Yellow sand filled the skies of the Iron Cauldron Secret Realm, and Bizarre Beast Corpses spasmed from time to time, sending gravel continuously rolling down from the mountaintops.
Cultivators digging into the Rock Walls could be seen everywhere.
To find high-quality Spiritual Herbs, one had to enter the interior of Corpse Mountain, so Childhood Stage cultivators with shallow cultivation all remained on its surface.
A gust of foul, fishy-smelling sand blew past.
Li Mo appeared in the Iron Cauldron Secret Realm. The exposed skin of his body was wrapped in the Desert Diagram, while strips of cloth extending from his shoulders carried the Bird in a Cage artifact.
Without realizing it, his appearance had begun to align with the aesthetic of the Heart Beast Black Market.
Li Mo surveyed Corpse Mountain. Molten Town Cultivators were mixed among Rogue Cultivators, but all of them kept their heads lowered as they gathered Spiritual Herbs, without communicating with one another.
Compared to his previous visit to the Secret Realm, many more Mine Caves had appeared across Corpse Mountain's surface.
The depths of the Mine Caves were where Spiritual Herbs gathered. Corpse Mountain's surface was relatively safe, but the gains there were truly meager.
During his seclusion, Li Mo had continuously sought information about the Iron Cauldron Secret Realm.
He had heard all manner of rumors and gossip, from which he could glimpse fragments of reality. It seemed the primary danger within the Mine Caves came from "Clay Sculptures."
The three warnings summarized by cultivators were the most widely circulated in the Black Market.
There were no temples within the Mine Caves.
When encountering a Clay Sculpture, do not turn back. Keep your eyes on it as you move away.
Once Spiritual Herbs were found, they had to be dug out as quickly as possible.
Without changing his expression, Li Mo activated Paint Green Clothes. The Ghost Tiger immediately detached from his right arm and hid within the shadows cast by the rock wall.
The Ghost Tiger was responsible for keeping watch. So long as a cultivator approached, it would alert him at once.
With Li Mo's current physique, the Flesh and Blood Spiritual Power needed to sustain the Ghost Tiger would not affect his condition in the slightest.
Li Mo's process of completing the Salamander Beast Head had naturally gone very smoothly.
The Salamander's essence was "life," and the Beast Head Tattoo also revealed the vigorous vitality of all things returning to life.
The Salamander was entirely blue-green, with coral-like pink flesh horns atop its head. Compared with the other Tattooed Beasts, it was truly an adorable little thing.
Li Mo summoned the Salamander, and a palm-sized Tattooed Beast appeared in his hand.
The Salamander could sense the reality of Corpse Mountain. It promptly concluded that the mountain held no life at all, then gently rubbed its flesh horns against his palm.
It was useless to expect much from it in battle, but once manifested in the outside world, it truly enveloped Li Mo in a faint vitality. It accelerated the recovery of his injuries while also allowing him to identify where natural vitality lay.
Li Mo was quite satisfied with the Salamander.
The auxiliary position of Paint Green Clothes was drawn with Beast Blood and required long-term nourishment. Its capacity for growth was what made Tattooed Beasts special.
Li Mo had made the Beast Head Tattoos as realistic as possible. Their teeth and eyeballs had already been transplanted, rendering the tattoos flawless.
As for the Kun Whale, because its original body was enormous, the transplanted eyeballs had to come from young beasts. Fortunately, Yi Bao Pavilion had stock, so the process went fairly smoothly.
After undergoing Simulation, the Beast Head Tattoos' patterns became lifelike, and the efficiency with which the Tattooed Beasts absorbed external Spiritual Energy clearly increased by quite a bit.
Li Mo glanced at the Book of Fortune, and an inexplicable odd sensation welled up in his heart.
He became even more certain that the Iron Cauldron Secret Realm possessed a method of increasing the book's pages. Perhaps it lay within the interior of Corpse Mountain.
Li Mo headed toward a secluded mine cave.
But before he had taken more than a few steps, Corpse Mountain's tremors suddenly intensified. A great number of pustules grew across its surface and swelled at a rate visible to the naked eye.
"Pseudo Bizarre Beast!!!"
A cultivator cried out in alarm, hurriedly swallowed pills to suppress the Metal Toxin, and immediately vanished from the Iron Cauldron Secret Realm.
Li Mo also knew that Corpse Mountain could give birth to Pseudo Bizarre Beasts.
Pseudo Bizarre Beasts were likewise one of the sources of Spiritual Herbs.
However, the deeper one went into Corpse Mountain, the stronger the Pseudo Bizarre Beasts encountered would become. Some Mine Caves even already contained Bizarre Beasts at the Childhood Stage.
Li Mo stopped where he was and watched the pustule swell to roughly two meters in size.
As fine cracks spread over it, a strangely shaped Pseudo Bizarre Beast crawled out from within, its mouth emitting cries similar to those of an infant.
The Pseudo Bizarre Beast was unexpectedly humanoid. Its limbs were abnormally long, while its body resembled that of an ordinary human, giving it an unsettling sense of discord.
Li Mo frowned slightly.
Sinister Beasts formed from cultivators after an outbreak of Death Sickness. What realm had Corpse Mountain been in while it was alive, for it to become such a colossal giant Sinister Beast?
The Establishment Stage?
As Li Mo pondered, the Pseudo Bizarre Beast broke free of the pustule's restraints, tore off the umbilical cord on its abdomen, and sprinted madly toward the cultivators who had yet to leave.
All the cultivators present intended to hunt the Pseudo Bizarre Beast, but to guard against being ambushed by others, they had all chosen to form groups of two or three.
They looked toward Li Mo and swiftly recognized him from the strips of cloth covering his entire body—the famous Golden Sand Daoist.
Yet after merely one exchange.
The Pseudo Bizarre Beast's figure vanished without a trace, and Li Mo disappeared with it. Only a foul, nauseating stench remained where they had stood.
The cultivators could not help but shudder.
They suddenly understood how Yin Xue of the Viper Society had had his neck bitten through.
Li Mo had little interest in killing for treasure. The Ghost Tiger dragged the Pseudo Bizarre Beast's corpse along as they entered an abandoned mine cave together.
The mine cave's Rock Walls were made of flesh and blood, though they had already dried and blackened. They were as hard as stone and continuously seeped dark-red blood.
He expertly dissected the corpse and discovered that the Pseudo Bizarre Beast's five viscera were no different from those of an ordinary human, deepening the doubts in his heart.
Even its crystallized internal organs looked more and more like the Corpse Spirit Root.
Li Mo sorted the useful Spiritual Herbs into his Storage Bag. After the Desert Diagram absorbed all the filth covering his body, he prepared to head deeper into the mine cave.
Yet just as his palm touched the rock wall, his expression turned startled.
The Book of Fortune turned to the Blank Pages on its own. A phantom image of a deformed visceral artifact appeared on the Blank Pages, but the visceral artifact was incomparably incomplete.
Li Mo's pupils contracted.
His Magic Finger transformed into a sharp blade. He forcefully sliced open the rock wall, then meticulously observed the flesh and blood patterns at the cut.
Li Mo noticed that the flesh and blood patterns were unnatural, as though they had been pieced together afterward. Not a single drop of Bizarre Beast Blood flowed out either.
"Why does it feel..."
He used the Magic Finger to dig for a while. The visceral artifact on the Blank Pages became increasingly clear; with but a thought, he could imprint it accordingly.
After working for nearly half an hour.
Li Mo dug a metal heart from within the rock wall. Perhaps due to congenital heart disease, some of its tissue was abnormally enlarged.
Thump, thump, thump...
The heart was connected to Corpse Mountain by blood vessels, and it began beating along with the tremors.
After Li Mo tore off the heart's blood vessels, the Metallization of the visceral artifact began to worsen. Before long, it became a low-quality Spiritual Herb.
He walked through the mine cave for a while. When he finally felt his way to another rock wall, the Book of Fortune once more developed a sense of the visceral artifact.
"This Sinister Beast's body is filled with countless Visceral Artifacts. That is also where the Spiritual Herbs come from."
Put plainly, Sinister Beasts were transformed Death Sickness cultivators. Li Mo had seen an Elk Bizarre Beast being dissected, and its internal organs had been no different from those of an ordinary person.
Corpse Mountain's formation might be related to the Ziqi Sect.
Li Mo slowly walked to the mine cave entrance and watched the many cultivators excavating Spiritual Herbs.
Because they were so far away, the cultivators on the mountain looked to him like maggots writhing over a corpse, laboriously breaking down rotting flesh.
A bold thought arose in Li Mo's mind.
Perhaps the Iron Cauldron Secret Realm was merely a place where the Ziqi Sect piled up corpses.
They had Heart Beast Sect deal with the relatively useless "rotting flesh," then, once it was nearly picked clean, reclaim its crucial resources and Spiritual Herbs.
The two did not necessarily have a master-servant relationship. Why would immortals spare a glance for maggots?
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