Chapter 244: Chapter 10 The Third Dantian [Temple]
Fake Soul Consciousness still needs more than a decade to gestate. Li Mo took the opportunity to lay low and, on the side, delve deeper into the Lifeless Ten Directions Spirit Festival.
The Nearby Array was set up within the cave mansion, supplemented by the Blood Sea Dust scattered across the mountain summit.
If any high-level cultivators approached, Li Mo could escape immediately.
"Using the Body of No Life to nurture the temple should be the most appropriate choice. Furthermore, I don’t need to worry about the No-Life Mother tracking me down."
Li Mo couldn’t help but glance at the Corpse Mountain Mini World. In the pool atop its peak, Corpse Wine soaked the corpse of the Body of No Life.
The temple could be formed using one’s own flesh and blood, or by devouring the bodies of others.
Li Mo tended toward compromise—a mix of his own flesh and blood, paired with the corpse of the Body of No Life, would undoubtedly forge an extremely compatible temple.
The tricky part lay in modifying the entry-level content of the Lifeless Ten Directions Spirit Festival. He could only pin his hopes on the Fake Soul Consciousness.
In the cultivation system of the No-Life Sect, the temple was of utmost importance, even surpassing the significance of the Golden Core or Nascent Soul. The phase of childhood was essentially the temple’s formative process.
The eventual form of the temple’s divine statue was intricately tied to Li Mo’s Taoist Body.
"Ah..."
Li Mo sighed deeply, feeling helpless as the Creation Book Pages remained scarce.
The temple should ideally imprint the Creation Book, but Li Mo only possessed a Metal Spirit Root Page, which wasn’t suitable for the Lifeless Ten Directions Spirit Festival.
The No-Life Sect primarily worshiped evil spirits, and its spiritual power predominantly comprised Yin attributes or the rarer blood attributes, making metal completely incompatible.
The temple ought to be imprinted with a Yin-Blood Spiritual Root Page, yet top-grade Spirit Stones were exceedingly rare.
"Forget it, I’ll set aside the matter of imprinting for now. After all, with Da Ai Mi Tian in place, the temple isn’t likely to lose control at lower realms."
In contrast, the Demon Golden Core presented no concerns.
Li Mo planned to imprint it later with the blank pages he’d gain after advancing to the Nascent Soul Stage.
"How intriguing."
According to the cultivation technique, the Golden Core and Nascent Soul of Lifeless Demon Cultivators were inseparably bound to the temple. Even during the Divine Separation Stage, when the Nascent Soul transformed into an Externalized Dharma Body, it would entirely merge with the temple, which served as the middle elixir field.
By the Divine Separation Stage, the temple could leave the Demon Cultivator’s body and replace the Externalized Dharma Body altogether.
As long as the temple remained undamaged, even if the Golden Core and Nascent Soul were destroyed, they could regenerate entirely.
Li Mo still only grasped the concepts partially and continued pondering the Lifeless Ten Directions Spirit Festival, diving into it with full focus, where time raced by like a galloping steed.
The mountains experienced the ebb and flow of spring and winter, cycling through the changing seasons endlessly.
Crops sprouted from the soil, and in the blink of an eye, golden ears of wheat adorned the fields, with mortals laboring in terraced fields and swiftly storing their harvest into granaries.
Li Mo grew increasingly accustomed to solitary meditation and secluded cultivation.
He felt a strange sense of distortion, as if the higher his cultivation realm rose, the shorter his perception of time became; decades felt as fleeting as opening and closing his eyes.
The No-Life Sect appeared uninterested in pursuing Elder Han Feng’s death.
Or perhaps the sect had made too many enemies to determine which group Li Mo represented, let alone the fact that the damage he had caused was insignificant.
Li Mo opened his eyes.
Suspended within the Mud Pill Palace was a brand-new Fake Soul. Utilizing the Mayfly Dream technique, it simulated the Lifeless Ten Directions Spirit Festival in a predictive manner.
Within the generated illusion realm, another Li Mo sat cross-legged in the cave mansion.
The Fake Soul Consciousness, following Li Mo’s envisioned trajectory, extracted the corpse of the Body of No Life and attempted to cultivate the Lifeless Ten Directions Spirit Festival.
But the difficulty of using the Body of No Life to nurture the temple proved overwhelming, and the process went poorly.
After multiple attempts, the Fake Soul Consciousness, aided by Da Ai Mi Tian, finally found its stride.
Even so, the resulting temple’s quality merely matched the Dual Dao Body, far from fully harnessing the potential of the Six Paths Body and the Body of No Life.
The Fake Soul Consciousness expressed regret, and the Primordial Tao Seed began refining the Lifeless Ten Directions Spirit Festival, rendering the entry-level method more accessible.
It sighed and muttered, "It’s a shame the cultivation technique must be mastered to leverage the Primordial Tao Seed; otherwise, the temple wouldn’t be so compromised."
"Never mind. It was chosen to rapidly achieve Nascent Soul anyway."
The Fake Soul Consciousness closed its eyes in cultivation, its temple harboring abundant traits of the Body of No Life and resembling a grotesque divine statue pieced together from rotting flesh.
The attempted fusion of the Six Paths Body and the Body of No Life remained superficial.
After twenty years of arduous cultivation within the illusion realm, the Fake Soul Consciousness barely reached the Late Teenage realm, failing to exhibit the advantages of a Demon Sect technique.
Its methods grew increasingly extreme, using the living beings within the Corpse Mountain Mini World for the blood-soaked sacrifices of the No-Life Sect, attempting to achieve Core Formation.
Yet disaster struck—due to flaws in its temple, its spiritual power backfired, showing signs of deviation.
The Fake Soul Consciousness descended into hysteria.
"Impossible! With my talent, there’s no way I would be stuck at the Core Formation bottleneck. I am the Innate Six Paths Body, Double Flawless Golden Core..."
The Fake Soul Consciousness’s eyes widened as the edges of the illusion realm began to collapse.
"So that’s it. It was all fake."
The Fake Soul Consciousness’s expression turned despairing as it was entirely obliterated by the Mayfly Dream.
Li Mo absorbed the Fake Soul’s memories, expertly filtering out the emotions from its final moments to maintain the stability of his mental realm.
After the Primordial Tao Seed adjusted the Lifeless Ten Directions Spirit Festival, it undoubtedly aligned better with Li Mo, even incorporating the fusion with the Body of No Life in its opening Chapters.
The cultivation technique encompassed five traits.
[Sacrifice]: Absorbs the spirit of believers, restoring oneself.
[Lifeless]: Ensures believers are unlikely to develop rebellious intent.
[Spirit Master]: Even if spiritual power is mingled, as long as it doesn’t escape the temple’s control, backlash from spirit energy won’t occur.
[True Void]: After Foundation Establishment, the temple can facilitate entry into the True Void Hometown.
[Zhuang Shen]: The divine sense nourished through believers’ sacrifices can recover rapidly upon their deaths.
"A cultivation technique with five distinct traits."
Li Mo sensed that the Lifeless Ten Directions Spirit Festival left room for further refinement and wasn’t the complete technique of the No-Life Sect, though its profundity was staggering.
He reviewed the contents of the childhood phase and began selecting spiritual energy from the Corpse Mountain Mini World.
Ever since the Corpse Mountain reached the level of a magic treasure, its spiritual energy was sufficient to sustain cultivation up to the Core Formation realm, even spawning dozens of unique variations.
Li Mo drew from the Fake Soul’s experience and quickly honed in on a target.
[Turbid Blood Spirit Qi]
Turbid Blood Spirit Qi belonged to the dual attributes of Yin and Blood and was an ideal match for the temple. It typically emerged in chaotic burial mounds rife with corpses, and the Corpse Mountain itself was formed from chunks of flesh and blood, accompanied by thousands of inhabitants, naturally making it abundant.
Li Mo’s thoughts stirred, and a vortex rose above the Corpse Mountain Mini World.
Turbid Blood Spirit Qi frantically surged into the cave mansion, tightly contained by the array formations to prevent any leakage.
Li Mo summoned the multiple-armed spine of the Spider Demon, suspending the corpse of the Body of No Life before him, and utilized Da Ai Mi Tian to refine the corpse ahead of time.
As cancer cells infiltrated its flesh, blood, and bones, a peculiar vitality radiated from this lifeless object.
Li Mo nodded slightly.
Once everything was confirmed, he absorbed a sliver of Turbid Blood Spirit Qi into his body, circulating it along the trajectory outlined by the Lifeless Ten Directions Spirit Festival.
When the circulation cycle completed, the Turbid Blood Spirit Qi settled in Li Mo’s chest.
A sharp pain spread throughout his body, signaling the nascent formation of his third middle elixir field.
The temple was positioned between the melting furnace and multiple dantians, ensuring that any signs of instability could be subdued by the Dual Golden Core.
Li Mo tirelessly absorbed the spiritual energy, and the divine statue-like temple gradually took shape.
The temple’s nurturing process was peculiar, constructing the outline first and then filling it in slowly.
Once the outline was set, Li Mo directed Da Ai Mi Tian to decompose the Body of No Life, whose blood-like fragments seeped into him through his pores in the form of micro dust.
The magic technique refined by the Primordial Tao Seed demanded precise control over the spiritual energy; otherwise, the temple’s creation would be suboptimal.
Li Mo relied entirely on the assistance of his divine sense, constantly fine-tuning the temple.
Time passed unnoticed.
As the third middle elixir field became fully formed, Li Mo smoothly ascended to the First Level of Puberty, while faint Turbid Blood Spirit Qi floated within the temple.
At the First Level of Puberty, the temple appeared as a simple mud sculpture, though the tattered vestments on the divine statue seemed to emanate the aura of a leakless body.
The divine statue exuded a sense of uncontrived perfection, displaying how seamlessly the Body of No Life merged with the temple, without antagonizing Li Mo himself.
Highly satisfied, Li Mo opened his mouth and devoured the Turbid Blood Spirit Qi within the cave mansion.
When he cultivated with Ash Spirit Power, childhood passed in mere minutes; Turbid Blood Spirit Qi operated even faster, achieving perfection in just a few breaths.
Childhood revolved around shaping the temple, ensuring the Six Paths Body integrated deeply into the middle elixir field.
At the Second Layer of Puberty, the temple took on an appearance akin to human skin, its surface inscribed with intricate patterns of the Primordial Dao Body.
At the Third Layer of Puberty, the temple expanded dramatically in size, and under the influence of Paoxiao Swallowing Body, insects and beasts formed from his five internal organs began to emerge from its mouth and nose.
At the Fourth Layer of Puberty, seven differently colored eyes grew on the temple’s forehead, symbolizing the seven-headed tattooed beast of the Ancient Sacred Body.
At the Fifth Layer of Puberty, a halo materialized behind the temple’s head, teeming with writhing mayflies upon closer inspection.
At the Sixth Layer of Puberty, the temple shed all traces of dust, its surface pristine and flawless, though its extremities were surrounded by dense black smoke.
It seemed to purge its inner filth outward, embodying the dual nature of a heavenly being’s purity and impurity.
The temple’s divine statue wasn’t static—each breakthrough in cultivation transformed its form.
Li Mo’s expression grew complicated, as the temple radiated an aura reminiscent of an immortal from the heavens; one glance was likely to compel mortals to bow down in reverence.
Yet upon closer observation, the hollow temple was entirely filled with cancer cells that could lead the divine statue into aberration with the slightest provocation.
One side symbolized divinity, the other spoke of monstrosity.
After employing the Leakless Body, the temple reduced its conspicuous display of Six Paths Body traits.
Li Mo continued absorbing Turbid Blood Spirit Qi, aiming for Foundation Establishment.
With the robust Eight Extraordinary Meridians, the circulation speed of Turbid Blood Spiritual Power proved astonishing; passing through multiple dantians even purified it slightly.
The bottleneck to Foundation Establishment lasted only a single minute.
Li Mo laughed aloud three times as his blood-stained spiritual power liquefied within the temple.
He communicated with the temple; as spiritual power was consumed, blood and flesh began to grow in his palm, forming a miniature divine statue within moments.
"Go."
The miniature divine statue expanded to over two meters, resembling a figuring crafted entirely from mud.
Upon reaching the Weak Crown Period, a temple could form the "No-Life Divine Statue" using spiritual power and flesh.
The No-Life Divine Statue lay between a puppet and a spell.
Li Mo could absorb the essence of believers through the No-Life Divine Statue; even if placed a thousand miles away, he retained full control over those nearby believers.
Even in death, believers couldn’t rest peacefully. Their corpses left within the range of the No-Life Divine Statue would transform into colorless "Grey People."
Upon reaching the Core Formation Stage, demon cultivators could even project their consciousness into the No-Life Divine Statue.
Li Mo didn’t explore the No-Life Divine Statue further, as the True Void Hometown created by the No-Life Mother had already developed a faint connection with the temple.