Ren Qing could not help but breathe a sigh of relief after obtaining immortality. Although that immortality was incomplete, at least immortality and ascension were now within reach.
He did not meditate to stabilize his realm, instead closing his eyes and resting.
The dangers of this world had always given Ren Qing a sense of urgency. He had never dared to slack off in the slightest and could only seek ways to extend his lifespan through every possible avenue.
Now, he suddenly no longer needed lifespan, and attaining immortality seemed to be right before his eyes.
This sleep of Ren Qing's lasted several days. Both body and soul were able to relax, and he no longer felt the same anxious tension as before.
He stood up and stretched his limbs, causing a hurricane to explode out of thin air within the cave abode.
The mushrooms growing in the corners instantly turned to powder and scattered through the air, while the protective magical artifacts emitted sounds as if they were about to collapse under the strain.
Ren Qing frowned slightly. After cultivating Corpse Fengdu, his physique had increased greatly, yet now he was unable to control it precisely. Every movement was full of flaws.
If he were fighting an enemy, even the smallest flaw could easily be exploited.
To adapt as quickly as possible, Ren Qing chose the crudest method available. He put on a Daoist robe capable of adjusting weight and gradually added more robes on top.
At the beginning, every step he took caused his knees to sink into the ground.
Later, Ren Qing gradually restrained his strength, and the disturbances he caused decreased geometrically, carrying the faint feeling of lifting a heavy weight as though it were light.
It felt as if he had returned to the days when he was in the Longevity Restricted Zone, tempering his body at the Qingfeng Martial Arts Hall while also cultivating Body Martial Arts.
Thinking of this, Ren Qing could not help feeling emotional.
Although only a few decades had passed in the outside world, more than a century had flowed by in the Longevity Restricted Zone, and the towns there had long since changed beyond recognition.
His nominal elder sister Wang Ling, despite cultivating Body Martial Arts and consuming lifespan-extending pills, lacked the intelligence required to advance to the Ghost Envoy realm and had passed away not long ago.
However, for Wang Ling, the Longevity Tree had been Wang Shanlu, her younger brother. She had willingly accompanied it for decades.
In the end, Mu Yi buried Wang Ling beside the Longevity Tree in an inconspicuous grave mound.
On the contrary, Xiao Wu's talent for Body Martial Arts was quite good, and his humble yet unyielding temperament was well suited to cultivating Restraint Officer techniques, allowing him to progress steadily.
Although Ren Qing did not know Xiao Wu's current circumstances, he was certainly still alive.
However, Xiao Wu's great-grandson was already old enough to run and jump. His son and daughter had died before him long ago. He was no longer that ignorant young boy from the past.
Ren Qing became slightly distracted. His punch immediately lost control and slammed heavily into the rock wall, causing rubble to rain down from above.
At the center of a pit two meters deep was the imprint of his fist, from which sizzling sounds emerged.
That was the manifestation of corpse poison carried by Yin Qi. Even after switching to Corpse Fengdu, the essence of his body remained that of a zombie.
It was simply a zombie that had become the Fengdu Corpse Emperor.
The cave abode lay more than two thousand meters beneath the surface, so it was naturally impossible for the Beast Pen people to notice it. Besides, they had troubles of their own.
After a long period of development, the Beast Pen population had once again exceeded ten thousand.
Once their numbers reached a certain threshold, their special constitutions caused their intelligence to advance by leaps and bounds.
The town could only be described as changing with each passing day.
It was now roughly the size of Sanxiang City. Hundred-meter-tall flesh walls had been erected on all four sides, accompanied by fungal fields similar to farmland.
While tempering his body, Ren Qing used Spirit Division to monitor the movements of the Beast Pen people.
He soon discovered that they had actually replicated something similar to a Heavenly Demon Nest, a "flesh-and-blood artifact." More accurately, it was a "flesh-and-blood organ," which they used to extend their lifespans.
These were the walls made of flesh and blood. At their bases were the heads of Flesh Sheep, while their bodies had fused into the walls themselves.
Every Beast Pen person whose lifespan was exhausted would go to the walls and touch the head of a Flesh Sheep, using flesh replacement to extend their lives.
Ren Qing watched a stooped Beast Pen person walk to a wall and place a hand on a Flesh Sheep's forehead. Their flesh instantly began boiling.
In only a few moments, their flesh dissolved into the wall and was replaced by fresh flesh. Even internal organs and bone marrow could be exchanged.
To the Beast Pen people, Flesh Sheep were essentially a medium for exchanging flesh.
How should he put it? Fortunately, the Beast Pen people had not mastered cultivation techniques. Otherwise, if this continued to evolve, the flesh walls would certainly become the framework of magical artifacts.
Of course, with Ren Qing's insight, he immediately noticed the flaw in the walls.
The flesh walls were still relatively fresh for now, but as the Beast Pen people used them more and more frequently to extend their lives, the decaying flesh would eventually contaminate the walls.
Ren Qing had already noticed faint corpse spots appearing at the tops of the walls.
As the decay deepened, the efficiency of lifespan extension would become lower and lower. They might eventually need to exchange flesh every half day.
Ren Qing felt it would not be long before the Beast Pen people once again brought about their own destruction.
A new Supreme Heavenly Demon was about to be born.
At the same time, he discovered something strange. The flesh walls were extremely similar to the flesh puppet and shared many inexplicable common traits.
Ren Qing did not know whether the Beast Pen people retained memories, but he had the feeling they were desperately trying to break the cycle and escape the predicament of lifespan exhaustion.
Very curious, Ren Qing used Dreamflower to monitor the Beast Pen people while spending most of his time stabilizing his cultivation and adapting to Yin Qi.
Several more months passed before he knew it.
The crack on the surface of his tortoise shell had healed by more than half, but the divination sign had changed to "auspicious with danger," indicating that he might encounter an opportunity soon, though it would contain a certain degree of risk.
According to his estimate of the healing speed, about two thousand years of lifespan damage could be repaired each year.
The twenty thousand years required to advance to the Heavenly Aberration realm would theoretically take only around ten years.
Of course, the recovery speed might drop sharply as it approached its limit, but at most it would be a hundred years. He had that much patience.
Ren Qing should have felt fortunate, yet he vaguely felt something was wrong.
During his daily cultivation, he began paying attention to the subsequent effects caused by the crack and suddenly discovered something extremely strange.
The depth of the crack actually affected the power of various techniques.
As the crack healed, Ren Qing sensed that the strange objects were no longer as active as before, and even his body had weakened slightly.
No matter how he looked at it, consuming lifespan seemed to have no drawbacks. Instead, it appeared to bring benefits.
However, Longevous Tortoise was a technique for predicting disasters. The crack represented impending danger, making the situation extremely bizarre.
Ren Qing could not help becoming deeply wary.
Although he possessed the information flow, cultivation in this world had always operated on equivalent exchange. Even he could not avoid that principle.
Ren Qing did not believe in free benefits. Forcibly advancing realms while simultaneously increasing strength was suspicious. If he truly acted without restraint, he would likely pay some unknown price.
He carefully examined his body and soul, even going so far as to spread bacterial souls throughout his flesh and bones.
Yet he still found nothing unusual, as though he were simply being overly cautious. Could it really be that advancing to the Heavenly Aberration realm was that easy?
Ren Qing remained noncommittal. The answer was likely hidden within the Heavenly Aberration realm itself.
Once he reached the Heavenly Aberration realm, he would naturally obtain a vast amount of information. Perhaps among it would be secrets concerning immortality and ascension.
Ren Qing stopped overthinking and simply sat cross-legged in the cave abode, making preparations for his advance to the Heavenly Aberration realm and ensuring nothing was overlooked.
He planned to advance Corpse Fengdu first, which should increase the upper limit of the lifespan he could consume.
However, just as Ren Qing immersed himself in secluded cultivation, the situation of the Beast Pen people began to worsen, to the point that even the cave abode trembled slightly.
Bang bang bang bang...
Ren Qing narrowed his eyes and attached his consciousness to a Dreamflower on the surface.
The town was filled with Beast Pen people who resembled walking corpses. Their bodies were covered with corpse spots from the inside out.
The houses and tools had all decayed to varying degrees. The Beast Pen people were heading toward extinction.
Even the flesh walls surrounding the town were no exception. Pus constantly seeped out, and the cries of the Flesh Sheep abruptly ceased, attracting swarms of flies.
Most of the Flesh Sheep heads had already lost all signs of life. A small portion had grown dense black hair and begun transforming into black goats.
The Beast Pen people became utterly desperate, and it was not long before some of them suffered complete mental collapse.
They brutally killed their own kind, chopped the corpses into pieces, and threw them into the flesh walls, attempting to make the entire wall fresh again.
Unfortunately, it was useless. At most, it allowed them to cling to life for a few more days.
Flesh dissolved away. The Beast Pen people roared in madness, while only the rotten flesh city walls continued standing around the town.
Under Ren Qing's watchful gaze, the town was destroyed once again.
Savage faces emerged from the flesh city walls. Bodies became entangled amid decay, creating an opportunity for the souls to achieve transcendence.
At last, the first rainfall in years descended upon the Beast Pen.
The rain was blackish-gray, as though it had come after a volcanic eruption. It washed over the flesh on the ground while thunder concealed the goat cries from within the walls.
Newborn black goats crawled out of the walls and quickly merged into heaven and earth.
Ren Qing observed carefully. At the instant the black goats disappeared, he saw countless goat herds revealed within the dark clouds.
Their numbers were not merely in the thousands or tens of thousands. They far exceeded even the population of the Restraint Officers' Hall.
Ren Qing wore a puzzled expression. Based on the terrifying ability Supreme Heavenly Demon had displayed when invading other regions, the ability to assimilate all things into itself...
Did it really need the existence of towns?
At most, a Beast Pen town only produced one black goat every half year. To Supreme Heavenly Demon, that could only be considered insignificant.
Or perhaps there were vast numbers of similar towns throughout the Beast Pen?
Yet towns had to rely on Heavenly Demon Nests. The conditions were extremely harsh. After putting himself in Supreme Heavenly Demon's position, Ren Qing felt that something was fundamentally backward.
There were absolutely signs of deliberate intervention behind the Beast Pen people.
He sent Dreamflower toward the Heavenly Demon Nest and soon personally witnessed the birth of the first Beast Pen person after the town's destruction.
A black goat crawled out of the Heavenly Demon Nest. Intelligence was clearly visible in its eyes, and it skillfully stripped off its own hide.
It then used the hide to generate large quantities of flesh, drawing several black goats out in turn.
Before long, the number of Beast Pen people had reached five. They set out toward the ruins, clearly intending to establish a new town.
A peculiar expression appeared on Ren Qing's face as he attempted to examine the memories of the Beast Pen people through Dreamflower.
However, the Beast Pen people seemed to be humanoid creatures transformed from black goats. The structure of their souls was extremely strange, appearing to be interconnected within the same race.
Yet they also possessed independent thoughts, implying that they shared a single brain that stored memories.
Ren Qing looked utterly astonished.
Setting aside the possibility of Supreme Heavenly Demon orchestrating everything, perhaps the Beast Pen had already developed a unique civilization of its own, one that was simply difficult to come into contact with.