The sub-soul descended into the Longevity Forbidden Zone.
After a brief period of unconsciousness, Ren Qing gradually became clear-minded, but his whole body was weak and powerless, to the point that even lifting his eyelids took quite some time.
His clothes were scattered not far away. He forced himself to endure the drowsiness, sat up cross-legged, and put on his clothes, and his breathing immediately became rapid.
Ren Qing instantly sensed something was wrong, because the frequency of his heartbeat was clearly off.
He had once again arrived in the Longevity Forbidden Zone; the sub-soul had turned into flesh, and the accompanying pathological changes still existed, but not to the exaggerated degree of before.
Ren Qing carefully examined himself. Although each internal organ was still far from failure, the heart clearly had congenital defects.
This caused him to instinctively gasp for breath.
The multiple-headed meat tumors on Ren Qing's shoulders had also disappeared, which showed that the pathological changes indeed had to do with the sub-soul.
Most likely, the fewer traces of cultivated techniques there were, the lighter the accompanying pathological changes.
At the same time, his five senses were not too weakened; at least his eyes could barely see clearly, and only his right ear was slightly deaf.
"Longevity, longevity, aside from a short-lived appearance, where is there even half a trace of longevity?"
He couldn't help but smile bitterly. After looking around he found that he was still at the same water pit as before; it should be that he descended according to the location of death.
The surface of the water reflected a deathly pale face, covered in dark-red bumps, anyone who saw it would think he had little time left.
Ren Qing was in the desolate wilderness, yet there were no traces of wild beasts.
He tried to communicate with the Eternal Prison Manacle, but unfortunately the sub-soul was simply too weak; otherwise he could use eating food to replenish physical strength.
Ren Qing drank the standing water without any hesitation, at worst the sub-soul would just die.
After closing his eyes to rest for a while, he could at least stand up, and he proceeded to walk through the forest in search of fruit to fill his stomach.
A few of the fruits hanging from the branches had fallen to the ground; from afar they looked like hearts, but up close like blood-soaked meat tumors.
Ren Qing had not brought the ghost shadow, so he could not summon the information stream; he simply used the fruit as food and gnawed on it.
After the fruit entered his stomach, it was quickly digested.
Warm currents flowed through his body along his blood vessels, driving out the cold, and the feeling of fullness made the weariness in Ren Qing's heart grow even stronger.
Ren Qing casually found a patch of grass to rest in. Right now he knew nothing about the situation of the Longevity Forbidden Zone, so it was best to recover as soon as possible before making plans.
Besides, it was getting late; after all, this was a Yang God-realm Forbidden Zone, and might well be filled with all sorts of bizarre Supernatural Remnants.
He attempted to cultivate the low-threshold Heaven Dao introductory method, but the body had no response at all; he tried imagined-creation techniques and they were the same.
Unknowingly, Ren Qing fell into a deep sleep.
By noon, he groggily opened his eyes.
Ren Qing experienced again the vexations of mortal aging and sickness, which made him even more desirous of "longevity," hoping to transcend the mundane world.
He had just intended to continue investigating the situation in the Forbidden Zone when he suddenly clutched his chest; bean-sized beads of sweat poured from his forehead without stopping.
His heart had already swollen by an entire circle, and was beating at a burden-beyond-bearing pace.
Ren Qing knew that after eating the fruit, the pathological changes of the body seemed to have worsened, and even his skin was giving off a tingling pain.
"What kind of damned world is this?"
After adapting to the heavy heartbeat, he got up and slowly walked through the mountain forest.
At this moment Ren Qing discovered that living creatures did exist here, he could see small rodents and reptiles.
But without exception, all of them had strange deformities.
Ren Qing saw with his own eyes a field mouse whose chest and abdomen protruded with a ball of flesh that pulsed constantly as it moved, clearly a heart.
With the knowledge of his previous life, it resembled a congenital condition of exposed heart, caused mainly by incomplete rib development.
Immediately afterward, Ren Qing saw a sparrow whose wings were of mismatched sizes.
Normal animals existed too, but were not many.
He walked in fits and starts for two days, with resting time taking up more than half.
The nights of the Longevity Forbidden Zone were safer than Ren Qing imagined. You could rarely hear cries of wild beasts; most things were dead silent.
Due to hunger, Ren Qing could only eat the fruits of the plants, but without exception they all worsened the body's pathological changes.
By this point, every step caused a stabbing pain in his heart; his breathing sounded like a blower, and his mouth was filled with the bloody taste of rust.
Just as Ren Qing was about to give up on this sub-soul, he suddenly noticed footprints.
His heart stirred, there were actually living people in the Longevity Forbidden Zone. Could they be survivors who had gradually reproduced after mistakenly entering?
What difference was there between a so-called Yang God-realm Forbidden Zone and the real world?
Ren Qing guessed that clues to longevity should not be hard to find; after all, despite how dangerous this place was, three Restraint Officers had managed to extend their life spans.
He followed the footprints toward the rising sun, and soon saw a winding mountain path, he was probably already close to a village.
Ren Qing took out a palm-sized fleshy leaf from his chest, ate one-third of it, and then put the rest away, to avoid worsening his own death.
This leaf was something he had tested, among the foods, it caused the smallest amount of pathological worsening, unlike the meat-tumor fruit, which did the opposite.
He forced his body to keep going, walking as far as he could. If truly impossible, he would simply re-nurture another sub-soul to enter the Longevity Forbidden Zone.
Ren Qing estimated that if the sub-soul did not cultivate techniques, the body that formed would be fairly healthy and not die within a few days.
When nightfall approached, his failing organs were on the verge of collapse, and his heart was three times the size of a normal one.
Ren Qing laboriously crossed a mountain ridge and noticed that the mountain road had grown flatter; not far away there was an extremely dilapidated temple.
From it rose curls of greenish smoke.
When he approached the broken temple, the plaque bore three crooked characters: "Fortune-Prosperity-Longevity." The writing was crooked and clearly had been abandoned for many years.
Ren Qing stepped inside; someone had clearly used it as a temporary shelter.
Inside the Fortune-Prosperity-Longevity temple were three dust-covered statues, similar in scale to the Three Dao Ancestors, but their appearances were extremely horrifying.
The Prosperity Immortal, standing in the middle, had auspicious-ruyi-shaped fleshy lingzhi growing from his head and arms, and his beard was formed from veins and blood vessels.
To the right was the Longevity Immortal, whose signature large forehead had been replaced by a meat tumor, bluish veins bulging over its surface, truly chilling.
In the Longevity Immortal's palms were two longevity peaches formed from infant heads; faint malicious and resentful smiles could still be seen.
The last, the Fortune Immortal, looked relatively normal, but his lower body was connected to a spotted deer, and the golden boy he held in his arms had been reduced to bare bones.
Just from the gods worshipped here, one could see that the Longevity Forbidden Zone was indeed strange beyond reason.
"Who's there?"
Inside the temple were two emaciated men; judging by their attire they were martial wanderers, but their qi and blood were inferior even to children outside.
Their bodies also had varying degrees of pathological deformities, mostly concentrated in deformed limbs or hidden organ defects.
They seemed to have been eating something earlier; after hearing footsteps they immediately put it away.
"Just staying one night. I will leave by myself tomorrow."
Seeing that the two had no reaction, Ren Qing walked to a corner of the temple and sat down, closing his eyes as though resting.
The two men stared at each other, their expressions showing some mixed delight, and their occasional glances at Ren Qing were filled with greed.
Ren Qing pretended to sleep, but in truth listened carefully to their whispers; however, his hearing was limited, making the voices intermittent.
"Like this... still hasn't died?"
"Really think it's..."
"Should trade for quite a bit of food, right?"
"I think so... but be careful... could be an evil ghost..."
The more Ren Qing listened, the more confused he felt. He quietly swallowed the leaf; as his heartbeat accelerated, he made his preparations.
The two stopped talking, and their positions intentionally formed an encirclement.
Ren Qing could sense their nervousness, which meant they were not people who habitually committed evil, this seemed like a sudden impulse.
He grew even more curious about what kind of worldview the Longevity Forbidden Zone had; everything seemed connected to disease.
After more than half an hour passed, the two finally made up their minds to act against Ren Qing.
They crept within two meters, then suddenly pounced, drawing the long knives at their waists in an attempt to subdue him.
Although Ren Qing's cultivation did not show and his body was like that of a hundred-year-old man, he had after all once reached the Yin Runner realm, his experience in dealing with such situations was extremely rich.
"Evil ghost! The evil ghost is here!!"
Hearing Ren Qing's bluffing shout, one of the men turned his head in terror.
Ren Qing drew the wooden short spear at his waist and stabbed it into the nearer man's shoulder, using it to form a hostage hold.
He pressed the spear against the man's neck; a burning pain surged from his lungs.
The other man looked at Ren Qing with the gaze of a fierce beast, especially when he noticed the dark-red blood flowing from Ren Qing's facial features.
Just as Ren Qing was about to ask something, the man completely ignored his companion's life, dropped his knife, and bolted away, quickly disappearing into the night.
"Evil ghost, evil ghost..."
"What evil ghost?"
In confusion, Ren Qing saw that the man he was holding hostage was developing red blotches similar to his own; soon his flesh exuded a foul stench of decay.
The man trembled and collapsed to the ground, his breath growing weaker.
Ren Qing immediately understood, the "evil ghost" the two had spoken of was actually the contagious disease on his own body. Truly, contact with blood meant certain death.
He used the wooden spear as a cane and deepened his tone:
"Do you want to live, or die?"
"W-want... to live..."
The man's pupils were already unfocused, but the instinct to survive forced him to stay conscious.
"Where were you planning to take me? For what reason?"
"Uu... uu..."
The man tried his best to speak, but the corrosion of his flesh was visible to the naked eye; in the end, he squeezed out only a few words from his throat:
"Med... ical... hall..."
Before he finished, he had already turned into a pile of rotting sludge.
Only then did Ren Qing realize how dangerous he was. His body not only had congenital heart disease, but also a contagious illness.
He felt his life draining away and collapsed limply.
The pathological locus of the body was likely somewhat random; unless Ren Qing completely refrained from letting the sub-soul cultivate techniques, disease was inevitable.
But Ren Qing vaguely felt that the Longevity Forbidden Zone was connected to disease everywhere, perhaps longevity itself had some special link.
Otherwise, even though the two men clearly knew he was extremely dangerous, why still attempt to capture him and send him to the "medical hall"? There must be some hidden clue.
Ren Qing's head fell to the side, and his body quickly rotted away.