"Pre—preposterous... Utter nonsense!"
Granny Meng was furious. She snapped, "How could an old woman like me ever water down her tea-soup? Even immortals who drink my tea-soup end up dazed and muddled, forgetting their past and present lives. You clearly gave them too much to drink, and they built up a tolerance!"
Midway through her outburst, she abruptly came to her senses and said hastily, "Take no offense, Emissary. It is merely that there is no reason on earth for an old woman's soup to be watered down."
Holding the bowl of Meng Po soup and carrying the green paper umbrella, the figure drifted away, gradually disappearing into the hazy mist.
In the ruined temple world, Xu Ying suddenly leaped down from the bell, landing on the immortal mountain below. The youth darted swiftly through the mountain forest to evade the searching eyes of the four stone dragons in the sky. The bronze bell followed closely behind, accompanying him to the nearest sacrificial altar.
Beside the altar, although the stone statue had shattered into several pieces, one could still discern its once-valiant posture—majestic, martial, and awe-inspiring without wrath!
Oddly enough, a dense incense aura still coiled around the stone statue, even more potent than that of City God Xue Lingfu!
"The god is dead, yet the incense aura has not dispersed. How strange," Xu Ying murmured in bewilderment.
It was common knowledge that once a god died, the incense aura clinging to them dissipated.
Xu Ying walked over to inspect it. A babble of clamorous murmurs buzzed in his ears—the lingering echoes of mortal prayers preserved within the incense aura.
Mortals prayed to the gods for favorable winds and timely rains, for blessings upon their descendants, for enduring peace and order, or for abundant offspring and bountiful harvests. These prayers were akin to the visualizations of Qi Refiners and Nuo masters; when combined with the incense aura, they became dharma power.
A god's dharma power depended on two things: first, the years they had received offerings—the longer the span, the stronger the power; second, the number of worshippers—the more mortals who offered sacrifices, the greater the might.
Xu Ying examined where the statue had broken. The jagged fractures suggested it had weathered over the years and snapped upon falling. However, the crown of the statue's head did not appear damaged by weathering.
The skullcap was burst open, and the interior was hollow. Judging by the fractured edges, it looked as though pressure from within had blown outward, blasting the crown apart!
"The god's head is hollow! But why hollow?" Xu Ying was astonished.
There was no need whatsoever for a god's head to be hollow. They had no brain to store; their souls merely needed to inhabit the divine statue!
Xu Ying leaned the upper half of his body into the stone head. On the inner wall, he discovered peculiar patterns that looked like writing yet were not quite text, but it was too dark inside to see clearly.
Xu Ying pulled himself out and said to the bronze bell, "Lord Bell, shrink down a bit."
The bronze bell reduced its size until it stood roughly two chi tall.
Xu Ying gripped the bell's hanging loop, leaned back into the stone head, and gave the bell a vigorous shake. Catching on, the bronze bell illuminated the strange patterns on its surface, casting a soft, dim glow.
By that light, Xu Ying could finally make out the script and patterns carved into the interior of the statue's skull.
He realized he did not recognize a single word.
The bronze bell did, however, and said, "It's a soul-summoning sacrificial text, written in the talisman script used by ancient Qi Refiners! Sacrificial texts like this are meant to gather wandering spirits and wild ghosts, but the text on this inner wall is heterodox—more like an evil art designed to summon souls to refine magical treasures or spirit pills. Several characters are even written incorrectly, which means whoever carved this wasn't an ancient Qi Refiner at all."
"An ancient evil art?"
Carrying the bell, Xu Ying withdrew from the head, deeply puzzled. "If this is truly the Immortal Realm, why would there be gods here? And why a soul-summoning sacrificial text?"
Gods required the incense of mortals; surely no one in the Immortal Realm offered sacrifices to them.
Besides, what was the point of summoning ghosts and spirits in the Immortal Realm? Were there ghosts here too?
"Then... is the one preaching in the grand temple truly an immortal?" Xu Ying tilted his head back, looking toward the great temple encircled by the five immortal mountains in the sky.
Suddenly, he froze. Looking across at the other immortal mountains, he blurted out, "Lord Bell, look at the arrangement of these five mountains. Doesn't it look like the positions of the five viscera in the Realm of Xiyi?"
At his words, the bronze bell burst into laughter. "The Realm of Xiyi? The positions of the five viscera? How could that be? This ought to be the Immortal Realm. An immortal was just preaching in that grand temple..."
Mid-sentence, it abruptly stopped. Compared to the Immortal Realm and an immortal's preaching, the Realm of Xiyi was far more plausible. After all, even in its own era, not even its former master had ever seen the Immortal Realm, let alone a true immortal.
The bell rang out with a chime, using the echoes among the mountains to probe the surrounding geography. Only then did it realize Xu Ying was right. This place truly resembled the Realm of Xiyi.
In the Realm of Xiyi, the five viscera hung suspended in the sky like inverted mountain peaks, and here, the five immortal mountains likewise had their bases pointing toward the heavens and their peaks pointing downward. They had originally been buried beneath the earth in that manner; even after rising into the sky and revolving around the temple, their overall posture remained unchanged.
The five mountains varied in height and staggered in an order corresponding to the heart, lungs, liver, spleen, and kidneys. Even their contours mirrored the shapes of the five viscera.
More crucially, amidst the crevices of the boulders that had broken off these mountains, hair-like fibers clung to the stone. True immortal mountains would never harbor such things.
These five immortal mountains resembled organs trapped in a petrified state, plagued by external evils and undergoing rot and disease!
After the bell tolled, Xu Ying hurriedly concealed his tracks and slipped away with the bell.
Not long after they left, two stone dragons descended on treads of mist and clouds. Finding no sign of Xu Ying, both scowled.
"If only we had brought a few Earth Gods along," one stone dragon sighed.
Xu Ying hurried toward the second stone statue with the bronze bell. Suddenly, a scream rang out from the sky. Xu Ying quickly looked up to see gods from the Nether Court clashing with the officials under the regional inspector's command. Both sides were locked in fierce combat atop floating boulders, trading divine arts in a clash so ferocious it darkened the heavens.
The scream had come from an official trained in the Zhou clan's heritage. Heavily wounded, he had immediately activated his Mud Pill secret depository, channeling its vital energy to heal his wounds. Unexpectedly, the vital energy inside him surged out of his control, sucked away by the boulder beneath his feet!
That boulder was covered in hair. The moment it made contact with his vital energy, the hair whipped into a frenzy. With sharp hissing sounds, countless hairs pierced into the official's flesh, squirming like throats gulping down water.
The official felt his vital energy pouring out at a terrifying rate. Consumed by horror, he let out a shrill, agonizing shriek. As his screams continued, his entire body shriveled, quickly reducing to a withered skeleton.
He had been a man of seven chi, yet in death he was shrunken and tiny, barely two or three chi tall—even the vital essence in his bones had been sucked dry.
Upon his death, the boulder took on the hue of fresh flesh, bright crimson and glistening with bloody fluid. Countless strands of hair danced through the air like tentacles, seizing several officials and gods who were too slow to evade. With a sharp tearing hiss, the hairs drove deep into their bodies!
The gods fared slightly better; those born from sacrificial worship possessed no mortal flesh, as only demon gods had bodies of flesh and blood. But the officials and guards were mortal men, disciples or kin of the Zhou clan who had opened their Mud Pill secret depositories, endowed with astonishing vitality.
Their life force drained away in an instant, and four or five more were sucked into desiccated husks before anyone could react!
The combatants froze in shock.
Having devoured their vitality, the boulder's hairs regained elasticity, revealing themselves to be blood vessels of uneven thickness extending from raw flesh.
Vessels of varying lengths lashed out in every direction, latching onto another boulder and transferring a portion of their vitality into it.
That boulder's hair immediately flew into motion as well, grabbing a battling demon god and "feasting" on him.
Xu Ying looked up. The sky was in complete chaos as floating "boulders" roamed through the air, their hair thrashing about, snatching people and draining them dry.
Some were driven to leap toward the immortal mountains, only to fall short and plunge screaming into the abyss below.
"This Immortal Realm is ominous!" Xu Ying's heart pounded in terror.
The bronze bell sounded worried. "Many people have already entered the grand temple to listen to the immortal preach. It looks like Yuan Qi went in there too."
Xu Ying frowned slightly and arrived at the second sacrificial altar, which remained relatively intact. It sat at the intersection of two mountain paths, resting upon a neat, level platform jutting out over the cliff.
The divine statue stood beside the altar, its four arms resting on the rim as it gazed downward at the center, as though something there had captured its attention.
This statue had four arms, wore a flaming crown, bore a blue face with sharp fangs, sprouted a pair of wings from its back, and had an azure dragon coiled around its frame.
The stone across its body had turned a brilliant, gleaming gold, as though forged entirely from solid gold!
"This god has cultivated a golden body—far stronger than the City God!"
Xu Ying was shaken. He had witnessed City God Xue Lingfu clash with Zhou Yihang in Lingling; when Xue Lingfu wielded his dharma power, his shrine hovered aloft as the chants of ten thousand mortals resonated, exerting an immense, suffocating pressure!
Yet this divine stone statue exerted a pressure far more overwhelming!
Its cultivation was likely deeper than Xue Lingfu's, and its golden body was superior by a wide margin!
Even from a distance, the chanting of countless worshippers drifted from the statue, the voices fading and swelling as if near and far at once!
As Xu Ying stepped closer to inspect it, a dragon's roar suddenly split the sky. A stone dragon four to five zhang long came charging across the clouds, landing with a rushing whistle between Xu Ying and the altar!
The moment it hit the ground, incense aura swirled around it, and its form shifted from a dragon into a dragon-headed man over a zhang tall, a faint golden sheen shimmering on the surface of his body.
Faint murmurs of reading voices emanated from his frame—the prayers and hopes of mortals—though far inferior to the divine statue before them.
"Xu Ying. I am Shilongzi of the Temple of Confucius. By the City God's order, I have come to take you back!"
Condensing the incense aura into a flying sword that hovered before his chest, Shilongzi declared coldly, "You had best not resist. The City God has commanded that we may sever your head and bring only your soul back."
Just as Xu Ying opened his mouth to speak, two more dragon roars sounded, and two more stone dragons descended from the sky. They likewise transformed into tall, slender, dragon-headed men—one standing to Xu Ying's rear left, the other to his rear right.
These two dragon gods condensed their qi into swords without a word, forming a tripartite encirclement around him.
Xu Ying glanced up. A fourth stone dragon still circled above, treading azure clouds to seal off his escape from above.
Xu Ying recognized them: they were the stone dragons carved upon the pillars of the Ningyuan Temple of Confucius. Several stone pillars stood several zhang high in that temple, each wrapped in coiled dragons. Scholars offered incense to them in hopes of passing the imperial exams, which was why the incense aura on these dragons echoed with reading voices.
Xu Ying had visited the Temple of Confucius before, but knowing he was never cut out for scholarship, he had never offered them incense.
"I killed Zhou Yihang and Zhou Yang with swordsmanship."
Condensing his qi into a sword, surrounded by swirling sword qi, Xu Ying said indifferently, "You four have never done evil, and you hold a clean reputation among scholars. Do not force my hand."
The four stone dragons felt a jolt of apprehension. Zhou Yang's cultivation and strength were roughly on par with theirs; since Xu Ying could kill Zhou Yang, he undoubtedly possessed the strength to strike down any one of them.
Yet Xu Ying had also slain Zhou Yihang, which meant he was a figure on the level of a City God!
A City God had cultivated a golden body and enjoyed five hundred years of incense, possessing formidable dharma power!
Even joining forces, the four of them might not prevail!
Yet inwardly, Xu Ying felt uneasy. His cultivation had not fully recovered. Earlier, when the bronze bell had carried him in flight, it had siphoned his vital qi to sustain itself, causing his cultivation to drop rather than rise.
If the four dragons attacked together, he would likely be in dire straits.
Suddenly, Shilongzi dropped to his knees with a thud. Bearing a bizarre smile, he kowtowed ceaselessly toward the four-armed statue, muttering strange incantations under his breath.
The two stone dragons behind Xu Ying changed color, shouting sharply in unison, "Xu Ying, what did you do to our Fourth Brother?"
Quietly gathering a breath of vital qi, Xu Ying shook his head. "I did nothing!"
Keeping his guard up against Xu Ying, one of the stone dragons stepped cautiously toward Shilongzi, calling out, "Fourth Brother, what's wrong with you? Who ambushed you..."
He reached out to pull Shilongzi to his feet, but a bizarre smile suddenly spread across his own face. With a thud, he dropped to his knees as well, kowtowing madly before the four-armed statue and chanting the exact same incantations as Shilongzi.
"Ah Ying, something is wrong with this statue and altar!" the bronze bell whispered.
Xu Ying's heart pounded with dread.
Only by gathering faith and incense aura to attain divine arts could an entity be called a god. Shilongzi from the Temple of Confucius had enjoyed four hundred years of flourishing incense and wielded potent incense aura. How could he suddenly begin worshipping another god, turning into a devotee of a soulless stone statue?
The two stone dragons knelt there, their chanting growing faster and faster, the smiles on their faces twisting into ever more grotesque grimaces. Suddenly, with two muffled pops, Shilongzi and his brother's heads burst open from the inside out!
Xu Ying hastily focused his divine sense and opened his Heavenly Eye. He saw the divine souls of the two stone dragons fly out from their shattered skulls, heading straight for the altar cradled within the four-armed statue's embrace!
The altar stood tall, blocking his mortal sight, but under the gaze of his Heavenly Eye, every detail was laid bare!
The center of the altar formed the structure of a furnace, where a single pearl floated, spinning gently up and down.
The moment the divine souls of the two stone dragons reached the center of the altar, they shattered into fragments, their souls scattering to the winds until only a tiny point of indestructible primordial spirit remained, drifting into the pearl!
"Ah Ying, even if there is an immortal in this Realm of Xiyi, he's an evil sword immortal!" the bronze bell cried out. "He's using the indestructible primordial spirits of mortal souls to refine a Myriad Spirits Pill to mend his Primordial Spirit!"
Chapter 33