After trade began, lifespan started flowing into Ren Qing in a steady stream.
Ever since his dream-path technique advanced to the No-Birth Immortal realm, the abilities of the Dream Butterfly Method had grown considerably, and the proportion of lifespan it could extract was becoming increasingly high.
The effect was not particularly obvious on ordinary cultivators, but when used on Yang God realm cultivators, lifespan accumulated at a rate visible to the naked eye.
He felt that advancing the dream-path technique to the Ascension Method realm would be more than achievable. The remaining lifespan would also be enough to push the Disaster Elimination Method to the Yang God realm and complete the remaining supplementary techniques of the Dead Man's Sutra.
Ren Qing steadied himself, then had a bird-type Strange Beast deliver the Shellbearer technique to Sen Sheng.
Nearly all Restraint Officer cultivators followed the path of fusing two techniques. With Cocoon Man's talent, he was perfectly suited to cultivate both the Human Skin Book and Shellbearer.
The two techniques complemented each other in offense and defense, allowing Cocoon Man to become one of the pillars of the Restraint Officers' Hall.
After receiving Sen Sheng's deeply grateful response, Ren Qing seized the time to continue his secluded cultivation and recalled the contents of Longevous Tortoise.
The three mutation paths of Longevous Tortoise were Longevity Seeker, Fortune Knower, and Calamity Evader.
If Ren Qing had not been selecting a supplementary technique for the Disaster Elimination Method, he would definitely have chosen Longevity Seeker, the path related to extending lifespan.
The ability of Longevity Seeker was simple: the slower one's heartbeat, the lower one's lifespan consumption.
After advancing to the Ghost Envoy realm's "Survival Through Closed Eyes," even slowing one's movements would reduce lifespan consumption, making it ideal for cultivators who spent years in seclusion.
At the Yin Difference realm's "Forgotten Longevity in Stillness," once the cultivator ceased moving entirely, their body would transform into stone, leaving no trace even after a thousand years passed.
The drawback was that once one entered the state of forgotten stillness, there was no way to cancel the technique voluntarily until reaching the Yang God realm's "Still as an Immortal."
After some consideration between Fortune Knower and Calamity Evader, Ren Qing ultimately chose Calamity Evader as the mutation path for Longevous Tortoise.
He felt that every opportunity in the world was accompanied by unforeseeable danger.
Perhaps behind every so-called opportunity lurked hidden schemes left behind by True Immortals. Carelessly touching them could very well lead to complete death and annihilation.
Ren Qing possessed the Information Flow and was about to master the Dead Man's Sutra.
As long as he could keep lying low, not only was reaching the Heavenly Aberration realm possible, even attaining immortality was not an unrealistic dream. There was no need to court death all over the world searching for opportunities.
[Thirty days of lifespan may be consumed to waive the cost of mastering the technique.]
Ren Qing silently confirmed.
As thirty days of lifespan vanished, he felt a foreign object slowly crawling from his stomach toward his throat.
The difficult part of cultivating Longevous Tortoise was that the hatchling turtle would consume flesh and blood. Advancing half a finger's length per day meant it would take over ten days to complete the process, not to mention how quickly the hatchling grew.
When the foreign object finally reached his mouth, it wriggled into the roof of his mouth.
Ren Qing tried touching it with his tongue and immediately discovered an additional tortoise shell about the size of a fingernail embedded directly into his flesh.
He explored it with his tongue for a few moments. The shell seemed to have the character "Auspicious" engraved on it.
At the Half-Corpse realm, Calamity Evader could currently display only two divinations: Auspicious and Inauspicious. Judging from that, his current situation was not too bad.
Techniques with such singular abilities appeared useless on the surface, but were actually terrifying.
With Longevous Tortoise, unless his lifespan ran dry, no amount of reckless behavior should be able to result in complete death and annihilation.
[Would you like to choose the Calamity Evader branch? One year of lifespan will be consumed.]
[Would you like to choose the Driving Fortune and Avoiding Disaster branch? Ten years of lifespan will be consumed.]
Ren Qing continued advancing and selected the Ghostly Transformation branch of Longevous Tortoise.
The Ghost Envoy realm of Longevous Tortoise was called "Driving Fortune and Avoiding Disaster." Fortune and disaster generally went hand in hand. Avoiding disaster naturally meant distancing oneself from opportunities as well.
Ren Qing pressed his tongue against the shell.
The divinations were no longer limited to auspicious and inauspicious.
Instead, they became Great Auspicious, Auspicious, Auspicious with Disaster, Inauspicious, Inauspicious with Fortune, and Great Inauspicious, allowing him to assess situations more accurately.
Had he chosen Fortune Knower, its ability would have guided cultivators toward nearby opportunities.
Ren Qing noticed that the shell in the roof of his mouth displayed the inscription "Auspicious with Disaster," and the characters appeared somewhat blurry. He immediately understood.
The auspicious portion referred to the opportunities he was currently obtaining, including the Dead Man's Sutra and his technique breakthroughs.
The disaster portion likely indicated hidden dangers within the Dead Man's Forbidden Zone, while the Dead Man's Sutra itself was connected to matters within the Mirror World.
For someone like Ren Qing, who possessed numerous life-preserving methods, as long as it was not Great Inauspicious, there remained room to retreat from the Dead Man's Forbidden Zone.
Driving Fortune and Avoiding Disaster would usually display its divinations in advance, causing him to relax slightly.
Ren Qing was fairly satisfied with Longevous Tortoise, so he guided the Disaster Elimination Method's mutation tree into fully establishing a primary-secondary relationship with Longevous Tortoise.
This allowed additional abilities to develop from Longevous Tortoise.
Ren Qing could also divine the fortune and misfortune of hosts parasitized by the Storyteller and the clones created by Mirror Immortal. It was not particularly useful, but better than nothing.
As for the Ghostly Transformation branches, he focused primarily on strengthening Longevous Tortoise's disaster-avoidance abilities, so his first transformation choice was "Hexagram Mark."
Hexagram Mark: A hexagram carrying auspicious or inauspicious significance would appear upon the tortoise shell.
After completing the Hexagram Mark transformation, a strange image appeared on the shell embedded in the roof of his mouth. It resembled the corpse of a monk.
At first, Ren Qing suspected it was related to Elder Monk Zong Qing, but the latter was suspended upside down within the Mirror World and had no means of escaping his chains.
Ren Qing guessed that the future upheaval within the Mirror World was likely connected to the Great Compassion Maitreya Bodhisattva.
For the second transformation, he chose "Cracked Shell."
Cracked Shell: When a sign of misfortune appears, cracks emerge on the shell as a warning, while further strengthening Longevous Tortoise's effects.
Not long after completing the Cracked Shell transformation, Ren Qing's expression stiffened.
A faint cracking sound had come from inside his mouth.
He hurriedly checked the divination.
Fortunately, it still showed Auspicious with Disaster, but a faint crack had appeared on the shell, indicating that the situation was deteriorating.
Not daring to be careless, Ren Qing carefully searched for a suitable third transformation.
In the end, he selected "Death Hexagram."
Death Hexagram: Beyond Great Inauspicious lies the Death Hexagram. It signifies a catastrophe with virtually no chance of survival, yet still reveals a single thread of hope.
Naturally, Ren Qing hoped he would never have to use the Death Hexagram in his lifetime, but having it was better than not.
If finding life within death were easy, immortal Buddhas and immortals would never have fallen.
The cultivators who created these techniques were all extraordinary geniuses.
Ren Qing could glean some clues simply from the technique's information.
Restraint Officer techniques were truly inconceivable, but among all the names displayed by the Information Flow, only a pitiful few could genuinely attain immortality.
Unlike what he had done with the Disguise Technique, Ren Qing did not leave Longevous Tortoise at its current stage and instead continued advancing it into the Yin Difference realm.
[Would you like to choose the Knowing Fate in Vain branch? Two hundred years of lifespan will be consumed.]
He no longer cared whether this might delay the dream-path technique's advancement to the Ascension Method realm. Longevous Tortoise had already surpassed every other technique in priority.
Longevous Tortoise quickly reached the Yin Difference realm's "Knowing Fate in Vain."
Most techniques underwent earth-shaking transformations upon reaching the Yin Difference realm. By contrast, Yang God realm advancement merely strengthened existing abilities unless many techniques were fused together.
Longevous Tortoise, however, appeared rather ordinary.
The shell still displayed only seven divinations, and the Hexagram Mark showed no changes.
Yet when Ren Qing pressed his tongue against the divination mark, his eyes suddenly felt numb, as if they were on the verge of mutating out of control.
Immediately afterward, his left eye snapped shut while bone-shell patterns spread across the retina of his right eye. The world before him became completely different.
Ren Qing could see a faint black mist surrounding everything nearby, as though it were an inescapable disaster.
He then activated Double Pupils, allowing his vision to penetrate the Giant Corpse Buddha's flesh and see the vast, boundless Dead Man's Forbidden Zone.
Black mist filled heaven and earth, with the area around the Corpse Mirror being the densest of all.
The black mist represented signs of calamity.
When the divination displayed Great Auspicious, Auspicious with Disaster, or Auspicious, the left eye could perceive hidden dangers nearby. If he insisted on approaching them, the divination would worsen.
When the divination displayed Great Inauspicious, Inauspicious with Fortune, Inauspicious, or Death, the right eye would open instead, allowing him to see the hidden chance of survival concealed within disaster.
Crack. Crack. Crack.
The smile on Ren Qing's face stiffened.
Another crack had appeared on the shell.
Though still extremely small, it proved that the Dead Man's Forbidden Zone was indeed moving steadily toward disaster for some unknown reason.
Fortunately, Ren Qing had now mastered Knowing Fate in Vain at the Yin Difference realm and could accurately distinguish fortune from calamity. At present, everything was still in the brewing stage.
Ren Qing instructed Jade Splendor to accelerate the harvesting of lifespan from the various factions.
He also selected a number of insectfolk cultivators whose devotion to Fortune Virtue Earth Immortal exceeded their loyalty to the Insect Nest, planning to take them along when he eventually left and expand his manpower.
At the same time, Ren Qing had already instructed Li Tiangang to begin planning an evacuation from the Dead Man's Forbidden Zone.
Li Tiangang led a group of cultivators to the Giant Corpse Buddha's legs and used various magical artifacts and techniques to drill toward the depths underground.
He discovered that as long as corpse transformation remained relatively mild, escaping the forbidden zone should not be difficult.
Meanwhile, Ren Qing immediately began fusing the Ghostly Transformation branches of the Disaster Elimination Method. Since he was in a dangerous situation, survival capability naturally took priority.
There was no need to rush the Dead Man's Sutra. Completing it within the Dead Man's Forbidden Zone was simply too dangerous.
His lifespan continued increasing through the trade of Revival Pills.
After more than half a month had passed, his lifespan had already exceeded three thousand years.
In order to obtain enough Revival Pills to last a hundred years, the various factions began resorting to increasingly extreme methods, even refining living people into resources.
Before Jade Splendor could react, more than a thousand cultivators had already died.
Though Jade Splendor had long been accustomed to treating flesh and bone as resources within the Restraint Officers' Hall, even he had never seen anything this extreme.
Fearing the factions might drive themselves to extinction, he simply began selling Revival Pills at near-giveaway prices.
After all, Ren Qing's primary goal was harvesting more lifespan. He had no interest whatsoever in the meager resources those factions possessed.
The various factions sensed that something was strange.
However, unless their lifespan was nearly exhausted, even Yang God realm cultivators had difficulty accurately determining how much lifespan they still possessed.
Ren Qing remained immersed in the Ghostly Transformation fusion process.
By now, he was thoroughly experienced with it.
When only the final six transformations remained, he stopped performing the fusion manually and instead used the Information Flow to forcibly complete it by consuming lifespan.
The transformations gradually merged into one.
Ren Qing opened his eyes.
The Disaster Elimination Method had finally reached the peak of the Yin Difference realm, and an embryonic divine ability was born.
[Lifespan: 2,874 years]
[Disaster Elimination Method (Storyteller, Mirror Immortal, Disguise Technique, Longevous Tortoise), Hidden Door of the Strange Belly (Preaching Elder, Strange Mirror Wanderer, Hundred Faces in One Lifetime, Knowing Fate in Vain)..]
[Divine Ability: Walk Among Mortals]
Ren Qing's eyelids twitched.
At the exact moment another crack appeared on the tortoise shell, information regarding Walk Among Mortals flooded into his mind.
For several breaths after activating Walk Among Mortals, both body and soul would temporarily merge with heaven and earth.
Then, as long as the target was within the coverage range of the Disguise Technique and was a living being affected by the technique, Ren Qing could silently erase them and replace them without leaving any trace.
Naturally, the memories and techniques of the being he replaced would also be temporarily inherited.
Wherever his feet tread, there was the mortal world.