I was forced to cultivate immortality when I just wanted to lie down

Chapter 299 The Ten-Year Plan, The Unexpected Changes at the Yin River

There are very few free lunches in this world; everything comes at a price.

The Nine Heavens Secret Techniques, a forbidden book sealed by the Heavenly Emperor, are incredibly precious. Yet, Yuan Gong, who was in charge of guarding the Heavenly Book, generously passed on the Divine Travel Heavenly Book of the Heavenly Gang Department to Xu Qing.

If there's nothing fishy going on here, then it can only mean that Xu Qing misunderstood the monkeys; it turns out there are honest monkeys among them.

Xu Qing initially held onto a sliver of hope, thinking that since Yuan Gong had stolen the Heavenly Book, the Heavenly Emperor would punish him by causing him to suffer from wood damage, fire, earth burial, metal injury, and water flooding, subjecting him to the calamities of the Five Elements.

Of these five tribulations, Yuan Gong survived four on his own, but during the final water tribulation, he was suppressed in the Bright Moon Stream and could not escape.

However, Xu Qing, in the midst of a great calamity and the extreme situation where the path to heaven was severed, extended a helping hand, pulled the old monkey back, and rescued Yuan Gong from the final tribulation, helping him to achieve his goal.

This was a great favor, and the old monkey, out of gratitude, passed on the Heavenly Book of Divine Travel, which even the Heavenly Fox envied.

Gratitude and repaying kindness are a beautiful thing in the world.

But Xu Qing never expected that this old monkey was so shrewd, calculating every single expense for him.

Even the secret technique of teaching Xuan Yu the sword pellet was all to trap Xuan Yu in the White Cloud Cave scam.

Xu Qing could not resist the temptation of the Divine Travel Book. According to Master Yuan, when this escape technique is perfected, one can arrive at any destination in an instant simply by thinking of it.

It is far more powerful than Shrinking the Earth to an Inch, Golden Light Across the Earth, or even the Five Elements Escape Technique!

Xu Qing had a vague feeling that something was wrong, but then he thought, with this escape technique, even if there was something he couldn't do, wouldn't he be able to run away?

After practicing the Divine Travel Heavenly Book, he discovered that this escape technique, as tall as a ten-thousand-foot-high building, required a matching cloud ladder of equal length.

His magical power might only be a zhang (approximately 3.3 meters) long.

The inability to fully utilize the Heavenly Book's divine powers meant that he could not escape the Heavenly Fox's vengeful pursuit.

"We've been tricked by that old monkey!"

For two consecutive days, Xu Qing sat on the threshold of the coroner's shop, looking worried and distressed.

Xuan Yu noticed that he seemed preoccupied, so she came over and asked him what was wrong.

Xu Qing shook his head and said nothing.

Xuan Yu said earnestly, "I have formed a bond with Immortal Xu through cultivation, and we should support each other. Immortal Xu can talk to me about anything. As a celestial master who has survived the lightning calamity and has five hundred years of cultivation, I can still share Immortal Xu's burdens."

A glimmer of hope seemed to appear in Xu Qing's sorrowful eyes. He looked at Xuan Yu and said, "The Heavenly Fox of White Cloud Cave will break free in twelve years and seek revenge on you and me. Xuan Yu must have a way to defeat that old fox demon, right?"

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And so, another monster with a sorrowful face and a heart full of worries appeared in front of the coroner's shop.

Looking at the occasional passersby, Xu Qing's enthusiasm for handing out flyers and promoting his business waned.

After sitting there for most of the day, Xu Qing finally let out a slow breath.

After much thought, he finally came up with a way to deal with the emergence of the Heavenly Fox.

According to Master Yuan, the Nine Heavens Secret Methods and Earthly Fiends techniques are mostly evil and strange arts that violate the laws of nature, such as bean people, paper horses, ghost knives, and demonic swords.

Such heretical spells are most afraid of orthodox supernatural powers. As far as orthodox methods are concerned, Xu Qing has the Blood Lake Dharma Realm protecting him. As long as there is enough incense in the Blood Lake, the protective scepter, the Mother Qi Bottle, and the Living Man Scripture nurtured by the Blood Lake can all be used as protective magic treasures to resist the Heavenly Fox Demon Magic.

However, the power of the Baosheng Temple system is tied to its incense offerings. If Xu Qing wants to have enough Blood Lake magic power to fight against the evil magic of the Heavenly Fox within twelve years, he must break through the two obstacles of the Celestial Master's Mansion and Emperor Jingxing and spread the conservation manual to the world as soon as possible.

The righteous law is only for protection, but it may not be able to eliminate hidden dangers. If Xu Qing wants to completely eliminate the threat of the Heavenly Fox, he will also need the Heavenly Gang Divine Power to restrain the Earthly Fiends.

Although the Divine Travel Book is a divine power of the Heavenly Gang Department, it is a method of escape and is of no use in subduing demons and monsters. After much thought, Xu Qing only possesses the Heavenly Gang Axe Technique, which has the ability to kill the Heavenly Fox.

Similarly, if one wants to cultivate the Thirty-Six Axes of Heaven to the point of threatening the Heavenly Fox, one must at least comprehend it to the 25th level within twelve years.

Although Xu Qing was able to practice the Heavenly Gang Axe Technique to the nineteenth level in less than ten years, he knew that since he came into contact with the Heavenly Gang Axe Technique, he was able to use the Silver Armor Corpse Dao to perform the ninth level of the axe technique on his first attempt.

However, after the ninth level, the difficulty of each subsequent level of the Heavenly Gang Axe Technique is greater than that of the previous nine levels.

Only after cultivating to the Golden Armor Corpse and even the Three Transformations of Corpse Subduing was Xu Qing able to push the Heavenly Gang Axe Technique to the eighteenth level with all his might.

After the eighteenth floor, the difficulty of each subsequent floor is comparable to the sum of the previous eighteen floors.

In other words, Xu Qing condensed a complete piece of the Undying Bone, which allowed him to barely upgrade the Heavenly Gang Axe to the nineteenth layer by relying on the qualitative change power of the Undying Bone.

After that, things became extremely difficult!

However, supernatural powers are different from incense offerings. These are the most fundamental things for cultivators. Only by accumulating them little by little can one build a towering platform.

"What limits the Heavenly Gang Axe Technique is not the supernatural power itself, but my realm of cultivation."

Xu Qing had a clear self-awareness. If he wanted to cultivate the Heavenly Gang Axe Technique to the 25th level or higher, he would at least need to achieve the Great Perfection of the Undying Bone, touch the threshold of the Flying Zombie realm, and possess a thousand years of cultivation.

How can he improve his cultivation? Right now, besides consuming the Yin energy of the moon, the fastest way to improve is to perform rituals to liberate corpses, using the Yin Yuan Pills or Corpse Nourishing Pills that are occasionally condensed from the Salvation Scripture to aid his cultivation.

However, the vast majority of corpses do not condense into such pills.

Xu Qing recounted his experiences of performing rituals to help more than 10,000 corpses pass on, and began to discern some patterns.

Corpse-Nourishing Pills are extremely rare and mostly come from zombies or practitioners of the Yin Corpse Sect; Yin Yuan Pills, despite having the word "pill" in their name, are more like creations made from the purified Yin energy of the dead.

It is like a pure yin energy, mostly produced by unorthodox practitioners of yin and evil arts, or by skeletal ghosts.

There are distinctions here. For example, the skeleton ghosts in the Yinhe Ancient Road, which naturally possess a strong Yin energy, can almost always deliver Yin Yuan Pills.

So where are the most skeleton ghosts?

Xu Qing subconsciously thought of his old neighbor, the Ghost King Duo'e.

"Twelve years"

Xu Qing's eyes flickered. In twelve years, even if Zuo Zixiong and the Eight Banners Marshals couldn't defeat Duo'e Ghost King and Yin Shi Dharma King, it would have been enough to severely damage his old neighbor's vitality.

How many skeleton ghosts will die in the Ghost King's Tomb during this period?
Those skeletons are just white corpses!

Moreover, it was a corpse that could continuously provide Xu Qing with Yin Yuan Pills.

"Xuanyu! I've got an idea!"

As the moon rose high in the sky, Xu Qing turned his head with a joyful expression. But where was the black cat that had shared his worries?
As Xu Qing's gaze swept across the store, he saw Huang Xiaoliu on the coffin lid, holding a boiled egg in both hands and peeling the shell with his mouth.

Xu Qing stepped forward, snatched the boiled 'phoenix egg' from Huang Xiaoliu, and peeled it with his hands while asking, "Where did Immortal Xuanyu go?"

With an eggshell stuck in his teeth, Huang Xiaoliu hurriedly said, "There were refugees from Jingzhou who came to Tianjin by waterway to escape their plight. In the evening, Lady Qingqing, along with the Gray Immortal of Fengshui Hall and the Monkey Immortal of the Hall Guardian, went to the port to provide them with food and herbs."

The sacred treasure used by Baosheng Temple to protect the temple is the "Living Man's Sutra," while the sacred treasure used by Maoxiantang is a bowl of rice.

Relief for disaster victims is a major business of the Cat Fairy Hall and a major source of incense offerings, but this work cannot be done during the day and can only be carried out at night.

This also echoes the lyrics of the opera "Cat God" about showing compassion to the poor and relieving the distressed at night and controlling the rat infestation.

After listening to Huang Xiaoliu's report, Xu Qing couldn't help but smile.

He thought the cat was carefree, and that its worries came and went quickly, but he never expected that the cat had already started working overtime to earn incense offerings.

If Xu Qing remembered correctly, the last time Xuan Yu acted like this was when he learned that Xuan Yu was going to undergo the lightning calamity.

"Little Six, when Immortal Xuanyu returns, please pass on a message for me: let Immortal Xu come up with a solution, and tell it not to worry too much."

As they spoke, Xu Qing handed the peeled hard-boiled egg to Huang Xiaoliu.

"There's one more thing. I need to go on a long trip. Xiao Liu, go to the funeral shop and find Boss Liu. Tell her to look after the shop for me."

"As for the funeral clothing shop, you can go to the coffin room and have Tiezhu come back to take care of it."

Ever since the coffin shop was haunted, Liu Su'e went to the nearby funeral clothing shop to take the place of Wang's younger sister and help Gu Zixu's daughter, Gu Qiao'er, manage the shop.

When Xu Qing had a spirit guide look after his shop, he always had one principle: a shamanic disciple must be present.

Now that Xuan Yu is away, heading to the Yinhe Ancient Road, the business of the coroner's shop cannot be stopped.

Fortunately, besides Liu Su'e, Tie Zhu, who learned martial arts from him and became Huang Xiaoliu's disciple, was also capable of handling things on his own.

Most importantly, Tie Zhu is an obedient 'child'.

Unlike Wang Liang, who had also studied martial arts under Xu Qing, he abandoned his family and sister and went to the northern frontier alone with Zhu Huai'an.

If Wang Liang had withstood the test and cultivated diligently, his martial arts achievements today would certainly not be lower than Tie Zhu's.

Everyone has their own destiny; I just hope he won't regret it.

Xu Qing glanced at the lights in the incense and candle shop. Wang's younger sister had been waiting for her brother to return for six years.

The once pale and thin young girl has now grown into a graceful young woman in her late twenties.

The ancient Yinhe River Road.

Xu Qinggang had just been teleported from the Twin Coffins when he noticed something was wrong.

Why is the coffin, which was placed there, upside down on the ground?

Xu Qing felt a sudden sense of alertness. Holding the mountain-splitting axe, he added another layer to the Heavenly Gang Technique, which he had already deduced to the eighteenth level.

At the same time, Xu Qing had already located two anchor points for his divine journey through the Heavenly Book: one was the Baisha River in Tianjin, which was over a hundred miles wide, and the other was the Populus euphratica Mausoleum where Hu Baosong was located.

The Populus euphratica Mausoleum contains a restriction left by the Populus euphratica clan, which can serve as a certain concealment; the White Sand River is the home ground of the water zombies, and it is also suspected that a Azure Dragon is lurking there. If there is a truly formidable enemy, Xu Qing would not mind activating the Azure Scales to awaken the 'things' hidden in the White Sand River.

However, when Xu Qing forcibly pushed open the coffin lid and stepped out of the collapsed, desolate tomb, he discovered that this forest of steles and tombs had been swallowed up by some kind of disaster, and all the graves had been leveled.

Looking along the Yinhe Ancient Road, which appeared even more desolate than before, one could see that the vast Ghost King's Tomb in the distance had also been ravaged beyond recognition.

Xu Qing could even see the white skeletons of some skeleton ghosts exposed outside the mausoleum, being swept by layers of wind and sand.

Who would be so despicable as to dig up someone's grave?

At first, Xu Qing thought it was Zuo Zixiong and the Eight Banners Marshal who had put in the effort, but when he picked up a skeleton and performed a ritual to help it pass on, he found that it was not the case at all!
A few days ago, while the ghost soldiers scouts at the Ghost King's Tomb were on patrol, they suddenly felt the sky darken, followed by a loud rumbling sound from the sky.

The ghost soldier looked up and saw a water ladle that blotted out the sky, trailing the flames of incense, crashing down on the ancient Yin River Road with a destructive force.

The ghostly green flames within the empty eye sockets of the demon soldier leaped wildly.

A word of danger appeared in the withered brainstem of the ghost soldier.

At this critical moment, a demon king's image suddenly appeared in the sky above the Ghost King's Tomb, wearing an imperial crown and an ochre-yellow dragon robe.

The ghost king, wielding his royal sword, rose dozens of feet into the air, as if to stop the water ladle from falling.

At the same time, in the southeast, a skeleton general wearing a general's helmet and heavy armor, carrying the dragon of national destiny on his back and wielding a long spear, charged towards the water ladle that was about to fall.

In the southwest, the Yin-Erosion Dharma King, who is both male and female, commands countless Gu worms to form a tornado storm, raging and attacking the water ladle.

The ghost soldiers had never seen such a sight before. Before they could think any further, a shadowy figure appeared in the dark clouds that were lowered by the water ladle. It looked like a colossal creature pieced together from thousands of ghosts.

Xu Qing recognized the other party as Gui Lu, whom the old woman had faced when she first arrived at the Yinhe Ancient Road.

Gui Lu used the ghostly arm of the ghostly creature Wang Xiang, which could extend at will, to transform it into a thousand long black and red arms that grabbed at the water ladle.

At the same time, the plague ghosts, shadow-eating ghosts, and waste ghosts on Guilu's body swarmed up along Wangxiang's long arms and frantically pounced on the water ladle.

To the south, ancient deities and shamans chanted ancient incantations, causing the white skeletons buried beneath the Yinhe Ancient Road to emerge from the earth and piece together four white skeleton warriors with bull heads and human bodies and horse faces, attempting to stop the water ladle from falling.

However, just as the water ladle was about to fall, the Ghost King, who had manifested his Dharma body above the Ghost King's Tomb, suddenly shrank in size and then transformed into a beam of light, rapidly disappearing into the depths of the Ghost King's Tomb.

The ghostly fire in the patrolling ghost soldier's eyes visibly faltered. Everyone else hadn't run away, so why was their own ghost king making a quick getaway?

As the ghost soldier watched the Ghost King resolutely depart, he felt the image of the Ghost King in his heart, which was even more majestic than a mountain, crumbling.

At this moment, the water ladle crashed to the ground, and a visible gray storm swept in. The true spirit hidden in the ghost soldier's body was extinguished in an instant, like a candle flickering in the wind!
After finishing the "Scripture of Salvation" and turning the page, Xu Qing held the Yin Yuan Pill in his hand, remaining silent for a long time.

He vividly remembered that when the old woman fled the Yinhe Ancient Road, she uttered a harsh remark to the Ghost Law, the Witch Doctor, and the Witch Doctor's Auxiliary.

She said that what she borrowed from the Weak Water Law must eventually be repaid, and she would settle this debt with them sooner or later.

Xu Qingyuan didn't take it seriously, never expecting the old woman to hold such a grudge!
At the same time, Xu Qing also figured out where the old woman used all the magic power she borrowed from the Weak Water.

So the dud wasn't dropped in Tianjin at all, but rather on the Yinhe Ancient Road!
(End of this chapter)