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

Chapter 448 Karmic Fire Red Lotus, Eternal Drought Demon

The sinful god Sanmiao left with great resentment.

He shouldn't have known Kong Ren, nor should he have gone to the Jianghuai region.

Above the void, the Kitchen God, with his red face, snake whiskers, and three eyes, silently turned around.

However, the Kitchen God was extremely large, and with two dragons, one blue and one red, surrounding him, it was hard for Xu Qing not to notice him!

The Kitchen God, acting suspiciously, had just turned around and was about to escape when he heard Xu Qing's voice behind him.

"Where are you going? Are you going to report to the Heavenly Emperor, or to find the Dharma Lord? Why don't you take me with you!"

The Kitchen God, with his dark reddish complexion and large, broad face, turned around.

Behind Him, Xu Qing had already picked up the Gan Qi Great Axe, and at the same time, the Baosheng Dharma Image rose a hundred feet high. The concentration of the blood lake incense was no less than the mixed incense brought to the upper realm by the Kitchen God during his heyday.

However, the mixed incense offerings of the Kitchen God are actually the accumulated incense offerings collected by the Kitchen Gods of the world. Each Kitchen God's incense offerings come from different sources, which means that his incense offerings are not pure, hence the mixed colors.

However, the incense offerings to the deity Baosheng in front of them are pure and consistent. There is only one reason for this phenomenon: the other party is the only supreme deity who monopolizes the incense offerings in this area!

The crimson axe shadow, blessed by incense, came crashing down. Without the slightest hesitation, the Kitchen God decisively disintegrated his body in the instant the axe shadow was about to strike him, turning into countless sparks and disappearing without a trace.

Xu Qing frowned.

Compared to the stubborn Four Sin Gods, the Kitchen God in front of them was clearly much more resourceful.

At one moment, the Kitchen God, who had vanished from sight, reappeared silently behind Xu Qing as sparks of fire, taking shape once more.

He brandished the blue and red dragons, which lashed out at Xu Qing's body like fiery scissors.

However, just when the Kitchen God thought his fire escape technique was perfectly concealed, he suddenly saw the Goddess of Life in front of him twist and transform behind her head, and a second face actually grew out!

Under the glow of the merit halo, Xu Qing's solemn and dignified appearance gave the Kitchen God a chilling feeling, like a midnight terror.

Xu Qing raised his axe and brought it down. The Kitchen God, startled and enraged, once again vanished into a sky full of sparks.

"This supernatural power."

Xu Qing put away his axe and shield, and instead activated the Yellow Heaven Banner and the Wind-Leaving Guide to their maximum power.

You like being dismembered into countless pieces, so don't even think about reuniting them!
"."

Within a radius of a hundred miles, the omnipresent sparks suddenly burst into crimson light. Just as Xu Qing opened his three mouths above the ground, preparing to unleash the chilling wind, all the crimson light instantly converged into one place, and the Kitchen God's figure appeared.

"presumptuous!"

The Kitchen God spewed out crimson flames from his seven orifices, clearly very angry.

In the past, the Kitchen God would have thought Xu Qing was a celestial being from the upper realm who had descended to the mortal world, just like the sinful god Sanmiao, and then used this as an excuse to cause trouble.

However, the other party had previously denied it.
“Since you are not a celestial being, then you are a shady shrine built without permission. You have stolen so much incense from the people and angered Kong Ren to destroy the Heavenly Road. Neither the Heavenly Emperor nor the Dharma Lord will forgive you. There will be no place for you in the Three Realms!”

Xu Qing's eyes gleamed strangely as he asked, "Building a temple without permission? Who said it was done without permission? My sect built this temple several eons before the order of the upper realm was established. Who dares to be so audacious! You're talking about the Heavenly Emperor, does he intend to rebel?"

"."

The Kitchen God stared wide-eyed at Xu Qing, while the two fire dragons, Pan Nie and Chi Tuo, who were breathing on Xu Qing from both sides, unconsciously lowered their voices.

The little scouts who had been running and leaping around inside and outside the Kitchen God's wide sleeves, beating drums to cheer him on, as well as the grain-eating birds and the Kitchen Spirits that had been baring their teeth at Xu Qing on his shoulders, all quieted down.

Even if the Heavenly Emperor intended to rebel, they couldn't bring themselves to say such a thing, no matter how much they tried to find fault.

The Kitchen God asked in surprise and doubt, "In this age of great calamity, with no saints appearing, could the master you have worshipped be any saint or sage?"

Xu Qing blinked, wondering how she could guess so well.
However, he had more than one teacher and was taught by more than one sage.

Once upon a time, when Xu Qing was borrowing a celestial book in the White Cloud Cave, a deity imparted supernatural powers to him and took him as a disciple in secret.

However, he could only keep this relationship to himself and could not speak of it.

Xu Qing still doesn't know how many anonymous disciples the Primordial Ancestor had taken in; the only one he knows is the master of the Little Water Curtain Cave.

The first rule of the Hunyuan Patriarch when accepting disciples was that disciples who remained anonymous must not reveal their sect to outsiders.

Xu Qing even felt that the Primordial Ancestor's disguises were almost as numerous as his own.

No one knows who this patriarch was. The only thing Xu Qing knows is that the non-stick properties of the Hunyuan Patriarch have reached their peak.

"The absence of a deity does not mean that his disciples will not emerge."

Xu Qing said calmly, "I am a disciple of the goddess of the Zhonghuang Temple. There is still a divine tablet for me in the Zhonghuang Temple. How dare the Heavenly Emperor call me a wild shrine and licentious worship?"

"goddess."

The Kitchen God looked Xu Qing over again. His solemn and dignified appearance resembled that of a goddess in legend, with her signature golden gourd and red phoenix embroidered ball.

Then look at that pure, unadulterated incense offering in the blood lake.
The Kitchen God, already restless, was now even more paranoid.

A sacred plan, destroying the Heavenly Path; slaying the Four Gods, directly confronting the majesty of the Law Lord and the calamity of the collapsing heavens.

Each of these plans, taken individually, is beyond what someone his age could handle.

He, a seemingly chubby but actually lowly hearth god, seemed unlikely to survive in such a precarious situation.

Xu Qing didn't care about anything else; he absolutely couldn't let anyone else know that he had angered Kong Ren and caused the destruction of the Heavenly Pillar.

Everyone who knows the truth must be silenced!
Xu Qing understood that after the Heavenly Road barrier shattered, it was only a matter of time before the immortals and gods of the upper realm descended to the mortal world. In this extremely short period of time, he had to implement the Three Religions' plan to retreat into seclusion ahead of schedule.

The wood is beautiful in the forest, and the wind will destroy it.

Xu Qing understood this principle well. Only by assessing the situation and acting accordingly, and knowing when to act and when to remain silent, could he ensure that the three religions could survive the calamity.

During this period, all plans to deal with the calamity can only be carried out openly under other identities.

The fault lies with Xu Xuan, not Xu Qing.

Aside from contingency plans, he had another reason for wanting to silence the Kitchen God: to completely shift the blame for the Sanzu River's impact on the upper realm, causing the sky to tear apart and the Heavenly Road to open onto Kong Ren and the Lord of War.

Only in this way can he, Xu, continue to be the obedient disciple in front of the goddess.

Furthermore, the Lord of War and Kong Ren are now subordinates of the Lord of the Nine Netherworlds. As long as the public is unaware of this variable, the Heavenly Emperor and the gods and Buddhas of the Upper Realm will inevitably focus their attention on the Lord of the Nine Netherworlds.

Even if the two sides don't end up fighting each other, they will likely still experience constant friction due to suspicion.

Only by stirring up this pool of water can he navigate it and seize opportunities from it.

In a short time, Xu Qing had already figured out his way forward and his way back.

The enormous disaster that Kong Ren caused, though an accident, was also an opportunity!

Seeing Xu Qing put away his axe and shield, the Kitchen God finally breathed a sigh of relief. However, the next moment, he saw that the Goddess of Life had produced a Heaven-Mending Stone. "..."

The Kitchen God's eyelids twitched. Who was this goddess's disciple swinging a giant axe and a huge stone?
Accompanied by a thunderous roar, a series of loud clashing sounds of sparks colliding and striking each other rang out.

Above the void, Xu Qing was like a ruthless primitive man; each time a divine stone fell, it was a tribute to the ancient Stone Age.

The Kitchen God was furious and kept spewing out Kitchen God Fire from his mouth. After withstanding the divine stone twice, ash-like residue began to peel off the Kitchen God's body, and even the Kitchen God Fire spewing from his mouth turned into wisps of blue smoke.

"I will curse you! I will use the head of the five gods to cast a curse, and offer this body as a sacrifice, to curse you to be beset by calamity and never escape the cycle of reincarnation!"

Xu Qing chuckled upon hearing this, and even held back the divine stone that was about to fall from his hand.

"Then let's try casting the spell! But I'm short on time, so you'd better hurry!"

The Kitchen God, having suffered repeated humiliations, immediately uttered the Five Sacrifices Divine Incantation. As the incantation fell, his enormous body seemed to be consumed by some kind of energy, and in an instant, it visibly deflated.

The Kitchen God, severely injured, revealed a maniacal smile, but it wasn't long before he completely lost his smile.

Xu Qing, who was under a vicious curse, not only did not have his complexion affected, but became even more energetic, and even the five-colored divine stone in his hand shone brighter!
The Kitchen God's expression shifted from madness to astonishment, and then to incredulous fear. The goddess disciple before him had become an unknown being that he could not comprehend.

"Impossible! Even if you are a disciple of the Goddess, you cannot be unaffected by the power of the Five Sacrifices."

The Kitchen God was responded to by a divine stone heavier than Mount Tai, which suppressed him!
Putting away the divine stone, Xu Qing looked at the Kitchen God, whose body was flattened and deformed, and who no longer had the strength to resist, and said:
“You are a corrupted Dharma corpse, your vows are evil, not righteous, so how can you influence me?”

The Kitchen God looked at Xu Qing with crooked eyes, his heart filled with unspeakable shock.

"You, you are a heretic and evil spirit."

Xu Qing chuckled, reaching out his corpse claw and plunging it into the Kitchen God's body, saying, "Demon? Even if your true form, the Five Sacrificial Gods, came, you couldn't curse me! You can't compete with evil magic, but as for merit, how dare you even think about it?"

The fire in the Kitchen God's eyes suddenly shrank, and Xu Qing, who was now close at hand, had become something even more terrifying than the painted-skin demon in the eyes of mortals.

"What exactly are you?"

Xu Qing, who had opened the Salvation Sutra, unusually used a deep male voice to say, "Guess."

"."

The Kitchen God died with his eyes wide open in dismay.

If we're talking about the most hateful people in this matter, one type is the person who always says "we'll see" when something happens, and the other type is the person who only says half of what they mean.

Xu Qing happens to have both.

After performing the ritual to appease the Kitchen God, Xu Qing saw the Kitchen God's tablet worshipped in every household, and also saw the dark side of the people, who, in addition to their good wishes, also harbored evil desires and wicked thoughts.

Some umbrella sellers worshipped the Kitchen God, hoping for rain every day; some childless people hoped that their neighbor's child would die young; some cloth vendors, ridiculed by shopkeepers, prayed to the Kitchen God to burn down their shops, turning all their fine clothes to ashes so they could beg for food on the streets.
There are many instances where these evil thoughts, which are not righteous wishes, have been fulfilled by the Kitchen God, but many more have piled up into mountains, materializing together into the evil corpse of the Kitchen God, poisoning the world.

After watching the Kitchen God's revolving lantern, Xu Qing did not immediately take stock of the spoils. Instead, based on the Kitchen God's memory, he identified all the spirits under the Kitchen God's command within the forbidden area shrouded by the Misty Heaven Barrier and the Yellow Heaven Great Law.

Grain-eating birds, grass and wood soldiers, stove spirits, and soot beetles
The grain-eating bird lives by inhaling the essence of the grains offered as sacrifices. It was originally the eyes and ears of the Kitchen God and also the companion bird of the Kitchen God in every place.

Grass and wood soldiers are a type of small wood spirit monsters that are born after some plants that have grown to a certain size and have some spiritual energy are cut down to fill stoves and burn as firewood.

The "stove spirit" is a cloud of fire that can absorb the heat of the fire, while the "smoke beetle" is a type of ash beetle that has been nurtured by the essence of the five grains for a long time and is born from the smoke and ash of coal.

These sooty worms resemble spineless sea urchins, are as light as a feather, and are invisible to the naked eye.

Only some children with special physical conditions or whose fontanelles have not yet closed can occasionally see it.

According to common sense, the spirits and soldiers under the command of the Kitchen God during the fifth month of the lunar calendar are all harmless creatures that can even increase the prosperity of the house.

But the elven soldiers under the command of the Kitchen God's corpse in front of Xu Qing were all evil spirits with sharp mouths and fangs, who wished they could bite his hand.

Xu Qing, with the attitude of cutting weeds without leaving any roots, wiped out the grain-eating birds and even the gray spirits that were running around everywhere.

After doing all this, Xu Laojiang still plowed the ground again, and after using his supernatural powers of burning mountains and boiling seas and summoning clouds and rain, Xu Qing took off his shoes and used the shoe-throwing method to search for the whereabouts of the remaining gray essence.

He was relieved when he saw the shoe tips pointing upwards and spinning around.

Inside the bronze coffin, Xu Qing, having finished arranging all the funeral matters, hurried towards the Zhuoshui Dojo while examining his gains.

In addition to the chaotic power of Huan Dou that he had obtained earlier, Xu Qing also obtained a disordered power from the sinful god San Miao.

The former, 'Disaster,' can confuse the public, disrupt people's minds, reverse good and evil, create illusions and delusions, cause cognitive confusion, and induce others to suspect and kill each other.

The latter, 'disorder,' when unleashed, can disrupt the order of heaven and earth, causing an imbalance of yin and yang in a region, like a river flowing backward, women growing long beards, and men becoming beardless.

Or perhaps the earth lacks a substantial atmosphere, and the sky lacks clear light, so people can only float in the void and cannot stand on solid ground.

This kind of authority is a 'fragment of law' scattered at the beginning of creation.

Through the revolving lantern of the two Sin Gods, Xu Qing saw the origin of this kind of law-based divine power. The original divine power possessed by the four Sin Gods, including the Lord of War, all had a name—Chaos.

Chaos represents disorder, chaos, and also war and bloodshed.

This includes Kong Ren's extremely destructive power of breaking through illusions, which is also a type of chaotic supernatural power.

These kinds of supernatural powers cannot be comprehended; they can only be acquired through deprivation.

Xu Qing is in the neutral and benevolent camp, so he probably won't need to use this kind of supernatural power, but he desperately wants to have more of these abilities.

This is like the difference between having a knife and not having a knife.

Chaos abilities are all powerful weapons of destruction, serving as a means to threaten other forces and secure one's own safety.

Xu Qing understood this principle better than anyone else.

After suppressing the strange emotions in his heart, Xu Qingfu looked at the Kitchen God again to receive the reward.

A strange seed of karmic fire, a red lotus; a cultivation method that controls the karmic fire of countless eons.

Both are top-tier rewards.

Xu Qing looked at the ball of red lotus flame floating in front of him, his heart already filled with indescribable excitement.

This spark is born from karma and gathers the power of worldly tribulations; even immortals, Buddhas, and saints cannot refine it.

The immortals and gods of the upper realm feared karma as if it were a tiger or leopard, so how could they dare to even think of refining the seed of karmic fire?
But Xu Qing is the opposite. He has saved millions of corpses and has already accumulated countless karmas. Each karma is a tribulation, and he has already passed through countless tribulations. Not to mention that he has planted the karmic fire, he has also mastered the method of controlling the karmic fire of countless tribulations!

Xu Qing's only concern was the path to obtaining the future Drought Demon's Dao Fruit.

“The most precious treasures of heaven and earth are always hard to come by, let alone fire, which is a supreme treasure. Immortals and gods fear karma because their merits are insufficient and their tribulations in the mortal world are not enough. Now that I have both virtue and good deeds and bear the heavy burden of countless karmas, what is there that I cannot cultivate?”

If he doesn't cultivate, wouldn't he be burdened with countless worldly responsibilities for nothing?

(End of this chapter)