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

Chapter 334 The Tribulation of the Undying Immortal Bone Golden Egg
After the bones become incorruptible, they become flying zombies, also known as flying yakshas or black fiends.

Xu Qing had set himself a twelve-year deadline: before the Heavenly Fox of White Cloud Cave was born, he would at least refine the last three main bones in his body into one.

As long as he has one main bone connected to the other 203 bones, he can try to take a crucial step toward becoming a flying zombie, using his thousand years of cultivation as a foundation.

Now, six years later, he has obtained the opportunity to refine the second main bone, which is undoubtedly an encouraging thing for Xu Qing.

"Thank you, old neighbor; thank you, Dharma King Yin Shi; thank you, Yin River, for your gifts."

Xu Qing remained true to his original aspiration and decided to work even harder to collect corpses in the future, striving to expand and strengthen the corpse collection business in both the Yin River and the secular world, and endeavor to achieve simultaneous progress and success in both areas!
Inside the tomb, Xu Qing looked at the remains of the Yin Shi Dharma King. Every joint of the skeleton before him seemed to have been crafted by a master craftsman, with naturally formed patterns.

Perhaps it was because the Yin Shi Dharma King had tempered his body with witchcraft and holy water since childhood, or perhaps it was because the Dharma King and Panan were one body, but the skeleton in front of him was much more visually impactful than the Duo E Ghost King.

In addition, the shamanic runes that are everywhere on the skeleton give the entire skeleton a wild aura that belongs only to the wilderness.

If the Demon King of Duo'e is dignified and elegant, with every move displaying a grand demeanor, then the Yin Shi Dharma King is wild and bold, full of exotic charm from other lands.

Xu Qing found it difficult to say which of the corpses he preferred; he could only say that each had its own unique fragrance, like spring orchids and autumn chrysanthemums.

"The Yellow Court skull resides in the Jade Capital, the location of the Niwan Palace. Once refined, it can prevent wisdom from sinking and ensure that one is never affected by resentful evil spirits or yin energy."

Xu Qing currently has only the Yellow Court skull and the North Sea sacrum yet to be refined. The Yellow Court governs wisdom, and the North Sea governs harmony.

If Xu Qing had followed his original plan, he would have repaired his skull first. As long as his head was still intact, no matter how severe the injury, he could still wander around with his remaining head and slowly rebuild his body.

However, when the image of the short-sighted and reckless Dharma King Pangzan came to mind, Xu Qing still chose to train his sacrum first.

The sacrum of Beihai is considered an immortal bone by cultivators, and it is also the most difficult part to refine when a zombie is nurtured and its bones cannot be dissolved.

The Immortal Bone of the North Sea contains the Mysterious Female. If Xu Qing wants to survive the Heavenly Fire Calamity, he must harmonize Yin and Yang and use the Mysterious Female to refine his true essence.

The cathode generates yang, and the yang pole generates yin.

Xu Qing resided within the Ghost Cave, where the Yin energy was most concentrated. Embracing Yang while embracing Yin, he attempted to condense the Yin energy within his body to its extreme, generating a bit of true essence to awaken his immortal bones.

Meanwhile, outside the tomb chamber.

Having eaten and dressed warmly, Jinluan slept soundly for the first time, and when she opened her eyes, half a month had passed.

The golden phoenix stretched out its claws and spread its wings, about to follow its instinct to crow at dawn, but suddenly remembered the two-legged beast that was in seclusion in the tomb.

Smacking its lips, Jinluan simply took on the role of a guardian general, striding back and forth outside the tomb chamber.

After about three to five days, Jinluan, feeling bored, decided to go out for a walk. Xu Qing had clearly stated that, except for the northern passageway, the rest of the area beneath the Bone Temple was its territory.

Upon reaching the fork in the tunnel, Jinluan looked at the two unknown paths before her and was about to raise her claws to continue when she suddenly showed a confused expression.

Speaking of which direction is north under this underground river?

After hesitating for a moment, Jinluan had a sudden inspiration. She immediately returned to the entrance of the tomb, pecked a mouthful of rice from the rice bag, and came back to the fork in the road.

Jinluan spat out a handful of rice grains in the middle of the fork in the road. She would peck at a grain of rice and place it in the left passageway, then peck at another grain and place it in the right passageway. When the last grain of rice pointed to the right, Jinluan immediately revealed a knowing look.

It had seen Xu Qing throw his shoe to ask for directions, and now it had learned this divination technique by pecking at rice to ask for directions!

Jinluan, whose intelligence was not much higher than that of the Dharma King Pangzan, strode arrogantly into the passageway leading to the Temple of the True Lord of the Mysterious Altar as if surveying his own territory.
Outside the mortal world, seasons change; inside the Yin River, time remains unchanged.

It is unknown how much time has passed. When the bones of the Yin-Erosion Dharma King emitted a crisp sound like jade cracking and his entire body was covered with cracks, the young man in the tomb, who was enveloped in the most Yin energy and had no life at all, suddenly emitted a scorching and dazzling light from the location of his sacrum!

The light remained steadfast and unmoved within the almost solidified body of the zombie, like a reef in a raging storm!

And as time went on, that blazing sun energy grew stronger and stronger, growing from a tiny speck to the size of a fist.

When it reached its peak, the fist-sized ball of light suddenly shrank back!

Only young people understand that this is not shrinkage, but compression and purification.

The young man frowned, his entire body radiating yin energy and malevolent aura as he pressed towards the ball of light. Then, a clear sound of water droplets falling emanated from his body, and the intensely bright ball of light was condensed into the size of a water droplet, which dripped onto his sacrum and disappeared into it!

Yin cannot produce life alone, and Yang cannot grow alone. Now, Xu Qing is guarding a bit of true essence hidden in the Xuanpin, and has already touched the key to the zombie's path to enlightenment.

When he opened his eyes, a captivating glint flashed and disappeared, and behind Xu Qing, the male and female dual-faced Dharma King skeleton disintegrated into a pile of dry bones.

At this point, Xu Qing's entire body of incorruptible bones had been condensed into 205 pieces, with only the Yellow Court remaining to complete the process.

Looking across the Three Realms and Six Paths, perhaps only four types of zombie progenitors can rival Xu Qing.

However, besides not being able to dissolve bones, Xu Qing also has three other types of transformations, which are not possessed by these four types of corpse ancestors.

The immortal bone of Beihai contains true essence. With this essence, no one who examines Xu Qing's pulse in the future will be able to tell that he has no connection with the zombie.

At most, one could tell that he was a person with weak kidney yang and empty marrow, nothing more.

Upon arriving at the entrance of the tomb chamber, Xu Qing did not see Jin Luan, and the thousand-stone rice bag placed at the entrance was almost empty.

"How long have I been in seclusion that I could get this chicken, which hates rice, to eat a thousand bushels of rice?"

Xu Qing felt a strange sense of dread. It was like being on your way to the capital for the imperial examinations and realizing you'd overslept and missed the exam. The money that helped you get there was scraped together by the whole village.
He's a zombie; if he were a living person, he'd probably be terrified by now.

Xu Qing used the Qimen Dunjia method to calculate the date, and only when the Heavenly Stem and Earthly Branch appeared did he breathe a sigh of relief.

"A year is much faster than when we refined the Heavenly Pillar."

Xu Qing could roughly guess why the refining of the North Sea Bone was more efficient this time. He had previously cultivated in the cemetery of the Dayong army, where the concentration of Yin energy was far less than that of this ghost cave.

Furthermore, when he refined the North Sea Sacrum, he had already refined a main bone, and the cultivation he had accumulated this time was even greater than before. With the two combined, his speed was naturally not slow.

But here's the problem: how come the thousand bushels of rice placed at the entrance were completely used up in just one year?

Even if this golden rooster had broken through its shackles, it shouldn't be able to eat so much, let alone the fact that there was still a lot of Gu food stored in its crop.

"Something's wrong."

Xu Qing looked up and sensed his surroundings, but did not find Jin Luan.

After leaving the Ghost Cave and entering the Bone Temple, the Demon Exorcist Lord was nowhere to be seen.

This True Lord comes and goes without a trace; perhaps he's off plotting his own grand plan to slay the demons.

Xu Qing took off his shoes, took out a golden feather from the Landscape Painting, stuffed it into the shoe, and then used the shoe-throwing method to ask for directions to throw the shoe away.

The shoe flipped several times in the air, finally landing gracefully on the ground with the toe down and the heel pointing downwards.

Xu Qing was puzzled; was this chicken still inside the Ghost Cave?

However, he did not find anything unusual when he inspected the southeast and southwest passageways.
"."

Suddenly, Xu Qing's expression changed.

Could this stupid chicken have wandered into the northern tunnel?
"Xuantan Zhenjun Temple!"

Xu Qing jumped down into the ghost cave and looked into the passage filled with the evil spirits of swords and spears.

He didn't know how Jinluan had dodged the sword and weapon curse, but he did know that a demon with an extremely violent aura was lurking in that underground temple.

Focusing his mind, Xu Qing used the power of the Heavenly Pillar to connect with the surrounding earth veins. As the earth's energy surged, he once again saw the scene at the end of the tunnel through the layers of earth veins.

Before the temple gate, where swords and spears were spewing forth, a golden rooster lay on the gate, and beneath the gate, a huge, jet-black tiger with piercing eyes was coiled up!
As soon as Xu Qing caught sight of the black tiger, the tiger suddenly turned its head, its fangs bared menacingly!
Across the several-mile-long passageway, Xu Qing's figure was reflected in Black Tiger's golden eyes.

With its head held high, a roar that shook the entire forest suddenly resounded! The roar, carrying with it the murderous aura of weapons within the temple passageway, swept straight towards the entrance of the passageway!
"."

Xu Qing suddenly looked up, his mouth widening to an unbelievable degree. He also opened his corpse mouth, his chest filled with hidden fire arrows, and combined with his corpse roar, he faced the sword and spear shadows sweeping from the tunnel entrance head-on!
On one side, a vicious tiger, its ferocity unleashed; on the other, an uncorrupted corpse king spews forth furious flames.

The two malevolent forces collided, and the entire passageway was filled with the sounds of thunder and fire.

Weapons are inherently weapons of killing and destruction, and their nature is associated with metal.

Xu Qing, though unintentional, had a plan; the hidden arrow fire he spat out perfectly countered the murderous aura before him!

These days, who doesn't breathe on their skin?
Taking advantage of Black Tiger's setback, Xu Qing hurriedly called out the name of Golden Phoenix.

The golden rooster, still half-asleep, jumped off the temple gate with great excitement upon hearing Xu Qing's voice and ran towards the entrance of the passageway!
When the black tiger saw the golden phoenix enter the passageway, it stopped roaring. The weapons and spirits around the passageway automatically avoided the golden phoenix to the sides when they encountered it, as if they did not want to touch its body.

Watching the golden rooster disappear into the passageway, the black tiger let out a reluctant growl, then turned around, cut its tail, jumped onto the temple gate, and disappeared into the depths of the temple with a few leaps.

Outside the Ghost Cave, Xu Qing was criticizing the golden rooster in front of him.

The scolding tone was like that of a parent at the village entrance who discovers their unruly child playing with a group of unfamiliar thugs, and then, upon returning home, gives the child a beating with a bamboo stick and verbal abuse. If the parents were a little less resilient, they might even beat and scold the child while crying along with him.

Xu Qing neither hit nor cried; he simply plucked the golden phoenix's feathers while cursing loudly.

Once he had collected enough feather dusters from his previous stock, Xu Qing finally stopped.

"You're a chicken, and it's a tiger. Luckily, that tiger demon isn't hungry, otherwise do you think you could have gotten out unscathed?"

Jinluan, feeling guilty, explained that the black tiger didn't eat meat, it ate rice!

A tiger eating rice?
Xu Qing, recalling the missing rice bag at the tomb entrance, said in a dangerous tone, "You didn't just throw the rice away somewhere else, are you trying to fool me with that?"

Xu Qing had told Jinluan earlier that he would take it back to Tianjin once they finished eating the rice.

Given how homesick this chicken is, it might actually do that!
Just as Xu Qing was preparing to pluck feathers again to make a feather fan.

A voice suddenly rang out from within the Bone Temple:
"What the golden rooster said is true."

The Demon Exorcist True Lord revealed himself and said, "That black tiger was originally the mount of the Mysterious Altar True Lord. It is most skilled at exorcising evil spirits and suppressing malevolent forces. It possesses the power to devour demons and evil spirits, and can not only sweep away evil ghosts, but also protect the peace of the region."

"Unfortunately, in this age of great calamity, evil spirits are rampant and cannot be dispersed. Black Tiger is suffering from the evil energy and is already weak. The rice and grains of the common people, which are born from the sun's energy, can alleviate some of its pain. This golden rooster is also of the highest yang nature, so Black Tiger will not harm it."

Xu Qing came to his senses. This was somewhat similar to carnivores occasionally eating grass, but the former replenished a certain element that was lacking in the body, while the black tiger did so to alleviate the accumulated Yin energy in its body.

"The Yin energy beneath this bone temple is extremely dense. If it wants to resist the harm of evil spirits, why doesn't it go to the mortal world?"

The Exorcist True Lord shook his head and sighed, "The Black Tiger protects its master. The Mysterious Altar True Lord said it was returning to the Void, but in reality it was being reborn in the mortal world. This Yin River is full of enemies of the Mysterious Altar True Lord. If the Black Tiger leaves this place, the enemies will definitely find out."

"On the contrary, as long as the Black Tiger guards the tomb, they will assume that the True Lord of the Mysterious Altar has indeed returned to the Ruins and there is no possibility of him ever returning."

Xu Qing remained silent for a long time.

"Did you gain anything from your seclusion this time?" the Exorcist Lord suddenly asked.

"I have made some progress. Now that this seclusion is over, I will be leaving the Yin River for a while. If you want to deal with the Ghost Law, it would be best to wait a few days."

"Let alone a few days, even two or three years is not too late!"

After bidding farewell to the Exorcist Lord, Xu Qing did not leave the Yin River from the Twin Coffins. Instead, he planned to use the power of the Heavenly Pillar to communicate with the spirits and the Yin-Yang Boundary Marker as a coordinate to go to the mouth of the White Sand River.

Before leaving Yinhe, Xu Qing specially took out the court document and had Jin Luan sign and affix her seal.

Xu Qing originally thought it would take some persuasion to get the chicken into the hall, but to his surprise, the chicken put its name on the hall list as soon as he opened his mouth.

Aren't you going to ask me why I let you into the hall?

Jinluan looked bewildered. All it wanted was to live a life of luxury with the other party; it had never considered what it would do inside the hall.

Xu Qing looked at the plump chicken weighing about 200 to 300 pounds in front of him, and swallowed the words that were about to come out.

Baisha River Estuary

The moment the stiff creature and the chicken appeared, thunderclouds gathered overhead.

Xu Qing knew that the Golden Phoenix's five-hundred-year thunder calamity had arrived!

Under the clear blue sky, streaks of electricity crackled and popped in the thunderclouds, leaving Jinluan dazed.

It was in a hurry to get back to Tianjin, but it never expected to be struck by lightning.

Seeing Jin Luan's flustered expression, Xu Qing narrowed his eyes.

"You haven't forgotten that you'll face calamity once you return to the human world, have you?"

Jinluan remained silent.

So all you're thinking about is going home?
Xu Qing hesitated several times before finally letting out a long sigh. He then offered 100,000 incense sticks and said, "Focus on dealing with the lightning disaster and don't get distracted."

After saying that, Xu Qing disappeared.

Thunderclouds were gathering in the sky.

On the river, the unprepared golden phoenix could only rely on instinct to resist the calamity.

At one moment, a blinding bolt of lightning struck down, but it was the Yang Lightning that was just the right thing to do to counter the demon!
Jinluan instinctively threw out all the incense sticks, then crouched down with her head in her hands, resembling a large golden egg emitting a protective golden light.

"."

Xu Qing had used the Golden Stele of Merit and the Image of the Goddess of Life Protection to ward off disasters, and Xuan Yu had also taken the initiative to summon the lightning disaster from the front of the Forest of Merit Steles.

Even Tao Sanmei used the merits and incense to condense the peach tree image to resist the calamity.

How come it's become a chicken egg formed from the accumulation of merit and incense offerings in your hands?

Xu Qing was hoping to see the rooster's image flapping its wings and crowing, but the golden phoenix gave him this surprise.

The lightning strike at the mouth of the Baisha River lasted for about the time it takes to drink a cup of tea before it subsided.

The golden egg still retained its radiance, indicating that there was still a surplus of offerings from the 100,000 offerings.

When Jinluan peeked out and looked around, Xu Qing said irritably, "Put the 100,000 incense offerings on the Five Elders Temple's account first. When we get back to Jingxia Street, go find Xuanyu and get the court dismissal papers for you."

The Golden Phoenix was raised by the Five Elders Temple, and Xu Qing would not allow it to become a branch immortal. The signing of the hall agreement was only to deal with the lightning disaster.

Now that the calamity has passed, Jinluan can withdraw from court at any time.

Jinluan was unaware of the gravity of owing 100,000 incense offerings. In its eyes, having survived the lightning calamity, Abbot Jingxu and Daoist Yizhen would surely be overjoyed; as for the incense offerings owed...
How could the Primordial Spirit True Man not be able to repay?
"Jinluan, you may go back on your own. If Xuanyu asks, just say that I will return within the time limit."

Xu Qing was concerned about the twelve-year deadline, and at the same time, the land-based Nuo Immortal of the Yin River might return at any time. Every second counted during this period, and he had to handle the affairs of the Yin River before the other party noticed the changes in the Yin River.

"King Yu passed by his home three times without returning, and I've only passed by a few times?"

Xu Qing only hoped that this trip would go smoothly and that he could take another step forward before the deadline.

As for Cat Fairy Hall and Baosheng Temple.
When he saw the increase in the number of worshippers at the temple over the past seven years, he was completely relieved.

(End of this chapter)