Chapter 397: Similar Mother Source, the Role of Jiang Ying

Those channels of spirit springs were woven from light, forcibly piercing through the interlayer sea of sickness to reach this surface ground.

A new spirit vein created by a god! It is also a shackle she forged for herself!

The Holy God's true body needs to sink into the core layer, and her remaining strength is very little; before, it had even once been reduced to a mere wisp. Aside from the injuries sustained in the previous Great Battle of the Two Gods and the need to resist the influence of the diseased world, it was also because she had various behaviors of using magic power! Whether it was summoning Du En at the Holy Mausoleum, lighting the hanging lantern for him, or weaving the spirit veins created by the god to sustain each spirit spring village and protect the remaining living people, all of these were constantly depleting her remaining strength. Especially the latter, which was a disguised way of binding herself there, unable to move freely ever again.

Of course, the Dark God's side must also be in a miserable state; otherwise, they should be launching an offensive now, taking advantage of her illness to claim her life!

Du En thought this with great calmness and rationality.

The leaders on both sides have suffered heavy injuries; they should both be in this state where a decapitation strike could be executed to completely secure victory.

However, the apostles on the Holy God's side who are of any use have one by one become infected and fallen, while on the Dark God's side, there is still a great general who is at their peak, unaffected, and able to break through their realm normally, so the difference is actually still quite obvious.

In other words, if they hadn't broken through, then the Holy God summoning Du En would indeed have been able to easily overwhelm the opponent. But now, I don't know how Jiang Ying fought them, but she actually let the other party break through to the mid-stage of Deity Transformation, causing the gap to suddenly narrow until there is not much left.

A pig teammate—actually, one cannot really say it that way. In the final analysis, the reason the two of them were separated was under the arrangement of True Monarch Buyi. In other words, this situation only exists because the helmsman is adjusting the direction.

Therefore, the real pig teammate is Meng Changqing!

It was agreed that he would supervise, but he didn't do it properly, directly letting the two of them disperse and ending up in this state...

You should feel ashamed!

Far away, within the main sect of Falling Feather, Meng Changqing looked at the spirit light projection before him. In that bird's-eye view, he could still clearly and accurately capture the subtle expression Du En was revealing at this moment.

It was clearly the same as before, as calm as a facial paralysis, but perhaps because he was feeling guilty now, or because he couldn't save face, in short, Meng Changqing was somewhat exasperated.

Although he had just had an outburst, it did not prevent him from doing it again.

"Senior Brother Buyi, you..."

"I will give you a star."

"This is not a matter of a star!"

"Then I will give you two stars."

"Hiss!"

Meng Changqing's avatar was so angry that his face became somewhat distorted.

He casually pulled over a stone table and slapped it hard with a *bang bang* sound, extremely angry: "This is just not a matter of stars or no stars!"

"Rest assured, there are still people living on the stars."

"..."

Meng Changqing was about to explode even more; the stone table had already shattered.

"Do you want them or not?"

"... I want them!"

Although he was gnashing his teeth and felt deep detestation, in the end, he still nodded.

There was no other way; not to mention things like immortal cultivation resources, just the people still alive on them were the targets he wanted to save and snatch back from the hands of that scoundrel True Monarch Buyi!

However, although he would also provide relief to the living, he and the Holy God have great differences.

At this moment, after completing the handover of the control rights for the stars, Meng Changqing looked back at the spirit light projection. Inside that spirit spring village, staring at that hanging lantern, his gaze was somewhat complex and strange.

"Senior Brother Buyi, what exactly is her situation?"

"Keep watching and you will know."

True Monarch Buyi was expressionless, his gaze never shifting from beginning to end, because for him, the most urgent matter at hand was observation and recording.

Every kind of victory and defeat, every kind of life withering and perishing, could become his stepping stone!

Facing this True Monarch who was feigning mystery and did not want to say more, Meng Changqing could only patiently continue to observe and watch from the outside like this.

And inside the spirit spring village, Du En was walking along the village path under the guidance of the hanging lantern.

Incredibly, the villagers had no extra reaction to the hanging lantern; instead, they kept a respectful distance, as if they were seeing something they could not understand at all.

Observing further, he discovered that there was not a single immortal cultivator here, nor even a single body-refiner who digs for the origin; they were all ordinary people.

The Holy God did not care that she was not treated as a god; she only pointed toward the front.

"The physician is right ahead; they have been trying to save the patients since before, and I don't know if they have researched an antidote for the Fluorspar Sickness."

She held expectations for this, and faint wails began to drift from ahead.

A spirit lake came into view.

A large bamboo courtyard was built upon it.

It was not that the spirit spring village had no immortal cultivators or body-refiners, but that these people were all infected, isolated within the spirit lake, and were in the midst of attempting treatment.

Even so, looking back at the village and watching a few villagers with strong curiosity peeking and peering, Du En still narrowed his eyes slightly.

A completely different person from Meng Changqing.

He thought to himself.

There was no surprise.

*Ding~* Stepping onto the surface of the lake, an ethereal sound immediately rang out.

Ripples swayed slightly, spreading in all directions, then quickly echoed back, returning to a single point once more.

It was like a test; invisibly, it had already screened and confirmed him.

Du En walked forward calmly.

Looking at the lake surface, the projection of the hanging lantern was nowhere to be seen.

Without a word or sound, he continued to move forward.

Soon, he crossed the lake surface.

Green bamboo fences surrounded the building, appearing full of vitality.

Amidst a *creak*, someone had already heard the movement, opened the door, and signaled a welcome.

They looked tall and sturdy, yet were dressed tightly, with even their face completely shrouded; at this moment, they did not cross the door, as if concerned about something, and only stopped where they were.

Silence and calm met in a gaze; exhaustion and composure were distinct.

Du En did not open his mouth, and he did not speak either.

The two of them just stood there like that.

Fortunately, the Holy Spirit was there. "How is the situation?"

"It is not very good; although there is progress, it is still quite far off."

The physician spoke the truth, causing the Holy Spirit's hanging lamp to dim slightly, revealing the Holy Spirit's disappointment.

Immediately, she spoke again: "Then please help look at a person here first; she looks like her condition is not quite right, but I cannot say exactly what is going on."

"Alright."

The physician did not say much, looking toward Du En's side.

Clearly, this was also a person who was not quite right, but the person His Excellency the Holy Spirit spoke of was not him.

So the physician did not say anything either, just stepped aside to welcome Du En's side in.

It was also calm and silent here, just dragging Jiang Ying's coffin out from Kongsang Mountain and placing it in the courtyard behind the bamboo fence.

At the same time, looking around, buildings of bamboo and wood were distributed in an orderly fashion behind the fence on the lake-center island.

It was visible to the naked eye that there was a distinction between light and severe cases; the further in the rooms were, the more sealed they were, and from within, sounds of mourning, murmurs, and various fragmented whispers came from time to time.

Most were praises for the Holy Spirit, along with some poems and musical lyrics.

However, although they were hymns, the themes were basically all yearning for a better tomorrow.

Relying on these, those people who were seriously ill but still had their reason were resisting the mental torture, so as not to go mad, vent their pain everywhere, and eventually become completely corrupted and twisted.

There were also some nearby buildings with doors and windows wide open, inside which were many patients with mild symptoms, basically wearing armor and helmets, with only sporadic symptoms of fluorite on their bodies.

Their life here was very monotonous; it was just cooperating with treatment and not being allowed to run around randomly.

There were no complaints; these Holy Kingdom soldiers just silently polished their spears and armor, their expressions resilient. Seeing the Holy Spirit's hanging lamp from afar, they performed bows one after another, and seeing Du En, this so-called Final Apostle, they felt even more like they had seen their backbone, having an urge to come over to report, assemble, and return to his command.

Clearly, in the Holy Kingdom's system, the positioning of the God as a ruler was more like a high and lofty mascot, which would make specific groups of people revere them from the heart, but the various Apostles were actually the leaders with real power. After people excavated their own spiritual body origins and walked the path of body refinement, they were accustomed to gathering under the command of the Apostles.

As for ordinary civilians, the Holy Spirit did not permeate her influence much, to the extent that after entering the village, seeing her hanging lamp, they did not have any strong reaction.

Now these patients also knew their own situation, so they rationally restrained various thoughts, but their mental outlook became fuller, and as a whole, they appeared high-spirited and upward-looking.

Du En observed silently and also noticed that the number of civilian patients here was very small.

It was not that there was discriminatory treatment, no rescue, or a choice to abandon them, but that ordinary civilians either had not yet had time to catch the disease and were living well—very lucky, having been transferred to live in Spirit Spring Village—or they were unlucky and had already caught the disease.

Soldiers could still restrain the invasion of the fluorite disease through cultivation and willpower, but ordinary civilians simply could not do it, so, except for a very small number of people who were naturally resilient and had other talents, basically, once they were struck, the result was doomed.

In other words, the sporadic civilians being treated here were actually those with good intellect or aptitude. At the moment, they noticed the stranger's arrival from afar, but none of them were noisy; instead, they appeared curious and looked over with contemplation, making their own assessments and judgments.

If they could safely pass this hurdle and be cultivated, everyone would have great achievements in the future!

This was what True Monarch Bu Yi was accustomed to doing: subjecting crowds to cruel trials to select the outstanding talents among them, and then repeating it constantly.

The people of the Life Source Star Realm were victims, and Jiang Ying's side was as well.

The physician had already opened the coffin lid, touched the layer of ice, and said: "The quality of this wooden coffin is not bad. Although it is green wood, it is not dissipating vitality; on the contrary, it is absorbing excessive vitality. And this method of ice-sealing the soul—hmm, it can be used to suppress the deterioration of the seriously ill and buy more time..."

Listening to his words, Du En did not skimp on his magic power, directly using the remaining magic power—which had recovered quite a bit—to urge the growth of giant trees, then performing holy refinement on them to make them into identical coffins, finishing the number for the entire population of Holy Spring Village in the blink of an eye.

The onlookers, patients and the physician, were naturally quite amazed at this at first, but soon felt that something was not quite right, because why did this look like they were ordering their own coffins in advance?

Du En, however, did not care, directly stacking them as he finished, then performing spatial folding to store the pile so it would not take up space.

The physician had the strength of the Nascent Soul stage; as long as he knew the specific magic power incantation, he could take them out from within.

However, while the green wood coffins were simple to make, mass production was impossible without the ice-sealing soul technique.

"In that case, we can only pair it with medicinal spirit spring water and soak them in it..."

The physician soon had a plan and turned his attention to Jiang Ying's side.

Du En raised his hand and pointed, and the ice-sealing soul melted a little.

The flesh and blood slurry inside immediately melted and thawed, then wiggled very actively, starting to reorganize from a microscopic level, from time to time swimming out diamond-like fragments and reflecting the light of fluorite.

"It is actually like this?!"

The physician looked as if he had finally found the answer and wanted to raise his hand to scoop it up for a closer look, but before his hand could reach out, he realized and shrank it back, appearing fearful.

"What is wrong?"

The Holy Spirit asked.

"She is the source of the fluorite!"

The physician replied.

"What?!"

At this, even the Holy Spirit was very shocked. "She is the source that the Dark God can use to create the fluorite disease? If she is being hunted by it, could it be that she abandoned darkness for light and escaped?!"

"…No, that's not quite right. It looks like the same source, but it is actually a bit different?"

The physician overturned his previous conclusion halfway, revealing great distress; he both wanted to take action to observe and examine it personally, and was afraid that this suspected mother source of the fluorite disease would infect him as well.

He did not care about his own safety, but there were so many patients who could be saved waiting for him, those eighty-eight patients in Spirit Spring Village! Therefore, in the end, he still did not make contact, but only combined his own experience in treating the disease, which he had studied quite a lot, to conduct observations.

"Her condition is very bad. Although she is the mother source of the fluorite disease, or rather a similar mother source, she is also being infected by the fluorite disease. Her own origin cannot resist it—wait? It is not that she cannot resist, but that she is actively receiving it and being assimilated in return?"

"She must be saved. Otherwise, once she is completely assimilated and loses control and explodes, the previous great catastrophe of the disease will reappear!"

The current disease mutation of heaven and earth is already intense enough, having forcibly created a boundless sea of disease in the cracks of the surface; if there were another major strengthening, the Holy Spirit could not even imagine what that situation would be! At the very least, she herself would probably not be able to hold on, right? So, the Dark God's side only accidentally discovered her existence and therefore wanted to erase this terrible disaster?

After all, the disease mutation of heaven and earth also has a great impact on the Dark Kingdom and the Dark God; it is a means of mutual destruction as a last resort, killing a thousand enemies and losing a thousand oneself! "Then, how should we save her?"

The Holy Spirit asked this key question.

"Through days of study, I am now missing three rare items—three rare items that do not change their essence after the disease mutation. My younger sister has already helped me confirm in advance that they still exist in those three places and are qualified and up to standard."

"As long as they are collected, I can try to make an antidote. Originally, I would still have to deliberate on the matching of various dosages, but now, I can treat her as a dead horse and try various attempts and tests on her."

The meaning was to use Jiang Ying as a test subject, and she was also the most suitable one.

Du En had absolutely no opinion on this; after all, regarding her current situation, it was indeed only possible to treat a dead horse as a living one.

This was saving her, and it was also her playing a role.

I believe she will have no objections.

(End of chapter)