Longevity Strange Immortal
Chapter 194 - 54: Inner Sect Disciple, Li Mo

Chapter 194: Chapter 54: Inner Sect Disciple, Li Mo

The decorations within the White Bone Pagoda’s Daoist temple were unremarkable, with calligraphy and paintings urging the pursuit of knowledge hanging on drab walls. Outside the windows, all was shrouded in a blinding white haze.

Burning Eyes True Monarch had chosen to enter the White Bone Pagoda to avoid danger and had considered escaping more than once.

But each time he approached the main door, an indescribable terror would seize his heart, as though some unspeakable entity lurked beyond it.

"Damn it..."

His expression twisted with venomous hatred, his eyes filled with defeat. He cursed Daoist Qingtian under his breath, wishing he could kill him to vent his fury.

He blamed everything on Li Mo, as if making him the scapegoat could soothe his own turbulent emotions.

Burning Eyes True Monarch had no sense of how long he had been trapped inside the White Bone Pagoda. As time passed, his memories became increasingly fragmented and blurred.

Voices incessantly urged him to leave the Pagoda, echoing by his ears.

In a strange daze, almost as if controlled by some ghostly impulse, Burning Eyes True Monarch found himself standing before the entrance and gently pushed the wooden door open.

A slit no wider than his palm revealed a flickering candlelight, but the world beyond the door was not the Falling Abyss. Instead, it was another Daoist temple, though a figure was obstructing the doorway.

Burning Eyes True Monarch squinted, his gaze sharpening—and his spine immediately went cold with fear.

Standing beyond the door was a puppet whose physique mirrored his own, its form grotesquely pieced together from scraps of flesh, and its face bore the countenance of an unfamiliar man.

"What is this abomination?!!"

He staggered back multiple paces in fright, but the puppet clumsily mimicked his retreating movements and stepped into the Daoist temple.

Forcing himself to steady his nerves, he slipped his right hand behind his back, allowing his spiritual power to quietly emerge.

The puppet had no cultivation whatsoever, yet it imitated his every move, much like a crude, laughably incompetent marionette bound by invisible strings.

"Is this the Mother Furnace’s trial?"

Burning Eyes True Monarch let out a low grunt and lunged toward the figure, his legs propelling him forward with ferocious force.

The puppet also moved to close the distance, but as the walls confining the room pressed ever closer, shrinking the space between them, they were soon no more than two meters apart.

The pupils of Burning Eyes True Monarch contracted sharply.

He realized that as they grew closer, the puppet’s aura became increasingly similar to his own, even faintly exhibiting traces of spiritual power. Alarmed, he stopped in his tracks immediately.

He licked his lips, choking on the thick terror that rose within him.

Opening his mouth, he tentatively spat out a stream of magma. The puppet’s instantaneous injury triggered a bone-wrenching scream—and Burning Eyes True Monarch screamed in pain as well.

Disbelief etched itself into his features as he touched his shoulder, finding a burn wound identical to that he had inflicted on the puppet.

Daring no further reckless moves, he began scrutinizing the puppet for any exploitable flaws.

But soon, he discovered the bitter truth: even without willing it, the distance between them was dwindling. Four walls that once confined the temple were steadily compressing inward toward the center.

Two meters.

One meter.

Half a meter.

......

When his body finally collided with the puppet, his flesh began to melt and dissolve. The puppet, as though peeling apart its own body piece by grotesque piece, burrowed itself into his chest, his very Five Internal Organs reduced to nothing but a hollow, writhing cavity.

Particularly unsettling was the puppet’s head, which seemed to be merging into a molten furnace.

Burning Eyes True Monarch was powerless to stop the process; his mind clung to a single, desperate thought of survival. In the end, his Middle Dantian transformed into the puppet’s grotesque face.

The face wore a peculiar, almost pleased smile.

He had no idea how much time had passed.

Burning Eyes True Monarch’s dazed consciousness finally cleared when the creak of the main door opening jolted him awake. Gasping heavily, he turned toward the doorway.

Escape from the White Bone Pagoda seemed mere inches away.

"......"

Burning Eyes True Monarch froze in astonishment. Another version of himself, looking dazed and bewildered, was stepping out of the Pagoda.

His expression immediately contorted with ferocity, but understanding soon dawned on him—a path toward becoming the "Great Mother" lay before him.

The version of him that had exited the Pagoda was nothing more than his old shell, retaining everything that once made him human. He realized that to ascend and transform into the Great Mother, he would need to devour this old shell.

Burning Eyes True Monarch dragged himself toward the doorway, each step laborious and agonizing.

Like a newborn baby crawling from its crib, he felt his strength gradually returning as he moved forward.

He moved faster and faster, his expression oozing hatred and rage.

He surmised that outside, Daoist Qingtian’s forces of artifact refiners were lying in wait. However, any action they took against his old shell would likely focus solely on sealing it away.

"I am not like those worthless fools who came to the White Bone Pagoda before me. The Mother Furnace has already accepted me—just give me time, and I will break free!"

A faint, sinister grin played across his lips as he envisioned toying with Daoist Qingtian in his revenge.

Just as he thought, the situation outside unfolded to his advantage.

Mu Daoist released vines to bind the old shell, ignoring its desperate pleas. Meanwhile, the real Burning Eyes True Monarch moved steadily closer to the Daoist temple’s entrance.

His right hand reached for the door handle.

At that very moment—

The sound of a toad’s croak pierced the air. Looking through the slightly ajar door, he caught sight of a massive, black silhouette over twenty meters tall.

The Three-Legged Golden Toad materialized and slammed its body heavily downward.

"Noooo!!!"

The old shell was instantly crushed into a bloody pulp. Li Mo appeared just outside the temple door, locking eyes with Burning Eyes True Monarch through the sliver of an opening.

"So, this is how the Great Mother forms... How fascinating."

Bang.

The door slammed shut.

Burning Eyes True Monarch felt his strength rapidly drain as he was dragged back into the depths of the Daoist temple.

"Qingtian Daoist!!!"

Li Mo rejoined the group, instructing them to kill any version of Burning Eyes True Monarch leaving the Daoist temple without hesitation. None of the artifact refiners raised objections.

Mu Daoist glanced curiously at Li Mo, suspecting he had figured something out.

However, she wisely held her tongue. The secrets of the Great Mother were a matter only cultivators at the Nascent Soul Stage were privy to within any Daoist inheritance.

Li Mo stroked his chin thoughtfully.

Though he had never personally witnessed the birth process of the Great Mother, he had glimpsed fragments of its mystery.

Old Earth True Monarch once mentioned that becoming the Great Mother required either the twin devouring the cultivator, or the cultivator consuming the twin.

Inside the Daoist temple, Burning Eyes True Monarch was likely a phosphorescent-generated replication. By consuming the old shell, this replication could shed its former self entirely.

And after the Great Mother’s death, would its soul return to the inner sect?

Li Mo narrowed his eyes, recalling the half-corpse trapped beneath Dome Mountain’s gates.

It seemed likely that Dome Mountain’s replication had yet to fully transform into the Great Mother. Having devoured only half of its potential prey, it might come looking to complete the process someday.

Li Mo swallowed nervously.

The Chaotic Burial Furnace was no longer a place he could linger—who knew what his elusive master was plotting.

While artifact refiners harbored various private thoughts, the Daoist temple doors creaked open again, and another version of Burning Eyes True Monarch’s old shell emerged, its body further corrupted by mutations.

Inside the temple, the replication of Burning Eyes True Monarch wore an expression of abject terror.

He noticed that wherever the old shell mutated, his own flesh exhibited signs of decay, corroded by the death disease.

His steps grew heavier as he painfully crawled toward the exit, helplessly watching the old shell die again.

By the fourth resurrection of the old shell, Burning Eyes True Monarch’s body was wholly unrecognizable, his flesh torn and rotting as he slithered weakly toward the doorway.

To him, crossing that threshold meant a chance at rebirth.

But sadly...

Li Mo would not leave Burning Eyes True Monarch the slightest opportunity—he couldn’t be sure whether the Great Mother’s soul might merge back into the Mother Furnace.

"Fox."

Li Mo’s left arm detached, forming a twenty-meter-long Red Fox that darted toward the Western White Bone Pagoda, swiftly devouring the newly resurrected Tai Jiaozi in one gulp.

The Red Fox’s jaws chewed relentlessly, eliciting piercing, bloodcurdling screams.

Even when Tai Jiaozi showed signs of escaping, the Red Fox responded with an even fiercer onslaught of flames. The scorching heat twisted the very air itself.

Hundreds of artifact refiners stood guard on the outskirts.

Burning Eyes True Monarch and Tai Jiaozi had no room for resistance, and in the end, their consciousnesses were swallowed by eternal darkness amidst decay.

The five White Bone Pagodas returned to eerie silence, their stillness a stark anomaly in the corpse-strewn expanse of the Falling Abyss.

Li Mo turned and headed back to the camp, casually selecting an empty room to continue his secluded cultivation. The Ash Golden Core was only a step away from breaking through to the Transformation Core Stage.

The Three Mountains sect took over patrolling the White Bone Pagodas.

While awaiting the Falling Abyss’ next opening, Li Mo continued collecting corpses, driven by a compulsion to expand the area of his magical artifact, despite the limited digestive capability of the Corpse Mountain.

Brazenly pillaging resources, Li Mo consumed around a hundred corpses daily.

Though this was but a drop in the ocean compared to the millions of corpses in the Falling Abyss, it still sent shivers down the spines of the other artifact refiners.

Rumors swirled that Li Mo’s refinement of artifacts and brewing of corpse wine might be masking a practice of consuming corpses for cultivation.

Nonetheless, as long as Li Mo guaranteed a steady supply of corpse wine, many were all too willing to assist in moving bodies for him, even going so far as to pick out those with good quality.

With the unstable factors like Burning Eyes True Monarch eliminated, the situation calmed significantly.

Though Li Mo’s canned spiritual energy reserves were finite, he spent seven years in secluded cultivation, reaching Pseudo Core Perfection with his Ash Golden Core without rushing the breakthrough.

In his downtime, he advanced the Daluo Heaven artifact to Seventy-Six Refinements.

As expected, the artifact embryo’s quality now limited the Daluo Heaven artifact, making further progress beyond Seventy-Six Refinements difficult.

He could force further upgrades by consuming the medicine power of a Nourishing Yuan Fruit, but the cost far outweighed the benefits.

In the remaining days, Li Mo focused on purifying his spiritual power, occasionally cleansing the Da Ai Mi Tian. Without realizing it, his life-bound magical artifact achieved Sixty-Three Refinements.

Crack, crack, crack...

At the peak of the Falling Abyss, the fissures widened into a blooming chrysanthemum-like opening. All the artifact refiners immediately felt a compelling force pulling at them, their expressions lighting with joy.

It made sense, after all—the Mother Furnace wouldn’t simply eliminate most Core Formation artifact refiners for the Golden Cauldron Sect. However, the initial message passed along by the Mother Furnace upon entering the Falling Abyss indeed held strange implications.

Li Mo stood outside the camp as others turned their attention toward him.

Some artifact refiners, unable to resist the pulling force, disappeared into the opening one by one.

"Three Mountains, Mu Daoist, Jelly True Monarch... Hmm."

Scanning the crowd, Li Mo pointed to the familiar figure of Kuteng Daoist. "You, then. The four of you, stay briefly—I have important matters to discuss."

The four exchanged uncertain looks but ultimately chose not to voice objections.

Bothered by no need to provide an explanation, Li Mo summoned the Ghost Tiger to envelop the group and burrowed three thousand meters underground, emerging with practiced ease.

The four gazed in shock. The White Bone Pagoda extended an unfathomable depth of three thousand meters, ending at an inverted Daoist temple beneath the earth.

"The surface hosts the Great Mother’s Inner Sect, while underground lies the Inner Sect of artifact refiners."

After encountering Thousand-Legged Master’s conglomeration, Li Mo realized Luli Mountain was notably absent among the Nine Districts’ Three Daoist inheritances. It became clear the Daoist of Luli Mountain had already ascended into the Inner Sect through legitimate avenues.

No matter how much the Great Mother manipulated the Mother Furnace, she could not entirely sever the path to the Inner Sect.

"Who will go first?"

"I..."

"Allow me. Many thanks, Senior Qingtian."

Before Three Mountains could finish, Kuteng Daoist gritted his teeth and stepped forward, bowing respectfully to Li Mo.

Kuteng Daoist understood that the first to enter bore the greatest risk. As a Thousand-Year Vine cultivator of a Low Grade Daoist inheritance, he was in no position to contest others’ superiority.

He opened the Daoist temple and entered. Moments later, the White Bone Pagoda collapsed.

Once Li Mo confirmed there were no issues, he sent the remaining three to their respective White Bone Pagodas. Both Mu Daoist and Jelly True Monarch expressed their gratitude.

Three Mountains likewise bowed deeply. Never had he imagined gaining the fortune to become an Inner Sect disciple; his heart swelled with nothing but gratitude toward Li Mo.

Li Mo claimed the final slot for himself.

The Ziqi Sect’s Inner Sect held mysteries in Uncertainty-period magic that he simply couldn’t afford to miss.