Tianjin, starting with unorthodox methods to achieve immortality

About thirty gray-white shadows were slowly pressing down from above, less than three zhang away from them.

"above."

"Damn it, looks like a cunning and tough nut to crack!"

Liao Yinmu roared and swung his peach wood sword upwards. A dark green light shot into the sky, cleaving the nearest Yin ghost in two.

The ghost let out a piercing shriek and vanished into a cloud of grayish-white mist.

Xie Guiling reacted quickly. With a flick of her Soul-Capturing Bell, a circle of dark red sound waves spread out. The three Yin Ghosts that pounced down first were hit by the sound waves and flew backward as if they had been hit by a heavy hammer.

"A ghost?!"

Xie Guiling narrowed his eyes, his gaze sweeping across the surroundings. "There are fellow practitioners nearby!"

As soon as he finished speaking, the remaining twenty-odd ghosts pounced on him.

He dared not delay, and with a flick of his wrist, the Soul-Capturing Bell emitted a rapid tinkling sound.

Seven or eight crimson ghosts suddenly rose up from beside Xie Guiling, colliding head-on with the approaching Yin ghosts.

A ghostly howl suddenly echoed across the earthen slope, accompanied by a surge of malevolent energy.

Xie Guiling's vengeful ghosts were covered in blood and evil energy, with sharp claws like hooks and ferocious faces.

In contrast, the ghosts on the merit banners appear somewhat frail and lack ferocity.

Despite having a numerical advantage, the Yin Ghosts were instead overwhelmed by the opponent.

Chen Mo squatted behind the carriage twenty feet away, expressionless.

He had no intention of leaving.

Those ghostly appetizers were just an appetizer to attract the attention of the Meishan Duo.

The real killer move is elsewhere.

At this moment, eight shadow puppets had already materialized in the shadows behind the two.

It was shrouded in black mist, had no facial features, no clothing, only clearly defined limbs and torso.

Each shadow puppet held a long, narrow shadow blade, its edge as thin as a cicada's wing, without a trace of reflection.

They slowly rose from the ground without making a sound, not even breathing.

At the back of the carriage, Chen Mo slightly raised his right hand and silently made a handprint with his five fingers.

Shadow Puppet Differentiation.

The eight shadow puppets trembled simultaneously, their bodies instantly spreading to both sides. Amidst the churning black mist, another identical shadow puppet split off from the side of each puppet.

Eight becomes sixteen.

Liao Yinmu was staring at the remaining Yin ghosts above his head when he suddenly felt a chill on the back of his neck.

He spent twenty years navigating unorthodox paths, relying on this intuitive sense of what was right and wrong.

"Senior brother, later..."

Before the words were even finished, sixteen shadow blades had already pierced out from behind the two of them simultaneously.

There was no sound of air being cut, no murderous intent, and the speed was unbelievably fast.

They each targeted a vital spot on one of their bodies.

Liao Yinmu didn't have time to turn around, so he could only lunge forward and roll on the ground.

Five shadow blades grazed his shoulders and hips, slicing off two pieces of his clothing to reveal a dark yellow protective amulet armor underneath.

The armor was covered in twisted runes, and the areas grazed by the shadow blade instantly turned black, emitting a stench of burning flesh.

Another shadow blade came from below, and he almost instinctively shoved his peach wood sword into the ground, barely managing to block the shadow blade.

The situation is even more dangerous on Xie Guiling's side.

Eight shadow blades stabbed at him simultaneously from different angles, leaving him no time to even ring the bell.

"What are these things?!"

He twisted his waist, bending his entire body at an incredible angle like a snake, thus avoiding five of the weapons.

However, two of the shadow blades still grazed his left arm and ribs.

There was no bleeding from the wound; only two wisps of black smoke emerged from the flesh, as if something was wriggling inside.

"Damn it!" Liao Yinmu leaped up from the ground, sweeping his peach wood sword behind him.

The eerie green light struck a shadow puppet, the blade slicing past its waist without hindrance, as if cutting through a wisp of smoke.

The shadow puppet remained completely still.

The crack closed the instant the light passed by, without bleeding, without wounds, and without even losing a fraction of its shadow.

It swung its blade backhand, aiming straight for Liao Yinmu's throat.

"Not afraid of weapons?!" Liao Yinmu's pupils shrank sharply as he turned his head to avoid the blade. A soft hissing sound came from his ear, and a few strands of hair fell down.

Xie Guiling finally seized the opportunity to catch her breath and quickly shook the Soul-Capturing Bell.

The dark red sound waves exploded, shattering the six shadow puppets that were approaching him, turning them into six pools of shadow that seeped into the ground.

But in less than a breath, the shadows reformed and rose from several other directions, and the shadow blades stabbed again.

"This is no ordinary shadow magic!" Xie Guiling's voice changed, and for the first time, it was filled with fear.

"Let's give it our all!"

Liao Yinmu gave a bitter laugh, wiped the wound on his shoulder where the Shadow Blade had slashed him, pinched the wisp of writhing black energy between his two fingers, and stuffed it directly into his mouth.

His eyes began to change color; the whites of his eyes quickly turned yellow, and his pupils shrank into a vertical line, like a snake or a dragon.

Finally, he turned the peach wood sword upside down, pointed the tip at his palm, and thrust it in.

The peach wood sword pierced his palm and emerged from the back of his hand, but not a drop of blood flowed.

What gushed from the wound was not blood, but clusters of tiny insect eggs.

The insect eggs hatched immediately upon contact with air.

Countless milky-white worms, smaller than sesame seeds, crawled out of the wound and down the blade of the peach wood sword, covering the entire sword in the blink of an eye.

The peach wood sword began to deform, and in the blink of an eye, it became a writhing column of flesh, with a crack at the top revealing a ring of fine teeth.

"Eat," Liao Yinmu said, uttering only one word.

The fleshy pillar suddenly lengthened and lunged at the nearest shadow puppet.

The tooth-filled mouth at the top of the fleshy pillar bit down on the shadow puppet's waist and abdomen, tearing off a large chunk of thick darkness.

The shadow puppet's form instantly faded by half, changing from deep black to light black, and its attack speed also began to slow down.

Seeing this, Xie Guiling's eyes flashed with a fierce glint. She dug her fingernails deep into the patterns of the copper bell and tore it apart forcefully.

He tore the copper bell apart with his bare hands.

Beneath the dark red copper sheet, what was revealed was not the inner wall of the bell, but a throbbing mass of flesh.

The tumor was covered with tiny eyes, each blinking incessantly, its pupils turning in different directions, as if searching for something.

Xie Guiling bent down, brought her face close to the lump of flesh, opened her mouth, and blew a breath into those eyes.

All eyes stopped moving at the same time and stared at him intently.

More than a dozen dark red tentacles emerged from the tumor, burrowing into Xie Guiling's seven orifices like snakes.

Xie Guiling's body convulsed violently a few times, and his eyes had turned completely black, with no whites or pupils, only a bottomless darkness.

The dozen or so tentacles extended from his eye sockets, nostrils, and mouth, swaying slowly in mid-air, like the tentacles of some deep-sea creature.

"kill."

Xie Guiling's abdomen suddenly split open, and dozens of intestine-like things poured out, swirling towards the surrounding shadow puppets.

Those intestine-like things were extremely fast, instantly wrapping around the two shadow puppets and beginning to tighten.

The shadow puppet emitted a sharp buzzing sound as it was entangled in the intestines, and its black mist body began to tremble violently, as if it were being disintegrated from within by some force.

At the same time, Liao Yinmu's fleshy pillar had already swallowed three shadow puppets.

With each meal it swallowed, the fleshy column grew larger, its color changing from grayish-white to dark red, and the teeth in the mouth at the top became denser and longer.

Its appearance was somewhat similar to the ghost leeches he had seen in the mountain god temple.

At the back of the carriage, Chen Mo frowned.

I can feel my connection with those shadow puppets being severed.

The Shadow Puppet, which had never failed before, suffered its first backlash tonight.

Of the sixteen shadow puppets, only three original bodies remain.

The remaining clones will also dissipate as the original body disappears.

"No wonder these two have been able to survive in the unorthodox world for so long."

The Meishan Duo are indeed quite capable.

Those disgusting evil arts were clearly forbidden techniques that had been forged using countless lives, and they had already surpassed the capabilities of ordinary unorthodox methods.

"retreat."

Chen Mo silently chanted in his heart, and the three shadow puppets retreated at the same time, their figures turning into three black shadows that quickly seeped into the ground and disappeared from the earthen slope.

Liao Yinmu was controlling the dark red fleshy pillar to chase and bite the last shadow puppet. He bit into empty air, and the giant mouth at the top of the fleshy pillar closed with a dull "snap".

He was panting heavily, his eyes, now vertical pupils, scanning the surroundings. "They escaped?"

Xie Guiling didn't speak. The dark red tentacles in her seven orifices were still swaying slowly. The laceration on her abdomen opened and closed like a gaping mouth, and the gushing intestinal-like material kept waving towards the back of the carriage.

It was obvious that they had discovered Chen Mo hiding behind them.

"Fellow Daoist, since you're here, show yourself..."

He didn't finish his sentence.

Because something is rising up in the darkness below the earthen slope.

Chen Mo hid behind the carriage, his hands forming a mudra, and the Yin energy within his body surged out at an unprecedented speed.

After the remaining three shadow puppets retreated, he did not stop, but instead summoned five new shadow puppets from his own shadow.

After concentrating his divine sense, the number of shadow puppets he could control increased to sixteen.

Those eight bodies were just a test.

Now there are five new Shadow Puppets plus three remaining old Shadow Puppets, making a total of eight.

At this moment, the eight shadow puppets did not attack separately, but under Chen Mo's mental control, they began to converge in the same direction.

Black mist surged.

The figures of the eight shadow puppets gradually blurred, their outlines became indistinct, and they merged together, making it impossible to distinguish one from another.

The merged darkness began to expand.

From one foot, to ten feet, twenty feet, thirty feet...

Within the black mist, a massive outline is taking shape.

It was over three zhang tall, its body was pitch black, and it was shrouded in black mist. Its shape resembled a magnified version of the Heavenly King statue enshrined in a temple, but it had no color at all, only pure darkness.

Its right hand held a huge shadow blade.

The shadow blade was over two zhang long, with a blade as wide as a door panel and as thin as a cicada's wing, its outline almost invisible under the pale red moonlight.

...

On the earthen slope, the two villains of Meishan froze simultaneously.

Liao Yinmu's vertical pupils narrowed to thin lines, and the smug smile on his face froze, as if it had been slapped away.

"What the hell is this?!"

His voice changed tone, his dark red fleshy pillar twisted wildly, and the huge mouth at the top opened and closed, making a "crackling" sound, as if it were afraid.

Xie Guiling did not answer.

It's not that I don't want to answer, it's that I can't answer.

The tentacles that had been extending from his seven orifices were frantically retracting, as if sensing some terrifying presence and trying to escape back into his body.

The laceration in his abdomen was also convulsing violently; the gushing intestinal contents no longer flared forward but curled up together.

.....

Shadow Puppet Giant God.

Chen Mo raised his head and looked at the enormous creature formed by the fusion of eight shadow puppets, nodding slightly in his heart.

"go!"

At this point, with his late-stage Qi Refining cultivation, he was able to barely control the Shadow Puppet Giant Spirit God without taking any damage.

If the fight is resolved within ten seconds, it won't have much of an impact on him.

The Shadow Giant God moved.

Its movements were completely inconsistent with its enormous size; they were incredibly fast.

The three-zhang-tall black giant took a single step and his figure appeared beside the two of them.

Xie Guiling was the first to react. The dark red tentacles in her seven orifices contracted wildly, and a thick black mist spewed out from the rift in her abdomen, trying to escape using evil magic.

In the blink of an eye, his figure vanished from his original spot and reappeared three zhang away.

This was his trump card for survival: Blood Shadow Escape, which allowed him to instantly relocate at the cost of burning his own life essence.

But the Shadow Golem's Shadow Blade was faster than his.

The two-zhang-long giant blade fell silently, without a sound of it cutting through the air or any killing intent; only an almost invisible black line ripped through the night sky.

Xie Guiling had just emerged from the Blood Shadow Escape and hadn't even had a chance to catch her breath when she felt her vision spinning.

I saw the sky, I saw the earth, and I saw my own upper body slowly sliding down from my shoulders to my waist.

His head rolled twice on the ground, his expression frozen between horror and disbelief.

Less than three seconds passed from the moment the Shadow Puppet Giant God took its first step to the moment Xie Guiling's head fell to the ground.

Liao Yinmu saw his senior brother's head rolling on the ground, and his pupils suddenly shrank to a vertical line.

He gritted his teeth, grabbed the dark red fleshy pillar with both hands, and forcefully thrust it into his chest.

The fleshy pillar, like a giant python, burrowed into his chest cavity and merged with his body.

The person began to swell, a layer of dark red mucus appeared on the surface of the skin, the hands turned into claws, and the mouth split open to the ears, revealing rows of fine and sharp teeth.

This was his last resort: the snake-transformation technique.

By sacrificing himself and merging with the evil creature he had raised, he gained power far exceeding his usual strength in a short period of time.

However, the price is that after the fusion, they can never return to human form.

Liao Yinmu didn't care anymore.

All he wanted at that moment was to survive.

After transforming into a snake, Liao Yinmu's body swelled to over ten feet in size, dripping sticky liquid all over his body. He was on all fours, resembling a monster that was half human and half snake.

"Hiss... hiss..."

He opened his mouth, which split open to his ears, and let out a roar.

The Shadow Giant did not respond, but simply raised its left arm.

A huge black hand opened, its five fingers like five black pillars, and grabbed Liao Yinmu's head in an instant.

Liao Yinmu's sharp claws scratched at the hand frantically, but didn't even leave a scratch.

Even after transforming into a snake, its power was still no match for the immense force.

The large black hand slowly tightened.

Liao Yinmu's head lasted less than two seconds before cracking with a series of snapping sounds, and dark red blood seeped out from between his fingers.

Five seconds.

The Shadow Puppet Giant God released his grip, and Liao Yinmu's headless corpse fell from a height of three zhang (approximately 10 meters) to the ground, its skin peeling off piece by piece to reveal the rotting flesh beneath.

The backlash from the Serpent Transformation Technique began; his corpse rotted at a visible rate, eventually turning into a pool of dark red pus that seeped into the soil.

Seven seconds.

Chen Mo silently counted the time in his mind.

He could feel the Yin energy within his body being consumed at an alarming rate.

While the Shadow Giant God is powerful, it also places a huge burden on the controller.

With his late-stage Qi Refining cultivation, ten seconds is the limit; beyond that, he will begin to suffer a backlash.

Fortunately, it doesn't take ten seconds.

In just seven seconds, the two culprits from Meishan were killed.

"Disperse."

Chen Mo silently recited in his heart...