Chapter 220: Chapter 80 Special Page [Harmonization]
The puppets walked forward, their bodies emanating a thick aura of Ash Spirit Power, roughly at the Dan Formation Stage level.
At the same time, their pieced-together bodies began to heal, and intricate tattoo-like patterns began to emerge on their skin.
However, compared to Li Mo’s tattoos, the puppets’ designs were chaotic and disorganized.
"Awakened."
"Awakened, awakened."
The puppets murmured incomprehensibly, then suddenly sprinted madly toward the Taiyin Law Heaven, slamming their heads forcefully against its sealed entrance.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Dull thuds echoed from the Taiyin Law Heaven; such crude methods were incapable of breaking through a High Grade Magical Artifact.
Yet, the blood splattering from them contained phosphorescent light, causing the Taiyin Law Heaven to inexplicably begin a transformation, slowly taking on the quality of flesh and blood.
The Ghost Tiger and Salamander chose not to retaliate.
With their considerable Spiritual Wisdom, they instinctively understood the balance of pros and cons.
At present, Li Mo was in seclusion, attempting to break through his bottleneck. Depleting too much Spiritual Power or blood could well jeopardize his promotion to the Nascent Crying Stage.
Although the puppets’ behavior was bizarre and unnerving, for the time being, they posed no real threat to the Taiyin Law Heaven.
Soon, the residual fluctuations from the breakthroughs within the cave reached their climax.
The puppets halted their actions. Their three figures, already battered to the point of being covered in wounds and scars, stood tilted, less than two meters away from the Taiyin Law Heaven.
A look of contemplation appeared in their stiff gazes, as if they were constantly adjusting themselves.
Blood and flesh collapsed and reassembled, bones snapped and then healed, facial features twisted and mutated, while the phosphorescent light shone eerily bright.
The sight was chilling to behold.
Just as the puppets were encroaching ever closer to Li Mo, a sudden sound pierced through the air from within the cave.
Whoosh!
A limb abruptly shot out and pierced straight through the puppet with the Primordial Dao Body.
The puppet had no time to react; it continued mumbling incomprehensibly as its dissolved Five Internal Organs could be seen clearly through the wound.
The remaining puppets stiffly turned, taking faltering steps toward the Bone Wall as they tried to flee.
Li Mo flung out the Blood Soul, and intestinal tendrils burrowed into the remaining puppets, binding the melting furnaces at their cores, rendering them completely immobile.
"Awakened..."
The puppets convulsed uncontrollably, the phosphorescent light gradually fading from their bodies.
Taking advantage of the puppets’ lingering life force, Li Mo used his Divine Sense to probe their inner workings, discovering that they indeed possessed corresponding Taoist Bodies.
In fact, if he wanted to, Li Mo could brand their Taoist Bodies using the Raiding Page.
After a brief moment, the puppets, deprived of phosphorescent light to sustain them, collapsed into lifeless piles of flesh.
"Truly insidious. Why would the Mother Furnace deliberately create puppets to mimic me? Could it be related to the Five Dao Body connection..."
The puppets’ blood and flesh were sourced from the Inner Sect disciples of the Sub-Device Sect who had possessed similar Taoist Bodies in the past. These bodies were forcibly merged by the phosphorescent light.
However, the Ancient Sacred Body was formed by merging the Life-gathering Beast Body with the Hundred Beasts Blood Body, while the Heavenly Man was a diminished version of the Heavenly Human Seven Apertures.
Both were unique to Li Mo’s Taoist Bodies, so only three puppets had been created.
Li Mo absorbed the flesh and blood into the Corpse Mountain, gazing at the re-silenced Bone Wall. The skull fragments within collided against one another, producing unsettling noises.
Rumble...
The earth began to quake again.
Li Mo’s expression subtly shifted as he noticed that the ground was sinking by millimeters.
It wasn’t just Zone 10—likely the entire Outer Heaven Meteorite Crater was undergoing a collapse that appeared to worsen over time.
Li Mo returned to the Taiyin Law Heaven, opting to remain in place and wait for the Special Page to fully assemble.
If genuine danger were to arise, nowhere in Zone 10 would be safe, though it seemed unlikely to pose a threat to someone like Li Mo, an Inner Sect Disciple.
He continued to stabilize his cultivation.
Both of his Golden Cores had just successfully broken through to the Nascent Crying Stage and had grown to over twice their original size.
At first glance, the Golden Cores resembled women heavily pregnant in their tenth month, with strange entities periodically squirming within, seemingly attempting to break through their confinement.
Li Mo scrutinized the Golden Cores with a slightly perplexed expression. Their increasingly bizarre and inexplicable forms left him at a loss for understanding.
The Mist Fog Golden Core, originally cratered and rugged like a meteorite, had now grown a layer of fine Beast Fur, interspersed with scales.
The nascent soul incubating within the Mist Fog Golden Core seemed undoubtedly linked to "beasts."
Similarly, the Ash Golden Core’s volcanic-like surface had transformed into a metallic sheen, releasing smoke filled with a pungent, acrid smell.
The nascent soul within it appeared to embody "artifacts."
Li Mo recalled the ancient Cultivation World, where the cultivation system back then treated the Nascent Soul as closer to the cultivator’s Primordial Spirit.
It was only because the Nascent Soul fused with the Three Souls and Seven Spirits that it took the form of a baby.
Yet in the modern Cultivation World, Li Mo had the impression that the Golden Core actually incubated physical infants, a grotesque and indescribable form of progeny.
In a way,
the quest for Immortality had severed the cultivators’ capacity for procreation. Could the formation of a Nascent Soul be an alternative way of creating offspring?
"Haha..."
Li Mo chuckled bitterly. Regardless, his path to Nascent Soul formation would undoubtedly be fraught with difficulty. The sheer indestructibility of his Flawless Golden Cores rivaled that of Hundred Refinement Magical Artifacts.
For now, successfully advancing to the Nascent Crying Stage was already a relief.
Li Mo, just over a hundred years old, still had ample time to break the Golden Core and form his Nascent Soul before the Uncertainty Period Death Disease took root.
The Stinky Lung Soul had merged into the Mist Fog Golden Core during the Nascent Crying Stage.
It resembled a sponge riddled with dense pores, and the awakened Divine Skill was named [Qiankun Geomancy].
The terms Qiankun represented Yin and Yang, Heaven and Earth, while Geomancy combined "Heavenly Dao" and "Earthly Dao," aligning it with celestial and terrestrial rites.
Qiankun Geomancy’s techniques primarily centered on arrays.
Unlike other disciplines, arrays hadn’t drastically shifted with the changes in the heavens and earth, maintaining a largely consistent framework.
Of course, Li Mo wasn’t yet proficient in proper array cultivation. Most Loose Cultivators around port cities were merely run-of-the-mill Qi Cultivators.
Qi Cultivation sounded nice on the surface but essentially amounted to patchwork cultivation, cobbled together from various scraps of Cultivation Techniques.
Loose Cultivators relied heavily on arrays to aid their cultivation, making it easy to purchase foundational array manuals in port cities.
Li Mo had little interest in arrays.
But he had predicted this awakening of array-related Divine Skills. Having previously collected manuals, his Qiankun Geomancy skill now had ample resources to draw from.
Li Mo cast Qiankun Geomancy, uncovering a few upgraded arrays.
He skimmed through them and noted that the improved Spirit Gathering Array added 30% more Spiritual Energy, but it wasn’t nearly as convenient as the Primordial Dao Body, which enhanced the environment’s Spiritual Energy density at its source.
"No point in dual-cultivating arrays for now; it’s not particularly useful to me anyway."
Gu Worms had occasional uses, such as tracking targets or scouting terrains, and they could enrich his small world. Poison Making and array cultivation were currently of incidental value at best.
Perhaps only when Li Mo encountered Poison Cultivators or array repairers from the modern Cultivation World would these two skills truly show their potential.
Only the Corpse Dog Soul remained among the Seven Spirits, which should nurture an Innate Taoist Body.
Taoist Bodies related to souls were something Li Mo had never seen or heard of before.
While stabilizing his cultivation, Li Mo used Spiritual Power to cleanse the Da Ai Mi Tian. The life-bound artifact’s spirit pattern quickly began to take shape.
Li Mo couldn’t help but feel curious about what kind of Spirit Patterns the Da Ai Mi Tian would develop.
If the Corpse Mountain could generate Dual Spirit Patterns, the Da Ai Mi Tian, being part of his body and infused with the Five Dao Body, should theoretically be even stronger.
The Da Ai Mi Tian’s Spirit Pattern formation proved more challenging than anticipated.
Li Mo continually poured resources into it, especially Innate Essence, even expending the medicinal power of the Nourishing Yuan Fruit he had just accumulated.
Only when the Phosphor Special Page reached three-fifths completion did the Da Ai Mi Tian barely reveal its Spirit Pattern.
Upon seeing just a single Spirit Pattern, faint disappointment flashed across Li Mo’s eyes.
In his mind, the Da Ai Mi Tian, as his life-bound magical artifact, should have at least three Spirit Patterns.
However, Li Mo quickly noticed the profound intricacy of the Da Ai Mi Tian’s Spirit Pattern, whose structure far surpassed the complexity of Five Elements or Yin Yang Spirit Patterns.
He inhaled sharply.
Even a mere one or two percent of the Spirit Pattern overwhelmed his senses, forcing him to rely on Divine Sense to absorb its information.
Cr-cr-crack.
Li Mo’s head split open slightly, releasing intense heat waves that filled the cave.
Even with photographic memory, the Divine Skill began to operate under extreme stress.
"Damn it."
Li Mo hastily canceled the skill; the Spirit Pattern’s sheer informational load left him fearing that his brain might melt and explode into mush.
The Dual Golden Cores also began showing signs of impending destabilization.
Within the Golden Cores, the nascent souls instinctively struggled to breach their confines prematurely, yet soon settled, with only intermittent cries breaking the silence.
"No wonder the Nascent Crying Stage is considered the most dangerous phase of the Core Formation Stage. Even with the Dual Golden Cores imprinted, they’ve already nearly destabilized me several times."
Li Mo examined the Da Ai Mi Tian’s Spirit Pattern.
The Spirit Pattern was named [Mutated].
For some reason, he had a sense that the Mutated Spirit Pattern might be connected to the Longevity Spiritual Pattern.
Cancer cells, after all, were a type of cell capable of infinite division and proliferation, unlike ordinary cells that degraded with each division.
Theoretically, as long as the body could withstand the ravages of cancer cells, true longevity could be achieved.
Li Mo furrowed his brow. Spirit Patterns like Mutated had never existed in the ancient Cultivation World; it must have been an abnormality spawned by the upheavals of heaven and earth.
"A life-bound magical artifact isn’t limited to a single Spirit Pattern. There must be other methods to add more."
Li Mo didn’t feel dejected; noticing that it would take centuries for the Mutated Spirit Pattern to fully mature, he chose not to nurture it with the Nourishing Yuan Fruit’s medicinal power.
Though he could justify carrying a pseudo-treasure as a life-bound magical artifact, reaching the level of a genuine Magic Treasure would draw far too much unwanted attention.
The Da Ai Mi Tian was one of Li Mo’s key methods of survival; keeping it as a pseudo-treasure until reaching the Nascent Soul Stage would be prudent.
Taking a glance outside the cave, Li Mo noted that no humanoid puppets had appeared after his breakthrough, further implying that the prior disturbance had not been a random anomaly.
What followed was an unusually peaceful period of secluded cultivation.
Over thirty years passed.
Li Mo’s outward appearance showed no signs of aging. With the Da Ai Mi Tian fully achieving pseudo-treasure status, the cultivated cancer cells within grew increasingly vibrant.
Solely relying on the Da Ai Mi Tian’s cancer cells, he now possessed frightening regenerative abilities.
Most cultivators at the Core Formation Stage still relied on elixirs to recover from injuries, yet Li Mo seemed to have transcended into a more orthodox Cultivation Path.
Li Mo knew well that without becoming immortal, everything was but a fleeting illusion.
The Phosphor Special Page was finally completed.
According to the information revealed from the Creation Book, the Phosphor Special Page was called [Harmonization], deeply connected with the Raiding Page.
The Raiding Page was for stealing Taoist Bodies.
The Harmonization Page, by contrast, enabled the fusion of Taoist Bodies.
Before Li Mo could investigate further, the depths of the crater began to tremble violently, with rock walls collapsing continually—a phenomenon clearly triggered by the Harmonization Page.
Li Mo immediately worked on maneuvering the Taiyin Law Heaven away from the Bone Wall.