Li Mo felt that the Black Market was definitely not as simple as it appeared on the surface.
The area within two hundred miles centered around Smelting Town might well have once been the ruins of the Heart Beast Sect. What the Black Market represented, however, remained unknown.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh...
As Li Mo pondered, several cultivators streaked past overhead.
They rode magical artifacts resembling beast limbs toward the Heart Beast Black Market, but once they drew near a certain range, they still switched to traveling on foot.
Li Mo did not rush closer. Instead, he stood on high ground and observed the Black Market in detail.
He discovered that compared with Smelting Town, the Heart Beast Black Market was far more chaotic. Thus, the cultivators entering and leaving were exceedingly cautious, almost all wearing long robes to conceal their exposed features.
At the same time, the degree of bodily deformity among the cultivators far surpassed anything he had imagined.
Some cultivators could no longer maintain human form at all, moving across the desolate, boundless plains in bizarre postures.
Li Mo shook his head, switched into the New Human Skin, and draped himself in a loose Daoist robe.
He waited until the sky had slightly darkened before setting off for the Heart Beast Black Market.
The cultivators deliberately kept their distance from one another. From the bones half-buried in the soil, it was clear that murder and robbery were far from uncommon.
Li Mo had long been mentally prepared.
According to the memories that had gradually surged forth from the Book of Fortune, even in the Ancient Immortal Cultivation World, the living conditions of Rogue Cultivators had been just as brutal.
Li Mo arrived before the Black Market without giving anything away. The black fog was unfathomably deep, completely sealing off what lay within, while cultivators occasionally entered and exited.
He hesitated for half a breath, then lowered his head and stepped into the black fog.
The world spun around him. Darkness swallowed his vision, and all sound around him fell silent, as though he had arrived in a Minor World hidden within an abyss.
Li Mo's five senses gradually recovered, and incessant mockery drifted down from overhead.
"Pour spiritual power into your eyes. You don't even know such a rudimentary Dharma Gate?"
"Hurry and adapt, unless you want to end up as roadside bones."
"Ha ha ha ha..."
The voices rose and fell one after another. Li Mo needed no reminder; he had already poured spiritual power into his eyes, though he was somewhat unaccustomed to the corrosiveness of Miasma Spiritual Power.
"Junior!"
"Consider this old man to have done you a favor today. Remember to repay me in the future."
The thick fog dispersed, and the things within the Black Market brightened into view.
Li Mo looked overhead and saw that more than a hundred babbling heads hung from the gateway at the Black Market's entrance.
Iron chains pierced the temples of their heads. Their cultivation must have at least completed Spiritual Root Transformation of the five viscera; otherwise, they could not possibly have survived outside their bodies for so long.
Li Mo ignored the heads.
Looking around, he found that the Heart Beast Black Market was a street stretching beyond sight, with no distinction between day and night, filled with blood and greed.
Two rows of shops were scattered along the street, while countless stalls lined the roadside.
Li Mo looked toward the cultivators passing by. Their mouths opened and closed, yet no sound could be heard.
Clearly, the Heart Beast Black Market deliberately weakened cultivators' five senses to ensure that no one's identity would be easily exposed.
Under the effects of a Formation, the street had become a marketplace suited to clandestine dealings. No one knew how many sordid acts were being committed openly and in secret.
The Black Market's keeper was at least an Establishment Stage cultivator.
Li Mo had not mastered any eye technique, so his field of view was extremely limited. Everything beyond a hundred meters was a blur.
Even so, he still noticed the madness of the Black Market's Rogue Cultivators, as well as the obvious connection between the Spells they wielded and Smelting Town.
If the transformations of Body Beastification caused by Smelting Town Spells had evolved from the compatibility between Variant Spiritual Energy and Spells—
Then no matter what one's body became, it would not damage one's foundation.
The Black Market's Rogue Cultivators, however, took extremity to its absolute limit, displaying it in full and vivid detail.
They gave no thought to their foundations. Even if their bodies could barely withstand the alterations, as long as it suited their short-term interests, they would not hesitate in the slightest.
"Roar, roar, roar, roar."
A Rogue Cultivator passed by, and a Mandrill Head had actually been transplanted onto his neck. Countless threads tangled chaotically around the crude seam, with blood constantly seeping from it.
If Han Cai had seen such a crude operation, he would have shaken his head again and again.
Li Mo glanced at the Two-Headed Cultivator.
He noticed that the Mandrill Head seemed to be specifically responsible for cultivation, its remaining consciousness inhaling and exhaling a particular kind of Variant Spiritual Energy.
From time to time, the cultivator stuffed food into the Mandrill Head's mouth, proving that the human and beast heads did not share a single set of five viscera.
Perhaps that would also make them easier to separate in the future.
Li Mo's scalp prickled.
Only Eternal Life could make cultivators mistreat their own bodies so wantonly. If the Mandrill Head went out of control, the man would immediately die a violent death.
Rogue Cultivators like this were everywhere in the Black Market.
One cultivator had placed his heart directly outside his body, brazenly hanging it from his waist. The blood vessels connected to it had taken on a crystalline form.
Once the heartbeat stopped, the cultivator would set about replacing it with a new heart.
He treated hearts entirely as consumables, using them only to delay the onset of Death Sickness and provide his body with a brief, faint trace of vitality.
Just as Li Mo was preparing to search for a shop selling Bizarre Beast Corpses, he heard the heads on the gateway begin making their presence known again.
"Junior, the inn is three hundred meters ahead on the left. Yi Bao Pavilion is seven hundred and fifty meters ahead on the right. Spell Hall is..."
The Long Beard Head gave a strange laugh and rattled off an endless introduction to the Black Market, then smugly swayed. "I'll remember you, Junior."
"If you have the heart, give me a section of spine as thanks someday. A spine from the Childhood Stage will do. I, Old Yue, am not picky."
"Don't listen to him. Give the spine to this old lady instead. I can even tell you all about my romantic exploits from when I was alive, ha ha ha."
"You're nothing but heads now! What romantic exploits? Have you no shame?!"
The heads began quarrelling. If they had not been bound by iron chains, they would inevitably have come to blows.
Li Mo shook his head. Just as he was about to leave the entrance, a figure stopped beside him.
The other person was wrapped in a Daoist robe, and he could only tell from her voice that she was a female cultivator. "Ignore those Ghost Heads. They owe the Black Market quite a bit of debt, and their organs have already been mortgaged off."
"They demand spines only in hopes that one day, they can gather enough body parts to escape the fate of hanging from the gateway for thousands upon thousands of years."
After saying that, she vanished into the Black Market.
The Ghost Heads burst into curses, even spitting pus and blood from their mostly rotted Tongues toward the female cultivator's retreating back.
Li Mo glanced at the female cultivator and caught an inexplicable fishy stench in his nostrils.
He followed her away from the entrance. No wonder Jin Li was so wary of the Black Market. This ghostly place was filled with temptations everywhere, as though Spirit Stones could buy every resource imaginable.
Yet the Heart Beast Black Market also concealed danger. One misstep, and one would be swallowed whole.
Only after Li Mo entered the Heart Beast Black Market did he understand why so many people fell into debt. In front of many shops hung all kinds of fluorescent signs.
Buying original hearts, priced according to the vitality contained within. Starting at twenty Mid-grade Spirit Stones.
Growing limbs, Bone-Mending Pills provided. Also purchasing intact limbs. Starting at five Mid-grade Spirit Stones.
Hiring Medical Hall physicians, proficient in Universal Skill. Compensation negotiable. Spirit Contract begins at ten years.
"Why does it feel like the Black Market and Smelting Town have completely gone their separate ways?"
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