Ren Qing came back to his senses and immersed himself once more in comprehending the Ascension Method.
Having already gained experience from the Dragon Devouring Art, he now knew exactly how to construct an Ascension Method. His objective had become exceptionally clear.
Ren Qing had spent more time on Wuying Ghost's Ascension Method than on all of his other techniques combined, refining it for well over ten years.
In his view, Wuying Ghost's strengths and weaknesses were both extremely obvious.
Its weakness lay in the low compatibility between its primary and secondary techniques. Judging from the strange object "Five Yin Horned Dragon" formed after reaching No-Birth Immortal, the secondary technique Dragon Spine was already showing signs of overtaking the primary technique.
Had it not been for the information stream's flawless suppression of the secondary techniques, Ren Qing would very likely have suffered backlash from them.
But Wuying Ghost also possessed a unique advantage, which was precisely why it could produce an Earth Immortal Ascension Method.
Looking deeper into the techniques themselves, Wuying Ghost, Dragon Spine, Human Skin Tome, Bone Armor Technique, and Nether Sea Breathing Art all revolved around flesh and bone.
As long as the direction of the Ascension Method leaned toward mythical beasts, it could fully unleash its potential.
The statue of Daode Heavenly Venerable continued to crack apart. The bleating of goats sent chills down the spine as dense black smoke engulfed the surroundings.
Grotesque lumps of flesh squeezed out through the cracks in the statue. Their surfaces were covered with irregular mouths dripping slime, while their tongues were packed with sucker-covered tentacles, spewing endless black smoke.
With the blessing of the Heavenly Dao, Ren Qing's comprehension increased by more than a hundredfold. Nearly every breath allowed him to analyze what would normally take several days of contemplation.
At the same time, he could clearly feel Daode Heavenly Venerable stimulating the primal instincts buried within him. Countless distracting thoughts born of the seven emotions and six desires continuously emerged.
Primordial Heavenly Venerable was made of endlessly splitting and reforming bubbles.
Lingbao Heavenly Venerable was stitched together from countless bizarre limbs.
Daode Heavenly Venerable's demonic aura stimulated desire itself.
He had no idea what had caused the Three Dao Ancestors to become such horrifying beings.
Ren Qing shook his head. Other than himself, could any cultivator truly comprehend an Earth Immortal Ascension Method while facing the Three Dao Ancestors?
When Great Dream True Person and the others had faced them, both their souls and bodies had undergone loss of control through mutation.
Amid Daode Heavenly Venerable's incessant whispers, the third Ascension Method was born.
[Winged Dragon Art]
[Created by Ren Qing. Cultivation requires consuming dragon blood continuously for five years until a dragon pearl forms within the dantian, then removing the dragon pearl and burning it within a pure yin cauldron for seven years before it can be mastered.]
The Winged Dragon Art can be cultivated up to Earth Immortal and is compatible with other techniques.
[Immortal Position: Thunder-Crossing Winged Dragon]
The image of the Thunder-Crossing Winged Dragon flashed through Ren Qing's mind.
The Winged Dragon was covered in violet-blue scales, surrounded by lightning. Its enormous dragon horns looked incomparably ferocious, while a pair of wings resembling those of a bird spread from its back.
According to legend, after five hundred years a water snake became a flood dragon, after another thousand years the flood dragon became a true dragon, after another five hundred years the dragon became a horned dragon, and after another thousand years the horned dragon became a Winged Dragon.
A Winged Dragon was already a true dragon, worthy of being called a Dragon Immortal. In the myths of Ren Qing's previous life, it had assisted the Yellow Emperor in slaying Chiyou and Hanba.
Was Ren Qing satisfied?
Of course he was.
Yet he still chose to erase the memory of the Winged Dragon Art and begin comprehending a new Ascension Method from scratch.
As he comprehended again and again, the thought in his heart became increasingly clear.
In fact, the instant the Winged Dragon Art had taken shape, Ren Qing had already become confident.
The next Ascension Method would definitely be the one he wanted.
Crack... crack... crack...
Daode Heavenly Venerable crawled out from within the statue. Goat hooves of varying sizes hung all over its body, twitching from time to time.
Supreme Heavenly Demon simply could not be compared to Daode Heavenly Venerable. The former was like nothing more than a lump of flesh that had fallen from the latter's body.
Ren Qing swallowed.
Desire flooded his mind, but the information stream protected the last trace of clarity, preventing him from losing all reason.
He was not overly alarmed.
After all, this was already the fourth time he had faced the pressure of the Three Dao Ancestors, and he would inevitably have to continue encountering them in the future.
The contents of the Ascension Method rapidly took shape.
Line after line of concise text contained an overwhelming dragon's aura, as though a colossal dragon thousands of meters long had appeared before him.
The fourth Ascension Method formed even faster than the previous ones.
Ren Qing glanced at the Ascension Method displayed by the information stream, then immediately drove his soul back toward his physical body. The goat bleating gradually faded into the distance.
He suspected that had he failed to escape from the gourd, he would have been unable to return to his body on his own and could only have waited for the information stream to forcibly retrieve his soul.
If the information stream had failed, his soul might have remained inside the gourd for hundreds or even thousands of years, perhaps eventually becoming a new Supreme Heavenly Demon.
Ren Qing's physical body regained consciousness, and he stretched his limbs.
He was far too familiar with demonic aura, so Daode Heavenly Venerable had affected his comprehension far less than expected, allowing him to complete the breakthrough in half the anticipated time.
The information stream surged.
[Lifespan: Infinite]
[Techniques: Ancestral Lineage Derivation (Scaled Carp)]
[Strange Object: Five Yin Horned Dragon]
[Divine Ability: Dragon Roar Within the Casket]
[Immortal Position: Primordial Unity Ancestral Dragon (Pseudo)]
[Ancestral Lineage Derivation]
[Created by Ren Qing. Cultivation requires simultaneously implanting dragon skin, dragon spine, dragon heart, and dragon brain into the body, back, chest, abdomen, and head. After the soul subdues these living organs, the technique can be mastered.]
Ancestral Lineage Derivation can be cultivated up to Earth Immortal and is compatible with other techniques.
Immortal Position: Primordial Unity Ancestral Dragon
The cultivation stages of Ancestral Lineage Derivation are: Scaled Carp at the Martial Practitioner Realm, Water Snake at the Half-Corpse Realm, Flood Serpent at the Ghost Envoy Realm, Coiling Dragon at the Yin Difference Realm, Horned Dragon at the Yang Spirit Realm, and Winged Dragon at the Heavenly Aberration Realm.
The Daoist Canon states:
"In the first year of the Dragon-Han Era came the Ancestral Calamity. Dragon signifies transformation, Han signifies greatness. Before heaven and earth had taken form, a single breath wandered through the void, its body winding and changing endlessly, giving rise to spirit and essence."
Its meaning was that although the Ancestral Dragon possessed a fixed form, it could transform freely at will. It had already existed before heaven and earth came into being.
The characteristics of the Ancestral Dragon perfectly matched Ghost Shadow.
Its appearance resembled that of the Winged Dragon, but its body was even larger. Its dragon horns shone like black jade, it lacked the vulnerable dragon pearl, and it could command clouds, rain, and lightning with effortless ease.
Ren Qing looked beneath his feet. A Ghost Shadow several meters tall emerged from the darkness, the pair of wings on its back existing not as physical objects but as smoke.
Closing his eyes, he felt his skin, spine, heart, and brain all covered in scales. The moment he activated Ancestral Lineage Derivation, he could transform into the Ancestral Dragon.
Ren Qing and Ghost Shadow still retained traces of their secondary techniques.
Specifically, beneath the scales grew a second layer of dragon skin resembling an insect shell. Their body and soul could shift between substance and shadow, while the spine could be detached and used independently as a magical artifact.
The Primordial Unity Ancestral Dragon affected the physical body. Not only did it not conflict with the Fengdu Corpse Emperor, the two even complemented one another, revealing the connection between Emperor and Dragon.
In fact, within the Daoist Canon, the Ancestral Dragon was also known as the Dragon Ancestor Great Emperor.
Of course, the most terrifying aspect of the Ancestral Dragon was not the enhancement of the body itself, but its status as the origin of all dragon bloodlines in the world.
Ren Qing defined the core principle of Ancestral Lineage Derivation as:
"All living beings possess a dragon vein. The First Ancestor stands above all dragons."
The divine ability Dragon Roar Within the Casket also underwent a subtle transformation.
Instead of animating all things, it now bestowed dragon veins upon all things, allowing them to transform into living creatures.
Dragon blood resembled a virus. It could assimilate living beings, forcibly turning them into descendants and influencing countless offspring from the very source of their bloodline.
In a certain sense, Supreme Heavenly Demon and the Primordial Unity Ancestral Dragon were remarkably similar.
Ren Qing was the ancestor of the dragon veins. He could influence any descendant carrying dragon blood, and with a single thought could even cause both body and soul to collapse and perish.
His gaze turned toward Stomach World.
Dark clouds immediately covered the entire mortal realm.
Rain infused with dragon blood poured from the heavens. Whether on land or within the Sea of Wine, nothing could escape the corruption of the dragon blood's power.
Even the grass, trees, mountains, and stones became descendants of Ren Qing's dragon blood.
However, Ren Qing did not actually bestow dragon blood upon anyone.
With his current strength, even the Yang Spirit cultivators of the Heavenly Palace and Underworld could not resist it.
But dragon blood also carried disadvantages.
Restraint Officers' Hall had grown from a small force in Xiangxiang into what it was today within a century. Part of that was due to Ren Qing's overwhelming advantages, but another equally important reason was the diversity of the Restraint Officer techniques.
Whenever they acquired a new type of resource, the corresponding branch could flourish.
Once dragon blood became widespread, the cultivation paths of Restraint Officers' Hall would become completely fixed.
No matter what technique they cultivated, they would ultimately become true dragons.
If no technique could surpass dragon transformation, then Stomach World's potential would more or less have reached its limit.
Had Ren Qing possessed only the single Immortal Position of the Primordial Unity Ancestral Dragon, he could have taken that route, allowing the Immortal Position's effects to reach their maximum.
But he possessed the Fengdu Corpse Emperor, Zhili Dream Immortal, Zhenyuan Earth Ancestor, and Primordial Unity Ancestral Dragon.
Immortal Positions that Heavenly Aberration cultivators could only dream of were merely options for Ren Qing. He was even troubled by how invasive dragon blood was.
If Chen Changsheng learned of this, even the lid of his coffin probably wouldn't stay shut.
After some thought, Ren Qing used Ancestral Lineage Derivation to alter the rules governing the evolution of dragon veins.
Only insects, snakes, fish, turtles, shrimp, and horses would be capable of transforming into dragons.
Naturally, the requirements for dragon transformation were exceptionally harsh.
Only after dozens of generations of reproduction would there be the slightest chance of producing even the lowest-ranked Water Snake.
Nor would the offspring of dragons necessarily become Water Snakes.
They might very well remain nothing more than mindless beasts.
For a Water Snake to become a Flood Serpent, it required not only fortune but also baptism by lightning.
Ren Qing surveyed Stomach World.
He suddenly noticed that the world's very first Water Snake was about to be born and immediately shifted his attention over.
It was a remora fish that normally attached itself to the bellies of larger fish.
However, the remora Ren Qing discovered had always followed the Kunpeng, bathing in dragon blood while it churned the seawater and benefiting immensely from the rain of blood.
Seeing this, Ren Qing opened the Dragon Transformation Palace within the Heavenly Palace.
With a casual gesture, he scattered vegetation containing traces of dragon blood and captured a batch of wild beasts from the mortal realm.
Once flood dragons appeared in the mortal world, the Dragon Transformation Palace would guide them to ascend into the higher realm.
At the center of the small world stood a stone monument engraved with the Dragon Spine technique.
However, it contained only the Spine Dragon mutation path, which would gradually evolve toward becoming a true dragon as one cultivated it.
Besides land, the Dragon Transformation Palace also contained vast lakes that would require a long time to develop their ecosystem.
Flood dragons could not possibly appear in the mortal realm anytime soon.
At the very least, it would take several hundred years.
Thus Ren Qing made no effort to accelerate the process.
He then began cultivating Ancestral Lineage Derivation, continuously consuming lifespan to advance through its realms.
The dragonized organs within his body gradually spread into his remaining flesh and bones, and the pressure they emitted was so overwhelming that even the Fungus People dared not approach.
Inside the skull-shaped magical artifact less than a hundred miles away from the Ghost Ship,
tens of thousands of skeletal cultivators gathered within.
Many of their skeletons had been pieced together from mismatched bones, giving them a distinctly uneven appearance.
At the very top, suspended by chains of bone, rested the Throne of Skulls, upon which sat four skeletons.
One of them slowly opened its eyes.
Its spine stretched unnaturally long like a dragon or serpent as its entire body trembled while staring toward the seemingly empty world outside.
Truly the weakest of the weak.