Outside the glass bottle was enshrouded in an extremely thick white mist, there was no way to make sense of the situation.
But as long as it was confirmed that the Stomach within the Stomach was inside the Restraint Officers' Hall, then at least it wouldn't be too dangerous.
After Ren Qing found himself trapped, he tried knocking with both hands, and the moment he touched the physical surface, the information stream responded.
[Bottle Imp]
[Age: Fifty-three]
[Lifespan: Two hundred seventy-five]
[Spell: Bottle-Man (Filth-Collecting Aberrant Bottle)]
The spell called "Bottle-Man" was extremely bizarre, causing Ren Qing to feel a bit startled.
[Engraved upon a nameless ancient altar. Requires a person born with two heads to cultivate. Both heads must be placed into a porcelain bottle, kept undead by a special medicinal primer. One is hung in the gutters and backstreets, one is hung in a private academy. Only after three years can the spell be refined.]
Since it's called the Filth-Collecting Aberrant Bottle, perhaps the Bottle Imp could alleviate loss of control due to aberration.
But the entity clearly wasn't any kind of benevolent being. Its behavior more resembled playing around. Most likely, once you entered the Stomach within the Stomach, it would be difficult to leave.
Ren Qing abandoned the idea of serving his sentence peacefully.
He knew he had to find a way to understand the rules of the Stomach within the Stomach and escape from within.
Otherwise, he might be locked up for years.
Ren Qing waited for a moment.
Suddenly, the bottle he was in began to sway, as if someone was carrying it on a journey.
Ren Qing vaguely felt it was an illusion, but it still affected his body, indicating the Bottle Imp was definitely at the Yin Runner realm.
Seeing this, he tried to communicate with his soul-split.
A stabbing pain came from between his brows, and he unexpectedly tapped into part of the Twin Nightmare Ghosts' abilities.
"To be able to communicate with spells, could this be related to Twin Nightmare Ghosts' aberration of the brain?"
Ren Qing's eyes seemed to see through the mist, observing a street bustling with traffic. The illusion was likely set somewhere in Sanxiang City.
But as the jar shook, the scene suddenly changed, becoming like a hell on earth.
The pedestrians on the street turned inhuman, their appearances either rotting corpses, half-human half-beast, or even more grotesque, with legs formed entirely of a dozen malformed limbs.
Butcher shops sold human flesh, noodle shops cooked with black hair, and one could see eyeballs skewered like candied hawthorns at roadside stalls.
Ren Qing seemed to have become the Bottle Imp. He was being carried by a skin-and-bone skeleton, wobbling down a street.
What confused him was that the degrees of aberration among the residents were inconsistent, and children appeared relatively normal, showing no abnormalities.
Was this the world as seen through the Bottle Imp's eyes, able to discern good and evil in people easily?
The more evil, the more monstrous?
The skeleton carried the bottle into a dilapidated house, where the floor was covered with jars and bottles, exquisite glass containers.
Inside each was a human head.
Ren Qing's jar was placed among them, positioned near the edge.
He felt that such a realistic illusion likely originated from the Bottle Imp's memories, that is, experiences it had personally undergone.
What followed only became more bizarre.
When night fell,
Ren Qing could clearly hear strange whispers in his ears. The evil thoughts in his heart were being stimulated and magnified.
"Smash the bottle... kill them all..."
"Kill, kill, kill..."
He could only endure it with great effort, placing himself into a meditative state.
Many jars around him began trembling simultaneously, clearly the heads inside were all Restraint Officers imprisoned in the Stomach within the Stomach.
Just as Ren Qing thought he could tough it out by force of will,
The skeleton entered again, this time carrying a bamboo basket filled with all kinds of flesh, severed and mutilated human parts.
"Eat more, get more blessings."
It removed the bottle's cap and stuffed in the mangled remains.
The flesh wasn't real, it symbolized the Bottle Imp's evil thoughts, which could invoke the darkness hidden deep in one's heart.
Ren Qing became dazed. The situation was similar to the heart-demon tribulation encountered when ascending a realm, as if someone were constantly whispering temptations.
He, at least, was doing alright.
After all, his soul hadn't aberrated. He just needed to restrain his desires.
But it wasn't so for the adjacent jars, the Restraint Officers inside had completely lost control to aberration.
It was essentially a battle against another version of themselves, how could they withstand such stimulation?
Several hours passed. The rustling sounds came in waves, Restraint Officers being consumed by evil thoughts one after another.
Ren Qing was heavily affected but retained brief clarity.
His soul-split sat cross-legged atop a lotus leaf, chanting the contents of the Blindless Method in unison with his main body.
The pain between his brows intensified, gradually creating a sense of awakening, but to truly wake up remained incredibly difficult.
The Blindless Method was recited again and again, to the point that he forgot time's passing.
Thump. thump.. thump...
The moment Ren Qing heard his own heartbeat, his eyes opened.
But it was not his physical eyes, it was the extra eye that had aberrated on his brain after advancing to Double Pupils.
He found he could only sense the brain's presence, and instantly understood why the Bottle-Man illusion felt so different.
Because this spell targeted the brain, it transformed the skull into a glass bottle, imprisoning the consciousness, which then retained bodily perception.
It was, in effect, a "brain-in-a-bottle."
The other Restraint Officers' brains inside the bottles were still gathering evil thoughts, seemingly provoked intentionally by the Bottle Imp.
One might have assumed that once the mind was consumed by evil, it would be over,
But the Bottle Imp cackled and spoke:
"Horrors eat people, people eat horrors..."
Then cracks slowly appeared across the bottle's surface, and the illusion began to shatter. The influence of the spell receded like a falling tide.
Ren Qing returned to the dark room, still hearing howls from next door.
But this time, Non-Poison didn't show up.
Ren Qing first checked his body but found no abnormalities.
It seemed the illusion had only targeted the brain.
Then Ren Qing suddenly noticed, the darkness in his vision was gradually brightening.
It wasn't a change in the environment, it was the Twin Nightmare Ghosts ability returning.
And compared to before, it felt like a complete transformation.
Ren Qing blinked.
His perspective kept adjusting, and his pupils were like high-precision cameras.
One moment they were watching floating dust in the corner, the next they focused on subtle stains on his sleeve.
The Double Pupils rotated irregularly, as if they were a naturally endowed divine ability.
Ren Qing speculated that the reason spell arts couldn't be used in the Stomach within the Stomach was due to being severed from connection with the Supernatural Remnants.
From this, he realized, essentially, the body itself was a "bottle" used to imprison Supernatural Remnants.
The Bottle Imp likely cultivated by absorbing evil thoughts generated from aberration in cultivators.
Its relationship with the Restraint Officers' Hall was more one of mutual need.
The Restraint Officers' Hall used the Bottle Imp to imprison aberration-lost cultivators, while also giving them some hope of resisting aberration.
The Bottle Imp, in turn, treated all cultivators, Ren Qing included, as resources.
Of course, constructing something like the Stomach within the Stomach would require more than just one spell, the Restraint Officers' Hall had definitely put in effort.
If an aberrated Restraint Officer suppressed their Supernatural Remnant, they could gain full control of their spell, and the soul's aberration would be greatly eased.
The Bottle Imp grumbled as it floated past the corridor, seemingly complaining that this time it got a cultivator who hadn't lost control at all.
Then the iron door in front of Ren Qing opened.
Ren Qing raised an eyebrow, then slowly stepped out of the room.
He stood in the dim corridor. Behind each iron door came faint rustling sounds, each one strangely eerie.
Ren Qing activated his mind, even though other spell arts couldn't be used, the Twin Nightmare Ghosts' body-soul separation alone was enough.
His main soul left the body and floated to the opposite door. Through the thick wall, he could see clearly inside.
A figure about three meters tall sat cross-legged inside. One could call him broad and muscular, but his body had already been completely devoured by aberration.
His skin had a purplish hue. His right arm was thicker than a normal person's waist, while his left arm was thin and claw-like, dry as a stick.
From his pores, wisps of bloody mist leaked out, forming a thin veil around him.
Just by appearance, he was no different from an evil spirit, green-faced, fanged, utterly ferocious.
But judging from how he had kindly warned him before, this man still had some goodness left in his heart, he hadn't completely fallen to madness.
The man's expression twisted, becoming increasingly unstable.
His neck vertebrae cracked together. After his head tilted slightly, a fist-sized bulge appeared on his shoulder.
The bulge grew rapidly to the naked eye, and faint facial features appeared, it looked like an ordinary person.
A second head quickly formed.
When the head opened its eyes, it dropped off like a ripe fruit falling from a tree.
The head sprouted a body and limbs, turning into a brawny middle-aged man, with facial features somewhat resembling the original body.
The Restraint Officer regained awareness. His skin turned crimson, and murderous intent surged.
The doppelgänger wore a bizarre expression and said in a near-mocking tone, "Li Fangtan, you are me, I am you. You and I are split between good and evil."
Li Fangtan narrowed his eyes, his mind still filled with malice.
He tried his best to resist, but still, his massive right arm lifted,
"Li Fangtan, remember three years ago when you lost control and killed that family of three walking in the mountains? They weren't horrors."
"And seven years ago, while cultivating spell arts, your leaking aura caused serious injuries to two people. They struggled for five days and nights before they died."
"Enough!!"
"And also..."
Li Fangtan's eyes grew redder and redder, and finally he couldn't suppress it anymore. He slammed his arm into the doppelgänger, who turned into a pile of minced meat.
Even with only a head left, the doppelgänger still shouted, "Your soul's aberration is worsening, you're dying, dying..."
Li Fangtan stomped the head into pulp. The remaining flesh squirmed like a living thing, trying to reenter his body.
"Hehehehehe..."
A porcelain bottle suddenly appeared in the room. The mouth of the bottle generated suction and swallowed up all the flesh.
The Bottle Imp smacked its lips in satisfaction.
Ren Qing went on to check other rooms.
All the aberration-lost Restraint Officers had grown second heads, the more aberrated they were, the more terrifying the doppelgängers became.
Some of the cultivators would have been killed by their doppelgängers if not for the Bottle Imp's intervention.
As long as they failed to suppress the Supernatural Remnant, the Bottle Imp's spell would continue to trap them in an endless cycle.
They had become little more than chaff to be reaped.
Ren Qing hesitated briefly, could he perhaps use the Wuwei Daoist Altar to invent a spell that restrained aberration and mutation?
He turned and returned to his room. "I'd better take this opportunity to fully suppress all the Supernatural Remnants first."