Chen Zhou sensed the coordinates where the last ghost servant had disappeared, and his consciousness instantly sank into the 【Living Dead Secret Realm】, fully expanding his ghost domain.
He was back in that dilapidated park, but it was now completely different from the bone-spike hell he had left behind last time.
The insect corpses he had previously ossified had long since vanished, replaced by a new generation of life.
Dense swarms of mutant insects once again carpeted the ground, a sight that filled Chen Zhou with joy.
He had waited so long, and they had finally reappeared.
The mutant insects' mouthparts clicked and chewed as they gnawed at a new patch of open ground, and a rupture soon formed.
Chen Zhou waited for them to continue gnawing, allowing the edges of the rupture to slowly expand until the space stabilized.
Seeing that the timing was right, he slowly raised his hand, curling his fingers as he activated the Hate Prison.
In an instant, the sky above the park shifted violently. Countless bone spikes appeared out of thin air, forming a giant inverted bowl that shrouded all the mutant insects within.
The bone spikes interlaced as hatred fire burned. The mutant insects didn't even have time to struggle before they were instantly imprisoned; only a tiny core group was forcibly kept alive, rendered unable to move.
Chen Zhou controlled several skeletons to transport these imprisoned mutant insects in batches to other areas of the secret realm.
'Go, see if these insects can gnaw out ruptures in other places too.'
Chen Zhou issued the command, wanting to see if this was a localized fluke or a universal ability of these mutant insects.
Since these mutant insects could open a teleportation channel, Chen Zhou didn't mind opening a few more.
Once that was done, he turned his gaze toward the rupture in the center of the park.
Chen Zhou stepped directly into the spatial light curtain.
A familiar sensation of weightlessness and spatial displacement washed over him. When Chen Zhou’s vision cleared, he knew he had crossed into another province.
He could feel that his connection with the main body of the City of the Wrongfully Dead had become extremely distant.
Chen Zhou looked around.
This was a city.
In terms of layout and prosperity, it rivaled Lantao City. The city walls towered into the clouds, their ends nowhere in sight.
But this city was dead.
An eerie copper hue covered everything as far as the eye could see.
The streets, houses, trees, and even a fallen child by the road, a hawker in the middle of a sale, and a young cultivator.
Everything had been completely copperized in a single moment.
The entire city was a colossal collection of copper statues.
Forget living people—there wasn't even a living creature left.
Chen Zhou’s feet stepped onto the copper ground, feeling it hard and cold, producing a dull thud.
He followed the street, walking leisurely toward the inner city.
Along the way, he could see many traces of battle.
A copperized cultivator remained in a posture of forming hand seals. His artifact was a bronze bell, but a massive palm print had been driven into it, piercing through both the bell and the man.
On a high wall, a Buddha's palm print was embedded deep into the structure, surrounded by countless copperized resentful souls.
It seemed that before the copperization had fully descended, an extremely tragic battle had broken out in this city.
Chen Zhou passed through the inner city gate.
The inner city district turned out to be the ruins of celestial pavilions floating in the air. Although most had collapsed, one could still catch glimpses of their former glory.
And at the very center of all the ruins, atop the peak of the highest celestial mountain, a tower three hundred meters tall stood there.
The Soul-Suppressing Tower.
It was almost identical to the one in Kushi County, only larger in scale. The tower's body was likewise covered in talismans, which were currently flickering with a faint light, clearly still operational.
The copper poison was spreading out from beneath the tower.
'Heh, another Aspect of All Beings from the Buddhist Sect.'
Chen Zhou was already experienced with this.
He didn't even bother to investigate the situation inside the tower, nor did he need a strategy. He raised his hand and clenched his fist.
The ghost domain covering the entire immortal sect ruins suddenly contracted, focusing entirely on the body of the Soul-Suppressing Tower.
Crack... Crunch...
The three-hundred-meter tower couldn't even last for a single breath before it collapsed with a roar, turning into a pile of powder.
"ROAR—!!!"
The moment the giant tower collapsed, a roar that didn't sound like any living creature erupted from underground.
The earth split open as a massive creature burst forth.
It was an exotic beast resembling a white deer, its body covered in heavy scales. It should have been majestic and extraordinary.
But now, it was entirely copper-colored, its eyes clouded and frenzied. It possessed no intelligence, only a residual animalistic ferocity left after being tortured to the limit by the copper poison.
The deer demon's aura was formidable, nearly reaching the threshold of the sixth-stage.
Chen Zhou’s perception told him that the deer demon's mind had long since been eroded. The essence of its cultivation was being drained by the member of the Aspect of All Beings inside its belly.
'A piece of trash that's already been parasitized. Being alive is just agony for it.'
Chen Zhou gave a cold evaluation. He didn't even use his new abilities, simply releasing death qi and letting it surge toward the copperized great demon.
Everywhere the death qi passed, all vitality was forcibly inverted, returning to dead silence.
The great demon was still in mid-pounce when it instantly ossified. Its copper skin peeled away in layers, like a shedding snake skin.
From beneath the copper skin, bones began to proliferate frantically.
In the blink of an eye, the great demon completely vanished, replaced by a mountain of bone spikes that cut off all signs of life.
Splat.
At the center of the bone mountain, where the demon's belly had been, a fat monk with a compassionate face and a Buddhist halo behind his head pushed aside the bone spikes and crawled out.
He didn't seem to understand the situation yet.
He had been in a deep sleep of secluded cultivation, enjoying the nourishment of the demon's cultivation, waiting only for the consummation of merit to achieve an Arhat's body and complete his eerification.
He hadn't expected to be interrupted halfway through.
The monk brushed the dust off his monastic robe and looked up, just about to roar in anger:
"Which suicidal dog dares disturb this Buddha Lord's seclu—"
He didn't get to finish his sentence.
A giant hand constructed of death qi had been waiting for a long time.
The moment the monk crawled out, it slammed down on him.
Splat.
With a light sound, Chen Zhou’s palm instantly crushed the fat monk into a puddle of meat.
Against a member of the Aspect of All Beings who was still developing and hadn't even touched the threshold of the first transformation of eerification, the second transformation of eerification was an act of absolute suppression.
Amidst the mangled mess, a small light orb floated up. Chen Zhou reached out and beckoned, and the light orb landed in his hand.
【broken divinity — destruction】
'As I thought...'
Chen Zhou weighed the divinity in his hand, very satisfied.
'Blind boxes opened in secret realms really do have higher quality.'
He had dealt with the primary source here, but the copper poison in the city still hadn't dispersed.
With a thought, Chen Zhou’s consciousness connected to Jian Huaishuang in the City of the Wrongfully Dead.
'Pack up Piao and bring her over.'
After a moment, Jian Huaishuang’s figure appeared through the rupture, followed by a large cocoon wrapped in layers of white paper.
Jian Huaishuang unwrapped the paper cocoon, revealing Piao.
She seemed to have just woken up, rubbing her eyes with a sleepy expression on the beautiful half of her face.
"Eat again?"
As soon as Piao saw the copper color before her, her face immediately fell.
She had already eaten all the copper poison in Thousand Isles County and was already stuffed.
Piao never expected that she, who was born from famine and whose very nature was appetite, would actually have a day where she lost her appetite.
But since the copper poison was ultimately beneficial to her, and Mother said she had to listen to the adult, she complied.
Piao opened her mouth with a resigned expression. The mouthparts on the insect half of her face suddenly expanded, creating a terrifying suction force.
Like a whale swallowing water, the copper poison solidified in all things was frantically sucked into her mouth.
Wherever Piao passed, the copper color rapidly faded, revealing the original ashen color of the objects. Although they were still devoid of life, at least the pollution of the copper poison had vanished.
She ate quickly and with focus, and the city behind her was restored inch by inch.
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