The gaunt man muttered the contents of the Dream Butterfly Method, and his soul immediately began to emit the unique aura of a Nightmare Fiend. The light around him twisted and distorted.
"Aliang, Aliang..."
When his bedridden wife called out to him, the gaunt man immediately returned to normal and hurried over to check on her.
Through Matchmaking Immortal's red thread, Ren Qing could vaguely sense the aura of the gaunt man's soul, and he immediately realized something was wrong.
He had originally thought that after Great Dream Daoist had become an ordinary mortal, the mutations of his body and soul had been instinctively suppressed by the effects of the technique.
Yet the gaunt man's soul was completely normal, carrying only the faintest trace of a Nightmare Fiend's aura.
"Could this person not be Great Dream Daoist after all, or is there some arrangement at work?"
Ren Qing frowned slightly before suddenly noticing another inconsistency. If Great Dream Daoist had completely lost his memories, why had he participated in the conferring of immortal offices?
Yet the gaunt man named Aliang undeniably possessed Great Dream Daoist's aura...
Ren Qing instructed the bacterial soul to keep watch over Aliang. Just as his main consciousness prepared to contact the immortal office once more, he received information transmitted by the other bacterial souls.
His expression immediately changed in surprise, and he quickly examined the souls connected by the other red threads.
After reviewing a vast number of scenes, a second Great Dream Daoist appeared.
Then a third.
A fourth.
A fifth...
Among the men and women controlled by Matchmaking Immortal, at least one tenth carried Great Dream Daoist's soul aura, scattered throughout every corner of the world.
"What the hell?"
Ren Qing narrowed his eyes.
More than a thousand bacterial souls emerged from his Mud Pellet Palace. Protected by Ghost Shadow, they slowly descended into the deep sea once again.
Mixed among the bacterial souls were tens of thousands of disease seeds, like a gigantic bomb capable of destroying the ecology within thousands of miles.
Accompanied by the bacterial souls, Ghost Shadow reached the bottom of the deep-sea trench in only half a day.
Throughout the journey, Ren Qing observed carefully but never found any trace of Matchmaking Immortal, as though the worlds within the fishes' bellies simply did not exist.
The bacterial souls arrived among the mountain-like piles of broken magical artifacts, with the school of sea fish floating overhead.
Ren Qing had Ghost Shadow carry the disease seeds while the thousand bacterial souls entered the fishes' bellies, each following a red thread to communicate with the corresponding soul.
An enormous flood of memories poured into his mind.
Had tens of thousands of bacterial souls not been sharing the burden, even a Heavenly Aberration cultivator would have suffered a splitting headache.
Ren Qing forced himself to stay focused as he carefully distinguished the soul auras and gradually sorted through them.
In the end, to his astonishment, there were a total of three hundred seventy-eight men, one hundred sixty-five women, and six hundred twenty-one children whose soul auras matched Great Dream Daoist's.
"Who first awakens from the Great Dream? Only I have always known."
Dream Butterfly Method
Created by Great Dream Daoist after attaining enlightenment through dreams. Cultivation requires remaining awake for thirty consecutive days while visualizing the Nightmare Fiend from one's dreams. Only by surviving can one successfully cultivate it.
As a subsidiary technique of the Eyeless Method, Ren Qing rarely cultivated the Dream Butterfly Method and had almost forgotten how it worked.
Only now did he remember that the Dream Butterfly Method allowed one's consciousness to enter Soul Butterflies.
Like Zhuang Zhou dreaming he was a butterfly, the cultivator experienced the lives of countless different people through those Soul Butterflies, using those experiences to advance the technique.
If Ren Qing's guess was correct, Great Dream Daoist's true soul still remained within the deepest layer of dreams while controlling hundreds of split souls in the outside world.
A single breath in reality might correspond to several years within the deepest dream, giving him enough time to digest all the insights brought back by his split souls.
"Though Great Dream Daoist's Eyeless Method is probably only one split soul as well..."
Wait.
When Great Dream Daoist had left Xiangxiang, wasn't it because of Dao Lord Tai Sui?
Ren Qing had been able to produce ten thousand bacterial souls thanks to the Scripture of Tai Sui. If Great Dream Daoist had truly obtained Dao Lord Tai Sui's remains, then dividing himself into over a thousand split souls would not be difficult.
He could not help sighing in admiration. Cultivators capable of creating Restraint Officer Methods truly possessed unwavering Dao Hearts. They would pay any price to step onto the immortal path.
Great Dream Daoist was no different. He was equally ruthless toward himself.
By Ren Qing's estimation, Great Dream Daoist had remained within the deepest dream for at least several decades, experiencing countless joys and sorrows.
An ordinary person, forced to absorb overwhelming emotions and memories every instant, would either go insane or gradually lose all sense of self.
Had Great Dream Daoist already reached the Heavenly Aberration realm?
Ren Qing immediately rejected the thought.
For Restraint Officer Methods in the Yang God realm, every minor realm was a tremendous bottleneck. Great Dream Daoist should only have reached the No-Birth Immortal stage.
What came next would be pursuing the Ascension Ladder.
Could it be that Great Dream Daoist actually needed his help?
Ren Qing looked at the hundreds of mortals transformed from Great Dream Daoist's split souls.
Because their souls were saturated with the aura of the Nightmare Fiend, not a single one possessed the aptitude to cultivate.
Even if they accidentally encountered cultivation techniques, they would never be able to begin cultivating.
Ren Qing immediately understood.
He began transmitting the contents of the Dream Butterfly Method to every split soul.
Before long, many of them unconsciously began cultivating it.
Once the split souls mastered the Dream Butterfly Method, their souls would uncontrollably mutate toward becoming Nightmare Fiends, gradually growing closer and closer to Great Dream Daoist himself.
When the time came, the main soul would escape from the deepest dream, devour every split soul, ascend to the peak of the Yang God realm, and step onto the immortal ladder leading directly to the Heavenly Dao.
From the perspective of ordinary mortals, Great Dream Daoist's actions were undeniably somewhat cruel.
However, given the Dream Butterfly Method's harsh cultivation requirements, the split souls would need to spend several decades before reaching the desired level of complete mutation.
By then, an entire lifetime would have already passed.
Seeing this, Ren Qing could not help sighing inwardly.
With the Information Stream in his possession, if he still failed to attain immortality, he might as well smash his head against a wall.
That said, how exactly had Great Dream Daoist managed to make use of Matchmaking Immortal?
His breathing quickened as he stared intently at the school of fish.
Since Great Dream Daoist could use Matchmaking Immortal to cultivate, there was no reason Ren Qing could not.
Perhaps Matchmaking Immortal was no longer even capable of awakening.
Ren Qing had long been considering how to guide the various factions into competing over immortal positions.
As long as the first batch of Heavenly Aberration cultivators attempted to refine immortal positions, the situation would spread across the world like an unstoppable avalanche.
If Ren Qing could control Matchmaking Immortal, then through the red threads he would possess an even broader network of connections, reaching hundreds of different factions.
With that thought, he began preparing to merge the Ghost Immortal Office into Matchmaking Immortal.
Breaking through to Dao Gives Birth to One in Heaven and Earth Genesis also had to be moved up his schedule.
At present, there were simply too few vacant immortal offices. Relying solely on the Ghost Immortal Office would never be enough to restrain Matchmaking Immortal.
Ren Qing did not release the Ghost Immortal Office immediately.
Even if Matchmaking Immortal was no longer a peak Earth Immortal, it was still not something a mere Heavenly Aberration cultivator like himself could provoke lightly.
He instructed Ghost Shadow to release the disease seeds.
With tens of thousands of diseases available, surely at least one would prove effective against Matchmaking Immortal.
Meanwhile, Ren Qing's true body also became busy.
He activated Ancestral Lineage Derivation, causing the dragon-blood ecosystem to spread toward the seabed, planning to completely cover the trench first.
The dragons within the sea seemed to sense Ren Qing's summons, and the entire ocean immediately became lively.
Most were merely small fish and shrimp whose bloodlines had only reached the Scaled Carp level.
Not a single one of the gigantic deep-sea beasts hundreds of meters long had undergone dragonification.
However, the whales of the shallow seas had almost completely fallen.
Long cries echoed across the sea.
Whales covered in scales leaped from the water. As they flapped their fins, they actually glided dozens of meters through the air before crashing violently back into the sea.
The Flood Merfolk tribe imprisoned aboard the Ghost Ship was also released.
After hesitating briefly, and sensing no pressure from Ren Qing, they all leaped into the rushing seawater and began hunting sea fish to their hearts' content.
The Flood Merfolk's leader was a Water Snake named Benbo'er.
His technique had reached the Half-Corpse realm, and his intelligence differed little from that of an ordinary human.
To save the Flood Merfolk the trouble of developing everything from scratch, Ren Qing transmitted all the knowledge possessed by the Merfolk to Benbo'er, instructing them to establish themselves in the shallow seas.
Once they became strong enough, they could venture into the deep sea to gather minerals and other resources.
Standing in midair, Ren Qing spread Dragon Roar Within the Casket across dozens of miles.
Dragon Blood Coral rapidly spread outward.
Though it resembled a plant on the surface, it was actually an aquatic animal possessing instincts to feed and reproduce.
One Dragon Blood Fruit after another ripened, attracting dragons to fight over them.
The greatest beneficiaries were the whales that had no natural predators.
Several of them leaped directly from Scaled Carp to Water Snake, coming close to reaching the Flood Serpent level.
Ren Qing then began perfecting the dragon-blood ecosystem.
He next turned his attention to aquatic plants.
Through nourishment from dragon blood, coupled with Dragon Roar Within the Casket's modifications, the plants became far better adapted to the environment.
The aquatic plants contained a small amount of dragon blood.
Consuming them over a long period allowed dragons to continue evolving.
A delighted expression appeared on Ren Qing's face.
As the dragons gradually flourished, the Heavenly Dao Crack healed at an increasingly rapid pace.
It seemed that True Immortals advanced their cultivation by using themselves to influence the rules of the world.
The seabed trench was like a wooden barrel.
Ren Qing had already sealed off its entrances and exits.
It was only a matter of time before the dragon-blood ecosystem completely occupied it.
In just a few months, aquatic plants had already spread throughout the seabed trench within twenty thousand meters.
The dragons themselves had not yet reached such depths.
Only after advancing to Flood Serpent would their bodies become strong enough to withstand the pressure at twenty thousand meters.
Left with no alternative, the gigantic deep-sea creatures retreated to depths of twenty-five thousand meters.
Ren Qing did not continue driving them to extinction.
Those deep-sea behemoths were each hundreds of meters long, with bodies comparable to Yang God cultivators.
Dragonifying them would truly be troublesome.
Unless he personally ventured into the deep sea.
But since a True Immortal was involved, there was no need to take such risks.
Ghost Shadow's experiments on Matchmaking Immortal finally produced results.
Among the tens of thousands of disease seeds, only the Lost Soul Disease Seed could coexist with Matchmaking Immortal.
The Lost Soul Disease Seed normally affected living beings with damaged souls.
Ren Qing used Zhili Technique to observe the Lost Soul Disease Seed.
The appearance of Matchmaking Immortal emerged within his mind.
Matchmaking Immortal resembled a giant salamander.
It moved on all fours, with red threads growing beside the gills on both sides of its head. Every breath generated an invisible suction force.
Its tail was even stranger.
Its flesh was fused with countless infant skeletons, whose mouths frantically gnawed at it, exposing Matchmaking Immortal's flesh.
"Matchmaking Immortal's Mud Pellet Palace truly contains no soul."
With Zhili Technique, Ren Qing could draw any creature carrying a disease seed into dreams.
Yet no matter how he searched, he could not find Matchmaking Immortal's soul.
Instead, he became even more excited.
It would not be an exaggeration to compare Matchmaking Immortal to a living immortal artifact.
"Why not go all in and have Heavenly Aberration cultivators gather immortal positions for me?"
Danger flashed across Ren Qing's eyes as he simultaneously guided the Ghost Immortal Office into Matchmaking Immortal.
Matchmaking Immortal possessed no soul whatsoever, only instinct.
Since the Ghost Immortal Office could never threaten a True Immortal, the fusion proceeded with remarkable ease.
Ren Qing felt a faint connection form between himself and Matchmaking Immortal.
The latter indeed possessed roughly twenty percent Heavenly Dao Transformation, though its recovery progressed at an extremely slow pace.
Unfortunately, the Ghost Immortal position was of too low a rank.
Had it been an Earth Immortal position instead, it should have been able to barely influence Matchmaking Immortal's actions.
He wondered how many Heavenly Aberration cultivators among those connected by the red threads could eventually be used.
Ren Qing glanced at the Heavenly Dao Crack on the tortoise shell.
It barely contained enough lifespan to spend over ten thousand years.
It was time to advance the Disaster-Dispelling Method first.