The Secret Way of Immortality

After more than half a year of development, Wuwei City already had the feel of a large town, especially with those towering buildings.

The Celestial Dome Artifact enveloped the sky above the city walls, firmly locking in the true essence.

Even cultivators who wanted to enter or leave the city had to pass through three or four gate checkpoints to ensure that no foreign demonic aura would flood into the city.

According to Li Tiangang, simply expanding the area could indeed accommodate more buildings, but it would lower the concentration of true essence.

The fungus trees growing from the ground exuded true essence and were currently five to six meters tall, with an appearance like black ink jade.

The true essence permeated the air, allowing the disciples of the Daoist temple to improve their cultivation rapidly, but so far, no one had broken through to the Nascent Soul stage.

But this was enough for the Prison Warden Hall; the Golden Core stage was equivalent to the Ghost Envoy realm, and although its combat strength was far inferior to the Prison Warden techniques, it could make up for the lack of personnel.

However, the Netherworld Heavenly Insect Art had many flaws, the most crucial being that the area outside the city was filled with demonic aura and contained no true essence at all.

This forced the Daoist temple disciples to carry magical artifacts or spirit crystals to replenish their true essence at any time.

Not long ago, Ren Qing received a commission from Li Tiangang, mainly to solve the problem of magical artifacts having a low capacity for true essence.

He also wanted to use the fungus trees as materials to refine magical artifacts to see if they could be brought into the Longevity Forbidden Zone.

Ren Qing walked out of the house.

The city walls, comparable to a dam, blocked most of the sunlight, and the surface was covered with shining orb-shaped magical artifacts, like miniature suns.

He looked around and his expression was surprised.

The changes in Wuwei City were really happening day by day, and coupled with the fact that he didn't have much energy to pay attention, he even felt a little out of touch.

Boom!!!

A gigantic beast, forty to fifty meters in size, crashed into the city wall, causing the spells to fluctuate, and a large number of cultivators rushed to support.

The common people were used to this; the city walls were impregnable, and no monster had been able to break through so far, so they were not worried at all.

Ren Qing raised his eyebrows, thinking he might as well take advantage of the relative leisure in the Longevity Forbidden Zone to understand the situation in Jing Prefecture, so as not to be caught unaware when the time came.

He then realized that the house he lived in was quite conspicuous in the city, and if it weren't for Wu Gui reducing its presence, it would have been noticed long ago.

Ren Qing simply put the house into the Eternal Incarceration.

He planned to find a new place to live, and also pay attention to the market in Wuwei City, so as to continue to improve the Dreamland Market.

Ren Qing canceled the effects of the Disaster Relief Art and slowly walked towards the city center.

A large number of people walked through the streets, more or less revealing some cultivation, giving the feeling that everyone was cultivating immortality.

Everyone was extremely busy, as if Wuwei City was a giant machine, making Ren Qing's leisure seem out of place.

Ren Qing also noticed that there were differences in the people's clothing; most of them wore Daoist robes made of animal skins.

These animal skins should be relatively cheap, probably not selling for much, so they were simply refined into crude magical artifacts.

Compared to Xiangxiang a few years ago, how could one have seen such a large number of magical artifacts?

Just as Ren Qing was hesitating where to go first, someone patted his right leg.

He turned his head and saw a little girl about half a meter tall, dressed like a tomboy, looking at him with cunning eyes.

Ren Qing couldn't help but ask, "Little girl, what's the matter?"

The little girl pointed to Ren Qing's Prison Warden token, and said with dissatisfaction, "Although you are a Prison Warden Hall immortal elder, you can't call me that."

"Ahem, ahem, this little girl's Daoist name is Qingzhu. Immortal elder, are you new to Wuwei City? Pay me some spirit crystals and I'll show you around."

"Alright, little Daoist Qingzhu, help me find an inn."

Ren Qing threw Qingzhu a bag of spirit crystals, and then signaled her to lead the way.

Qingzhu picked up the money bag, glanced at it, and was overjoyed, but fearing that Ren Qing would take back the money, she said, "I've taken the spirit crystals, you can't go back on your word, there's no going back on a deal."

"How could I?"

Ren Qing shook his head helplessly.

As the largest intermediary in Wuwei Daoist Temple, the number of his spirit crystals could be said to be piled up like a mountain, probably more than he could ever spend.

Qingzhu carefully put away the money bag and hopped towards the corner of the street.

Ren Qing looked at the various giant beasts passing by, mostly lizards and horses, but the cultivation of the alien aura was relatively weak.

He couldn't help but ask, "Are these strange beasts? How have they changed so much?"

Qingzhu explained seriously, "I don't know, they were all bred by the escort agencies, they're very expensive and I haven't come into contact with them..."

"Escort agencies?"

Qingzhu slowed down and began to describe the emerging forces that had developed in Wuwei City.

Cultivators usually went out of the city in groups to exterminate monsters, because the space in their stomach was limited, so they could only装些 useful materials.

The remaining monster corpses would be transported by escort agencies composed of ordinary cultivators.

The escorts were composed of cultivators whose qualifications were not enough to advance to the Golden Core stage.

They did not join the Prison Warden Hall and could not go to the Dreamland Market, their resources were far inferior to those of the Daoist temple disciples and Prison Wardens, so they naturally concentrated their energy on cultivating strange beasts.

After Yuan Si's efforts, there were already more than a dozen types of strange beasts, but the most popular were still the strong lizards.

"My father is from Changyuan Escort Agency. If you want to find odd jobs, you can go to Changyuan Escort Agency in the south of the city..."

Qingzhu tirelessly introduced Changyuan Escort Agency, her voice becoming louder and louder.

In her opinion, since Ren Qing was not short of spirit crystals, it meant that his cultivation was not bad, and he might even have reached the peak of the Foundation Establishment stage.

Ren Qing vaguely realized that the entire operation of Wuwei City was based on monsters, which led to the situation where everyone was a cultivator.

The Prison Warden Hall also held a default attitude towards this, after all, the future was full of uncertainty, and obtaining resources to strengthen oneself was the truth.

As Qingzhu spoke, she arrived in front of a four-story inn, but the surrounding environment was relatively ordinary, and the air was filled with a bloody smell.

She proudly lowered her voice and said, "This is opened by your Prison Warden Hall. If you walk north for a while, you'll reach the area where monsters are slaughtered, so there's indeed a bit of a smell."

"The accommodation price in the inn is not expensive, and you can eat the freshest monster meat."

Qingzhu swallowed her saliva, hinting that Ren Qing should treat her to something.

"I see, thank you."

Ren Qing ignored the precocious little girl and walked straight into the inn. Qingzhu scratched her head and ran away.

The innkeeper looked to be in his thirties or forties, and was a reserve who had been in Jing Prefecture for a long time. Because he had no confidence in breaking through to the Ghost Envoy realm, he simply did business in Wuwei City.

When he saw Ren Qing, he hurried forward and patted the dust off the latter's body with a rag.

Ren Qing casually asked for a room, planning to buy a separate house in the city when he had time. The innkeeper kept looking at him.

The innkeeper belatedly realized that Ren Qing looked familiar, but after thinking about it, he couldn't remember what he looked like, so he soon stopped worrying about it.

Ren Qing checked the room and then walked towards the place where monsters were slaughtered.

The closer he got, the stronger the bloody smell became, mixed with a foul stench, and many people covered their mouths and noses.

Slaughtering monsters was specifically set up on a spacious stone platform.

What came into Ren Qing's eyes were countless monster corpses, most of them were more than four meters tall, and very few were less than two meters.

However, they were all ordinary monster corpses. He did not see any monsters transformed from demon cultivators, let alone any strange anomalies.

Dozens of cultivators drove their flying swords to cut the monsters into various pieces of meat, and the useful materials were handed over to bird-like strange beasts to be sent to the ghost market.

Ren Qing deliberately reduced his presence, so no one came to stop him.

He checked the structure inside the monsters' bodies and noticed that their internal organs were complete, as if they had undergone tens of thousands of years of evolution in a short period of time.

Ren Qing then saw that a few monsters were slightly wrong, and some of the corpses were flowing with light golden blood.

He hurried forward, touched it with his palm, and a stream of information surged.

【Beast Corpse】

【Formed by the death of wild beasts eroded by demonic aura, containing a weak Buddhist aura, causing the three souls and seven spirits to produce alienation.】

Ren Qing pulled out a narrow dragon-snake spine, turned into a ghost shadow, and stabbed it into the Niwan Palace of the corpse, extracting the monster's soul.

The monster had been dead for several days, and its soul should have dissipated, but this soul was still solid.

The content displayed by the information flow was not abnormal. The Buddhist aura should be used to protect the soul, so it existed for a long time.

When the Buddhist aura was exhausted, the soul would naturally dissipate.

Ren Qing guessed that it might be related to Song Zongwu's Buddhism, but after the latter left Wuwei, he disappeared without a trace as if he had evaporated from the world.

He informed Li Tiangang of the monster corpse through bird-like strange beasts, and then walked towards the location where the insect molts were buried.

Since he wanted to refine magical artifacts with fungus trees, he might as well use the best materials. The fungus trees near the spiritual veins must be relatively thick.

Little did Ren Qing know that as soon as he left, the monster corpse showed an abnormality.

Although the abdomen had been剖开, it suddenly trembled all over.

The monster corpse was similar to a hyena in life, but it imitated humans and walked on two legs, but it knelt on the ground and died after taking a few steps.

The already weak Buddhist aura disappeared, as if it had been deliberately worn away.

A middle-aged Daoist landed on the ground with his sword and carefully checked the monster's corpse through spells, but in the end he found no clues.

He had to attribute the reason to the corpse being too fresh.

But as time went by, more and more similar monster corpses appeared, and some even came back to life on the way back to Wuwei City.

What made the cultivators shudder was that the corpses did not take any action after they revived.

They just imitated the kneeling posture, and in a trance, they looked like a eminent monk who had served the Buddha for a long time, and finally died with a devout expression.

The Prison Warden Hall quickly intervened and transported the corpses containing Buddhist aura to Abi Hell.

After their investigation, they found that these monster corpses all came from a place a hundred miles southwest of Wuwei City, called Liuli Mountain.

Because the mountain stones showed a crystal clear luster, they would turn into a Liuli color in the reflection of the sun, hence the name of the mountain.

The area near Liuli Mountain was relatively barren, with only exposed mountain stones. Trees and plants were rarely seen, making the field of vision wide and very suitable for hunting monsters.

The Prison Warden Hall listed Liuli Mountain as a forbidden area, along with Wangnian River and Bottomless Cave.

It had only been a short half year, and the next Jing Prefecture would only become more and more dangerous until the day when the Rabbit Toad cultivator arrived.

There is still a chapter, wait a moment