Dongxuan Spiritual Realm

Chapter 116 Mu Canzhuang's Nascent Soul
With a strange smile on her face, Mu Canzhuang leaned back slightly, parted the light gauze covering her body, and gently patted her belly: "Baby, come out and eat!"

Her belly swelled rapidly, and her navel expanded quickly, with red flesh churning out and splitting open in the blink of an eye into a monster's gaping maw, revealing two rows of sharp, pointed teeth, glistening with a thin layer of viscous fluid...

Lu Yichao had sensed something was off when she first smiled strangely, but he never expected that the child Mu Canzhuang had mentioned was hungry and needed to be fed some blood, and that the child would appear in this form!
Originally, the cultivation of immortality was based on valuing life. The earliest purpose of cultivating immortality was to achieve immortality. All other supernatural powers and transformations were simply various means obtained on the path to immortality.

After achieving immortality, one then pursues the even higher goal of eternal indestructibility.

The essence of health preservation is to maintain one's essence, energy, and spirit. Immortals are pure Yang, ghosts are pure Yin, and humans are a mixture of Yin and Yang. To cultivate oneself from a human to an immortal, one must continuously increase one's "Yang attribute," strengthen one's blood and energy, enhance the vital energy of the five internal organs, refine one's spirit and soul, and remain unaffected by illusions, etc.

However, the path of ghost cultivation leads in a different direction. Because they cannot walk the path of immortality and still want to achieve longevity, they walk the path of ghosts and then make the path of ghosts resemble the path of immortality.

Just as Mu Canzhuang said, the so-called understanding of life and death is to cultivate to the point of being between life and death, neither born nor dying, yet both dying and being born.

Although still alive, they are actually dead. Although dead, it's no different from being alive... and in this process, they can possess all sorts of supernatural powers and magic.

The characteristics of their path are that it is conducive to refining evil but not to refining qi. Due to the exhaustion of essence, deficiency of qi and weakness of spirit, it is extremely difficult to produce medicine and refine pills. They have to use very special methods and exert a lot of effort to successfully cultivate ghost pills. Moreover, the quality of their pills is not high. It is completely impossible to cultivate to the nascent soul level in the theory of immortality.

Therefore, they had to find another way.

Cui Wushe seized the Nascent Soul of the Old Man of Blackhead and used a secret technique to merge his own primordial spirit and soul with it.

The final ghost infant is fundamentally different from the immortal nascent soul, and its effects, such as increasing lifespan, are much smaller. However, because it is formed by the fusion of the ghost inner core and the Hundred Poisons Nascent Soul, it possesses both the various supernatural powers of the ghost path and various highly poisonous properties, making it more powerful than the immortal nascent soul cultivated normally.

Therefore, Zhen was poisoned by the real person and was defeated by Cui Wushe.

Mu Canzhuang took a different path. She was also stuck in her fixed realm for many years and could not break through. She sought out men to interact with her and reward each other, and the yin and yang interacted. As the saying goes, the male yang spreads the mysterious power, and the female yin transforms into a yellow bud. Using the infinite vitality that nurtured life at the time of conception as the yellow bud, she then conceived an infant, half physical and half divine, creating a ghost fetus and demonic infant!
In human cultivation, men and women have different physiques. When starting out, men begin by refining essence, while women begin by refining blood. In the end, both need to nurture a nascent soul within the Yellow Court.

This Mu Canzhuang actually conceived a nascent soul within the womb by using the father's sperm and mother's blood to create a child.

The child conceived in this way has a physical body, which she then refines into a stream of blood energy, and merges with her own primordial spirit and soul, storing it within her abdomen.

Because the baby's vital energy was still weak and it could not leave the body, it opened its belly button and extended a thin, long tongue, which flew out and wrapped around Lu Yichao's neck, limbs, waist and ribs.

Lu Yichao was taken aback and hurriedly released his sword energy to sever these tough tongues.

A heart-wrenching cry of an infant came from Mu Canzhuang's abdomen.

She laughed heartily, followed by a synchronized laugh from her abdomen: "Boy, do you still dare to resist? Quickly and obediently become my baby's blood food. When you swore an oath to me before, didn't you promise me that you would become one with me, inseparable, until the end of time?"

As she spoke, she waved her hand, unleashing a ball of cold yellow flame that formed a strange talisman in the air. Lu Yichao retreated while simultaneously unleashing his Ten-Finger Sword Aura in retaliation, pleading loudly, "Don't kill me! I'll do anything for you! Please!" Mu Canzhuang ignored his pleas, pointing a finger at him, and the sword aura Lu Yichao released dissipated. She had already crossed the threshold of the Nascent Soul Realm; flying swords of the aura level were utterly vulnerable before her, easily broken with a flick of her wrist.

The Yellow Springs Remnant Makeup Talisman flew over and smeared onto Lu Yichao's face, quickly transforming into a hollowed-out mask resembling a yellow crystal carving, tightly adhering to Lu Yichao's facial skin.

Lu Yichao covered his face with both hands, as if in great pain, and fell to the ground, howling loudly.

Mu Canzhuang's gaping maw spewed out its tongue again, wrapping around his neck and forcibly pulling him close as if strangling him. Its flesh turned outwards, and its two rows of teeth opened to the left and right, enveloping Lu Yichao's head in one bite. In a single stroke, it bit off his neck and forcibly pulled his head back into its belly like a watermelon to chew.

"Hahahaha." Mu Canzhuang was overjoyed. "I have finally cultivated to the Nascent Soul stage! And I did it using the essence of a righteous disciple!"
My Nascent Soul is even better than Old Ghost Cui's! Hahahaha, among the Eight Ghost Immortals, I should definitely be one of the top four!

She laughed triumphantly, letting the demonic infant in her womb pull Lu Yichao's corpse over and devour it one by one. Soon, only a pool of filthy blood remained on the stone bed. With a wave of her hand, she released the Yellow Spring Cold Flame, which instantly burned it to ashes, leaving no trace, as if Lu Yichao had never existed.

After finishing Lu Yichao's meal, she continued to sit cross-legged on the stone bed.

The Taoist Nascent Soul is a Yang spirit body cultivated from one's own primordial spirit as its essence and one's own essence and energy as its body.

Simply put, the nascent soul is the infancy of the Yang spirit; when the nascent soul grows up, it will become the Yang spirit.

Mu Canzhuang is different. She essentially possessed her own child and then devoured the child's father. She had to work hard to merge her primordial spirit and soul with the blood and energy transformed from the child's body.

The nascent soul she has now cultivated is still in its infancy, and she needs to integrate it with herself as soon as possible.

Yang Qisheng remained hidden in the uppermost niche, witnessing everything firsthand. He felt a chill run down his spine and a sense of unease, but also a sense of satisfaction. Lu Yichao had brought this upon himself and deserved to live. Mu Canzhuang's strength had also greatly increased, and since she was cultivating here, he couldn't leave either.

The cave was so quiet that you could hear a pin drop.

Yang Qisheng dared not move, not even breathe, while Mu Canzhuang sat there motionless, as if she had become a statue.

"If I make a move now and go all out against her, can I succeed?"

Yang Qisheng thought to himself, "I wonder what state this guy is in right now!"

As time passed, Yang Qisheng's palms were covered in cold sweat.

(End of this chapter)