The Beast Pen was filled with Heavenly Demon aura, and Jingzhou had been reduced to ruin amidst the clash of True Immortals. Disasters capable of destroying entire towns could be found everywhere.
However, after moving a thousand li away from Jingzhou, the mountains, rivers, and wilderness instead appeared relatively peaceful.
Intelligent cultivators and strange entities simply did not dare remain there for long. Driven by instinct, they competed to flee, leaving behind only ordinary wild beasts.
A leopard crouched low in the grass, its gaze fixed firmly on a wild boar not far away.
The boar's body was far larger than the leopard's. Under normal circumstances, even a tiger would not provoke a wild boar that ruled its mountain territory.
Yet the boar's fur had turned somewhat gray-white. Its abdomen heaved with labored breaths as it lay weakly beside a boulder. It was obvious that it did not have much time left.
The leopard waited for the boar's strength to gradually fade before finding an opportunity to enjoy a feast.
At that moment, a trace of complexity suddenly appeared in the boar's eyes. The sound of bones colliding echoed from within its body, and its form visibly collapsed inward.
In the blink of an eye, the boar transformed into a burly man.
The leopard was so frightened that it immediately fled for its life without the slightest hesitation. The bizarre condition of its prey had already surpassed its understanding.
"Walk Among Mortals really is well concealed. It's just that revealing my true form afterward is a bit... grotesque."
Ren Qing loosened his muscles and bones while walking leisurely toward Xiangxiang.
To increase the efficiency of his journey, he had repeatedly used the Divine Power Walk Among Mortals, directly targeting wild beasts more than a hundred li away.
Walk Among Mortals allowed Ren Qing to replace the wild boar, temporarily taking on the appearance of a beast.
However, after canceling the Divine Power and carefully examining his body, he could not detect the slightest abnormality, as though the entire experience had been an illusion.
As for the boar itself, it had been erased by the Divine Power. Its body and soul had completely vanished.
Ren Qing glanced back toward Jingzhou. Pitch-black storm clouds covered the sky, and the aftershocks of the earth-shaking battle could still be faintly sensed.
If nothing unexpected happened, the Fortune Virtue Earth Immortal could still hold on for at least several decades. However, restoring its Heavenly Dao-transformed body and soul would likely be difficult.
The reason the Heavenly Dao Crack on the turtle shell could slowly recover was primarily because Ren Qing's soul had not suffered corruption or mutation.
How could ordinary cultivators act as recklessly as he did when facing the Heavenly Dao directly?
Still, Ren Qing needed to remain cautious. Even though the information stream provided a safeguard, that did not mean the Heavenly Dao was incapable of corrupting his body and soul.
He had a feeling that if the statues shattered completely while comprehending the Ascension Method, the true forms of the Three Dao Ancestors would be even more terrifying than he imagined.
Ren Qing narrowed his eyes. Thinking about the Three Dao Ancestors before even becoming immortal was indeed somewhat premature.
What he needed to do now was increase his strength as much as possible before the layout unfolded and prepare himself to overturn the entire board.
Besides advancing his cultivation realm, there were other ways to increase his strength.
The Forbidden Corpse was an excellent aid. Even if Ren Qing did not personally control it, the tens of thousands of cultivators in the Restraint Officers' Hall could still bring out fifty to sixty percent of its power.
Ren Qing surveyed his surroundings. He was currently in the region between Jingzhou and the neighboring territory. There was not the slightest trace of technique aura nearby.
According to his perception of the Forbidden Realm, the Longevity Forbidden Zone should have moved to Xiangxiang.
However, Ren Qing planned to make a trip to the Marshlands first.
The upper half of Meat and Wine Taoist's corpse was located there. Back then, Chen Changsheng had flooded it with an enormous amount of pathogens. Only Heavenly Aberration Realm cultivators could likely approach it, so naturally no cultivator was interested.
Yet the corpse was quite useful to Ren Qing. After all, Meat and Wine Taoist could be refined into a guardian puppet similar to the Forbidden Corpse.
Body cultivation was connected to the Six Diseases Method. It was possible that the resulting guardian puppet could be controlled by the hundreds of thousands of cultivators from Longevity Township.
The Restraint Officers' Hall was about to participate in the struggles of this world. Any Heavenly Aberration Realm combat power was extraordinarily important.
Ren Qing had even long since considered how to complete Meat and Wine Taoist's corpse.
His legs exerted force, and every step carried him across mountain peaks. He looked like an immortal walking among the clouds, his figure impossible to clearly discern.
After passing through a region of rolling hills, a vast and boundless plain came into view.
Ren Qing no longer bothered hurrying. Seeing that the hexagram remained stable at "misfortune mixed with fortune," he released Husky from Stomach World.
Using Husky as transportation gave him spare time to deduce the Ascension Method.
Although Husky's strength was only equivalent to the Ghost Envoy Realm, its running speed was not slow in the slightest. It charged across the plains like a fish entering the sea.
Occasionally, it would chase birds, but its body remained remarkably stable despite the movement of its limbs, causing no disturbance to Ren Qing on its back.
Meanwhile, Ren Qing pondered the primary and secondary techniques of Wuying Ghost, recording his ideas as they arose.
When he finally came back to his senses, the soil beneath them had gradually begun to sandify. The air carried scorching heat, and grains of sand struck his face.
Realizing that the Marshlands were close, Ren Qing stored Husky back into Stomach World.
He reached down and caught a grain of Marsh Desert sand. Under the reflection of sunlight, the grain displayed rainbow-colored brilliance, yet the remnant souls within it were nowhere to be found.
A faint burning sensation came from his fingertips, showing that the Marsh Desert contained trace amounts of toxins.
Such a situation instead proved that Meat and Wine Taoist's corpse was safe and sound, having not been casually taken away by any passing True Immortal or Buddha.
Ren Qing continued south for several days. The closer he got to the Marshlands, the more concentrated the toxins within the Marsh Desert became.
The toxins had even begun affecting the environment, causing vegetation to mutate. Leaves transformed into containers that decomposed toxins.
When he finally arrived at the Marshlands, what entered his sight was an oasis at the center, occupying nearly one-third of the desert.
The oasis was completely covered by fungi. Several birds flew overhead, and even from five or six li away, they fell dead under the influence of the pathogens.
Approaching the oasis, Ren Qing noticed that the fungal stalks were covered with human faces. Their expressions changed constantly, appearing extraordinarily strange.
The oasis was deathly silent. Invisible dust filled the air, containing pathogens that even Yang Spirit Realm cultivators feared.
Ren Qing examined the area using the Dreamflower Double Pupils in his forehead and immediately noticed something peculiar.
The fungi concealed an immeasurable number of remnant souls, causing their lifeforms to gradually shift from plants toward a cordyceps-like existence.
Ren Qing tossed some flesh and bone fragments near the roots of the fungi. As expected, countless fungal threads covered the flesh, absorbing it completely within moments.
The fungi immediately began growing vigorously, and the pathogens became even more unpredictable.
Ren Qing stored one fungal specimen into Stomach World. Within only a few breaths, the remnant souls inside the stalk began dying. Face after face emitted shrill and miserable screams.
He understood that the state of the Marshlands was clearly influenced by Meat and Wine Taoist's corpse.
The Marsh Desert itself had originally been produced from the decay of the corpse. The remnant souls within it likely originated from Meat and Wine Taoist's Stomach World.
If allowed to develop indefinitely, the Marshlands would eventually form a unique ecological civilization.
Ren Qing saw no traces left behind by other cultivators in the Marshlands, so he continued directly toward Meat and Wine Taoist's corpse.
The corpse had already become a breeding ground for pathogens. Otherwise, the situation would not have become so exaggerated.
Back then, Chen Changsheng had used Meat and Wine Taoist's corpse to transform the Marshlands into a natural barrier against attacks from the Blood Moon.
Ren Qing adapted quite well to the environment of the oasis. He even separated some of the pathogens from the air and transported them into the disease tree within his Mud Pellet Palace.
The disease tree immediately produced numerous flower buds as new disease strains gradually formed.
He did not hurry to locate the corpse. Only after absorbing most of the unfamiliar pathogens did he head toward Meat and Wine Taoist at the center.
Ren Qing had not expected Meat and Wine Taoist's corpse to have transformed into a humanoid mountain. Brilliant multicolored flowers covered its surface, and insects could vaguely be seen circling around it.
There were also traces of rodents living there.
The combination of The Taotie Method and the Six Diseases Method had created such a bizarre ecosystem, and only a few decades had passed.
Arriving beside Meat and Wine Taoist, Ren Qing saw that the ruins of Qingxu Palace still remained atop the corpse's head, though everything had long since changed.
He observed the rodents and insects and discovered that each possessed an umbilical cord connected to Meat and Wine Taoist's mouth and nose.
The nutrients gathered by the beasts and insects were transmitted through these cords into the corpse, forming a bizarre cycle.
Ren Qing stared at Meat and Wine Taoist for a long time. He even summoned the information stream to inspect it, repeatedly confirming that the man was unquestionably dead.
Yet somehow, the corpse still seemed to retain a trace of vitality suspended between life and death.
This demonstrated just how terrifying a Heavenly Aberration Realm cultivator who cultivated Restraint Officer techniques could be. The influence of the aura they leaked upon the ecosystem was devastating.
Unlike Forbidden Zones with limited range, a Heavenly Aberration Realm corpse could continue radiating outward indefinitely.
Ren Qing did not dare imagine whether, if he failed to use Death Gives No Birth, his own death might transform thousands or even tens of thousands of li into a lawless wasteland.
After a moment of hesitation, he took out Meat and Wine Taoist's incomplete dantian.
The dantian had been obtained from the Dead Man's Forbidden Zone. It still contained a trace of the lingering might of the Food-Consuming Immortal Technique and therefore emitted intense heat.
Countless fungal threads wrapped around the dantian and dragged it back toward the lower half of the corpse, causing the fungi to proliferate wildly while animals and insects continuously evolved.
Their bodies grew increasingly enormous, naturally providing more nutrients to the corpse. It felt as though it could revive at any moment.
Ren Qing raised an eyebrow. His consciousness entered Stomach World, where he used a mutated disease strain to refine a still-beating heart from flesh.
The heart also contained a massive amount of pathogens and likewise carried the unique aura of the Six Diseases Method.
Ren Qing directed Ghost Shadow to envelop Meat and Wine Taoist's corpse. A strange mouth opened from the shadows and swallowed the corpse directly into Stomach World.
The oasis immediately showed signs of dying out, prompting him to quickly place the heart in its original location.
The heart was merely an extremely crude Flesh-and-Blood Artifact. Its only function was to maintain the oasis ecosystem and prevent it from collapsing. At most, it could last around a hundred years.
The oasis could disappear, but absolutely not now. A century would be enough time to erase all traces of Meat and Wine Taoist's existence.
With Spirit Division, Ren Qing threw the corpse onto a barren island within the Wine Sea. Next, he would need to strip away the pathogens inside one by one.
The pathogens contained within a guardian puppet refined from Meat and Wine Taoist would require careful selection.
Every organ within the Forbidden Corpse was connected to Restraint Officer techniques, whereas Meat and Wine Taoist was connected to various body cultivation methods, making him easier for ordinary cultivators to control.
If he wished to go further in the future, Ren Qing could even gradually transform Meat and Wine Taoist in the direction of the Forbidden Corpse.
Leaving the bacterial souls to process the corpse, Ren Qing departed the Marshlands and headed toward the Longevity Forbidden Zone, which was moving throughout Xiangxiang.