Ren Qing used the Zhili Technique to inspect the insect warriors who had returned from the dead, discovering that their memories remained frozen at the moment before their deaths.
However, after experiencing the despair of their lifespan running out, their minds had changed to varying degrees, becoming irritable and extreme.
It was similar to suffering qi deviation. Their thinking was no longer normal.
Originally, the population of Sanxiang City should have been around two hundred thirty thousand, but only one hundred thousand insect warriors had been reborn.
Including Heshan Town and Annan Town, more than two hundred thousand people had vanished completely.
Those who had not been reborn either had never refined Gu insects before, or had only reached the stage of barely refining them, far from truly controlling the Gu insects.
Ren Qing looked toward the strongest among them. Before dying, they had all advanced their Gu insects to the Ghost Envoy realm, but lacking Gu Immortal's resources, they were still far from the Yin Difference realm.
He immediately summoned the Information Stream.
[Blackwater Daoist]
[Age: One]
[Lifespan: Nine years, three hundred sixty-four days]
[Gu: Abdominal Water Gu]
[Abdominal Water Gu]
[After refining it, one can control water. The Gu must be nourished daily with ten jin of clean water. If its needs are not met, it will drain the host's blood.]
It can be nourished with clean water. After consuming a quantity of water equal to that of a stream or river, the Abdominal Water Gu will advance into the Stream-in-the-Belly Gu.
Ren Qing narrowed his eyes. After resurrection, the insect warriors' lifespan limit had increased to ten years, far beyond the previous single year.
His face showed confusion. What exactly was the opportunity that had drawn all the Heavenly Aberration cultivators to Jingzhou? And what connection did it have with events thousands of years ago?
Using the bacterial souls scattered throughout Jingzhou, Ren Qing observed the movements of the various factions and discovered that, without exception, the Heavenly Aberration cultivators were using techniques to mutate the insect warriors.
Unfortunately, limited by the Zhili Technique only being at the Yang Spirit realm, the bacterial souls simply could not get too close to the towns.
He closed his eyes to observe the reactions of the other factions, secretly speculating about the truth.
He saw Lady White Bone covering her mouth with a smile as she continuously swung a willow-leaf blade.
Blood splattered everywhere, creating a horrifying scene.
She flayed the flesh directly from the insect warriors, then opened her mouth and exhaled dense Yin Qi, forcing the Gu insects to fuse with the warriors' skeletons.
The Gu insects clearly had not originally functioned through the bones, but under the threat of death, they had no choice but to compromise.
The stripped flesh was thrown into the distance to feed crows.
After eating flesh tainted with Yin Qi, the crows' bodies rapidly swelled, while their feathers became coated in a layer resembling grease.
They lost the ability to fly, but transformed into a special Corpse Crow Gu that could evolve by consuming human flesh and was driven by Yin Qi.
Fresh flesh would occasionally regrow upon the skeletal insect warriors, allowing the Corpse Crow Gu and the skeletons to form a simple ecological cycle.
"Wake up for me."
The insect warriors stood up once more, staring at their hands with expressions of disbelief. They had clearly retained both the memories and intelligence they possessed before death.
Before they could react, however, their souls had already fallen under Lady White Bone's control.
As for the Elephant Lord, he fed the flesh of the Corpse Elephant to the insect warriors imprisoned inside cages.
The insect warriors let out heart-rending screams as they mutated toward half-human, half-elephant forms, while the parasitic Gu insects desperately fled from their bodies.
Although the cages were surrounded only by bone bars and open on all sides, they actually sealed away the Gu insects, preventing them from escaping.
Under Jingzhou's unique rules, the Gu insects required enormous amounts of nourishment to sustain themselves. Left with no choice, they crawled back into the insect warriors' bodies.
Under the erosion of the Corpse Elephant's flesh, the Gu insects gradually began adapting themselves to their hosts.
Every faction was freely transforming the insect warriors. In only a short time, the insect warriors became increasingly inhuman.
Insect Nest did the exact opposite. The Matriarch understood Gu refinement exceptionally well, so she instead transformed the insect warriors into immobile insect cocoons.
What surprised Ren Qing the most was Wuzhi, who had obviously prepared in advance.
Wuzhi had taken an entirely different approach, placing the insect warriors inside womb-like chambers used to nurture living beings, thereby constructing three- to four-meter-tall Buddhist monks.
The monks had enormous swollen bellies, containing the insect warriors. Inside the insect warriors were the Gu insects. The three formed a unique symbiotic relationship.
Ren Qing suddenly realized what Jingzhou's opportunity actually was.
Most likely, whenever an insect warrior's lifespan was exhausted, they would be reborn according to the rules of the immortal position, though there was some kind of selection mechanism.
With each death, only the strongest insect warriors would be resurrected.
Naturally, each resurrection would also influence their mentality, making them increasingly extreme until eventually...
Ren Qing suddenly understood. Many times while advancing the Ascension Ladder, he had witnessed cultivators such as Great Dream True Person creating cultivation techniques.
Cultivators capable of touching the Heavenly Dao all shared one common trait.
They were "extreme."
Or rather, at a certain point, Great Dream True Person and the others had reached a state of mind infinitely close to the Three Dao Ancestors, allowing them to achieve complete enlightenment.
As the insect warriors repeatedly died and resurrected, their states of mind would inevitably change, making it increasingly likely for them to directly encounter the Three Dao Ancestors.
Even if such cases remained rare among several thousand people, Jingzhou still possessed several million inhabitants even after one round of selection.
Sooner or later, some insect warriors would stumble upon such an opportunity by sheer luck, and there would likely be quite a few of them.
The Heavenly Aberration cultivators were mutating the insect warriors precisely so the insect warriors would master their cultivation methods, allowing any Ascension Methods they created to be used by them.
Such a fantastical situation could not possibly be the first occurrence.
Could it be that thousands of years ago, this world had already seen ordinary mortals pushed toward the Heavenly Dao, ultimately resulting in the absurd present where countless factions ruled separately?
Mortals were continuously filtered until one indescribable Weird Dao cultivation method after another was born.
"Even so, relying only on the immortal positions as a framework, creating an Ascension Method that directly points to the Earth Immortal realm should still be impossible, shouldn't it?"
Ren Qing's gaze grew profound. Having personally faced the Three Dao Ancestors five times while advancing the Ascension Ladder, no one understood the difficulty of Earth Immortal Ascension Methods better than he did.
First, at least four mutually complementary cultivation methods were required, and one also had to remain conscious before the Dao Ancestors.
Without the support of the Information Stream, ordinary cultivators only had a single opportunity to comprehend them, making the chance of creating an Earth Immortal Ascension Method virtually nonexistent.
Otherwise, Nameless would never have spent centuries plotting merely to possess the Corpse Immortal.
"Perhaps what they're actually after are Heavenly Aberration Ascension Methods?"
Ren Qing smiled bitterly and shook his head, realizing he had been exposed to too many Earth Immortal Ascension Methods and had unconsciously taken them for granted.
The Heavenly Aberration realm was divided into the four minor realms of Dharma-Birth Path, Dao Gives Birth to One, One Gives Birth to Two, and Birth of Myriad Things.
If the cultivation methods practiced in the Heavenly Aberration realm were not connected to an immortal position, they would most likely remain stuck at the Dharma-Birth Path.
However, the bottleneck of nurturing an immortal body should be bypassable through other means, though he had no idea what the advantages or drawbacks might be.
Without an Earth Immortal Ascension Method, cultivators would have to struggle through every minor realm, perhaps even spending enormous effort on planning and schemes.
No wonder the divination had indicated that Jingzhou's fortune did not even reach the level of great fortune.
Because an opportunity that benefited even Heavenly Aberration cultivators truly held little meaning for Ren Qing.
Now that he understood the situation, however, he could participate much more calmly and even attempt to leave preparations for the War of Enfeoffing Immortals.
The opportunity Ren Qing wanted was entirely different from what the other Heavenly Aberration cultivators sought.
He was very interested in the methods the hidden mastermind used to manipulate immortal positions, and he also intended to investigate what happened when insect warriors came into contact with the Three Dao Ancestors.
There was also the matter of spreading Heaven Court's reputation so more factions would learn of it.
And integrating immortal offices into immortal positions. He now even suspected that the hidden mastermind had arranged more than just three kinds of immortal positions within Jingzhou.
Ren Qing glanced at the Heavenly Dao Crack upon the turtle shell. If nothing unexpected happened, it should recover by more than half over the next thirty to forty years.
To ensure there were enough immortal office slots, he would continue advancing Heaven and Earth Genesis.
However, what gave Ren Qing a headache was how to deal with the several hundred thousand insect warriors in Xiangxiang. Like the other factions, he could simply let them descend into madness and thereby approach the Heavenly Dao.
But for Ren Qing, he himself could already create Ascension Methods through immortal positions.
What truly interested him were the insect warriors themselves. After repeated cycles of death and resurrection, those who remained would all be one in ten thousand.
Even though the insect warriors were like water without a source and would disappear completely once Jingzhou's arrangement came to an end, converting them into zombies afterward would still be an excellent option.
Ren Qing could not simply let the insect warriors run free. At the very least, he had to ensure they would not lose control.
A flash of inspiration suddenly struck him. He remembered the Soul-Splitting Disease Type that had once been used against the Cishi monks. He could completely create a secondary personality for the insect warriors to store their negative emotions.
He could also use it to control every move they made.
With that thought, Ren Qing released a large number of Soul-Splitting Disease Types from his Mud Pellet Palace, silently placing them into the Mud Pellet Palaces of the several hundred thousand insect warriors.
Closing his eyes, he activated The World Is Like a Dream. It was his first time casting it on several hundred thousand people simultaneously.
Throughout Xiangxiang, the insect warriors immediately convulsed. Blood flowed from all seven orifices while they muttered incomprehensible words under their breath.
Seeing this, Feng Ye felt his scalp go numb. He had no idea what kind of methods this colleague possessed, but the more he watched, the more unsettling it became. It did not seem like the methods of the Thunder Department at all.
However, Gu Immortal within the rainforest lay outside the range of The World Is Like a Dream.
Ren Qing kept watching Gu Immortal at all times, wanting to see just how far he could grow. Perhaps he might even influence Insect Nest.
After being reborn, Gu Immortal became far more cautious. Since he could replenish supplies through Dream City, he had no intention of approaching any towns.
He headed straight away from Xiangxiang, preparing to search for the Gu insects recorded in the Gu Scripture.
With a wave of his hand, Ren Qing caused thick fog to cover most of Xiangxiang. Han Li immediately led the cultivators into action, vanishing into the mist.
A light rain began to fall.
After bathing in dragon blood, all the Gu insects within Xiangxiang displayed subtle draconic traits, demonstrating just how corrosive dragon blood was to all living things.
A short while later, the insect warriors gradually awoke. However, their expressions no longer carried the previous savagery. Instead, they resembled the people of Jingzhou from several months earlier.
Madness still flickered within Blackwater Daoist's eyes. The Gu insect inside him could sense that his body's condition still contained hidden dangers.
The secondary personality absorbed his negative emotions, but traces of malice still influenced his primary personality.
Blackwater Daoist swept a vicious gaze over his surroundings. He felt the urge to experiment on the townspeople, hoping to push his Ghost Envoy realm Gu insect one step further.
At that very moment, Ren Qing's voice rang out beside their ears.
"In the near future, I shall impart the Immortal Dao."
Under the influence of the Zhili Technique, they could not produce the slightest doubt toward Ren Qing. The secondary personalities immediately restrained the negative emotions leaking outward.
Order throughout Xiangxiang returned to normal.
The Daoist temples and Buddhist monasteries shut their gates, awaiting Ren Qing's instructions.
In the eyes of the other Heavenly Aberration cultivators, the Dragon King of the Four Seas seemed to have no intention of competing for the opportunity at all, simply allowing the insect warriors to develop on their own.
Compared to the towns controlled by the other factions, the contrast could not have been greater.