Hyperdimensional Player

Chapter 329 Traveling Through the Mortal Realm, Blood God Technique

Lu Zu advised him to set aside his supreme and noble status and take a trip to the mortal world.

Duncan is the kind of person who listens to advice.

When he returned from Hepu County, the once handsome young man had become a down-on-his-luck wandering Taoist priest. Duncan found a tattered, patched Taoist robe from somewhere, and upon seeing Miss Sun, Fu Jianhan, he threw the sword he was carrying to her.

"what is this?"

Fu Jianhan reached out to catch the sword and felt the unusual movement of the pure Yang true energy within his body, his expression one of utter shock.

This sword contained an unparalleled pure Yang sword intent. He only sensed it slightly, and immediately had the illusion that his spirit had been penetrated by the sword intent.

Pure and yang.

It was as pure and refined as if it were the Innate Childhood Skill cultivated for over a hundred years.

Duncan remained calm and slowly said, "Lu Zu's sword."

"It's not a gift for you."

"You might have to return it to Lu Zu's disciples and grand-disciples in the future. You can use it for a while and try to understand the pure Yang sword intent on it."

Lü Zu?

Lü Dongbin!!!
Fu Jianhan looked up in astonishment, his expression beyond words. Upon hearing the name Lü Dongbin, even the Jade-Faced Lady and Miss Sun beside him were utterly shocked.

what happened?

Why is Lü Zu's sword with him? Did he encounter Lü Dongbin on this trip?
Duncan didn't offer any explanation, but reached out and patted Fu Jianhan on the shoulder. He had high hopes for Fu Jianhan, believing that he could one day achieve enlightenment through martial arts.

"I want to go out and travel, to experience the world."

"During this period of time."

"I'm entrusting Baoxuan Cave Heaven to you."

At this point, Duncan looked at the beautiful Miss Sun beside him and said, "I'm afraid I'll have to trouble you with that Toad Taoist."

Upon hearing this, Miss Sun bowed in return and said, "Don't worry, young hero."

"With me here and Lu Shanjun assisting, we won't let him run away and harm people again."

Duncan nodded slightly, then glanced at the elegant and aloof Jade-Faced Lady beside him, and calmly said, "My journey will take at least half a year, and at most several years."

"If there's anything, you can have Yunzhike contact me."

Bai Xiaosheng should be able to find him.

These various schools of thought still have some foundation in this world.

The Jade-Faced Lady nodded, hesitated, and ultimately remained silent. She had just entered the Daoist path, and this was the perfect time to forget Duncan; she absolutely could not allow herself to sink back into that state.

Last night, she dreamt of the waterfall, and her mind lingered on it for a long time.

"gone."

Duncan waved casually, carrying nothing with him. He simply broke off a piece of peach tree, his palm turning golden, and carved a peach wood sword before turning and leaving.

He once killed Guevara and possessed expertise in forging and other fields.

Even without any inscription, he is still very skilled.

I will embark on this journey into the world, traveling the globe, heading north without a destination, going wherever the road takes me.

However, unlike when he went south, Duncan had been traveling along official roads without stopping much in order to deal with the Evil Valley and the Joyful Union Sect. Now, he was traveling at a leisurely pace, stopping frequently to see remote and impoverished areas and observe the local customs and culture along the way.

Changle Prefecture.

This is the territory of Guangxi in later generations.

Duncan saw almost no signs of human habitation along the way, but there were many skeletons and occasional traces of wolves and tigers.

"The bones of the Hepu pearl maiden are used as sails."

The palace of Liu Yan was bathed in the cold light of night.

The poor tax collectors are rushing to collect the pearls every day.

It is said that the king wanted to gather coral.

Duncan had been spending all his time with the Jade-Faced Lady, accompanied by a dozen charming maids. His lifestyle was no less luxurious than that of a king or general. Now, traveling alone in the Guangdong and Guangxi regions, the sights he saw were quite shocking.

When they came to a dilapidated village, Duncan stopped in his tracks.

The house ahead was reduced to a few broken tiles, the dilapidated door was kicked to pieces, and everything inside had been looted. Dried bloodstains were scattered on the ground, and several corpses were covered with straw mats under the wall, already rotting and stinking, attracting insects and flies.

A woman with a numb expression and a hunched back held a child in her arms. Her clothes were tattered and barely covered her body. Her lower body was filthy and foul-smelling, mixed with blood, like a festering sore. She seemed to have been humiliated. Her expression was filled with despair, and all that remained was a deathly ashes.

The baby she held in her arms cried weakly, as if it had been hungry for a long time. The last vestige of maternal instinct awakened her, and the woman bit her fingertip and fed the baby with her blood.

But all of this was just a temporary fix; all the able-bodied men in the family had been killed, and the orphans and widows wouldn't live much longer.

There were faint figures in the distance, but no one dared to approach; they were probably surviving villagers.

Duncan stopped and slowly walked in, squatted down, looked at the ashen-faced woman in front of him, then at the thirsty, blood-drinking child in her arms, and said expressionlessly, "Do you still want to live?"

The hunched and withered woman struggled to raise her head and look at the young Taoist priest before her. Her cracked lips moved slightly, but she could no longer speak.

She was determined to die, and sat there for several days until her breath almost stopped.

Duncan took the gourd from his waist, fed her a few sips of water, then took out some dry rations and handed them to her, calmly saying, "If you're going to die, die well."

"Eat."

The woman's withered eyes finally changed. She tremblingly reached out her hand, her palm cut by something, the wound already scabbed over. She first looked up at Duncan, then looked down at the food, her throat moved slightly, then she looked up at Duncan again, and finally took it with trembling hands, taking a big bite.

After the food entered her stomach, the hunchbacked woman first wept silently, her tears turning blood-red, and then she wailed loudly, her voice hoarse and filled with unbearable sorrow. Holding her young child, she knelt before Duncan and kowtowed three times heavily.

When she looked up again, the woman's forehead was bruised and purple. With her last bit of strength, she lifted the child up and held him in front of Duncan, trying to speak, but her throat was damaged and she could not make a sound.

She simply held the child aloft, her eyes filled with pleading.

Duncan did not take the child, but only glanced at the bloodstains at the corner of the child's mouth.

Having just drunk human blood, his belly was already full, and the child was sleeping soundly.

Seeing that Duncan was unwilling to take the child, the woman's eyes turned ashen again. She silently lowered her head, hugged the child tightly, and said nothing.

A single meal of dry rations couldn't save the mother and child.

But she didn't know that the man in front of her, if he wanted to, could save people, and even save the whole world.

Duncan stood up.

He went to the corpses, lifted the straw mat and took a look. The corpses were mutilated, with flesh cut off from several places on their thighs, exposing the white bones. He then turned to look at the woman. There was a short knife under her, but it was for self-defense. If she had eaten human flesh, she shouldn't be so weak.

Duncan knelt down in front of her again, looked at the ashen-faced woman, and asked once more, "Do you still want to live?"

He drew his wooden sword, and with a gentle flick, a sword aura pierced the air, followed by a shrill scream from outside.

The woman's eyes regained some color, and she nodded emphatically. She picked up the child again and tried her best to lift him up in front of Duncan. Seeing Duncan's Taoist attire, she wanted to ask him to take the child in.

"As long as I want to live, that's enough."

Duncan drew his sword, left his water bottle and dry rations behind, and calmly said, "Leave them here."

Lu Zu advised him to travel the world, but he never expected to see this scene before he even left Guangxi.

The boy, holding a wooden sword, looked at the wailing man outside. The man wasn't thin, but his eyes were cloudy and yellowish. Upon seeing Duncan, he immediately knelt down and begged for mercy, repeatedly kowtowing and saying, "Daoist Master, spare my life! Daoist Master, spare my life!"

Duncan broke his other leg bone with one stomp, and said expressionlessly, "Speak."

"What's going on here?"

The man's face was filled with fear, and he stammered out a long string of words.

Liu Chang was fond of luxury and pleasure. During his reign, the Southern Han Dynasty had as many as 47 types of taxes. Historical records show that Liu Chang even had absurd tax items such as bat tax and toad tax.

In the Meichuan area, the main tax was 'pearls in exchange for lives'.

A fixed daily quota was levied, and those who failed to meet the quota were subjected to the punishment of having their ankles smashed with stones, resulting in many drownings.

Anyone who dares to resist will have their home confiscated and their entire family exterminated.

In times of chaos, the common people are treated like livestock.

This world has never truly belonged to the common people.

Duncan asked a few questions and then stopped. He looked down at the man kneeling before him and calmly asked, "Did you cut the flesh from the thighs of those corpses?"

The man trembled all over and dared not utter a word.

Duncan sighed helplessly, "Even living near the sea, do we have to resort to cannibalism to fill our stomachs?"

"Or?"

"You've gotten used to eating human flesh?"

The Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period was an era of systematic cannibalism.

Sometimes, ordinary people are even treated worse than livestock.

Historical records.

Qin Zongquan's army salted human flesh to use as military rations, leading to the Central Plains being "covered in brambles and thorns, and deserted."

Yang Xingmi's army ate people during their march, and the remaining human flesh was processed, pickled, and sold by weight.

Zhao Siwan liked to extract gallbladders from living people to accompany her wine, claiming that "after eating a thousand gallbladders, one's courage will be invincible."

Gao Li preys on passersby at night, drinking their blood as if it were wine.

Wang Jixun (Zhao Kuangyin's brother-in-law) preyed on the tender flesh of young girls and tortured and killed more than a hundred women.

During the Later Han Dynasty, Liu Xin, the King of Cai, forced prisoners to eat the flesh of their wives and children, and watched the entire dismemberment process.

Zhang Fang, a general of the Later Tang Dynasty, abducted palace women from Luoyang for military rations and committed 'killing by day and debauchery by night' during his march.

Even after the establishment of the Song Dynasty, the Northern Song army, in order to intimidate the enemy army of the Southern Han, publicly ate prisoners and released survivors with tattooed faces, causing the enemy camp to collapse.

There are too many other scattered records.

However, history has always belonged to kings and generals, while the common people at the bottom of society were hardly cared about. Their existence was simply to be exploited to the bone, not in a symbolic sense, but in a literal physical sense.

From the late Tang Dynasty to the present, wheat has only ripened a few dozen times, but the human landscape has changed completely.

Huang Chao slaughtered all the powerful Li Tang families, but left behind a mess.

These military generals were even more ruthless than the powerful clans.

The man trembled all over, unable to resist Duncan's mental pressure, and said out his thoughts: "Human flesh is 100 coins a pound, dog meat is 500 coins a pound."

"I cut them and sold them at the market to earn some money to play with."

"The woman stopped me from cutting the meat." "So I raped her. Later she found a knife, and I dared not approach her. I could only wait until she was exhausted before taking her to the market together."

it is good!it is good!it is good!
Duncan laughed in fury, and slapped the man's head, instantly causing it to explode.

He didn't know much about the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, only that it was a time of great chaos, no less than the Five Barbarian Invasions of the past.

When he entered this world, it was also within the territory of the Later Zhou and Southern Tang dynasties. The Jiangnan region was still relatively prosperous.

It was probably during the reign of Liu Chengyou of the Later Han Dynasty that famine in North China led to the practice of "salting corpses for food" and the open trade of human flesh, which was even called "human shops and human wax" and was extremely cheap. The government tacitly approved of this practice in the private markets.

This happened only ten years ago.

Duncan got up and returned to the woman, squatted down, and calmly said, "There is a way out to the south."

"I recently acquired a blessed land called Baoxuan Cave Heaven."

"There's no one here."

"But if you're willing to go, at least you won't starve."

The woman couldn't understand much, but she knew this was a way out. She immediately knelt down and banged her head against the ground repeatedly. When she looked up again, blood was flowing out.

Her throat was hoarse, and she could only make a few sounds.

"Ah."

Duncan infused her with the true energy of the Longevity Technique, leaving behind his food and water bottle, and said, "It's best to find someone to travel with. You stay here for now, and I'll see if anyone will join you."

While talking.

Duncan got up and wandered around the nearby villages, killing some people and saving others.

Then, as night fell, he arrived at the military camp in Yongle Prefecture. He entered alone, beheaded hundreds of people, leaving no survivors, and finally rescued several filthy and smelly 'military maids' from a tent.

The so-called "military maids" were women who were forcibly taken by soldiers, brought into the military camp and raped. They were unlikely to come out alive.

If the family is wealthy, it might be possible to redeem them with money, but they would be no longer human when they came out.

Sometimes, in the chaos, even the women of officials' families would be abducted and raped.

After dealing with all of this, Duncan set off again on the third day, entering what would later become Guangdong.

However, the wandering Taoist he disguised himself as became a beggar in exile during a chaotic world.

Duncan's appearance changed drastically. He was filthy and his clothes were tattered. He no longer had the aura of the King of Kings and the Great Free Heaven Demon Lord. Instead, he looked like a destitute fugitive beggar. His body had become thin and bony. He had used the "Stealing the Sky and Changing the Sun Technique" to burn his own lifespan and cultivate the Blood God Technique. Even his appearance had aged considerably.

Since Lu Zu advised him to relinquish his position and travel the world, Duncan relinquished everything, even his martial arts skills.

Along the way, it seems that the bottleneck in his entry into the Dao Realm has loosened slightly.

However, the murderous intent in his heart grew increasingly terrifying.

Panyu.

Xingwang Mansion.

This is the capital of the Southern Han Dynasty. Duncan traveled all the way here and saw that the people were impoverished, all things were withered and decayed, and the fields were full of white bones. He occasionally saw phosphorescent plague ships and ghost owls crying. He casually killed some of the ghosts and monsters, but they were all low-class fierce and evil ghosts.

This was caused by the plague and natural disaster of a few years ago.

Because the human world is like a purgatory, where babies are exchanged for food or abandoned and strangled by their biological parents because they are unable to raise them, Duncan also took in some vicious ghost babies, planning to find an opportunity to arrange for them to be reincarnated in the future.

He sealed these ghost infants with ghostly incantations, hoping to have the opportunity to visit the underworld again and have a proper talk with them.

However, what I saw along the way was that Buddhism and Taoism were quite prosperous. If they were all slaughtered, they should be able to get a lot of money and food to help the starving people.

Liu Chang's palace here was extremely luxurious, decorated with a large number of pearls and corals, and luminous pearls were placed inside, all of which were tributes from Mei Chuan. Duncan finally saw the famous flesh screen, a bunch of beautiful women openly having sex in the palace for Mei Zhu and others to enjoy.

From God's perspective.

The charming pig accompanied Liu Chang on his journey, occasionally stopping to admire the scenery, either as a reward or a severe punishment, while the ten charming women surrounding him laughed and joked incessantly.

Fan Hu Zi was involved in all matters of the Southern Han court, and officials from all walks of life tried every means to offer tribute and curry favor with him.

Eunuchs and castrated men were everywhere in and around the capital. Once they were sent out to other places, they were extremely vicious.

Looking at everything before him, Duncan remained unmoved. He merely glanced at Liu Chang's head from afar and made a note of it.

Fan Huzi is here too.

He wasn't confident he could kill them all by himself, since he hadn't truly broken through to the Dao Realm yet.

The young man traveled north to see what kind of world this was.

The land of Wu and Yue was filled with withered bones and graves. Along the way, the mass graves were filled with lonely ghosts. "In the year of great famine, people ate each other." This was no longer just a few words in the history books, but a part of his tempering of the mortal world, and also the human world he saw.

The language here is already difficult to describe; if we were to go into any more detail, it might not pass the review.

When he arrived in Southern Tang, the situation was slightly better.

During Li Bian's reign, a policy of "cessation of war and pacification of the people" was implemented, encouraging the reclamation of wasteland and the development of textiles. Textiles were used to replace silver in taxes to reduce the burden, resulting in mulberry trees covering the fields and wasteland being reclaimed in the Jiangnan region.

However, the situation deteriorated rapidly during the reigns of Li Jing and Li Yu.

During the tenth to twelfth years of the Baoda reign, the Jiangnan region suffered from consecutive severe droughts and locust plagues, while Huainan experienced a tragic situation where "famine and epidemic were rampant, and more than half of the people died."

"Floods, droughts, and locust plagues struck one after another, and starving people sold their children for every penny."

Dry bones lie buried beneath overgrown weeds, new ghosts weep while old ones wail.

When Duncan arrived in the Southern Tang territory, he was disheveled, tattered, and emaciated. He had also thrown away his peach wood sword, leaving only a pair of dark eyes looking down upon the human world. Occasionally, a strange, blood-red glint would appear in the depths of those dark eyes.

That was the killing intent of military strategists, a tangible killing intent, as if it wanted to kill everything.

When he was a barbarian, he was never able to control the power of anger, but now, as he uses the martial arts of military strategists to break through to the Dao realm, a boundless killing intent and endless rage are burning in his heart.

Li Yu was probably still enjoying himself with Empress Da Zhou. After Empress Da Zhou died, it was Empress Xiao Zhou's turn to take over.

Buddhism flourished in the Southern Tang Dynasty, with temples thriving and many monks becoming incredibly wealthy. Their bald heads were so shiny they gleamed with oil, and the grease seeping from their skin was more abundant than the oil in the pots of starving people.

Li Yu was an extremely devout Buddhist.

He called himself "Lianfeng Jushi" and declared that "he has been fond of Buddhism all his life and is indifferent to worldly affairs." He knelt and chanted sutras with the empress while wearing monk's robes, which caused him to develop a "tumor on his forehead." More than ten Buddhist temples were set up in the palace.

Several years after he ascended the throne, the Southern Tang Dynasty began to systematically expand Buddhism, universally ordaining monks in various prefectures and rewarding them with money to become monks. The number of monks and nuns in the capital reached tens of thousands, which led to "many Taoist priests shaving their beards and heads to entice them," that is, Taoist priests vying to be ordained.

The national treasury even funded the construction of temples and pagodas, casting 84,000 bronze pagodas which were distributed throughout the country. The donations were excessive, creating an atmosphere of "solemn donations, vegetarian feasts, and chanting, with no day off in a month."

In contrast, Emperor Shizong of Zhou suppressed Buddhism (in the second year of Xiande, he destroyed temples to mint coins and forced monks and nuns to return to secular life).

It's a pity that Chai Rong died too soon, otherwise he could be considered a great ruler.

This is the famous "Three Wu and One Zong Persecutions of Buddhism" in history.

They've wiped it out so many times.

It was still impossible to eradicate Buddhism completely; Emperor Shizong of Zhou, Chai Rong, died suddenly a few years after he began persecuting Buddhism.

All the way north.

Duncan traveled the world, entered the Central Plains, and then continued north, gradually arriving in Youzhou.

"The bones of refugees are abandoned on desolate hills, and the lean horses neigh in the wind while tears flow silently."

Where lies the distant mountains and passes? A lonely soul wanders night after night around this land of swords.

"After the Khitan retreated, the moon hung like a hook, and old whispers could be heard in the empty alleys."

The price of the child was equivalent to three bushels of millet, enough to buy half a day's rest for the general.

After entering the northern territory, Duncan suddenly fell silent, as if he had entered a state of silent meditation. His dark eyes were fixed on everything in front of him as he fled with the refugees and beggars.

He walked barefoot on the Central Plains, a land littered with corpses, his body almost emaciated, his life force and essence burning wildly.

The demonic martial arts have advanced by leaps and bounds!

Occasionally, when the night is still and quiet, Duncan opens his eyes, and his pupils seem to burn with a ghostly flame.

The Blood Refining Technique is complete!
Blood Child's immortality is achieved!
The Taoist priest has been made.

But he felt no joy whatsoever, only staring blankly at the world, like a numb vagrant who had lost all vitality and was nothing but a walking corpse.

He didn't know what Zhang Jiao, the Great Teacher of Virtue, felt when he traveled the world, but now he was so filled with murderous intent that he could hardly contain himself.

Without engaging in large-scale killings, one's thoughts remain unclear and one's heart is not at ease.

The situation is even worse in the north.

After losing the Sixteen Prefectures of Yan and Yun, the entire Central Plains became a place where people were at the mercy of others.

"Shi Jingtang truly deserves to die!"

Because of the cession of the Sixteen Prefectures of Yan and Yun, the entire Central Plains was plunged into a 430-year period of torment, and nomadic peoples became a major threat to the entire Central Plains civilization.

Thirteen years ago, after the Liao army captured Kaifeng, they abducted tens of thousands of craftsmen and women, and the dead lay piled up on the roadside.

Due to frequent wars, the Later Liang dynasty breached the Yellow River dikes three times. In just a few decades, the Yellow River flooded more than thirty times. During the Later Jin dynasty, locust plagues and droughts broke out in North China. Starving people resorted to cannibalism, and the government even salted the corpses of the starving to make "human dregs" to serve as military rations.

Because of these 'traditions', the profession of 'dried human flesh' even emerged, which was responsible for making dried human flesh and openly operating the business, with human flesh priced far lower than dog meat.

The entire human world has been torn apart to the extreme!

The upper class indulged in extravagance and debauchery, while the lower class resorted to cannibalism and exchanging children

When Duncan disguised himself as a beggar and a vagrant and traveled north, he was even able to dig up bones from dead people from more than a decade ago by the roadside.

Sometimes when he didn't have a pillow at night, he would just use human bones as a pillow.

Will-o'-the-wisps.

The common people wept in sorrow.

It's as if you can hear the mournful cries of countless people and souls who have perished in the Central Plains over the past century.

The three corpses suddenly fell silent.

Since Duncan began his travels, the Three Corpses have remained completely silent. They were so frightened that they hid away, not daring to provoke Duncan's anger at this time.

The entire world needs a great purge!

The boy's murderous aura had transformed into a raging demonic flame.

With each place Duncan passed through, his Blood Refining Technique advanced to a higher level. His body was permeated with malevolent energy, and the souls of the dead turned into firewood. The king's eyes were the first fire, and that ball of blood flame condensed in his eyes. When it occasionally surfaced in the deepest part of his pupils, it was eerily blood-red.

The magic power is accomplished!

A sea of ​​blood surged to the heavens.

Duncan traveled the world alone, exploring the human realm, but the first skill he mastered was the Blood God Technique of the Demonic Sect.

………………

(End of this chapter)