Li Mo glanced at the Corpse Mountain Mini World.
The Heavenly Palace Stage Sword Cultivator had already been dissected into fragments and broken limbs, but his Externalized Dharma Body still required the suppression of a Magic Treasure. Once everything was settled, he would be completely refined into Spiritual Energy through the Melting Furnace.
An Artifact Infant at the Nascent Soul Stage was already challenging to handle for the Externalized Dharma Body. If it involved the Void Refining Stage, the Melting Furnace might face potential damage.
"Becoming the Chief of the Great Sun Sword Tomb should allow me access to some unconventional inheritances, and there’s a chance the Dual Cultivation Technique for Artifact Infants might work."
"The transformation of the Yang Thunder Sword Bone can continue, the primary Cultivation Technique of the Tattooed Beast can be completed, and perhaps even Void Refining Techniques..."
Li Mo narrowed his eyes.
Realizing that the identity of Chief would only be advantageous, he had unleashed a thunderous assault to eliminate Fen Li and his three companions, saving himself from much trouble.
"Let’s focus on obtaining the current opportunities first."
Li Mo silently communicated with the Great Sun Evil Extermination Eight Directions Sword Formation.
His consciousness seemed to plunge into the warmth of sunlight, the profound mysteries of Yang Attribute Sword Intent surging into his mind. At the same time, he unhesitatingly revealed his Sword Intent.
Under Li Mo’s sole control, the Great Sun Evil Extermination Eight Directions Sword Formation began to operate.
Its imposing power surpassed even that of fourteen Heavenly Palace Stage Sword Cultivators.
From this, it was evident that Li Mo’s comprehension of various Yang Attribute Sword Intents had reached a level far beyond the reach of ordinary Sword Cultivators.
Universal Illumination Sword Intent, Bright Day Sword Intent, Fire Burning Sword Intent, Soft Light Sword Intent, Dark Light Sword Intent, Blazing Sword Intent, Sun Sword Intent, Ghostly Light Sword Intent...
With the blessing of numerous Sword Intents, the power of the Great Sun Evil Extermination Eight Directions Sword Formation grew increasingly formidable, its sword light pressing the Sword Ghost into an immobilized state.
Soon, the other Sword Cultivators understood what "innate talent" truly meant.
For Li Mo, comprehending Sword Intent seemed as effortless as drinking water or eating food, and he possessed control far beyond the ordinary.
Fen Li and the others were incapable of commanding Sword Qi with such precision, resulting in indiscriminate sword rain.
But Li Mo was different.
The Sword Qi seemed almost alive, bypassing Sword Cultivators and actively pursuing the Deceitful Objects.
Wang Wen observed this spectacle and asked Jiang Xi in a peculiar tone, "Does it bother you to be overshadowed by someone destined to ascend as an Innate Immortal Seed?"
Jiang Xi’s face remained impassive. "You should know as well, including Taiyi, the thirteen Innate Immortal Seeds are fated to ascend."
"They will reign over an entire era."
Wang Wen remained silent, a deep helplessness flickering in his eyes.
Even as they conversed, Li Mo, leveraging the Great Sun Evil Extermination Eight Directions Sword Formation, comprehended three additional Lower-Level Yang Attribute Sword Intents, causing the sword rain to grow denser and more diverse, pouring down like a torrential storm.
Ordinary Sword Cultivators could barely imagine how one could possess such comprehension, untangling the residual rhythms of the Great Dao in an instant and deriving clarity from them.
Perhaps only the term "Innate Immortal Seed" could describe such talent.
The descent of the Fire Spirit Hall into the Copper Mirror’s Eighth Layer began to slow, and the fog within the town dissipated.
Jiang Xi and the others dared not interfere, allowing Li Mo to sit alone within the Mountain Protection Array, as Flood Dragons wove through various parts of the city.
"The Blood Scythe Worm Body? Excellent. Integrating it with the Great Wilderness Immortal Body should enhance the physical strength of the Tattooed Beast without compatibility issues."
"The Nine-Tailed Cat can improve the Tattooed Beast’s regenerative abilities."
"The Heart Eye Body enhances the sensitivity of Divine Sense release, perfect for an Innate Saint."
Li Mo was extremely pleased.
The sheer variety of Beast-type Taoist Bodies gave even him a feeling of being overwhelmed by choice.
He had already begun performing surgeries with a divided mind, while the Spider Sword Orb frantically modified both his inner and outer body, with joints revealing fanged external skeletons.
The characteristics of the Blood Scythe Worm Body were evident only momentarily before being completely devoured by the Great Wilderness Immortal Body.
Li Mo’s eyes were filled with heat.
"The aura of the Primordial... it seems to belong to a Big Night Wander."
Li Mo directed his vast Sword Intent toward the North City District, quickly identifying the Big Night Wander in a dried well. Its Taoist Body was named [Earth Queen’s Arm].
The Big Night Wander, composed of foul-smelling dirt, seemed to have been a "Incense Man" in Wumen City during its life, a miserable laborer cleaning filth at midnight.
And the Earth Queen’s Arm contained the dual arms of the Primordial Dao Body.
Obtaining it would mean Li Mo had assembled one-third of the Primordial Dao Body. The remaining parts could possibly be sourced from the Sub-Device Sect.
Sword rain poured into the dried well, supplemented by the assistance of the Jiao Long Lifebound Flying Sword, pressing the Big Night Wander into an immobilized state with incessant roars.
Jiang Xi remained silent for a long time before stepping forward to support the effort from the ground.
The other Sword Cultivators followed in succession.
No matter what, the fact that Li Mo had become the Chief of the Great Sun Sword Tomb could no longer be changed. Going along with it was the wisest choice.
Otherwise, once the Thirteen Immortals advanced to the Void Refining Stage, it would mark the time of their reckoning.
The taboo of the Incense Men turning all things into filth ceaselessly replenished their numbers, but it was ultimately no match for the Mountain Protection Array.
The Poison Element Lifebound Flying Sword devoured the Big Night Wander in one gulp and delivered it into Li Mo’s hands.
By now, Li Mo was already fusing with the Nine-Tailed Cat, his entire body covered in dense Beast Fur, his spine extending into nine awkwardly bent white bone tails.
The Red Fox erupted in flames.
Its nine tails, being its Life-bound Magical Artifact, immediately swelled to a size far exceeding its body under the influence of the Nine-Tailed Cat.
The other Tattooed Beasts experienced the same transformation, undergoing a rebirth and metamorphosis in silence.
Li Mo sealed the Earth Queen’s Arm in a wine pool. Compared to mid- and lower-tier Beast-type Taoist Bodies, the Earth Queen’s Arm was far too complex, requiring at least twenty to thirty years of calculations in Xia Dao Palace.
The fusion of the Primordial Dao Body wasn’t as brute-force as the Great Wilderness Immortal Body. The latter was purely predatory—big fish eating small fish. Beast-type Taoist Bodies that didn’t match its level would simply become nourishment.
Ultimately, among hundreds of thousands of Sword Ghosts, he found a total of 178 types of Beast-type Taoist Bodies.
"Blindly fusing them would take at least a dozen years. Could the Great Wilderness Immortal Body truly have hope of Transcending Mortality?"
Li Mo’s breathing grew heavy.
Even in a post-era Cultivation World with endless variations of Taoist Bodies, Immortal Bodies remained almost unknown.
So far, he had only encountered the Corpse Dissolution Immortal Body of his Twelfth Senior Sister.
Li Mo’s expression turned subtle as he noticed Ye Zhuo Daoist’s dire situation—trapped inside the 36th shop on Wang Xin Street.
With a thought, the Flood Dragon agilely slipped into the cellar beneath the shop.
He had expected to find a Big Night Wander in the cellar but instead encountered merely a dozen Little Night Wanders that had entrapped several dozen Cultivators.
The Sword Cultivators who touched the Deceit Rain had their consciousness confined within the cellar’s Puppets, experiencing cycles of life and death endlessly.
Most were already on the brink of collapse.
Li Mo furrowed his brows tightly.
The disaster at the Great Sun Sword Tomb had commenced with the Deceit Rain. If there was a human factor at play, the implications were dire. The source of thɪs content is novel•fire.net
"There’s an insider. Luo Yang was likely deliberately diverted elsewhere."
The cellar resembled a labyrinth, containing hundreds of rooms where Sword Cultivators were imprisoned like livestock, tortured until they succumbed to Deviation.
The Flood Dragon even spotted Taishan Yan.
Taishan Yan had lost all semblance of humanity, his entire body covered in human heads, muttering nonsensically to himself.
Every ten days, the Puppet housing his consciousness would succumb to intensified mutation and perish.
"How could a mere dozen Little Night Wanders trap Sword Cultivators numbering several times their size?"
"And the taboos of the Little Night Wanders cooperated so seamlessly, forming an independent small world within the cellar. Could this really be coincidence?"
Li Mo’s pupils contracted. From an omniscient perspective, the possibility that the cellar had formed naturally was almost ruled out.
When the Puppet bodies of the Sword Cultivators died, their corpses often mutated uncontrollably into Deceitful Objects.
"The cellar functions like a machine producing Deceitful Objects, perpetually trapping the consciousness of Sword Cultivators into Puppet bodies, driving them to Deviation, resetting their memories, and repeating the process endlessly..."
Li Mo drew in a sharp breath.
The cellar contained over 200,000 corpses, and the number of Sword Ghosts continued to grow.
It seemed that the spring outings during past Tomb-Sweeping Festivals had been a direct result of the cellar, with the Sword Ghosts being sourced from there. The orchestrators had cleverly harnessed taboos to gradually spark disaster.
"An insider? Could it be those lingering ancient Cultivators?"
The disaster at the Great Sun Sword Tomb certainly couldn’t have been orchestrated by a single individual. It must have taken years, even decades, and could even implicate the Eight Hall Elders.
"What exactly are they after?"
Li Mo pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration as his thoughts raced.
"It can’t be to make the sword tomb fall; there’s no need to overcomplicate matters. Creating a large number of Deceitful Objects is meaningless. A few Night Patrol Deities going berserk would already suffice to cause chaos."
"The ancient Cultivation World?"
Li Mo gulped nervously. The Copper Mirror appeared to have faithfully replicated the upheavals of heaven and earth, suggesting that the orchestrators were deliberately reenacting them.
"Perhaps they’re trying to uncover the truth?"
"But according to Luo Yang, isn’t the truth of the upheaval known to more than one person?"
Li Mo recalled Luo Yang’s words: "The truth of the upheaval cannot be disclosed. Once disseminated, it will repeat itself."
To uncover the truth of the upheaval, one likely had to swear a Heart Demon Oath, with the Heavenly Sword Sect likely imposing stringent conditions and possibly erasing parts of ancient Cultivators’ memories.
Li Mo reached a conclusion.
The orchestrators were using the disaster to verify the truth of the upheaval.
By now, they probably had already regained the truth of the upheaval—a truth capable of overturning the Immortal and Mortal Realms.
Li Mo’s expression darkened.
"Perhaps I’m overthinking things, and everything is purely coincidental."
"In any case, I mustn’t expose myself, lest I attract undue attention."
Suppressing his stray thoughts, Li Mo exhaled nearly two thousand Lifebound Flying Swords, which swarmed into the cellar to plunder the corpses within.
He had always harbored a habit of collecting corpses. Even the resources harvested from Zhi Mountain Temple favored flesh and organs, and to show disinterest now might reveal his intent.
Li Mo had never intended to leave the corpses untouched.
The Deceitful Objects in the cellar were merely ordinary Little Night Wanders, utterly powerless against the Sword Rain.
"If necessary, I’ll need to find an opportunity to gain control of the Sub-Device Sect."
"The Mother Furnace summons the immortal ladder every thousand years. At the very least, it serves as a pathway to ascend to the Immortal Realm, and even major sects remain unaware of it."
The population of the Corpse Mountain Mini World swelled dramatically, increasing from just over 400,000 to 600,000 in a single jump.
The Spirit Root Worms stirred to life, and the Taoists of Xia Dao Palace became lifelike.
Now achieving the level of a High Grade Magical Treasure, the Spirit Root Worms grew to over a hundred meters long. Their vein-like bodies eagerly made their way into the Corpse Mountain Mini World.
The efficiency of the Spirit Root Worms in producing Illusion Spirit Roots had improved to an extraordinary degree.
Ten thousand corpses required only half a day.
The sound of infants crying echoed through Xia Dao Palace, as corpses descended into the Illusion Realm in the form of newborns.
"The High Grade Spirit Root Worm has transformed Xia Dao Palace into a cycle of birth, aging, sickness, and death."