CHAPTER 547: CHAPTER 63 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE SOUL AS AN INSECT

Li Mo actively approached the Ancient Age Death Disease while simultaneously focusing his Divine Split on studying the Three Immortal Body.

With the support of the Three Immortal Body, he could feel an extraordinary closeness between his body and soul, and the progress of his Externalized Dharma Body advancing to the Mahayana Realm surged significantly.

Li Mo sat cross-legged in the Corpse Mountain Mini World.

His Lifebound Flying Sword tempered the Great Wilderness Immortal Body, as his blood and flesh organs subtly wriggled, transforming in a profoundly mysterious direction.

The Ten Thousand Sword Immortal Bone simulated the evolution of the Taoist path within his skeleton, with his forty-eighth Immortal Bone nearing full formation, continuously emitting the sound of bones colliding.

Similar phenomena were occurring in the Mud Pill Palace.

Within the Xia Dao Palace, the total number of living beings unknowingly surpassed seventeen million. Apart from grass, wood, birds, and beasts, the Spirit Root Worms had begun diversifying into insect species.

Although it couldn’t change the fact that the environment was an Illusion Realm, it was infinitely close to a real world.

The countless beings inside experienced birth, aging, sickness, and death, along with joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness—all under the influence of the Spirit Root Worms.

Meanwhile, the Fake Soul Consciousness transformed into twinkling stars in the sky above Xia Dao Palace.

Whenever a meteor shot across, it signified that a Fake Soul Consciousness had fallen into Xia Dao Palace to become one of its myriad inhabitants, assisting Li Mo in his deductions.

Li Mo used his Divine Sense to maintain the cognition of the Fake Soul Consciousness, allowing him to intervene at any moment. Additionally, due to the unique nature of Xia Dao Palace, there was no need to worry about unpredictable developments in the Fake Soul Consciousness.

"With the support of the Three Immortal Body, I can’t be powerless against a mere Death Disease, can I?"

Li Mo flipped open the Creation Book, continually imprinting various organs onto its blank pages, striving to ensure that his body and soul remained under his perfect control.

The Taoist Body formed by these organs naturally fused into the Three Immortal Body.

Li Mo was uncertain whether he’d pursue the Fourth Immortal Body in the future, but for now, he couldn’t find any significant flaws in his body and soul.

"Ugh!"

Li Mo groaned softly.

Without any warning, the Ancient Age Death Disease finally revealed its symptoms. His forehead swelled uncontrollably, covered in dense pale blue veins.

"Damn it, is this really related to the soul?"

Li Mo couldn’t help but curse under his breath. Suddenly, an unbearable itch spread across his cerebral cortex, as if billions of tiny worms were crawling within.

He felt an overwhelming urge to tear through his scalp.

The Great Wilderness Immortal Body began to take effect, restructuring the neural pathways of his brain, while his pituitary gland secreted an aura that suppressed the pain.

"Phew..."

"Under normal circumstances, the Ancient Age Death Disease won’t manifest for another century. By then, the strength of my physical body should have already broken through the Mahayana Realm."

Li Mo’s deliberate attempt to confront the Ancient Age Death Disease was born out of necessity.

Should the disease erupt upon entering the Ancestor Court, it might cause unpredictable disasters, even drawing the attention of the Immortals—something utterly unacceptable.

While the Great Wilderness Immortal Body had just subdued the disease, intense pain surged through his five senses again.

Li Mo broke out in cold sweat from the agonizing torment that penetrated deep into his soul, and this was despite dividing part of it with the Fake Soul Consciousness.

It was unclear how much time had passed.

Li Mo gradually lost his five senses, yet he could still maintain communication with his Externalized Dharma Body.

"The Ancient Age Death Disease has no connection to the soul? Is it merely that my five senses are entirely lost?"

Li Mo was slightly taken aback but swiftly suppressed his distracting thoughts, activating the Circulation Cycle to distribute Spiritual Power throughout his blood vessels and meridians, reorganizing his five senses.

Touch recovered first.

"Hiss..."

Li Mo drew a sharp breath as he discovered an unsettling distortion in his perception through touch.

Though he was intimately familiar with the Corpse Mountain Mini World, the tactile feedback suggested that the air surrounding his body had turned into a sticky mesh of threads.

Yes, threads.

Such a sensation even unnerved someone as resolute as Li Mo.

"What the hell?"

With a thought, Li Mo’s body sprouted numerous bizarrely shaped arms, analyzing the tactile imbalance from various angles.

Soon, he reached a conclusion—the issue wasn’t with his sense of touch.

It was simply that his touch had become refined to an extreme degree. The sticky threads were none other than invisible, formless Spiritual Energy.

Before Li Mo could delve deeper into this phenomenon, his sense of taste returned.

He instinctively clutched his throat as an inexplicable familiarity grew stronger. The air he normally breathed seemed to transform into a solid mass, too resistant to pass through his throat.

It wasn’t until he consciously ceased the operation of his lungs that the suffocating sensation dissipated.

Li Mo no longer needed to rely on breathing; he had simply maintained the habit of using his lungs to absorb air as a way to stimulate the Great Wilderness Immortal Body to adapt to its surroundings.

Next came his sense of smell.

The overwhelming stench of decay surged into his nostrils, accompanied by the distinct odor of decomposing corpses.

As soon as his hearing returned, his ears were filled with eerie rustling sounds, resembling countless multi-legged creatures scurrying back and forth.

Li Mo couldn’t help but feel tense; the eerie manifestations of the Ancient Age Death Disease far exceeded his expectations.

He vigilantly braced himself, and when his vision finally returned, he opened his Cave God’s Eye and was plunged into profound disbelief.

All the Spiritual Energy within the Corpse Mountain Mini World had manifested as thread-like structures.

These threads intertwined to form an infinitely extending giant web, nearly enveloping every corner, with all things caught like prey within the net.

A blade of grass swayed gently in the wind, causing ripples to surge across the immense web.

The rustling noises originated from the giant web extending beyond the boundaries of the Corpse Mountain Mini World—it was as though a colossal spider was detecting the source of the disturbance.

At that moment.

Li Mo’s pupils narrowed as the Mud Pill Palace spasmed inexplicably.

Within the Mud Pill Palace, he found remnants of the Three Souls and Seven Spirits assembled from countless tiny worms. These Soul Worms, stimulated by the Ancient Age Death Disease, were proliferating explosively.

Li Mo suddenly realized something, connecting his awareness to the hidden No-Life God Statues scattered across various black markets.

[Great Wilderness Black Market] lay on the edges of the Northwest, where the harsh climate made Earth Attribute Spiritual Energy exceedingly abundant.

This attracted not only Loose Cultivators to congregate but also mortal villages to rely on the black market.

The No-Life God Statue opened its eyes.

Li Mo scanned one such village where a newborn was about to come into the world, making the fluctuations of the spiritual threads unusually conspicuous.

The vast web spanning thousands of miles trembled slightly, and the skies split open with a sudden crack.

The crack overflowed with Immortal Light, and with a single glance, Li Mo identified its origin—the Upper Realm. The web was likely the work of an extraordinarily skilled Immortal.

Roar.

An elderly man’s head emerged from the crack. His upper body revealed a Taoist Immortal God wearing a bright red robe accented with a jade-green sash.

Yet the old man’s eyes were incomparably murky as he dully clung to the giant web, climbing downward toward the mortal world.

Li Mo trembled uncontrollably, purely a visceral reaction to confronting an unknown existence of this magnitude—akin only to the sensation of touching the Heavenly Dao.

"Is that... Elder Yue?"

The Immortal’s identity was ridiculously absurd, but according to the Creation Book’s feedback, it was none other than the famed Elder Yue.

Ten thousand years ago, Elder Yue oversaw the domain of marriage as an Immortal God, his cultivation far surpassing ordinary Immortal Gods, even ranking among the Upper Immortals of the Immortal Realm.

Roar.

Elder Yue let out a bone-chilling howl, his lower body emerging from the crack.

What fell before Li Mo’s eyes were countless distorted figures—Red Line Child, Bo Yuan Child, Nine Heavenly Immortals—all once under Elder Yue’s command, now fused grotesquely into his corporeal form.

Their heads were shattered, their necks snapping grotesquely.

As Elder Yue’s lower half descended into the mortal world, it revealed the warped, monstrous body of a spider.

The web-storing abdomen of the spider was chaotically infused with remnants of the Incense Fire Palace.

The Incense Fire Palace, once Elder Yue’s majestic residence, had been a symbol of grandness in the Creation Book’s records. Even in its current state of ruin, its former glory was unmistakable.

Elder Yue scurried along the web, approaching the village where the baby was being born.

The mortals toiled in relentless labor, entirely unaware of the monstrosity looming overhead.

Elder Yue extended a limb, gently piercing the infant’s Mud Pill Palace, injecting countless insect eggs that transformed into the child’s Three Souls and Seven Spirits.

Waa waa waa.

The infant cried incessantly, its tiny hand instinctively pointing toward Elder Yue.

After completing the implantation of the eggs, Elder Yue retreated into the crack, and the web stilled once more while the ecstatic parents celebrated the birth of their child.

"Wasn’t the Immortal Path severed? How could Elder Yue freely traverse the Immortal and Mortal Realms?"

"Is it because of Spiritual Energy?"

"The world’s Spiritual Energy has been transformed into Elder Yue’s exclusive immortal ladder. But even so, Elder Yue still endured immense suffering while passing through the crack."

Li Mo’s scalp tingled with dread. "Is Elder Yue still considered an Immortal God? Or is he some unspeakable eldritch horror? It’s utterly mind-numbing."

"The living become hosts for insect eggs; what about the dead?"

Li Mo quickly searched nearby towns and villages for deceased corpses awaiting cremation, locating one near the Three Elements Pavilion.

An old man, a thousand years of age, devoid of cultivation, had his body rigidly preserved, trapped between life and death.

Some mortal clans practiced the custom of forbidding anyone over a thousand years old to live, fearing that they would linger in agony without voicing their desires.

The thousand-year-old funeral became a festivity, with relatives joyfully partaking without a trace of sorrow.

They danced and sang around the flaming coffin, chanting the old man’s life story as the intense heat reduced his withered flesh and bones to ashes.

When the man was completely obliterated, tiny, imperceptible worms emerged from his Mud Pill Palace.

The worms climbed along the web, quickly vanishing into the tides of Spiritual Energy, likely feeding Elder Yue’s cultivation.

"Cultivators suppress their Three Souls and Seven Spirits during Foundation Establishment and Golden Core Formation. By the Body Integration Realm, they abandon their physical forms entirely—all to prevent the Three Souls and Seven Spirits from losing control."

"The truth behind the Three Souls and Seven Spirits... originates from the Immortal Gods of the Upper Realm."

"In hindsight, it makes sense. The Word-to-law can distort mortal rules, so applying it to Immortals to create unimaginable eldritch horrors isn’t far-fetched."

Li Mo cast a suspicious glance at the Ancestor Court, pondering the true nature of the Immortals within.

He had finally pieced together the process of the Ancient Age Death Disease—purging residual souls from within the Mud Pill Palace to prevent Soul Regeneration.

Li Mo was profoundly relieved he hadn’t abandoned his attempts to overcome the disease.

Merely the seventh tribulation, the Ancient Age Death Disease, had already entangled Elder Yue, suggesting that the unprecedented eighth and ninth tribulations would only escalate in importance, serving as the critical steps for transcending the Immortal and Mortal Realms.

Li Mo activated the Buddha Demon Body, sealing the Mud Pill Palace within the Purgatory Pure Land.

He knew he couldn’t afford to overlook even a single Soul Worm; a single oversight would resurrect the Three Souls and Seven Spirits, rendering his cultivation aspirations futile.

Souls are intangible, leaving the Great Wilderness Immortal Body powerless.

Li Mo could only rely on Supreme Heavenly Beings to combat the Soul Worms. Dozens of strands of Fake Soul Consciousness emitted dazzling Golden Light, igniting the entirety of the Mud Pill Palace.

"How unfortunate—if only Supreme Heavenly Beings had transcended mortality a millennium earlier, the multitude of Fake Soul Consciousness would have been sufficient to overpower the Ancient Age Death Disease."

Li Mo shook his head in resignation, trying his best to ensure no loss of Fake Soul Consciousness.

As he became consumed by battling the Ancient Age Death Disease, the jade stone used for communication with Qu Ai revealed a single line of text:

"Everything is ready. Come to the Ancestor Court immediately."

Li Mo glanced at the jade stone, but the grip of the disease left him incapable of breaking free.

"I need to hurry. It should still be in time."