Chapter 289

Alone, Qian Chen came to the back hall of the White Bone Buddha Temple.

In the demon cave, there was no sun, and even at the hour of the tiger in the middle of the night, there was not a trace of starlight or moonlight in the sky. The entire White Bone Corpse Land was silent.

"How exhausting! For the revival of the Supreme Louguan Gate, I have paid too much!" Qian Chen sighed in his heart. Even his own demon body had been dismembered and suppressed; no one had paid more for the Supreme Louguan Gate than he had. If he didn't take this position of Sect Master, who would?

Besides collecting a group of outstanding people and burying them here, plotting for their next life.

He had also casually laid out several idle pieces, calculating for the great calamity thousands of years later.

A white deer with a broken horn hopped out of the forest, pacing its steps until it came before Qian Chen, nudging the red-skinned gourd at Qian Chen's waist with its head. Qian Chen took off the gourd and poured out a spirit pill flowing with moonlight. In this dim white bone forest, that spirit pill was like a bright moon that had fallen.

The white deer stuck out its tongue and rolled the spirit pill into its mouth.

"A second-turn spirit pill, it can be considered a bargain for you!" Qian Chen stroked the white deer's neck and said calmly: "The little bit of residual incense I left behind cannot protect the people behind for too long. Even if they pass the most dangerous hour of the rat, by the time the incense dissipates, no more than ten percent will survive."

"The Central Lands of the Divine Continent today are indeed declining! The demon cave I painstakingly created has only reached the White Bone Forest, and the people who entered are about to die out. Then who am I showing my subsequent arrangements to? The calculations of the demon cave, although they continue for several sixty-year cycles..."

"But someone must bring the situation of the demon cave out!"

"So, thank you for your hard work! Bring them to the White Bone Temple!" Qian Chen patted the white deer's neck and instructed: "These are all testers I painstakingly tricked into coming in. I still want those great families to bring pigs, sacrifice to the fierce earth, summon the demon body, and screen for good talents who can withstand the inheritance of my demon body for generations to come!"

"The Lei, Xin, Jin, Tao, and other great families are cursed by the Heavenly Demon, and their clansmen have ominous ends in their old age. To break the curse, every time the demon cave opens, the great families must seek out capable people and strangers, widely inviting loose cultivators from all over the world to enter the cave and explore!"

"Where else can I find such free labor?"

"Go!"

The white deer's large eyes blinked; it looked at Qian Chen with the expression of someone looking at a black-hearted, unscrupulous merchant. It obediently lowered its head and rubbed against Qian Chen's hand, then turned into a white stream of light and drilled into the white bone forest.

…………

Xiao Yu, the Old Daoist, and the others followed the changes in the yin-yang qi and arrived at the location of the Toad-Fishing Strange Cave.

It was a hill with a nearly vertical cliff nearby, only thirty zhang high. With the hill behind it, one large and one small, from the side, it looked like a toad crouching and raising its head.

The Old Daoist's eyes stared at the cliff, completely attracted by a crack on it—it was as if an axe had struck the top of the cliff, leaving a gap five zhang long and two zhang wide. And this was only the outermost outline; further inside, it was pitch black and bottomless.

This crack on the toad-shaped hill was like the toad opening its mouth.

"Toad-Fishing Cave! It really is the Toad-Fishing Cave..." the Old Daoist muttered to himself: "The toad opens its mouth; this golden toad has really been fished up!"

Xiao Yu narrowed his eyes and observed the toad's mouth with his yin-yang eyes for a long time before saying solemnly: "I am not proficient in yin-yang feng shui and cannot see what is strange about the earth qi here, but this toad's mouth has a dangerous and strange aura!"

"Of course it's dangerous!" the Old Daoist said firmly: "This crack definitely hasn't appeared for more than a year!"

"It must have been that day when the Nine Heavens thunder roared and the Thunder Sea opened that this place collapsed and formed a gap!"

"Let's go up first!" Xiao Yu greeted the Big Guy.

The three climbed up the cliff and arrived beside the toad's mouth. They were now standing on the toad's nose. Leaning down slightly, they could see the bottomless gap.

Xiao Yu lit an incense stick, calculated the timing, and inserted it at the very edge of the gap.

The incense smoke rose in wisps. At this moment, the few saw a strange scene that struck their hearts: the smoke drifted to the toad's mouth. This was a type of Malevolent Human Incense refined from the corpse oil of the malevolent corpses in the bronze coffin. There were two types of incense refined from corpse oil: Malevolent Corpse Incense could drive away demon objects, and Malevolent Human Incense could summon demon objects.

A flying head with ears like wings was lured by the Malevolent Human Incense and whistled toward the smoke.

The Flying Head Barbarian, a type of demon object, was transformed from a human head; it could fly, was bloodthirsty, and was extremely ferocious. For the three of them to deal with such a Flying Head Barbarian with their cultivation was not an easy task.

But when the Flying Head Barbarian lunged past the toad's mouth, a powerful suction force erupted from the crack, swallowing the Flying Head Barbarian in the blink of an eye. Even the Malevolent Human Incense inserted in front of the toad's mouth was sucked empty in one breath.

The Flying Head Barbarian fell into the crack without a sound, as if something ferocious and terrifying was hidden inside.

The Big Guy's eyes widened, and he asked somewhat hesitantly: "Old Daoist, this toad couldn't be a real demon, could it?"

Xiao Yu looked at the cliff under his feet and couldn't help but shiver. If this was really a toad demon, wouldn't they be standing right under its nose?

The goat-bearded Old Daoist was stroking his beard in deep thought. Hearing this, he didn't even raise his head and knocked the Big Guy on the head, drawing out his voice: "Of course not... this is the power of a strange feng shui cave. The toad opens its mouth, inhaling and exhaling the wind from all directions, collecting the vitality from all four directions. No wonder there is no feng shui situation where the toad's mouth faces. This kind of cave field... is too greedy!"

"We don't need to dig a hole! From here, we can go straight into the strange feng shui cave of the Qi Jinchan Land."

"This gap is unfathomable and leads straight to the nine earths. The demon objects swallowed from here are all sent to that strange cave. Even if the master buried inside is transforming, there are countless dangers!"

"Toad-Fishing, Toad-Fishing... this crack and the bottomless cave beneath it are the fishing line, and also the air hole for the Qi Jinchan Strange Cave to inhale and exhale qi."

Xiao Yu hesitated and asked in a low voice: "So, we also have to be like that Flying Head Barbarian just now, run to the toad's mouth, and throw ourselves into the net?"

The Old Daoist flipped his tattered yellow cloth Daoist robe, revealing the still-tattered lining painted with talismans. The three put on the talisman-grass rain capes given to them by Old Guo, and Xiao Yu carefully took out three sticks of Malevolent Corpse Incense and inserted them into his bamboo hat.

With the Big Guy walking in front, the three jumped onto the toad's mouth together.

Instantly, a powerful suction force enveloped them. The three were sucked straight into the toad's belly and fell into the dark cave. In this instant, the sound of the wind whistled in their ears, and they didn't know how deep they had fallen.

After a while—perhaps a quarter of an hour, perhaps half an hour—the sound of the wind in their ears turned into the wailing of ghosts. This was the sound of the wind passing through many holes, as if the wind blowing from the Nine Nethers had passed through the earth's aperture. Mixed in this sound were many flapping sounds of wings.

The three activated their true qi on the talisman leaves of their rain capes, and the momentum of their descent slowed. The three drifted downward slowly at the speed of falling leaves. At this time, the Big Guy opened his eyes wide, looked left and right, and said strangely: "Xiao Yu, why are there so many birds?"

The Old Daoist turned his head with difficulty in the air, opened his eyes, and said in shock: "They aren't birds, they're human heads!"

Xiao Yu looked back in horror and saw countless human heads with meat wings like bats in the countless stone caves in the abyss, like clusters of black clouds, shuttling through the stone caves and flying toward them.

The human heads each showed fangs, and the sound of their ear-meat wings flapping was truly like bats.

"Damn it! How many Flying Head Barbarians did this toad's mouth swallow?" The Old Daoist let out a scream. Those Flying Head Barbarians were extremely bloodthirsty, carrying the dense resentment of being beheaded, and bit toward them. The Old Daoist swung a peach wood sword from his sleeve, hacking left and right, but only knocked down two flying heads before it snapped in the middle.

Human skulls were originally the hardest parts, and these demonized human heads were even more like steel and iron. Many of the meat wings transformed from ears also had white hair growing on them.

If not for the smoke of the Malevolent Corpse Incense still shrouding the three of them.

These countless flying heads swarming up would have been enough to finish them off in less than a quarter of an hour, even if they truly had Core Formation magic power.

Xiao Yu shouted: "The Malevolent Corpse Incense is still useful! It's just that we are falling downward, and the incense is very thin. Let's get together; the incense will be thicker."

The Old Daoist threw away the hilt of the hundred-year-old peach wood sword in his hand, gritting his teeth: "This ghost place is too strange! Outside, I have beheaded many corpse-transformations with this peach wood sword, but in the demon cave, as long as it is a zombie or demon object, it doesn't fear it."

"These Flying Head Barbarians, outside, a single one running out would be a ferocious demon object that commits endless sins! But here they are in swarms... how many people died in this demon cave? Could this be an ancient battlefield?"

The three held hands together, and the incense finally gathered into a ball, forcing back the Flying Head Barbarians rushing toward them.

But just as the three breathed a sigh of relief, countless blood-red eyes opened and closed in the darkness, and killing intent like a tide surged, drowning the three. Those human heads, clinging to the stone walls with meat wings and densely packed on both sides of the abyss, and those human heads flying in the air and emitting terrifying roars, suddenly shrieked at the three in unison, emitting soul-shattering sound waves.

The incense dissipated ninety percent of the shrieking, but just the remaining ten percent made Xiao Yu and the Old Daoist's spiritual sense go blank, and blood seeped from their mouths and noses. Their sanity fell into a daze...

The incense shrouding them was also scattered by the sound waves.

Thousands of flying heads swarmed over, carrying monstrous resentment, their fangs sharp, constantly lunging down, tearing at their flesh and blood.

The Big Guy hugged the dazed Xiao Yu and Old Daoist, twisted his body, protected the two in his arms, and left his back to those ferocious flying heads.

Fangs grazed his stiff and tough back. His pale, tough skin, even though its strength was already comparable to a Bronze Armored Zombie, was still torn into deep wounds under the desperate tearing of thousands of flying heads constantly lunging down.

In just a few breaths, the Big Guy's back was torn into several wounds deep enough to see bone.

Xiao Yu regained consciousness slightly, raised his head, and saw the Big Guy frowning, his face showing a trace of pain. He leaned out from the Big Guy's shoulder and saw this scene, his eyes splitting with rage.

Using life-fire to burn incense, the incense head of a stick of Seven Malevolence Incense in his hand burned for only an instant before it burned away most of it. The wish-power of resentment and hatred, under the control of the spirit in Xiao Yu's heart, transformed into seven large black pythons condensed from incense smoke, tearing toward the flying heads behind the Big Guy.

Those seven black pythons began to strangle the flying heads, and flying heads constantly fell, cursed by the wish-power.

At this time, the Old Daoist also regained consciousness and said loudly: "There are too many flying heads here, your poison incense can't drive away many!"

"Vitality converges below, let's go into the Qi Jinchan Cave! The Qi Jinchan eats flying insects, it must have something to restrain these flying heads!" The Old Daoist unfolded his talisman-leaf rain cape. Most of the countless grass talismans on it burned, carrying the three and transforming into a black wind, lunging downward.

They swept past several stone caves and fell into the depths of the abyss.

The Old Daoist constantly shuttled between the stone pillars, dodging the groups of flying heads behind him.

Arriving at a relatively open abyss, the flying heads finally feared the place ahead somewhat and began to disperse. At this time, they also arrived at the place where vitality converged. From afar, the sound of the surging Yin River came, and the Old Daoist saw a bit of shimmering light. Finally unable to hold on, he fell headlong.

The three fell into a body of water with a splash.

Floating to the surface, the Big Guy was somewhat breathless. Fortunately, the zombie body was strong enough; even though his back was covered in wounds, the Big Guy could still persist. Xiao Yu swam up to check the Big Guy's wounds, while the Old Daoist looked left and right.

"Sure enough, the Qi Jinchan likes water. Without a few water veins, how could it support such a strange cave?"

Xiao Yu treated the Big Guy's wounds and applied some incense ash to them before he had time to look around. He discovered that this was an extremely wide underground lake, and the lake water was extremely cold. Even though the three had a yang fire to protect their bodies, they were frozen enough.

In the center of the lake, a mountain pillar as white as jade stood tall.

The jade pillar reached the top of the stone wall and was as white as mutton-fat jade, but it was mixed with wisps of crimson and dark red, like blood streaks in mutton-fat jade. The higher these blood streaks went, the denser they were, as if they were flowing, reflecting blood light.

"At the top of the jade pillar, there seems to be a human figure!"

Xiao Yu had sharp eyes. Through the reflection of the white jade light, he saw a blurred figure.

It was just a fleeting glance, but it was peerless.

The few carefully headed toward the jade mountain. The Old Daoist looked increasingly solemn and said in a low voice: "This is the location of the Qi Jinchan Strange Cave. The Qi Jinchan is just an extremely agile vitality of creation, which can attach itself to all things."

"This jade vein, so lively with spirit qi, should be transformed from the Qi Jinchan earth qi."

"Sure enough, there is someone!" Xiao Yu drove a wind force, climbed onto the stone walls on both sides, and finally could look levelly at the top of the jade pillar. There, nine stalactite jade stones hung from the top of the cave, and drops of milk-jade liquid accumulated into a gelatinous substance.

The milk-jade with jade color was like a frog egg, wrapping a peerless figure.

"Is this... an immortal lady from the Heavenly Realm?"

Seeing that shadow, Xiao Yu felt a sense of amazement. His Dao heart wavered instantly. Even though he had just experienced life and death, he couldn't help but feel a sense of obsession, and his body felt dry-mouthed.

"Taiyin Feng Xianzi?" The Old Daoist also couldn't help but be obsessed.

Thump, thump...

A heartbeat like a small drum came from the Big Guy's chest. Xiao Yu then woke up. The Big Guy had a zombie body and should have long since had no heartbeat. At this moment, a corpse heart was actually beating.

Clearly separated by the jade egg, he couldn't see her face clearly.

But all of this could not shake her peerless elegance.

Xiao Yu said in a low voice: "The senior buried in the Toad-Fishing Land is actually such an amazing woman?"

"With such peerless beauty, why cultivate immortality! Even if a god from the upper realm saw her, they would be willing to grant longevity in exchange for her company!" The Old Daoist clicked his tongue: "What holy land immortal lady, what peerless beauty in the human world—I have seen those women who consider themselves beautiful, and I'm afraid they can't even compare to one of her fingers!"

The Big Guy said dejectedly: "I'm not worthy of her!"

"Even the Big Guy can't eat this soft rice!" The Old Daoist said in horror: "This is still her remains after death; if she were alive, what kind of elegance would she have?"

Xiao Yu went around to the other side of the jade pillar and saw several lines of seal script.

"Clouds remind me of her clothes, flowers of her face,

Spring breezes brush the railing, dew is thick and fragrant.

If not seen at the top of Qunyu Mountain,

One would meet her under the moon at the Yao Terrace."

Xiao Yu slowly recited these few lines of poetry, and a charm like the goddess of Mount Guxie—skin like ice and snow, graceful like a maiden, not eating grains, inhaling wind and drinking dew, riding cloud qi, like a flying immortal... flowed out.

At the top of the jade pillar, there was a white jade platform. On the white jade platform, there was a jade dragon egg.

The true person in the egg, peerless elegance, with poetry and prose...

The three pondered and were shocked for a long time before they finally broke free from this peerless elegance. At this time, they noticed—under the white jade platform, there was a scroll of golden books and several rare treasures flowing with spirit light, offered on a table.

On the golden book, strange and ancient characters twisted, like tadpoles.