Longevity Strange Immortal
Chapter 186 - 46 The 3rd Special Page

Chapter 186: Chapter 46 The 3rd Special Page

Sun Yangli stepped out of the Daoist Temple.

His internal organs and flesh seemed to coagulate, faint phosphorescence leaking from his pores, his expression carrying an inscrutable smile.

When Sun Yangli left the temple, its main doors closed again.

The windows still emitted a glow, revealing a figure walking in place inside, eerily resembling Sun Yangli.

"What the hell?"

"A second Sun Yangli?"

Tai Jiaozi squinted his eyes, feeling an inexplicable unease about the White Bone Pagoda.

He instinctively stared at Sun Yangli for a long while, an inexplicable chill running down his spine, as though he was standing before a creature resembling, but not quite, human.

"Great Mother?"

Tai Jiaozi’s expression grew increasingly grave.

He had indeed encountered the Great Mother a few times before, though he understood little about her. All he knew was that even the mighty Nascent Soul cultivators were unspeakably wary of her.

"Artifact cultivators only evolve into a Great Mother through their twin birth, don’t they? I distinctly remember Sun Yangli failed to condense a twin when forming his Core."

Tai Jiaozi pinched the bridge of his nose. If not for the Mother Furnace being unrestricted by Golden Cauldron Sect’s timeline, he might already have decided to hide until this was all over.

No matter what the Great Mother was, it could bring no benefit, only harm.

Of course, not every artifact cultivator could transform into a Great Mother. It was said only a rare few who condensed a high-grade Golden Core might produce a twin during their ascension, sprouting from the back of their skull.

Tai Jiaozi, though himself a high-grade Golden Core cultivator, had failed to condense a twin.

The memory of Daoist Qingtian floated into his mind. Rumor held that Qingtian’s talent was so extraordinary, he had already cultivated a twin well before reaching the Fake Core Stage.

It was said that the Old Earth True Monarch personally guided Qingtian in selecting and refining a technique for nourishing his Life-bound Magical Artifact.

By now, Daoist Qingtian most likely wielded a formidable Life-bound Magical Artifact, likely of a high-grade artifact tier.

Tai Jiaozi couldn’t help but feel envious.

Had he possessed a Life-bound Magical Artifact, perhaps he wouldn’t always be overshadowed by Mu Daoist.

"Hmm..."

A flicker of greed passed through Tai Jiaozi’s eyes as a sudden realization struck him: the White Bone Pagoda might possess properties conducive to fostering a twin birth.

His otherwise placid mental realm immediately spun into chaos.

Sun Yangli descended slowly from the apex of the White Bone Pagoda, step by step returning to the ground. His expression was tinged with confusion, as if trying to recall something forgotten.

Just then.

Veins stretched up from the ground, directly ensnaring Sun Yangli.

"Spare me..."

Snapping out of his daze, Sun Yangli mobilized his Spiritual Power, struggling to break free of the veins, only to find himself forcibly suspended upside down on the White Bone Pagoda.

"Thousand-legged Master."

Tai Jiaozi frowned slightly. If he wasn’t mistaken, the one casting this spell was none other than Bai Gu Qianzu’s Daoist heir, a Core Formation artifact cultivator known as Thousand-legged Master.

Big Deer Thousand Feet couldn’t be bothered to take on a new title, so across generations, their DAOist heirs all universally adopted the moniker "Thousand-legged Master."

Bai Gu Qianzu’s core magic techniques fell broadly into four categories. The Thousand-legged Master possessed the Three Elements Blood Thorns Red Heart Skill, a technique that could extract veins to combat enemies.

Tai Jiaozi realized something.

The three Dao Unions from Zone 9 had evidently arrived earlier than his own group. It seemed entirely plausible that Thousand-legged Master had already uncovered the secrets of the White Bone Pagoda.

While deep in thought, he noticed additional artifact cultivators exiting the remaining four White Bone Pagodas in turn.

However, they too were quickly subdued.

The stalemate lingered, shrouded in an invisible yet deeply unsettling strangeness.

Close to a thousand Core Formation artifact cultivators now hid among the heaps of bodies inside a colossal receptacle for the dead, sprawled within the corpses in an almost absurdly grotesque manner.

Even Li Mo felt his scalp tingle with unease.

Li Mo had recently completed the Sixty Refinements of his Corpse Mountain, the process harrowing yet ultimately free of error under his intense focus.

He had been silently observing the White Bone Pagoda for some time now.

With his Divine Sense-enhanced Cave God’s Eye, the information he gathered far exceeded that of other artifact cultivators; he could already confirm that the White Bone Pagoda was tangled up with the Great Mother.

"The Great Mother, again with the Great Mother."

In Li Mo’s eyes, Sun Yangli radiated weak phosphorescence from his body. His internal organs seemed fused, giving him the appearance of some macabre wax figure.

As for the shadow moving within the Daoist Temple—no matter how closely he compared—it unmistakably mirrored Sun Yangli.

Li Mo shook his head.

His attention shifted back to the Corpse Mountain in his palm. Its spirit attributes had grown to a total of five—Earth Yin, Wood, Water, Metal—and a barren sub-peak had newly emerged.

The metallic sub-peak was riddled with ore veins, its rocky surface laced with streaks of gold, silver, copper, and iron.

Spiritual materials lay buried within the stones, requiring keen discernment to extract. Occasionally, he spotted Deceit Beasts that feasted on minerals.

The Sixth Refinement had obliterated the Wood Element Sub-Peak of the Corpse Mountain.

The peak, like before, had transmuted into Spirit Veins, forming an ink-green root system that intertwined with the Yin Attribute Spirit Veins, snaking through the mountain’s interior.

Moss began to form on several of the tombstones scattered across the mountain’s surface.

This addition meant that the Yin Attribute Spiritual Energy released from the tombstones now carried threads of Wood Attribute Energy, the merging peaks gradually refining the internal laws of Corpse Mountain’s small world.

Li Mo examined the miniature Corpse Mountain. The presence of Wood Spiritual Veins endowed the peaks with vitality, significantly enhancing the adaptability of ordinary plants.

Over time, the vegetation underwent mutations, thriving even in extreme environments.

The Evergreen Tree at the summit of the main peak now grew far more luxuriantly, its branches heavy with seven to eight hundred fruits once more.

Li Mo continued feeding corpses into the Corpse Mountain, as the cavernous hollows of its inner structure expanded ceaselessly.

No one else noticed, but during their collective obsession with the White Bone Pagoda, Daoist Qingtian had stolen nearly a thousand corpses already.

As Li Mo excavated to a depth of five hundred meters, he discovered that the deaths of the bodies there dated back four thousand years.

The corpses bore signs of the Death Disease, most of their forms already decomposing. Only the blood-spattered skeletal remains of their torsos and a half-exposed jumble of internal organs remained intact.

Upon closer inspection, Li Mo realized that the anatomical structure of these ancient corpses differed little from contemporary humans. Only their Melting Furnaces seemed subtly different.

How to put it...

The furnaces of three thousand years ago bore noticeably artificial markings.

Li Mo fiddled with one such Melting Furnace, suddenly struck by the distinct impression that these older artifacts were fashioned from metallized human skulls.

His curiosity about Falling Abyss deepened, and he continued digging straight downward.

At a depth where the remains dated back five thousand years, only the skull-like furnaces were intact—prompting Li Mo to realize he had vastly underestimated the sheer quantity of corpses buried within Falling Abyss.

If all the skeletal remains piled below culminated in skull-sized furnaces, this implied the body count could easily exceed tens of millions.

And every furnace grew increasingly bizarre in design.

With tension evident on his face, Li Mo dug deeper into the abyss, reaching a depth of one thousand meters. Illuminating the darkness with the light radiating from his right eye, he was instantly stunned by his surroundings.

Piled before him were countless human skulls.

The Melting Furnaces of seven to eight thousand years ago now revealed their true origins—they truly were skulls. From their fragile cranial structures, he could even discern traces left by their cultivation efforts.

The skulls’ contours all indicated the same strange conclusion: their appearances had been identical in life.

Yet these skulls bore no open eyes, ears, mouths, or nostrils. Their necks were sealed by a layer of bone, making them distinctly abnormal in appearance.

"Compared to the Heart Beast Sect, had the Cultivation World not yet experienced the revolt of heaven and earth during this ancient time?"

With his eyes closed, Li Mo attempted to reconstruct the facial features of these skulls in his mind, soon envisioning a Daoist face filled with immortal majesty.

The Creation Book suddenly stirred.

Hurriedly absorbing the memories embedded within the Creation Scholar, Li Mo discovered the face belonged to a Nascent Soul artifact cultivator from the Sub-Device Sect tens of thousands of years ago:

[Chen Tiangang]

Though not the sect’s founder, Chen Tiangang had been a master of Puppetry Techniques and the originator of the Central Alloy Golden Light Puppet Secret Method.

Under his leadership, the Sub-Device Sect’s mining expeditions into the Outer Heaven Meteorite Crater had far surpassed those of other sect leaders.

Li Mo drew in a cold breath. What unimaginable circumstances could have caused the Central Dantian of all artifact cultivators of that era to transform entirely into replicas of Chen Tiangang’s head?

"This is way too bizarre."

Perhaps the Central Alloy Golden Light Puppet Secret Method held the key? No matter how much he pondered it, the connection between these two anomalies remained elusive.

Rubbing his temples in frustration, Li Mo nonetheless set aside several skulls to store within his Corpse Mountain.

The skull-shaped furnaces contributed precious little nourishment to the Corpse Mountain, prompting him to return to shallower depths where the corpses were better preserved for nurturing his artifact.

Just then.

Li Mo noticed the last page of the Creation Book shifting—new material forming from its edges.

"A Spirit Root Page?!"

Reaching out to connect with the ambient spirits, Li Mo found no resonance with the energy of any top-grade Spirit Stones. Whatever this new page was, it clearly wasn’t another Spirit Root Page.

He surmised its origins might lie in the strange aura emanating from the depths of Falling Abyss.

Thus far, only two types of special pages had ever emerged from the Creation Book: the "Spirit Root Page," capable of transforming organs into Spirit Roots, and the "Spell Page," which imparted spells of innate origins.

Li Mo hadn’t expected there’d be an opportunity for a third special page to manifest.

Abandoning any immediate plans to resurface, he resolved to await the full formation of this mysterious new page.

After a brief moment of hesitation, he slowed his excavation and continued downwards at a more deliberate pace.

As the blank page grew to occupy about one-tenth of its surface, its peculiar properties began to manifest. Its texture resembled a translucent layer of human skin, its pores rhythmically opening and closing.

In terms of its unsettling artistry, it bore a striking resemblance to the grotesquely infamous Da Ai Mi Tian and the "human skin page." Yet its exact significance could only be divined upon completion.

Settling down to meditate in seclusion, Li Mo eagerly began drafting plans for his Corpse Mountain’s Eighty Refinements.

Meanwhile, strange changes began to occur with the newborn Great Mother hanging from the White Bone Pagoda.

Fear plastered across his face, Sun Yangli only needed five days bound to the Pagoda to notice something terribly wrong with him—his flesh and blood spiraled out of control.

He began to seem more corpse than man.

Before their very eyes, Sun Yangli’s body visibly rotted, his flesh dissolving into pus that dripped to the ground, while his hard-earned Core Formation cultivation steadily drained away.

"Help! Save me!"

His cries became increasingly repetitive, resonating with the strange, incomprehensible murmurs Li Mo had once heard while in contact with faint phosphorescent light.

Before long.

Sun Yangli perished atop the White Bone Pagoda, his corpse released from its bondage of veins.

Tai Jiaozi and the other artifact cultivators were deeply perplexed. Before they could delve further, the Pagoda’s apex temple doors creaked open once more, releasing another Sun Yangli.

Hunched and crooked, this version of Sun Yangli had ribs that jutted through his chest and walked with a strained limp, his demeanor bordering on deranged lunacy.

Thousand-legged Master promptly acted, weaving his veins into an impenetrable net.

"Save me! Why won’t you save me!?"

Sun Yangli let out ear-piercing wails, and, deprived of his limbs, began crawling forward on his protruding ribcage.

But Thousand-legged Master was ready—his blood-weaved net easily ensnared Sun Yangli once more.

Suspended helplessly in midair yet again.

"Thousand Feet, how long have you been lingering in the Golden Cauldron Sect?" Mu Daoist stepped into the open, his gaze fixed intensely on the distorted Sun Yangli.

"First, figure out how to escape this place."

Thousand-legged Master did not reveal himself, his voice echoing from all directions, "Originally, there were six White Bone Pagodas. After Luochen became a Great Mother within them, he ascended to the Inner Sect."

"Those who fail to withstand the transformation process will simply endure death after death, until they eventually rot into an incomprehensible Deceit Furnace."

"Heh, do any of you wish to abandon your identity as artifact cultivators in pursuit of Inner Sect ascension?"

Falling Abyss returned to its chilling silence, as the gathered Core Formation artifact cultivators each wrestled with their own precarious thoughts.