou.
Once the demonic qi became sufficiently dense, the Rabbit-Toad cultivator would be able to fully recover from his injuries.
Any Rabbit-Toad cultivator who could survive to reach the Waning Moon Layer would absolutely possess Yang Spirit realm strength. It was only due to bodily mutilation that they had fallen to the Yin Messenger realm.
As the last region not yet eroded by demonic qi, Wuwei City was simply a battleground that must be contested.
After discussion among the many Yin Messenger realms, they unanimously believed that the Rabbit-Toad cultivator intended to bypass the Supreme Heavenly Demon of the Lower Crescent Moon Layer, use the Waning Moon Layer as a springboard, and directly target the New Moon Layer of the Earth Immortal Heavenly Dao Insect.
To reach the New Moon Layer, the Waning Moon Layer would need to be completely saturated with demonic qi, and Wuwei City was the final area without demonic qi.
They would inevitably strike at Wuwei City, and sooner or later would even come personally.
Fortunately, the Restraint Officers' Hall had noticed early enough and still had a chance to counteract.
Ren Qing proposed summoning part of the Black Goats to descend into the Waning Moon Layer, using them to restrain the Rabbit-Toad cultivator, so that this game might end with everyone intact.
Li Tiangang hesitated to speak. It was truly a mad idea, but coming from Ren Qing, it was also somehow natural. The degree of certainty was simply impossible to see through.
Song Zongwu did not respond immediately. The atmosphere instantly dropped to freezing. After a long time, he finally said, "Follow Ren Qing's plan. Cooperate with him to draw the Heavenly Demons into Jingzhou."
The Yin Messenger realms looked at one another. Li Tiangang was the second to agree. "So be it. Ren Qing will continue to study that kind of altar, while we do our utmost to cooperate and defend against demonic beast attacks."
At present, whether Jingzhou fell to the Heavenly Demons or the Blood Moon, Xiangxiang would inevitably be affected. Fortunately, the worst outcome would simply be relocation.
When Song Zongwu made the final decision, it also meant that the meeting had ended.
The Yin Messenger realms each went about their own business, and Ren Qing immediately returned underground to continue closed-door cultivation.
Most of the Yin Messenger realms went to assist in refining the aberrant fetus artifact. Li Yaoyang, on the other hand, used the concealment of gu insects to transport aberrant entities outside the city, constructing forbidden zones to defend against demonic beast attacks.
On the surface, Wuwei City appeared calm. The incoming demonic beast tides were more like deliveries of resources, making many cultivators unable to suppress their delight.
But the problem was..
What if the demonic beast tide truly gathered all the demonic beasts of Jingzhou?