Muyi's expression became complicated after noticing that it was Ren Qing.
At present, the news that Ren Qing had reached the Heavenly Aberration realm had not spread. The main reason was that most cultivators knew nothing about the Heavenly Aberration realm.
In their understanding, the Yang God realm was already equivalent to a terrestrial immortal.
The ashes of the Longevity Species drifted through the wind.
Muyi had witnessed Ren Qing's rise step by step from the Martial Practitioner realm to the Heavenly Aberration realm. Throughout the entire process, everything had gone smoothly, without the slightest setback.
It felt as though the young man who had once followed Song Zongwu around mining had only been encountered yesterday.
Crack crack crack crack...
Ren Qing's appearance triggered regenerative changes within the Longevity Forbidden Zone. The canyon expanded at a visible rate, accompanied by continuous collapses of the ground.
Following a muffled boom, the entire town dropped directly into the darkness below.
Everything tilted and toppled. Some objects even lost control and floated away from the ground. Several horse carts flew into the air before instantly breaking apart into fragments.
Fortunately, all the civilians practiced body cultivation. Even elderly people in their seventies and eighties could leap agilely between buildings.
Only then did they belatedly realize what was happening. Their eyes filled with terror as they prayed desperately for survival.
The profound and endless darkness had no visible bottom. It seemed unlikely that anyone could survive a fall into it.
Compared to the panic of hundreds of thousands of people, the cultivators of Restraint Officers' Hall remained relatively calm.
Most of them knew Ren Qing. Even if they were unaware of his Heavenly Aberration realm cultivation, rumors described his divine abilities as no different from those of immortals and Buddhas.
Wasn't the city standing within Stomach World itself transformed from Ren Qing's dream?
Ren Qing was still digesting the clues he had obtained from the Longevity Immortal when he suddenly noticed the abnormality within the forbidden zone and immediately dove toward the town.
The light in the sky was blocked by clouds.
The town seemed to be falling into an abyss.
A voice was reciting something.
"Strange darkness changes, Boqiang is yang."
"Order and harmony govern all, beneficent qi travels forth, expanding in season and contracting in season, where could there be any fixed homeland!!!"
The smile on Huang Ziwan's face stiffened. He immediately covered his ears with both hands as eerie and incomprehensible murmurs flooded into his mind from every direction.
He had once suffered a loss of control caused by soul mutation. Although he had continuously taken Weird Dust to suppress it, remnants still remained, making it difficult to control his body and soul.
Blood vessels filled Huang Ziwan's eyes, while countless poisonous blisters emerged across his skin.
The civilians had never experienced mutation of body and soul before. Although their reactions were not as severe as Huang Ziwan's, the fear in their hearts lingered relentlessly.
They began running about in panic. The chaos surpassed even that caused by an assault from the Longevity Species.
Ren Qing guided the town using yin qi, trying to draw it closer, only to discover that the distance between them was actually increasing, as though some force were pulling the town away.
He let out a cold snort.
Shadows covered his body. Scales emerged, while five-colored lightning flickered around him.
In only a few breaths, Ren Qing transformed into a bizarre coiling dragon over a thousand meters long. Traces of human facial features could vaguely be seen upon its face.
Boom!!!
In an instant, the darkness was completely dispersed. The whispers vanished without a trace, leaving only five-colored lightning covering the city.
Only then did Huang Ziwan recover. His clothes were already soaked with sweat.
He exhaled heavily with lingering fear and quickly closed his eyes to stabilize the rampaging weird item inside his body. Several nearby cultivators quietly withdrew after seeing this.
Yet there was a blessing hidden within the disaster.
After experiencing the loss of control of his weird item, Huang Ziwan's soul actually felt liberated. The bottleneck that had trapped him at Ghost Envoy realm perfection for decades had loosened slightly.
The town trembled, while an invisible pressure filled the sky.
When Huang Ziwan opened his eyes, he saw that the town was rising upward once more. The coiling dragon exhaled, while enormous dragon claws gripped the four walls of the city.
None of the cultivators dared discuss Ren Qing openly, especially those who had joined Restraint Officers' Hall within the past century.
They only knew that the master of the Knowing Dream realm possessed talent that appeared perhaps once in ten thousand years, but they had little understanding of what "talent" truly meant.
Breaking through to the Heavenly Aberration realm within a hundred years merely made them think he had enjoyed extraordinary fortune.
But Ren Qing's techniques numbered at least three. Yin qi resembling that of Corpse Vein, dreams that blurred reality and illusion, and the coiling dragon clad in lightning and shadows.
That was no longer something luck alone could explain...
The sound of flapping wings rang out again.
At some unknown time, another wave of Longevity Species had arrived.
Without soil, the Longevity Species were now born from air currents, and they had become even closer to birds, though their lower bodies still consisted of serpents.
"Seeking death..."
Ren Qing narrowed his dragon eyes.
Watching a group of Ghost Envoy realm ants attempt to attack him inevitably irritated him somewhat.
He had originally intended to probe the forbidden zone anyway, so he simply stopped holding back.
His dragon body twisted.
Endless Five Elements lightning scattered in every direction. Not only were the fully formed Longevity Species destroyed, even the hurricanes themselves were dispersed by the lightning.
Brilliant light covered heaven and earth. The civilians' eyes ached slightly, causing tears to stream down their faces.
No one knew how many would develop eye diseases because of it.
Of course, in the eyes of body cultivators, any illness was considered cultivation talent.
Boom!!!
Lightning exploded.
It felt like using a cannon to kill mosquitoes.
Ren Qing realized that the Longevity Forbidden Zone truly hid some secret, just as Chen Changsheng had said.
The techniques he had just unleashed had already surpassed the scope of the Yang God realm. Logically speaking, the Longevity Forbidden Zone should have suffered severe damage at the very least.
Yet when Ren Qing looked around, there wasn't even the slightest sign of collapse.
However, all the ground had already vanished.
The forbidden zone had transformed into a bottomless abyss filled with howling winds. The environment had undergone a complete upheaval.
The only other place Ren Qing had seen withstand attacks far beyond the Yang God realm was the Dead Man's Forbidden Zone.
But that place involved the Corpse Immortal, and also the arrangements left behind within it.
Carrying the town, he broke through the clouds and arrived above an endless sea of clouds. Under the sunlight, it seemed coated in golden lacquer.
Faced with such a magnificent sight, the defending cultivators stood stunned.
Ren Qing opened his mouth and spat out Wuwei City.
This Weird Embryo Artifact had already reached the Yin Difference realm and had also been animated by Dragon Roar Within the Casket.
The moment Wuwei City entered the Longevity Forbidden Zone, it smashed through the clouds and plummeted downward.
Ren Qing stared at Wuwei City without intervening.
A giant face emerged from the city's walls.
Then came arms and legs.
Finally, more than a dozen mouthparts grew from its underside. Fierce winds poured from the mouths, allowing Wuwei City to float upon the sea of clouds.
Ren Qing nodded in satisfaction.
The refinement of Wuwei City had consumed enormous resources. If it lacked adaptability, all those resources would have been wasted.
He transferred the nearly one million inhabitants of the town into Wuwei City.
As for the Longevity Tree, he uprooted it entirely and swallowed it into Stomach World.
The Longevity Tree had already undergone preliminary refinement. It had fused together with Avici Hell and used a blood moon avatar as its foundation, becoming the embryo of a fairly good magical artifact known as the Forbidden World.
Ren Qing handed it over to Ghost Shadow for continued refinement. In the future, it would also become one of Restraint Officers' Hall's trump cards.
After entering Wuwei City, the civilians quickly adapted.
Under the arrangements of Restraint Officers' Hall cultivators, each family selected residences and moved in.
They glanced toward Ren Qing standing atop the city walls, their eyes filled with reverence.
Although immortals had always been synonymous with demons and monsters within the Longevity Forbidden Zone, the terrifying strength displayed by Ren Qing truly deserved the title of a genuine immortal descended into the mortal world.
Ren Qing returned to his ordinary appearance and could not help but ponder.
Wuwei City resembled a ship floating upon the sea.
Above stretched a blue-and-white sky, while thick clouds surrounded them on all sides.
Within Ren Qing's perception, there was no trace of land within a thousand miles.
The reason the Longevity Forbidden Zone had undergone such drastic changes was either because it had devoured a Yang God realm weird item, causing the rules of the forbidden zone to change...
Or because the core weird item itself had undergone some mysterious transformation.
Ren Qing leaned more toward the latter.
He was certain that no outsiders had entered the Longevity Forbidden Zone recently. After all, the forbidden zone itself was extremely well hidden.
The Longevity Forbidden Zone had transformed into a well concealed within the ruins of Sanxiang City and was then buried beneath rubble and soil. It could not possibly be found easily.
"But why would the core weird item..."
He remembered that the core weird items of the Longevity Forbidden Zone should be the Rebirth Technique and the Six Diseases Method.
No matter how he looked at them, neither should have anything to do with the wind attribute.
Wait.
He suddenly realized something and immediately took out a Longevity Species corpse for inspection.
Longevity Species
Condensed from a weird item and later mutated under the influence of the Six Diseases Method.
The Longevity Species appears somewhat deformed, yet resembles a type of ghostly being described in myths from Ren Qing's previous life, known as "Boqiang," also called "Wind God Boqiang."
Unlike ordinary immortals, Wind God Boqiang is better known for calamities.
Ancient people believed illnesses originated from cold winds invading the body. Since diseases spread through wind, Boqiang also became the wind god who controlled plagues.
A strange expression appeared on Ren Qing's face.
Could there actually be clues to an immortal position hidden within the Longevity Forbidden Zone?
As for the possibility of a True Immortal existing there, that seemed unrealistic for the time being.
Even the leaked aura of an Earth Immortal would destroy a Yang God realm forbidden zone. Back then, the Dead Man's Forbidden Zone had been completely obliterated during the clash between Great Compassion Buddha qi and the Corpse Immortal.
Moreover, the cracks on the tortoise shell were not particularly obvious, and the divination signs did not even indicate great fortune.
Perhaps it was merely a fragment of a True Immortal's remains.
Ren Qing narrowed his eyes.
Although the immortal position added a layer of uncertainty to the Longevity Forbidden Zone, it also stirred new thoughts within him.
Restraint Officers' Hall needed time to digest its resources, and the fivefold time flow within the Longevity Forbidden Zone was perfect for that purpose.
Of course, Ren Qing had to finish refining the Forbidden World as quickly as possible. Otherwise, the Yang God realm forbidden zone would continue to hinder the efficiency of cultivating Restraint Officer techniques.
Unfortunately, the recovery speed of the Heavenly Dao Crack was measured according to external time. Otherwise, Ren Qing would not need long before attaining immortality.
After planning carefully for a while, he concluded that the most urgent matter was determining Chen Changsheng's condition and, while doing so, obtaining clues regarding Wind God Boqiang's immortal position.
What Ren Qing coveted most was Chen Changsheng's method of controlling the Longevity Forbidden Zone.
It could even move the forbidden zone across vast distances.
If Ren Qing could accomplish the same thing and fuse large numbers of weird items into the Longevity Forbidden Zone, wouldn't that essentially become a small-world Daoist sanctuary?
Ren Qing surveyed the surroundings.
The sea of clouds surged endlessly, producing new changes at every moment before quickly settling once more.
If he wanted to understand the immortal position, he would likely need to wait until the Longevity Forbidden Zone completed its transformation.
Ren Qing intended to use the Longevity Forbidden Zone as a base of operations.
He did not store Wuwei City inside Stomach World.
The time flow rates of the two places could not stack together, and the Longevity Forbidden Zone was still the slower of the two.
With a thought, Ren Qing opened an enormous rift in the center of Wuwei City.
The tens of thousands of cultivators within Stomach World impatiently rushed outside.
After decades, things had changed dramatically.
Countless friends and relatives had passed away from old age.
People like Zhou Wu, who had relied on body cultivation to reach the Ghost Envoy realm, were ultimately rare.
Most civilians considered reaching sixty or seventy years old a good lifespan.
They quickly found familiar faces.
Wuwei City soon became extremely lively.
No matter how real a dream might be, it was still separated by countless mountains and rivers.