Chapter 350: The Tree of Hanging People

"The demonic beasts here look quite normal, it's just that they seem to have undergone adaptive evolution and become smaller in size."

Du En reached out as if no one were around, fiddling with the demonic beast carcasses within reach, whether fresh or putrid, ranging from the second to the fourth rank.

Because he had handled many of these, he could be considered experienced, which was why he could determine at a glance that these were one hundred percent wild, and not cases of spirit beasts returning to the wild or being raised in captivity.

However, regardless of the species of demonic beast, compared to the normal counterparts or similar species he had seen before, they all presented a state of extreme condensation, to the point where an ordinary flatbed cart could transport several of them.

Their cause of death was also simple and brutal: they had been killed by people using weapons in close-quarters combat.

It seemed that both the people and beasts here were influenced by that Spirit Mother; everyone liked to engage in armed melee, and there were hardly any traces left by magical spell exchanges.

"It could also be due to limitations like the venue."

After all, they were underground; the tunnels near the central camp were fine, but the further out and more remote they were, the narrower they became. Given the material and human resources displayed here, it was impossible to set up stable reinforcement measures, and any spell or demonic art with a bit more power and a wider coverage area could cause a localized collapse.

After finishing the inspection of the unremarkable demonic beast carcasses, Du En continued to follow the spirit paste transport team, then watched them and the convoy transporting the demonic beast carcasses formally converge at a spot, arriving at a specially designated camp area.

"Alright, there's nothing for you here anymore, go back."

Having just squeezed the labor dry, the priest holding the order waved a hand, driving away the miscellaneous people who had escorted the spirit paste, leaving them angry but afraid to speak, and they could only sullenly take their subordinate soldiers and leave.

Once the outsiders were gone, the main business could begin.

Du En immediately saw large vats filled with spirit paste being set up to boil, demonic beast carcasses being thrown into them, and a priest dancing and chanting gibberish on the side, invisibly drawing in the evil tentacles from the surrounding area that the Spirit Mother had not yet had time to retract.

*Squelch—*

One by one, viscous and slippery eyes blinked, appearing and swimming through the vats.

Vat after vat of scorching spirit paste, which caused one's form to dissolve and bones to wither, mixed with yellow and red, with evil nature spreading within, was thus boiled and concocted.

Then, people were brought over one by one.

They were all sturdy young men, bare-chested; it was evident they had undergone significant physical tempering, and their aura and strength were naturally far superior to their peers.

Du En scrutinized them, seeing only a look of fanaticism, so he made no move.

"My Lord, are we finally able to become members of the Holy Sect Army?"

"My Lord, we only hope to share the burdens of the Holy Sect and dedicate ourselves to the Spirit Mother!"

"My Lord..."

Voice after voice, fanatical and sincere, they had long been unable to wait.

"Good, good, good!"

The priest looked very satisfied and nodded repeatedly: "At present, rebellious elements are running rampant everywhere, and it is precisely the time when we need your dedication. As the saying goes, soldiers are raised for a thousand days to be used for a moment. Go, drink as much as you can; this is the grace of the Sect Leader!"

"Long live the Sect Leader!"

The sturdy young men shouted in unison and rushed over impatiently. Regardless of the scorching heat of the paste, they threw themselves down and began to drink, gulping it down in large mouthfuls, as if molten iron were flowing stickily into them.

Basically, they could only take one gulp before the evil nature erupted, turning the whole person red like a large shrimp. They would throw their heads back and retreat rapidly, falling into the prepared open space, where they would collapse and struggle, clutching their throats, foaming at the mouth, and rolling their eyes in great agony.

"Ahhh... hhh..."

One by one, the sturdy young men fell here, and one after another, more followed. In a short time, a thousand vats of concocted spirit paste caused several thousand people to fall in agony, piling up together like maggots, twisting their bodies.

"There are still too few who meet the standard."

The responsible priest looked at the remaining concocted spirit paste, could only shake his head and sigh, waved his hand to have it sealed and carried to the warehouse, and then turned his head to look at the open space piled with people.

After struggling for a while, those sturdy young men stopped twisting and instead became silent and dull. Their sense of self had already been erased, and their physical bodies began to strengthen and expand, growing to nine feet tall, with their internal structures also optimized and strengthened.

"Among the internal organs, the useless ones have been dissolved and transformed into parts that are still useful and can provide support for combat. Hmm, only the heart, lungs, and liver remain; three hearts, five lungs, seven livers..."

Du En continued to observe from nearby, confirming the details of these formed Holy Sect soldiers.

In short, their positioning was that of killing tools that also served as expendable cannon fodder.

Therefore, their sense of self was not needed; they only needed to obey orders to fight. Even if they died, no one would care, which was why they acted so wantonly, disregarding human ethics.

The priests were a bit different, but all changes stemmed from the same source; it should still be centered on that spirit paste, and there was no need to continue digging deeper.

Thinking this, Du En turned and left the area.

Brushing past other Holy Sect soldiers carrying heavy armor and weapons, he began to investigate further inside this military camp filled with humanoid killing weapons.

The result was that he did not find any information worth noting, and he finished his sweep very quickly.

"From the words of those people earlier, it is known that the sacrificial ritual is actually not held often. At the same time, from the case of Zheng Xing, it is known that besides the sacrificial ritual, the spirit paste can also use incoming normal cultivators as raw materials."

"What Zheng Xing provided was at most enough to dilute into one vat. Comparing it like this, the storage in the warehouse is truly astonishing; it could not possibly have been obtained through forms like the sacrificial ritual."

"So, perhaps the True Monarch of this sect periodically drops off cultivators, which is to say, there should be another path to obtain the spirit paste..."

Du En, having walked out of the military camp area, looked up. Relying on his master-level spirit-seeking skills, he conducted identification and observation, and soon discovered some clues.

Because he had observed the spirit paste closely enough, although it was actually a non-spiritual object—an evil object—it also had an impact on the spiritual energy environment. It was just that before, because the spiritual energy environment here was also polluted and filthy, it was mixed in and difficult to distinguish.

Now that the observation was complete, he could naturally follow the vine to find the melon.

And so, he searched all the way along.

"Hmm?"

Along the way, amidst heavy curtains and in various barracks, he discovered ceremonial guards hidden in the shadows.

They seemed to be guarding something, so he took a detour and arrived at a barrack they were guarding.

It was inconspicuous and very ordinary.

Du En, unnoticed and yet openly, directly lifted the curtain door and walked in.

The little stone statue trailing behind him did the same.

This door had been lifted twice, yet the dark guards and ceremonial soldiers around did not notice a thing, even though they generally possessed the strength of the Nascent Soul completion stage and could kill elites like Zheng Xing as easily as killing chickens, and could be called geniuses. "A study? The Sect Leader's?"

Inside the barrack were bookshelves, filled with all kinds of books, from bamboo slips and jade volumes to printed paper books; it could be said that everything one expected to find was there.

Du En walked over and took out the one that looked like it had been handled the most.

There was no title, only a signature.

"Luo Heng, the name of that Sect Leader... Let me see, what has he written? Could it be a diary?"

Opening it, he saw it was not a diary, but Luo Heng's recent research notes on a certain book.

Comparing them, he soon pulled that volume of bamboo slips from another bookshelf.

"Mechanical Metalwork"

"He has been studying mechanical apparatuses recently, attempting to improve forging techniques... Interesting. He carves tool prohibitions in the form of talisman patterns onto the surface of the apparatuses to gather and absorb external spiritual Qi, inspiring and triggering them... Most experiments end in failure, which is normal; the spiritual Qi here is indeed difficult to put to great use and is heavily polluted."

He finished reading it quickly. With his attainments in artifact refining, he could easily understand it and was even greatly inspired; he could try to put it into practice when he returned in the future.

"Looking at it this way, he is becoming less and less like a native of this place. As for these books, they are diverse, ranging from methods and spells to the techniques of the hundred arts, having everything one expects to find. They should be the inherited legacy of the Queguang Star Realm."

"Although the vast majority of the knowledge is actually quite backward and outdated, the overall style is unique. It is still perfectly fine to use it to attack the problem from another angle and inspire ideas."

After all, it is the legacy of a star realm that once shone brightly in the past, so it naturally possesses its own various essences of wisdom.

Du En flipped through and read them, soon finishing all the books in this room. It was of no small benefit, giving rise to quite a few inspirations.

His foundation was solidified. Although it seemed there was no actual improvement and the proficiency of each item was actually the same, it could not be calculated that way.

Not to mention anything else, when casting spells next, Du En would be able to guard against corresponding forms of interference in a targeted manner, and add new modes, new frequencies, and new combinations into the operation and effect of his magical power, thereby effectively improving stability and versatility, and increasing the resilience of the spells, as well as the nuances in the details.

"... This Luo Heng, does he seem to have a secret vault?"

Putting back the last book, there was an essay in this book that obscurely revealed this point.

"A trap, perhaps? How could a normal person write such information in an essay?"

If a secret vault is written on paper, can it still be called a secret vault? Du En turned around and left calmly, letting the study return to its previous state.

There was not a single trace of an outsider having stepped inside.

Continuing to move along the direction found by the spirit-seeking, he did not delay further, driving straight in, and arrived in front of a cloth wall that looked like it had nothing, appearing to be a boundary area.

An array!

His Fiery Eyes flashed by. Du En continued to step forward, treading on the pulse nodes of the array, capturing the timing in one go. In the nick of time, he walked through calmly and composedly, crossing that actually quite clumsy and broken fifth-tier array.

This was not strange, because although Luo Heng, the leader of the Queguang Sect, had set up an array here, it had been distorted by some kind of evil infection from within, which was why it appeared clumsy, broken, and easy to intrude upon.

It looked reasonable, yet Du En did not let his guard down.

Thus, carrying the small stone statue, he arrived at the back of this surface space guarded by the array.

As soon as he entered, a foul stench rushed toward him, making one want to vomit.

Looking up, he only saw a tree that was incomparably twisted, without a single leaf, its whole body appearing to be wrapped in grease, growing straight up here and rooted in a deeper space.

Du En immediately captured that its roots had a connection and link behind the gate where the Spirit Mother was hiding and sealing herself, or rather, it was growing its roots over there, wanting to connect and link with each other.

It was difficult to interfere with the process over there, so his gaze naturally fell on the part growing on the ground, in the surface space before him.

The tree grew strangely, hanging person after person. Their clothes had been stripped off, and their bodies were oozing with viscous grease, making them look like blocks of lard, permeating with evil nature, dripping into the large vats entwined by the roots.

This was another way to obtain spirit paste.

Du En immediately wanted to take action and try to do something to this grease-dripping tree hung with people.

"It's useless, young man, save your energy!"

Suddenly, a voice sounded. Among the people hanging on the tree, there were still some alive and capable of speaking.

Following this voice, the others also swayed in various ways, like half-dead fish, struggling to shake their bodies to show their vitality.

*Not dead yet, save me! * This meaning was revealed intangibly.

Du En then stopped his movements and walked around to the other side. Here, he saw an old man whose state was slightly better, not having been wrapped too fully by the oozing grease.

Although he appeared to have no dignity at all because of this, like a piece of old, fatty bacon hanging there and drifting in the wind.

This was actually a great cultivator at the Nascent Soul stage! And, judging from some subtle signs, at least a late-stage Nascent Soul!

"Sir, you do not seem to be a member of my sect?"

Du En calmly examined and observed, quickly capturing this clue, and began to communicate with him.

"Indeed, I am a cultivator from the Stop Realm. At this point, there is no need to hide it. I was once sent by the True Monarch of my sect to try to infiltrate and control this star realm. The result is as you see: I was discovered by the True Monarch of your sect, beaten until crippled, and thrown into the territory of these Queguang Sect natives, then caught and hung here, constantly breeding evil things, ugh—"

Having said so much in one breath, he could no longer suppress it and vomited wretchedly, without any decorum.

Large mouthfuls of grease and spirit paste were vomited out, landing in the largest vat below.

"Cough, cough! I have let you see a joke, young man."

"No joke. According to what you said, are all those hanging here outsiders?"

Du En did not care; there was no contempt or disgust, only his usual calmness as he continued the topic just now.

Seeing this, the embarrassment in the old Nascent Soul's eyes dissipated slightly, and he nodded with difficulty: "That is the case. Capturing us outsiders—normal cultivators, whether from your sect or others, as long as they dare to infiltrate, are basically all here. As far as I know, only a few fellow Daoists reacted quickly and had windows and means to escape, which is how they were able to escape to safety by a hair's breadth."

"And those of us who were caught and crippled—well, actually, it cannot be said we were crippled; accurately speaking, it should be that our strength was restricted. We cannot even beat an ordinary three-year-old child, which is why we were finally caught alive, hung here, constantly infected and having our cultivation stolen by that so-called Spirit Mother, and wretchedly breeding evil things."

Speaking of this, he could not help but vomit spirit paste again. However, the old Nascent Soul's thoughts seemed to have become completely clear, and his eyes were shining somewhat.

(End of chapter)