CHAPTER 365: CHAPTER 111: INCREASINGLY REALISTIC DEDUCTIONS

The mark of the Floating Island Circulation Buddha Hand sealed itself, and the Sunlight Monk began to fall into the dormant state of transformation.

Although the Sunlight Monk is an eccentric Nascent Soul neither fully Buddhist nor fully demonic, Li Mo was certain that the emerging Dao Body would inevitably be linked to the Buddhist Sect.

Because of the nature of the Nascent Soul Dao Body, he decided to slightly postpone the use of the Substitute Dao Page.

If the Substitute Dao Page were to be used again to seize opportunities, it would undoubtedly be for the Dao Body characteristics of the Twelve Immortals.

Li Mo had carefully observed the Dao Bodies of the Twelve Immortals and found that some of them weren’t suitable for him, but they could fully integrate into the Nascent Soul Dao Body.

If necessary, it would still be best to wait for the birth of all Four Nascent Souls’ Dao Bodies.

Due to the lack of Blank Pages, the plan would inevitably have to be delayed until he ascended to the Divine Separation Stage, but only in this way could he maximize the benefits of the opportunities.

"Let’s stick to prioritizing the Sunlight Monk for now. After all, the Great Sun Nascent Soul has foundational spiritual objects, not to mention the Fake Buddha is also connected to the Heavenly Sword Sect."

Li Mo exhaled deeply.

Step by step, he was drawing closer to achieving immortality and Dao, and with the Divine Separation Stage in sight, he couldn’t help but feel a rare sense of relief.

Li Mo also understood that, perhaps in a medium-sized sect, the Divine Separation Stage already counted as top-tier combat strength, but in a large sect, it was far from adequate.

"The Nine Realms of Immortality... Achieving immortality is truly difficult."

Li Mo continued to circulate spiritual power while simultaneously connecting his consciousness with the Gu Refining Divine Power.

Although he did not intend to involve himself in the schemes of the Daoist and Demon factions, he had still secretly planted a Gu Worm in the Purple Mansion Black Market, silently monitoring developments.

The calamities to come would shape the rise and fall of the Cultivation World for tens of thousands of years.

Whether he would go to the Heavenly Sword Sect to seek immortal fate depended on the strategic outcomes of the Daoist and Demon factions’ power struggle—and the Master Senior Sister’s mind remained utterly inscrutable.

Li Mo sent his consciousness into the newly nurtured Gu Worm, named [Stone Dragon], which appeared like a rock-textured ladybug.

The Stone Dragon was indistinguishable from dead objects, lacking any traits of living beings. It emitted no aura, and even scanning it with divine sense would yield nothing.

Unfortunately, the Stone Dragon was immobile and extremely fragile.

Li Mo had previously nurtured the Stone Dragon with Innate Essence, barely ensuring that the Gu Worm could retain a hint of vitality even in an alienated and out-of-control environment.

He didn’t need to worry about the Stone Dragon implicating him.

Because Li Mo’s connection with the Stone Dragon relied entirely on the ethereal Gu Refining Divine Power, with no trace of magical skills inside or outside the Gu Worm.

Li Mo used the limited lifespan of the Stone Dragon to witness the demise of the Purple Mansion Black Market.

After the Heart Beast Sect descended upon the Purple Mansion Black Market and helped facilitate resource exchange with the outside world, the number of loose cultivators had once exceeded twenty thousand.

But when the Heart Beast Sect withdrew, forces realizing the danger also left one after another.

The loose cultivators who stubbornly stayed in the Purple Mansion Black Market ultimately ended up as discarded bones on the roadside—or perhaps as grotesque, deformed deceitful objects.

The Purple Mansion Black Market was now nothing more than a desolate landscape of abandoned shops.

A thick fog enveloped the mountains.

Amid the haze, one could vaguely see blood vessels extending from brainstems, writhing and occasionally grabbing deceitful objects to devour, the stench of blood permeating the air.

The sound of the wind scraped across the ground, producing a teeth-gritting noise.

"The brainstem has been intact for some time now. It might be about time to begin?"

Just as the thought formed in Li Mo’s mind, he noticed a figure slowly emerging from the dense fog, its posture unnervingly rigid, not resembling a True Person.

The figure was unmistakably a flesh-and-blood puppet, likely newly refined.

Its back hunched, its head grotesquely oversized—two or three times the size of an ordinary human—and pus flowed from its skull.

It wore a Daoist robe bearing the words "Ten Thousand Demon Dao," and its two hands clutched a wooden box, the terror in its lifeless gaze unmistakable even in death.

"The Ten Thousand Demon Dao?"

"In life, it was at least at the Core Formation Stage, yet it has become a flesh-and-blood puppet without rhyme or reason."

Li Mo muttered to himself, his gaze scrutinizing the seemingly ordinary wooden box, while his body—thousands of miles away—quivered inexplicably.

The patterns etched on the surface of the wooden box resembled childish drawings, reminding Li Mo of the shepherding children in Niu Village, carrying their "medicine baskets," which bore a striking resemblance to the puppet’s wooden box.

But medicine baskets were merely containers for storing herbs, weren’t they?

On the side of the wooden box, there was a line of crooked writing.

[Even if granted immortality, you are merely a corpse guardian ghost.]

Crack.

A crisp sound echoed as a fissure appeared on the box’s surface, and a pungent, bloody liquid began oozing out, the flow intensifying.

The flesh-and-blood puppet’s body started to dissolve, turning into a puddle of sludge moments later.

Deceitful objects, drawn by the scent of blood, converged toward the wooden box but soon shared the puppet’s fate.

An oppressive surge of spiritual power emanated from it, suffocating all around.

Crack.

"Ahhhhhhh..."

Amidst heart-wrenching screams, a grotesquely malformed mass of flesh emerged from the box, interspersed with fragments of shattered bones.

It was as if a person had been forcibly crammed into the box.

It took nearly half an hour for the rotten flesh to squeeze out and barely form a rotting upper body.

The Creation Book began to transmit fragmented and intermittent memories.

"Even if granted immortality, you are merely a corpse guardian ghost."

The Box Man’s voice was raspy, like a sharp tool scraping against rock, as his body began to uncontrollably swell.

Within a mere few breaths, he transformed into an indescribable monstrosity with a stature exceeding a thousand meters.

The Box Man reached into the fog and plucked something out—a moment later, the brainstem of the No-Life Mother was brought before him, examined like a treasured artifact.

He caressed the brainstem, muttering indecipherable words under his breath.

Reaching once more into the fog, a variety of the No-Life Mother’s remains appeared around the Box Man. He then used an extraordinarily intricate method to piece together the organs.

Strangely enough, though all the organs were sourced from a head, the assembled form resembled...

A female womb.

The Creation Book provided limited information, and only by combining it with the Demon Sect’s texts did Li Mo realize the Box Man was likely from the [Ten Desires Forest].

"The techniques of the Ten Desires Forest demon cultivators seem to center on reproduction and childbirth?"

Li Mo inhaled sharply. Seizing the opportunity before the corrupted blood could touch the Stone Dragon, he quickly drained the Gu Worm of its vitality and returned his consciousness to his body.

The Ten Thousand Demon Dao was a collective of numerous Demon Path legacies interwoven together.

Through the fragmented knowledge provided by the Creation Book, he had glimpsed a fragment of the nature of the Ten Desires Forest—a sect that revered fertility, where all disciples were male.

The Box Man’s state was bizarre.

He seemed caught between the Divine Separation and Void Refining Stages, exuding an indescribable aura of oppression.

"The Demon Sect is truly too enigmatic. Gu Worms alone aren’t enough to discern the full truth of demon cultivators. However, based on what I’ve seen..."

"It seems like they intend to use the No-Life Mother’s remains to nurture something?"

Li Mo’s expression turned helpless.

His own cultivation remained too shallow. Even if he could glimpse the tip of the iceberg, he couldn’t fathom the machinations of the Daoist and Demon factions.

He decided not to dwell on it further—for now, his focus was on advancing each Nascent Soul to the Nascent Soul Stage.

"The Heavenly Sword Sect... Let’s leave it to fate. I’ll investigate closer to the Cocoon Sword Meeting. A large sect wouldn’t descend into internal chaos, would it?"

Li Mo absorbed various spiritual energies, steadily advancing his Nascent Soul cultivation.

He also took the opportunity to explore the differences in his transformed Fake Soul Consciousness.

Glancing toward the Mud Pill Palace, he noticed that the Spirit Root Worm had already nurtured over two hundred thousand Illusion Spirit Roots, leading to Xia Dao Palace’s dramatic expansion.

No matter how many times he observed it, Li Mo couldn’t help but find it incredible.

A Daoist Temple housing over two hundred thousand disciples—its pavilions and towers arranged like a forest—and within, thirty-five Nascent Soul cultivators and three hundred forty Core Formation cultivators.

The Illusion Spirit Patterns linked to the Spirit Root Worm had already reached fifty.

Though the Illusion Spirit Patterns weren’t real, the power of the magic treasures they conjured was undeniably solid, even faintly surpassing that of the Dual Spirit Patterns’ Corpse Mountain.

Moreover, with the existence of the Sunlight Monk, the spiritual wisdom of the Xia Dao practitioners had grown vastly greater.

What could he say?

If Li Mo didn’t know that everything in Xia Dao Palace was fabricated, he would have taken its practitioners’ somewhat wooden dispositions as signs of childlike purity.

They diligently repeated their daily cultivation practices, and even after perishing and their Dao dissipating, they wouldn’t immediately revive but instead reincarnated as mortals to rejoin Xia Dao Palace anew.

"Primordial Chaos."

Li Mo connected with the Spirit Root Worm. With just a trace of contact between the magic treasures and the aura of Primordial Chaos, the decorations within Xia Dao Palace underwent spontaneous creation once more.

"Kekeke, no matter how many times I watch it, it’s always amusing."

The decor of Xia Dao Palace aligned itself more and more with the Sub-Device Sect. The disciples, one by one, possessed the Primordial Dao Body, constantly surrounded by illusory scenes under the shroud of metallic sandstorms.

Li Mo then cast the Mayfly Dream spell, no longer using himself as the template to construct Fake Soul Consciousness but actively interfering with the process of its nurturance.

Moments later, the Fake Soul Consciousness took the form of a Taoist child, now appearing inside Xia Dao Palace.

The Taoist child was single-mindedly devoted to Dao. However, because it didn’t possess the Primordial Dao Body, it instead embodied the Dao Body Li Mo had previously obtained—[Earth Master’s Hind Foot].

Li Mo noticed that the Nascent Soul cultivators of Xia Dao Palace reacted naturally.

While imparting magic techniques, they surrounded the Taoist child, studying the Earth Master’s Hind Foot, unconsciously initiating a Dao Body fusion simulation.

"Kekeke."

Li Mo couldn’t help but let out a sinister chuckle. The combination of Xia Dao Palace’s practitioners and Fake Soul Consciousness was like watching an utterly nonsensical movie—a source of genuine amusement.

Because of the influence of the Fake Soul Consciousness, Xia Dao Palace seemed to accelerate as though someone had pressed fast forward.

A hundred-year simulation might be compressed into a mere hundred days.

Initially, Xia Dao Palace’s demeanor was still within the bounds of normalcy.

The elders of the Daoist Temple, seeing that the Fake Soul Consciousness showed no signs of enlightenment, kept devising new cultivation techniques for it or used external stimuli to provoke the Earth Master’s Hind Foot, trying to find commonalities in the Dao Body.

But when the simulation reached around eighty years...

The Fake Soul Consciousness, as always, veered into extremes, leading Xia Dao Palace into a bloodbath. Within the remaining twenty years, the Daoist Temple became littered with corpses.

After the hundred-year simulation, the Fake Soul Consciousness transformed into a white-haired elder.

It suddenly lifted its gaze, murmuring in joy and astonishment, "Ah, so that’s it. Everything is false. No wonder I couldn’t leave the mountain gate."

As soon as his words fell, the Mayfly Dream wiped away the Fake Soul Consciousness.

Following a brief period of chaos within Xia Dao Palace, the countless corpses disappeared, and everything returned to the serene and routine cultivation practices of day-to-day life.

Li Mo marveled as he digested the memories of the Fake Soul Consciousness.

The direction of the Fake Soul Consciousness’s simulation was clear: integrating external Dao Bodies into itself, using the conflict between Dao Bodies to force their union.

Through a hundred years of simulation, the Fake Soul Consciousness had already discovered the point of convergence between the Primordial Dao Body and the Earth Master’s Hind Foot.

It first stimulated the right calf to derive the Acquired Dao Body [Earth Master’s Hind Foot], then gradually fused the Earth Master’s Hind Foot with the Primordial Dao Body.

Adding a touch of Innate Essence, the possibility of a perfect fusion wasn’t out of reach.

Li Mo simply needed to repeat one or two more simulations with the Fake Soul Consciousness before attempting to elevate the Primordial Chaos Taoist Body further toward the Immortal Body.

"Before advancing to the Divine Separation Stage, I must ensure my foundation reaches an unprecedented level of perfection."