People who had passed the first phase of the assessment had a lot of freedom. They could come and go as they pleased in their attempts to open the door of Paramount Temple. They had half a year to do so. Therefore, after settling things with the Captain, Xu Qing chose to go back. His plan was to wait for the ‘oil’ that the Captain mentioned, and also to get used to his taboo poison gaze.

As for the Captain, his true form was sealed in the mirror lake. He had appeared in Paramount Temple as a soul body, and thus couldn’t leave. The Captain didn’t seem to mind. He was more than happy to stick around endlessly gnawing on the Crimson Mother totem.

And that was how the days passed.

The war in Moonrite Region heated up. The Red Moon Cathedral violently cracked down on any uprising, but the resistance movement only grew.

Fifth Sister and Eighth Sib had not yet returned. The Heir Apparent and Princess Brightblossom frequently went out, though it was hard to say what exactly they were busy doing.

The Green Spirit Pharmacy wasn’t as busy as it had been before. However, Wu Jianwu was just as passionate with his poetry, Ning Yan constantly scrubbed the floor, and Li Youfei was now pulling double duty as he served as the guard. Nethersprite and Patriarch Inkrule were fully aware that the Heir Apparent was gone a lot, but neither of them dared to attempt escaping.

Xu Qing also took plenty of opportunities to leave the medicine shop and find places in the Bitter Life Mountains to test out his taboo poison gaze. He was currently speeding through the mountains, not slowed down at all by the sun hanging at his waist or the unusual hat. He had long since grown used to both of those things. Even bearing their weight, he was still capable of his normal speed. In fact, he was actually a bit faster than before.

Thus, he was a blur of afterimages as he moved through the mountains. Eventually, he reached a valley. The cliff walls of the valley were full of holes, making them look almost like a honeycomb. They also pulsed with a sensation of decay. The lingering aura of taboo poison filled the area, making it so that any living being who got close would feel a sensation of deadly crisis, and would immediately go in the opposite direction.

This was the spot where Xu Qing had been practicing with his taboo poison gaze. After arriving, he checked to make sure the area was safe, then sat down cross-legged, closed his eyes, and regulated his breathing.

After the time it takes an incense stick to burn, his eyes opened. They were pitch black. In fact, if anyone were present to look at them, they would feel like they were looking into a bottomless pit. Whatever he looked at would start to rot. The power of taboo poison would build rapidly, to the point where everything would ripple and distort.

It was very similar to what happened when the eyes of the broken face opened. Of course, the effect was vastly less formidable for Xu Qing.

During Xu Qing’s time in the Moonrite Region, he had been improving and growing constantly. If he went back to Sea-Sealing County now, all of his old friends would be completely shocked. However, such growth came with a price. Mixed emotions could be seen on his face right now. This was not his first time unleashing taboo poison here. And every time he did, his heart filled with complexity.

During god-glimpsing, I looked at the world with the eyesight of a god. It seemed different.

Right now, this valley still looked like a valley. However, instead of being made of rocks, it was made of innumerable corpses, both human and nonhuman. In fact, the entire world seemed to be made of corpses. Death was the main theme of everything. The gray wind off in the distance also looked different. It was the breath of a massive snake that filled the sky. And every time the snake moved, scales would fall off of its body and become ash that drifted to the ground.

It was just possible to see that it was snowing in the lands outside of the desert. It was made of blood droplets that drifted to the ground like goose feathers. Sadly, ninety-nine percent of cultivators couldn’t see any of that.

And then there’s the broken face in the sky.

Xu Qing looked up through the gray wind and red snow at the face.

Hē… had opened hīs eyes. However, the spot being looked at was somewhere else.

Different gazes reveal different worlds. But which one is real?

Eventually, he looked away and took out a desert scorpion to experiment on. The scorpion was only about three meters long. It trembled, not daring to fight back or struggle. It was as if Xu Qing was a god to it. When Xu Qing looked at the scorpion, it didn’t actually look like a scorpion. It was a mass of glowing light that wriggled constantly. Eventually, it went dark and disappeared. If anyone had been watching the scene, they would have seen the scorpion… transform into a pool of blood.

Xu Qing lifted his hand and looked at it. It was still a hand. However, there was a gauzy substance covering it that seemed to be trying to absorb his flesh. Some of it was even trying to burrow into him. It should have hurt, yet Xu Qing didn’t feel anything. He knew what those wisps were.

“Mutagen…” he murmured. Xu Qing had dealt with mutagen since he was born, but it was only after starting to practice cultivation that he understood what it was.

Oftentimes, the higher one’s cultivation base, and the further away from the mortal world someone got, the less they paid attention to the pain of mutagen. Furthermore, the threat of mutation that came with cultivation grew increasingly irrelevant.

However, Xu Qing was well aware that, to mortals, mutagen was still a never-ending torment. The curse in Moonrite Region was part of that. Xu Qing knew that he couldn’t afford to discount mutagen just because his shadow could devour it. As of this moment, he was once again sensing mutagen. Mutagen was everywhere in this world.

Mutagen. It’s alive….

Xu Qing sent his senses out into the world.

The giant snake in the sky is made from the mutagen of the high god that the Captain made a deal with. That’s also the source of the wind. The red snow is Crimson Mother’s mutagen. The substance on my hand is local mutagen, of an unknown origin. There are other places where there’s even more mutagen, also of different varieties. Anywhere a god has passed through, or even looked at, will have mutagen.

There wasn’t just a single type of mutagen.

Fundamentally speaking, my taboo poison is also a type of mutagen. In the past, my taboo poison could harm any and all living beings. But now, anything I look at… is invaded.

Xu Qing’s eyes glittered, and the substance on his hand shivered and turned black, then fell off, revealing his skin. Now he could see a black ghost face on his skin where the gauzy substance had been.

Evil. Sinister. Deathly. Inauspicious. That was what the ghost face emanated. It was the taboo poison from a god’s gaze. It could be one ghost face, or it could be many. All were mutagen, and all came from Xu Qing’s gaze.

And to anything with a lower level of personhood, it… could be called a curse.

Xu Qing closed his eyes, then opened them and looked at his shadow. The shadow trembled and sent out fawning fluctuations. A strange expression could be seen on Xu Qing’s face. This wasn’t his first time using his taboo poison gaze to look at the shadow. And every time he did… it looked different.

A few days ago, when he did it the first time, the shadow looked like a tree. The second time he looked at it, it was a coffin. The third time, it was an eye.

This time, it had changed again. It looked like a person facing away from him. The person facing away from him was tall and muscular, mighty and emanating a sensation of violence and aggression. A moment later, it changed again. This time it looked like a pool of ink surrounding Xu Qing.

He looked away.

I wonder what the broken face’s mutagen looks like.

He was suddenly struck with the desire to find out the answer to that question. However, he also got the feeling it would be very dangerous. After some thought, he squashed his curiosity about that. There was plenty of mutagen in the world, and getting too curious about things like that could be extremely dangerous.

“You want to know about the broken face’s mutagen?” the Heir Apparent asked. He had appeared out of nowhere, and was hovering just overhead. Princess Brightblossom was with him.

“Well met, Seniors,” Xu Qing said, quickly clasping hands and bowing.

Princess Brightblossom nodded in response. “If you want to take a look, go ahead. That way you’ll know what you’ll have to deal with later on.”

Xu Qing’s eyes glittered. After some thought, he unhesitatingly flew out of the valley and up into the air. Higher and higher he went, until he passed the huge snake in the sky, and went beyond the red snow. Soon he was high enough that he could feel the mutagen of the broken face.

“Hamabirah, dotadoya, gajarah, dodiya….”

All of a sudden, the sound of a chant filled Xu Qing’s sea of consciousness. It couldn’t be heard, only seen, which seemed contradictory. And though he wasn’t sure how he knew, Xu Qing could tell that the sound wasn’t reaching him through his ears, but rather, his eyes. It was floating in his mind. At first, it sounded like a complicated enchantment. It started out faint, but eventually became an insane rumbling that boomed in his sea of consciousness. It kept repeating the same thing over and over again.

Xu Qing shivered. He felt like he was being superimposed over himself, as if his soul was about to leave his body, as if he were being ripped apart, as if he were fusing with the air around him. Everything blurred. A sense of deadly crisis rose within him, and he dropped down. Gruish mutations suddenly struck him. He felt like his organs were alive, and he could suddenly sense his own past around him. The memories of the past were like illusory images that were about to become real.

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