After meditating for a few days, Ren Qing's body gradually recovered, at least to the point where he no longer felt obvious weakness.
During this period, although he didn't hold out much hope, he still tried once more to attract Non-Poison.
As a result, the soul-split successfully communicated with the Wuwei Daoist Altar, but when trying to enter, he found there wasn't enough time and could only give up helplessly.
Ren Qing settled his mind.
He continued to wait patiently for three days. He made sounds again and knocked on the iron door in coordination, as if he had gone hysterical after being locked up too long.
Several rooms along the corridor made faint noises. It was evident that Restraint Officers with unbalanced Dao hearts were not limited to the man across the door.
Non-Poison approached with heavy footsteps.
At the instant the iron door cracked open, a long tongue extended into the room, attempting to roll Ren Qing up and swallow him.
Ren Qing quickly dodged into a corner, narrowly avoiding it in a lying posture.
He looked disheveled, but in reality, he hadn't used a shred of actual effort.
He skillfully multitasked, with a soul-split gradually forming within the Niwan Palace, and he vaguely sensed the Wuwei Daoist Altar.
The reason it came so easily was mainly due to his advancement in Dao births Dao.
Ren Qing could clearly feel that his connection to the Wuwei Daoist Altar had become extremely close, far beyond what a Grand Dao Officer could match.
At the moment the soul-split left the body, his expression became dazed, and his arm took a heavy hit.
The soul-split then appeared in the spacious council hall. Looking around, he saw the familiar three Dao Ancestor statues and mats scattered across the floor.
Ren Qing couldn't help but show a look of joy.
Luckily, Non-Poison had lingered for a while. Otherwise, it might have failed again.
He shut his mouth and made no more noise. As long as Non-Poison left the iron door, he could simply wait out the remainder of his sentence.
But what Ren Qing didn't expect was that Non-Poison was still relentless, repeatedly ramming its head against the iron door, even to the point where several of the eyeballs on its skin had gone blind.
Ren Qing frowned, deciding not to sit and wait for death.
The soul-split transferred the eyeballs from Prison Within the Abdomen to his physical body via the Wuwei Daoist Altar.
Even such a simple process caused Ren Qing's head to ache, a sign that his lifespan-depleted body was truly unfit for use.
He shoved one directly into his mouth and swallowed.
Although The Taotie Method couldn't be activated, its digestive capacity still existed.
The eyeball immediately turned into a stream of heat and circulated throughout his body with the blood.
Ren Qing recovered some strength and sidestepped to dodge Non-Poison's tongue.
Even without spell arts, digesting the eyeballs brought his body up to the level of a vigorous martial artist, greatly increasing his flexibility.
He moved to a blind spot, Non-Poison couldn't see into the room through the door crack.
Ren Qing now held a dagger in his right hand.
The dagger stabbed into the tongue. It didn't pierce the skin, but it still caused Non-Poison to lose its mind.
Non-Poison tried to wrap its tongue around Ren Qing, but the latter darted and leapt, never giving it a chance.
With eyeballs in his abdomen, Ren Qing's stamina was being replenished continuously.
Also, some of the predictive ability of Double Pupils remained, and combined with the residual beast instincts from Divine Leg Sutra, he handled the poison spirit's attacks with ease.
The iron door slowly began to close.
Ren Qing's eyes lit up. He deliberately exposed a flaw and was struck by the tongue, flying across the room and using the momentum to reach a corner.
Non-Poison seemed to notice the closing crack and tried to retract its tongue.
Ren Qing slid forward and kicked the tip of the tongue, then tightly wrapped his arms around it. Even as he was dragged several meters, he refused to let go.
As the iron door shut, Non-Poison let out a cry of pain, then decisively turned and left toward the end of the corridor.
In the room across the hallway, the man in the dark looked slightly confused.
He had kindly warned him, thinking Non-Poison would fiercely attack Ren Qing, perhaps even take his life, he hadn't expected such a mild outcome.
Had the other party actually blocked Non-Poison's attack?
The man's eyes showed a hint of schadenfreude. If he was injured, things wouldn't go well when the Bottle Imp arrived.
...
Ren Qing held Non-Poison's tongue, feeling a foul stench wafting off of it.
He immediately threw it to the ground.
The tongue quickly dissipated into nothingness.
Even though Non-Poison was nearly physical, it was still formed from soul matter.
Ren Qing smiled in relief.
If Non-Poison had kept pestering him, he'd have had to consider having his soul-split retrieve the Dragon-Snake Spine from his body.
But that would've made quite a scene, and Non-Poison was immortal. Even if turned to mush, it would recover soon enough.
Feeling the longevity gained from digesting the eyeballs, Ren Qing suddenly felt more confident.
After resting briefly, he pulled out a bed to slightly improve his quality of life, and then focused most of his energy on the Wuwei Daoist Altar.
The Wuwei Daoist Altar remained unchanged, showing no signs of alteration following the Immortal Lord's death.
This proved that unless the cultivator who would control the Wuwei Daoist Altar five years later perished, no matter how far Ren Qing advanced in Dao births Dao, he couldn't override it.
However, the benefits of advancing Dao births Dao to Dao Master were obvious.
He could not only retrieve items freely but also edit fabricated spell arts, including making refinements, such as strengthening specific body parts.
Still, fabricated spell arts were fundamentally designed to hatch the Heavenly Dao Egg.
So no matter how much they were modified, they couldn't escape the fate of being food, and their power was capped at the Half-Corpse realm.
Ren Qing could now seal the Wuwei Daoist Altar at will. Any preacher below Dao Master could no longer enter.
This also completely cut off the blind Daoist's ability to continue spreading Dao births Dao.
Ren Qing set down the bamboo slip and approached the statue of Primordial Heavenly Venerable.
The arms of the three statues were all keys for entering and exiting the Dao field, not just the Council Hall, but also any Daoist shrines in the pond.
He broke off Primordial Heavenly Venerable's arm and opened the main door of the Council Hall.
Ren Qing then waited beside a lotus leaf.
When a corpse about three meters long approached the lotus, he stepped on it to test it and found it could indeed serve as a boat.
However, he didn't rush to cross the pond to other places. He had to first confirm whether there were monsters hatched from the Heavenly Dao Egg in the water.
If his soul-split was lost here, it would be a huge problem, just healing the main soul would take a full month.
Ren Qing naturally chose the most cautious method.
He carefully took out the flesh of the mountain bandit boss from Prison Within the Abdomen. But before he even threw it into the water, large ripples had already spread out.
Several shadows circled the lotus leaf, and the pond water instantly became murky.
Ren Qing quickly tossed the flesh into the air, and just as it touched the water's surface, the cry of a baby rang out.
A three-meter-long fat, bloated maggot leapt out, its flower-shaped head opening to reveal a child's face emerging from within.
Ren Qing swallowed hard. Was this the kind of monster hatched from the Heavenly Dao Egg? It felt a bit too grotesque.
The maggot devoured the flesh, and a satisfied smile appeared on the child's face.
At that moment, an even larger shadow enveloped the surrounding water.
Suddenly, a hundred-meter-tall giant maggot swallowed the smaller one whole, then sank into the water and disappeared.
The water churned, the lotus leaf trembled, and Ren Qing had trouble standing steady.
He recalled that the giant maggot looked different.
Its body had grown hundreds of densely packed legs, and the human face protruding from its flower-like mouth was that of a middle-aged man.
This indicated that the maggots could evolve.
Were they raised by the Wuwei Daoist Shrine, or had they burst forth for some unknown reason?
Only the Secret Repository Hall held the answer.
Ren Qing hesitated a little about using corpses to cross the pond. But without a better option, he had to try.
He planned to find a corpse at least twenty or thirty meters long to serve as a boat, otherwise, if it capsized, he'd be in serious trouble.
For now, he could only wait patiently. After all, the floating of corpses on the water was completely unpredictable.
Ren Qing felt like he had returned to the days of closed-door cultivation in the Corpse Burners' Hall.
Because he could retrieve items from Prison Within the Abdomen, his main body was living much more comfortably, but he couldn't send items back into the Wuwei Daoist Altar.
So Ren Qing specially placed a small wooden table next to the bed to store miscellaneous items like empty wine jars.
After staying long enough, he began to feel puzzled.
The Stomach within the Stomach held Restraint Officers who had lost control to aberration. There had to be something hidden here to alleviate the aberration of cultivators.
Although the aberration of the body was irreversible, perhaps the soul could still be saved.
It must be related to the so-called Bottle Imp.
Ren Qing suppressed his thoughts and used meditation to pass the time.
He occasionally heard the Restraint Officers in surrounding rooms making strange noises, but they clenched their teeth and soon quieted down again.
By comparison, Ren Qing showed no sign of losing control to aberration at all.
However, it was impossible to tell day from night in the Stomach within the Stomach, and there was no progress within the Wuwei Daoist Altar.
So after his body had mostly recovered, Ren Qing began exercising with makeshift equipment out of sheer boredom.
But he hadn't trained for more than a few days,
When Ren Qing suddenly, without warning, felt panic in his chest. It was the residual beast instinct from the Divine Leg Sutra Supernatural Remnant acting up.
He grabbed a dagger and hid behind the iron door. The moment it opened, he'd strike.
But after waiting a long while, the hallway remained completely silent.
Yet the sensed danger only grew more intense.
Just as Ren Qing was about to move, he felt a sudden sense of weightlessness, like falling from a great height, like being flipped over in an hourglass.
The moment he opened his eyes, he finally understood what the Bottle Imp was.
Floating nearby was a delicate glass bottle.
Inside was a mass of black mist too obscure to be seen clearly. Within it, he could vaguely make out a mouth, grinning maliciously at him inside the bottle.
Black mist poured from the mouth of the bottle.
It brushed lightly against Ren Qing's cheek like a feather.
Ren Qing recalled the heads in jars from the Secret Pavilion, he didn't know if they were related, or just different aberration paths of spell arts.
The Bottle Imp laughed for a long time, then spoke in a hoarse and strange tone:
"Everyone has a horror in their heart. Either you eat the horror, or the horror eats you."
"Are you ready? The horror is coming..."
The Bottle Imp slowly faded into the darkness.
Ren Qing noticed the restraints on his body gradually disappearing, and the room brightened, but the environment seemed to have changed.
He looked around and realized that he was inside a glass bottle.