White bones piled into mountains, stretching as far as the eye could see, with no end in sight.
Such abnormal scenes were spread across every part of the plain, under the backdrop of gray-black clouds, resembling a human hell and making one's scalp tingle.
Dense swarms of carrion insects circled around the hills of White Bone Mountain, attempting to find traces of rotting flesh clinging to the clean skeletons.
However, in such a deathly silent land, there were still living beings.
Between the hills, one could vaguely see short figures wandering aimlessly, like scavengers in a garbage heap.
There were quite a few scavengers, and their appearances were even more bizarre.
They wore tattered robes, and the exposed skin was semi-transparent, revealing the internal organs, bones, and even blood vessels beneath.
The scavengers did not know what they were searching for, their aimless wandering no different from carrion insects.
Occasionally, a few scavengers would accidentally fall from the top of the hills; even if they were on the verge of death from the fall, their kind showed no reaction whatsoever.
There was no sun or moon in the sky, yet the light gradually dimmed.
The scavengers left the hills of White Bone Mountain one after another. Most had gained nothing, yet they did not linger, instead moving in unison toward a certain place.
Bang bang bang...
From the mountainside suddenly came the sound of bones colliding, echoing continuously, immediately drawing the attention of some scavengers.
They pulled bone carts and quickly moved toward the source of the sound, completely unafraid of any possible danger.
Clearly, the scavengers lacked the intelligence to understand that abnormal occurrences imply something strange; their actions were more like driven by instinct.
More and more scavengers gathered, soon reaching the destination.
Unexpectedly, the sound came from an inconspicuous pit, with rustling noises, like rodents crawling upward.
The scavengers took out tools resembling pickaxes from their carts and began digging at the pit, their movements extremely stiff.
But their strength was astonishing; even beast-transformed cultivators at the Half-Corpse realm could not reach such a level.
Crack...
One scavenger's hand bone could not withstand the recoil of the pickaxe and broke apart, instantly splitting into three segments. Bone spikes pierced through the skin, and dark red blood flowed down along the elbow.
He stared blankly at his right hand, showing no panic nor crying out in pain, and directly walked toward a nearby pile of bones.
The scavenger forcibly pulled out a hand bone from a skeleton, compared it with his right hand, then used his sharp nails to slice open the skin.
A slit appeared in the semi-transparent skin, and more blood immediately gushed out.
The smell of blood instantly attracted a large number of carrion insects, which eagerly swarmed toward the wound, feeding on the scavenger's blood.
The scavenger allowed the carrion insects to wreak havoc, his expression still utterly dull.
He removed the shattered hand bone, then gestured with the intact bone before forcibly stuffing it into the flesh of his right hand.
The wound instantly healed, and nerves and blood vessels autonomously connected to the new bone.
The scavenger moved his arm, then continued digging expressionlessly, as if the bone had never been broken moments ago.
The other scavengers were similar; due to improper exertion of force, bones all over their bodies suffered immense strain.
But to the scavengers, bones seemed to be merely replaceable items, if broken, they would simply take materials locally and replace them.
The most outrageous case was a scavenger who accidentally smashed a companion's skull to pieces with a swing of the pickaxe, yet the latter simply attached a new skull without any effect.
Nothing could stop the scavengers from continuing until they dug out a shriveled and strange corpse, only then did they put down their pickaxes.
The corpse's skin was covered in wrinkles, and its body was somewhat bloated, appearing as if formed from hundreds of layers of skin piled together.
The scavengers carefully placed the corpse onto the cart, yet did not leave, instead lifting their pickaxes and continuing to dig.
After spending a full five to six hours.
Three more similar corpses were added to the cart, all covered in layers of thick human skin, far larger than ordinary skeletons.
The scavengers looked at each other, seemingly communicating in some unknown way.
After a few breaths, they took the initiative to form groups of three to transport the corpses; otherwise, the bone carts could not bear the weight.
Bang bang bang...
Just as the scavengers were about to leave the hills of White Bone Mountain, an arm suddenly extended from the pit.
The arm was covered in signs of decay, yet did not attract carrion insects, and the flesh had already begun to wither.
Under the gaze of the scavengers, a dried corpse crawled out of the pit. The foul stench caused more than half of the carrion insects to die.
When the odor of the dried corpse subsided again, its body seemed to regain some vitality, and a hoarse murmur came from its mouth.
"What kind of damn place is this, almost made the Taishui Sutra lose control."
The dried corpse was naturally Ren Qing himself. While muttering, he jumped onto the bone cart and casually found a corner to lie down.
The scavengers' intelligence made it difficult to understand the behavior of the dried corpse.
They were like puppets set with certain instructions, completely indifferent to Ren Qing, pulling the cart and heading down from White Bone Mountain.
Ren Qing closed his eyes to inspect his own condition, and a bitter smile could not help but appear at the corner of his mouth.
Originally, he thought the corpse transformation when the Giant Corpse Buddha's stomach sank underground was already extremely exaggerated, but the hinterland was even more terrifying.
As soon as Ren Qing approached within a hundred meters of the surface, he felt the moisture in his flesh being drained, and even his internal organs shrank to one-tenth their size.
He nearly fell into Corpse-State, fortunately reacting in time to use the Rebirth Technique.
The vitality he used to maintain himself was more than twice that of before, barely preventing the corpse transformation from worsening further.
Within the stomach world, the corpse transformation of living beings also intensified, forcing him to reduce the time flow to normal and maintain it with vitality.
He could not help but feel apprehensive, fortunately he had not hastily brought the Giant Corpse Buddha, otherwise at least half of the cultivators in the Restraint Officers' Hall would have died suddenly.
In stark contrast were the three cocooned Cocoon People who had broken out.
Although they appeared like corpses, their vitality was continuously recovering, only their souls had dissipated, making it difficult for consciousness to awaken.
A bold guess arose in Ren Qing's mind. The ghost shadow at his feet touched a scavenger's body, and immediately the information stream surged.
[Age: 326]
[Lifespan: none]
[Technique: Corpse Refining Method (Pseudo-Zombie)]
Corpse Refining Method
Created by unknown, cultivation requires the body's vitality to be completely extinguished while the soul still remains, absorbing corpse qi for ten days to revive, only then can it be completed.
Dead Man's Forbidden Zone indeed involved that existence. Could the Dead Man's Sutra also have been created by it? It felt like something immense was hidden within.
A nonexistent person, if they wished to lay out plans, perhaps no one in the world could stop them.
The "Pseudo-Zombie" shown in the information stream was also difficult for Ren Qing to ignore.
Perhaps only zombies could fix lifespan at "none," allowing Ren Qing to achieve true immortality and thereby attain transcendence.
Ren Qing decided to obtain the Corpse Refining Method; perhaps it contained clues about the Dead Man's Sutra.
With a thought, the Dream Flower landed on the forehead of a scavenger named Pi Jie, only to notice that the latter's three souls and seven spirits were extremely weak, and consciousness was so faint it could not think independently.
Fortunately, Ren Qing still obtained some fragmented memory pieces.
The memory fragments were scenes from the scavenger's life, allowing Ren Qing to understand the existence of the "Zhe People."
The Zhe People resembled jellyfish in the ocean, with the semi-transparent skin controlling the body, while flesh and bones were unimportant.
Although they used internal organs to maintain the body, bones to support flesh, and the brain to contain the soul, these organs were all replaceable.
In this way, the Zhe People theoretically possessed immortality; as long as organs aged, they could be directly replaced.
But unfortunately, no matter how they replaced their organs, the limit of lifespan could never be avoided.
The lifespan of the Zhe People was generally similar to that of the Cocoon People, around three hundred years, an unsettling coincidence.
When they reached the end of their lifespan, they would secrete viscous liquid to wrap their skin, eventually turning into an amber-like state, sealing themselves within.
In the records of the Zhe People across generations, there were also rumors similar to breaking the cocoon and becoming immortal, though they called it "Stone-Shattering Immortalization."
The scavengers within Dead Man's Forbidden Zone had actually all undergone Stone-Shattering Immortalization.
Just like the Cocoon People who broke out of their cocoons, even without vitality, they could adapt to the environment of Dead Man's Forbidden Zone, indicating a clear connection.
Ren Qing suspected that whether Cocoon People, Zhe People, or even the rarely encountered Worm People, any living beings connected to Dead Man's Forbidden Zone would, upon exhausting their lifespan, attain the Dao and become "immortal."
As for ordinary cultivators like them, or Cocoon People who had not undergone immortalization, being within Dead Man's Forbidden Zone inevitably led to corpse transformation.
Like the difference between stowaways and natives.
Wait...
Ren Qing's heart jolted.
When corpse transformation reached the level of Corpse-State, one would feel the urge to enter dormancy, could it also result in an alternative form of attaining the Dao and becoming immortal?
If one followed the rules of Dead Man's Forbidden Zone, could the Restraint Officers' Hall adapt to the corpse transformation?
Ren Qing immediately shook his head in denial. Although becoming immortal transformed the physique, it undoubtedly caused the soul to scatter.
It was likely that the place the scavengers brought the Cocoon People to had methods to give birth to souls again, forming something like a Pseudo-Zombie?
Ren Qing turned back to glance at the inconspicuous hill of White Bone Mountain; the Giant Corpse Buddha was buried a thousand meters underground.
What puzzled him was that the target of the Buddhist qi was clearly Dead Man's Forbidden Zone, yet after the Giant Corpse Buddha arrived, it fell into silence.
It gave Ren Qing a strange feeling, as if the Buddhist qi only knew that the current Great Compassion Maitreya Bodhisattva was within Dead Man's Forbidden Zone, but did not know the exact location.
He planned to clarify the situation first, then suppressed his own presence.
The scavengers walked under the afterglow of the setting sun, across a plain covered in white bones, occasionally replacing bones due to broken limbs.
If this world had an underworld, it would probably look like this.
By the time darkness was about to engulf heaven and earth, the scavengers arrived at a secluded mountain foot and stood there blankly, no longer moving.
Ren Qing suddenly felt something was off; a sense of malice drifted within the darkness.
He looked behind him, pushing his Double Pupils to the limit, yet detected nothing unusual, as if it were merely an illusion.
The wind howled wildly, mixed with ghostly wails.
Just as Ren Qing was about to use the ghost shadow to protect himself, a massive white bone rock was pushed aside, revealing a bottomless cave.
The scavengers stepped into the cave, and the white bone rock was moved back into place.