Chapter 347: Central Camp

"Tsk! These refugees, the places they live are truly filthy, even more unbearable than a rat's nest!"

"Indeed, if not for the sake of the Immaculate Infant, sending just a few soldiers would be enough to easily destroy such filthy and eyesore existences!"

"Spirit Mother above, how could anyone abandon the radiance and choose to flee from your protection?"

"A bunch of vermin and petty scoundrels, choosing to discard their sincerity yet still coveting the radiance bestowed by the Spirit Mother, damn them! I was too agitated before and forgot to have someone retrieve this radiance; you all must remember to handle it later!"

The words of the priests were filled with contempt and hatred, spittle flying everywhere, and invisibly, there seemed to be some kind of slippery sound accompanying them, while the soldiers merely lowered their heads in silence, having already received the order to extinguish the fire.

Then, as they approached the corpse of Zheng Xing, the two priests also fell silent.

On those two faces, which looked like opera masks, expressions of fanaticism and serenity appeared simultaneously; it was extremely awkward, yet they were cautious, kneeling and moving forward, prostrating themselves beside the corpse with extreme humility, not daring to look directly at it.

"Great Spirit Mother, you are truly merciful, pitying and showing compassion to us!"

"Respectfully welcoming the descending grace and bestowing virtue, worshipping the great power of the radiance!"

They uttered words of praise, their movements rigid and mechanical, not daring to have the slightest deviation.

Then, one person took out a ritual urn the size of a human head, and the other took out a knife that, judging by the chants, should be for bestowing blessings, and began to humbly scrape the grease covering Zheng Xing's corpse.

What was strange was that, to Du En, that knife and urn were clearly ordinary objects, yet they were able to scrape off that grease filled with evil, continuously collecting and filling it until Zheng Xing was scraped down to nothing but a remnant of a body, with not a trace of grease left.

The blessing knife became blood-stained, and because of the flesh and blood of a Nascent Soul cultivator, it even retained strange properties after death, and it had already begun to show obvious damage.

Even so, this was actually because that strange grease had destroyed ninety-nine percent of such strange properties.

But, one could also determine through this that these two implements were indeed undoubtedly mortal objects.

"It's getting stranger and stranger, but just now, when they were scraping the grease, it seemed like there was some kind of strange sound faintly accompanying it in secret..."

It was not that kind of slippery eyeball-rolling sound, but something even more obscure.

Du En thought for a moment, timing the actions of the two priests, and at a moment he deemed appropriate, he boldly used his Fiery Eyes to take a deeper look.

Then, he saw a hand holding the urn and another hand holding the knife; they were only outlines, without substance, faintly overlapping the hands of the two priests.

It was just a fleeting glance; not lingering his gaze to attempt to see its true nature clearly, Du En chose to close his eyes quickly.

At this instant, those two hands seemed to sense the peeping and immediately shook.

"Who is it?"

"Audacious!"

Amidst the stern reprimands, two attacks had already fallen, directly leveling that direction to the ground, but Du En had long since quietly moved away from his original position, so naturally, he was not affected.

The two priests squinted at each other, stood up in a panic, closed the urn, turned around, and walked away in a hurry, not caring at all about the bones of Zheng Xing, from which the "divine miracle" had already been scraped clean.

"Quick, quick, quick, it must be the Spirit Mother urging us to hurry and offer up the Immaculate Infant!"

"Indeed, but I didn't expect beforehand that there would actually be an Immaculate Infant here; the preparations were improper, I beg for forgiveness, please show your great mercy!"

They were flustered, their headgear shaking, not daring to stay for even a moment, and directly left this camp with that squad of fifty soldiers, not wanting to retrieve the so-called flame blessing as they had just said.

Wait until the matters are resolved, then come back to collect you all.

Du En glanced at this camp; the situation was still unclear, so he didn't do anything else, just thinking this, and then calmly followed in the shadows, trailing this Queguang Sect troop as they began to move.

The panicked footsteps gradually became steady, and torches were lit one by one in the darkness, illuminating the wide underground tunnel all around, with various excavation marks everywhere, showing a trend of becoming narrower the further "out" one went.

And in the direction towards the "inside," it presented a uniform and consistent width.

The two priests, leading fifty soldiers, converged with the main force of a thousand people waiting here at this junction, which was clearly a combination of a "main road" and a "small path."

Besides the one thousand heavy-armored soldiers who were uniform and whose armor was not stained with blood, there were also three other priests with equally tall headgear among them.

These middle-level personnel of the Queguang Sect gathered together, appearing reverent and afraid of disturbing something, whispering to each other.

"How was the retrieval of the grace?"

"There were no problems."

"That's great! This time we actually found the Immaculate Infant, and the Most Holy Spirit Mother actually bestowed grace in advance!"

"Praise the Spirit Mother!"

"How is the Immaculate Infant?"

"No need to worry, it is being cared for properly!"

As they spoke, the priests looked toward the center of the soldiers, where there was a horse-drawn carriage, three layers inside and three layers outside, sealed tightly and completely airtight, making one worry whether the infant inside would suffocate to death.

Pfft—a horse-like demonic beast pulling the carriage, covered in fangs, snorted at this moment, its eight white pupils each roaming around, scanning the surroundings.

It seemed to have sensed something, but in the end, it did not detect anything.

"A fourth-rank peak demonic horse, only one step away from being a Great Demon, and it seems to possess some kind of special bloodline; it might be the descendant of a strange beast."

Perhaps this is actually the strongest one in this Queguang Sect troop!

Its strength could completely and easily kill a peerless genius of the same rank as Zheng Xing! Du En withdrew his gaze from it and looked at the carriage, not acting rashly.

At this moment, the priests had finished communicating and similarly felt that the anomaly he had triggered was that so-called Spirit Mother urging them, thirsting for the Immaculate Infant, without much suspicion.

Thus, they naturally did not delay, ordering five hundred soldiers to clear the path in front, the five priests themselves surrounding the beast carriage, and the remaining one thousand soldiers following behind.

The troop became silent, with only the sound of armor rubbing, heavy footsteps, and the occasional snort of the demonic horse.

They were completely unaware that Du En was walking right beside the demonic horse, only an arm's length away from each other.

Just walking along like this, by confirming the direction, they should be heading toward the southeast.

Gradually moving away from the desolation, they began to light torches, and narrow tunnels connected to the main tunnel; looking from afar, one could see poor-looking camps, ranging in size from a few hundred to over a thousand people.

"Respectfully welcome the Holy Sect!"

"May the Holy Sect be peaceful forever!" "Prostrate to the Spirit Mother!"

"Bestow your grace!"

They looked at the passing Queguang Sect troop with reverence, or even fear; regardless of size, they all prostrated and knelt on the spot, calling out repeatedly in their mouths.

Among them, there was a genuine, irrepressible feeling of longing, but the Queguang Sect troop did not stop because of this, so in the end, there was only disappointment and sighs; after the troop moved away, they gathered together, discussing their livelihood problems with worry.

The poverty and hardship were visible at a glance!

But the key was that they all had cultivation; the children were at the Qi Refining stage, and the adults were at the Foundation Establishment stage, which made this discussion seem somewhat strange.

The Qi Condensation stage is one thing, but when would those in the Foundation Establishment stage ever be worried about having a bite to eat? "Sure enough, the people here, although they all possess cultivation as a whole, are in a very strange state. This innate cultivation does not bring with it corresponding Dharma power; it is more like an attached air fungus—seemingly growing, but actually very illusory."

They have cultivation in name only, without Dharma power! Yet, it can rise with their age, reaching the level of Foundation Establishment perfection.

Du En shifted his gaze to another camp they passed; inside were infants in swaddling clothes, born not long ago, already possessing cultivation, yet their fragile and easily broken state remained unchanged.

There were also octogenarians, trembling and tottering, their natural lifespans nearing an end, yet they strangely possessed the peak cultivation of Foundation Establishment perfection; looking at the situation, however, it was actually just the twilight of an ordinary person's lifespan.

Not only do they lack Dharma power, but they also have a realm in name only! "Normal and abnormal are intertwined; illusory yet truly existing. Thus, even at Foundation Establishment, they need to eat and have short lifespans like ordinary people... In that case, the whole place is less a habitat for cultivators and more a struggle for ordinary people."

Du En saw the living, universal situation here with his own eyes, gradually gaining a comprehensive understanding of this place and filling in the gaps in his intelligence.

At the same time, he had his own deduction: "Is this the work of a True Monarch of our sect? After all, this is within the jurisdiction of some True Monarch, but the resolution side didn't even manage to find out exactly who it is. It seems the influence and interference power here in the Star Realm is much weaker."

This was also the reason Meng Changqing did not let him use his divine abilities; if it were the territory of True Monarch Zhuding, it would be fine, but if not, he would be completely exposed.

Although other True Monarchs should generally guess that he has divine abilities, if it were just that, there would be no major problem at all.

"As for the purpose, could it be to prevent the succession from being cut off due to a lack of successors, or to prevent them from regressing into beasts due to the underground environment, or gradually evolving into other different living beings..."

Such a situation requires more information to confirm and corroborate.

Du En was now calmly analyzing what he saw with his divine sense.

The reason he did not think it was caused by that so-called Spirit Mother or some weird thing related to resentment is that although the underground habitat here in Queguang is strange, it is not *too* strange! Of course, these people of the Queguang Sect are different.

Turning his gaze back to the soldier-priests beside him, having an actual comparison highlighted their incompatibility and strange abnormality!

First, their specific cultivation is ambiguous and difficult to judge; second, they clearly possess extraordinary strength, not just cultivation and realm in name only; and there are other strange signs.

Du En was in no rush to alert the enemy, just silently continuing to move forward.

This main tunnel presented a trend of gradual, subtle expansion. After the group marched quickly for over a thousand miles, the dimensions of the main tunnel became significantly wider, and even the vaulted walls began to have clusters of flames burning, emitting light.

Looking around, there were many new chisel marks, as well as sturdy, ruddy-faced workers whose aura approached Foundation Establishment perfection, yet they held ordinary tools and were doing ordinary labor, either repairing and reinforcing or chiseling and widening.

Seeing the Queguang Sect's party, they naturally hurried to prostrate themselves.

And here, the sides were also overgrown with all kinds of jagged, strange trees and grasses.

A worker had just happened to be working behind a strange tree, but no tragedy occurred because they keenly sensed the movement, promptly ran out from behind the tree to prostrate and kneel, singing praises.

"The strength has clearly increased; some match their cultivation, but correspondingly, it starts to not match their age, and vaguely, it has also become strange and hard to define..."

Du En observed further, while knowing that he should have arrived at the outskirts of that central camp.

Along the way, they had passed at least a thousand camps; if this number held in all directions, then the population gathered here was actually quite large, reaching several million to ten million.

Compared to the mortals in the main territory of the Luoyu Immortal Sect, it was naturally a drop in the bucket, but given how arduous the living conditions were here, having this number was already quite significant.

While he was thinking, noisy sounds came from ahead.

Spacious tents, and even wooden buildings, and houses made of a mix of wood and steel, began to come into view.

They walked out of the tunnel and arrived at a cavern.

A central great cavern! It was unknown how many years it took to chisel it out, creating a huge cavity underground! People flowed through it incessantly, with dense buildings one after another; there were markets, restaurants, pavilions, and even schools and other such places.

Under the illumination of torches, bonfires, and lamps everywhere, it presented a distinct brightness, as if this were the human world, and the outer camps were just uncivilized, lowly places.

This was the ruling core of the Queguang Sect. Naturally, when the party arrived, the people who had been going about their daily business restrained their laughter and lightness, appearing solemn, and likewise knelt to welcome them.

Walking under the blazing firelight, all Du En felt at this moment was a heartfelt repulsion!

This underground great cavern was so bright, and the presence of fire so abundant, yet there were always dark corners where one could hear the sound of slimy slithering from time to time, with a higher and more frequent rate, no longer hidden.

At least in Du En's view, it was like it was being done openly, right under his nose! "However, the state of the people here is still considered normal, but that abnormal change is clearly deepening; the closer to the center, the higher the status, and the closer to the Queguang Sect, the more it deepens..."

Du En pondered, his ears moving slightly.

Unlike people in other places, the people living here had a clearly broader horizon and cognition. After the party passed, they uttered words that were quite different from disappointment, sighs, or helplessness.

"Really throwing their weight around, tsk!"

"What? Are you dissatisfied? You actually dare to be disrespectful to the Holy Sect?!"

"Don't talk nonsense! I just hate the attitude of those fallen ones. Once I pass the selection and am successfully anointed, I will certainly correct the atmosphere and act in a way that matches the Holy Sect!"

"Oh my, quite the ambition!"

"Hahaha, Little Sanzi has always been like that!"

"But then again, that is indeed the best way out. Gratitude to the Holy Sect, thanks to the Spirit Mother!"

"Homage to the Holy Sect, homage to the Spirit Mother!"

"... We have the protection of the Holy Sect and Spirit Mother, so we are naturally carefree, but I heard that now outside..."

"Bold! You must not spread heretical talk!"

The topic stopped there.

(End of chapter)