The Secret Way of Immortality

When the figure of the Supreme Heavenly Devil appeared above the heads of all living beings, almost occupying the entire sky, the terrifying pressure made scalps tingle.

The Daoist forces immediately fell into despair.

Unknowing mortals fled in droves, but no matter which direction they ran, they could not escape the Supreme Heavenly Devil standing in the clouds.

Spells surpassing those of terrestrial immortals struck at the Supreme Heavenly Devil, but they were like ants trying to shake a tree, creating no ripples whatsoever.

The Daoists tried to pray to the Three Dao Ancestors, but they did not appear as a result.

The situation was somewhat strange, especially in Zhou Zuosan's eyes.

The former Supreme Heavenly Devil was a shapeless mass of black mist, but now, having become the Dipamkara Buddha, it possessed a materialized body.

In the distorted perception of the beings in the stomach world, the Supreme Heavenly Devil was entirely composed of a deformed mountain of flesh, wearing a colorful glazed kasaya, its flesh pierced by countless ram horns, emitting deafening cries from time to time.

Dense Buddhist aura emanated, highlighting a nauseating sense of holiness.

Zhou Zuosan, using the normal perception of the outside world, saw that the Supreme Heavenly Devil was still an indescribable object, seemingly unchanged.

It was evident that the Supreme Heavenly Devil, born from the Moral Heavenly Lord, did not belong to the Three Dao Ancestors' camp, and might even be involved with extraterrestrial demons; otherwise, it would not be so deformed and terrifying in both perceptions.

Zhou Zuosan's breathing became rapid, and he muttered, "Is it real or fake? I'm not crazy, I'm not crazy..."

The pain from the conflicting perceptions caused Zhou Zuosan to become unstable.

The Refiner quickly reinforced the magical artifact attached to his brain, to prevent his soul from being affected and falling into a deeper level of dream.

Real Man Great Dream was about to help Zhou Zuosan, but the latter calmed down on his own, and he couldn't help but take a deep look at Zhou Zuosan.

Zhou Zuosan took a deep breath, realizing that this was the result of insufficient vision due to a low realm.

As long as he didn't reach the level of the Heavenly Dao, no matter how fast his thinking was, he couldn't find the correct answer.

Zhou Zuosan suppressed his distracting thoughts, and the trend of his soul collapsing immediately subsided.

He did not take any countermeasures against the descending Supreme Heavenly Devil, because with the Heavenly Dao's strength, any means would be futile.

He could only adapt to the situation and hope that his previous arrangements for the disaster were correct.

The Forbidden Soldiers Hall then contracted its forces, and the Daoists in the outside world naturally did the same, and the open and secret struggles between Dao bodies were no longer pursued.

Many acquired Dao bodies took this opportunity to defect from the Daoist sect on a large scale, establishing heretical and unorthodox forces.

Today's Daoist sect has most of its power divided by innate Dao bodies; there are few examples of acquired Dao bodies overcoming the innate, except for the Three Purities Temple, which is dominated by the Grand Duke of Jupiter and the Unorthodox Dao Lord.

The surface prosperity of the Daoist sect concealed undercurrents.

Zhou Zuosan didn't even retain his informants in the outside world, cutting them off completely like a lizard shedding its tail.

They simply used Real Man Great Dream's ability to perceive dreams, focusing on the Daoist sect's movements after the Supreme Heavenly Devil descended.

However, to Zhou Zuosan's surprise, the southern towns occupied by the Buddhist sect also did nothing, even though they had awakened thirteen Bodhisattvas, giving them an absolute advantage in strength.

The situation inexplicably fell into a stalemate, and the Supreme Heavenly Devil's shadow gradually faded.

In this situation, the outside world safely passed twenty years; the Supreme Heavenly Devil's figure had completely disappeared, and everything seemed like a fleeting cloud, leaving people scratching their heads.

The disaster had no warning from beginning to end.

"The disaster definitely exists."

Zhou Zuosan's eyes were bloodshot; after entering the third stage of modification, in addition to his original brain, he had more than a dozen artificial brains.

His thinking speed had reached an indescribable level, and his soul had fallen into a deeper level of dream, causing the progress of his consciousness's fall to advance silently.

The process was irreversible, at least Real Man Great Dream had no way to stop it.

Dozens of immortals and gods surrounded Zhou Zuosan, and a heat wave of hundreds of degrees swept over them.

They waited silently for Zhou Zuosan to issue orders; the two hundred years in the stomach world after the Supreme Heavenly Devil's descent had almost all been spent in this atmosphere.

The immortals and gods did not communicate; at their level, all words were a waste of time, and divine sense communication was more straightforward.

Only Zhou Zuosan still transmitted information orally, because his brain had been modified, and his cultivation had regressed instead of advanced; now he was not much different from an Underworld Emissary.

"Or rather, has it already begun?"

Zhou Zuosan's eyes lit up, and he looked at the Old Man of the Moon and said, "Help me check how many monks are distributed in the north."

"Okay."

The Old Man of the Moon nodded and said, his whole body melted like a candle, turning into countless red threads, wrapping around the roots of the Heavenly Dao Tree.

Even if incense deities reach the level of Sun and Moon Immortals, they still have to rely on the Heavenly Dao Tree to exert their strength.

The Old Man of the Moon had hidden red threads in various towns in the outside world, hidden in the mud ball palaces of the people, which were not only difficult to detect, but also could be preserved to the next generation with the reproduction of the people.

The Old Man of the Moon said with a strange expression, "The monks in the towns have all been evacuated, and seem to be concentrated in the villages."

"It seems I'm right."

Zhou Zuosan murmured, "The disaster has already arrived, but it is still brewing."

"We don't have much time, we must make a counterattack, and we can't let the balance between the Daoist and Buddhist sides be easily broken."

"Once living beings are destroyed, it will be a struggle between the Heavenly Daos."

Zhou Zuosan then issued a large number of tasks, and the immortals and gods hurriedly left the palace to arrange measures in the outside world, even though they didn't know what the disaster was.

At this moment, the monks in the villages seemed to feel some kind of premonition.

They had been treating patients in the villages not long ago, but suddenly looked at the sky, revealing meaningful expressions.

Immediately afterwards, the monks felt an itchy sensation on their skin, and couldn't help but scratch with their hands; blood soaked their robes, and golden light was growing in the wounds.

"Amitabha..."

Under the astonished gaze of others, the monk actually turned into a Buddha statue.

Just before his life was about to end, the Buddha statue said, "All who do not believe in Dipamkara are demons, all who are unfaithful and unrighteous are demons, all who kill..."

Screams rang out in the village.

One by one, the villagers suddenly knelt weakly on the ground, dense black hair growing out of their pores, and after a moment, they turned into black goats.

The villagers who believed in Dipamkara Buddha, on the other hand, felt peace in their hearts, and their bodies also underwent transformation, but they were transforming into Buddha statues.

Some semi-believers who had once worshiped Dipamkara Buddha neither turned into black goats nor transformed into Buddha statues.

After the black goats took shape, their eyes were filled with malice and greed to devour everything.

"Baa!!!"

They leaped over the believers who had turned into Buddha statues and pounced on the semi-believers who were still standing there, and then the sound of bones being crushed came.

The corpses twitched and fell to the ground, and then their tattered bodies quickly healed, and then in the blink of an eye they turned into new black goats, joining the rampaging flock.

One smiling Buddha statue after another became the medium for the Supreme Heavenly Devil, emitting Buddhist aura, causing the surrounding ecology to gradually become fleshy.

Countless black goats surged towards the towns where mortals gathered.

The situation in the towns was completely different.

The Forbidden Soldiers Hall took action in time, and strange phenomena occurred in the Three Purities Temples.

The gold foil on the surface of the statues slowly peeled off, revealing the appearance of Dipamkara Buddha, and illusory and intangible red threads wrapped around the statues, with the source connected to the back of the mortals' heads.

"Who first awakens from the Great Dream, I alone know myself in my life."

Real Man Great Dream let out a sigh, and all the mortals' expressions became dazed, and then the statues of Dipamkara Buddha seemed to become familiar.

Zhou Zuosan's arrangement did not turn tens of millions of mortals into Dipamkara believers, but they at least survived the first round of the disaster's impact.

The disaster brought by the Supreme Heavenly Devil transformed humans who did not believe in Dipamkara Buddha into black goats, and believers into Buddha statues.

If one had cultivation, they could use their magic power to resist, but mortals could only become sacrifices, becoming the Supreme Heavenly Devil's offspring.

Obviously, Zhou Zuosan did guess the disaster of the Supreme Heavenly Devil.

No one knew how many kinds of disasters his arrangements could deal with, but every minute gained was crucial.

Real Man Great Dream stood on top of the city wall, looking towards the northwest.

In the far north, there was a Daoist town, where the Three Purities Temple had been demolished not long ago, and the Forbidden Soldiers Hall had not had time to rearrange it.

The town completely fell in half a day, directly giving birth to tens of thousands of black goats.

The consequence was that the surrounding towns all fell, and hundreds of thousands of black goats surged out like a tide.

The more black goats there were, the more terrifying the individual strength became; one hundred thousand had already reached the level of terrestrial immortals, and perhaps one million black goats would be enough to fight against corpse-dissecting immortals.

Fortunately, there was the Forbidden Soldiers Hall's arrangement, which prevented the black goats from completely flooding, and the Daoist sect took the opportunity to contract its forces, barely resisting.

When they noticed the Dipamkara statues in the Three Purities Temple, the statues disintegrated on their own, leaving only fragments all over the ground.

After the first wave of the "Demon Tide" passed, mortals would no longer transform into black goats, but the actual disaster had just begun, after all, the destructiveness of black goats to the environment was extremely terrifying.

The mountains turned into fleshy ground, and the plants, trees, birds, and animals inside were like skinned monsters.

In the center of the most concentrated Buddhist aura, walls of flesh drilled out of the ground, giving birth to a massive number of black goats.

Real Man Great Dream watched for a moment, then returned to the stomach world.

There would also be disasters in the stomach world, but not as serious as in the outside world; only the bodies and souls of some people were undergoing transformation, but they were suppressed by elixirs before they could completely transform into black goats.

The situation in the outside world was barely under control.

The Three Dao Ancestors then took action, and a drizzle fell in the north.

Spiritual energy began to recover, and spiritual veins grew deep underground, which could not only increase the medicinal properties of spiritual herbs, but also continue to raise the realm of the Daoist sect.

The immortals and gods breathed a long sigh of relief; as long as the Three Dao Ancestors did not take action personally, there was still room for maneuver, at least they could delay for a while longer.

Zhou Zuosan shook his head slightly.

Unlimitedly raising the realm meant that the path for mortals to ascend was fixed.

According to his discoveries in the classics, the Daoist sect's power system was almost exactly the same as it was twenty thousand years ago.

The Three Dao Ancestors probably also found it difficult to determine whether, when the extraterrestrial demons once again gazed upon this world, history would not repeat itself?

The Forbidden Soldiers Hall remained on standby, and the black goats in the outside world gradually became rampant.

Even the stomach world had appearances, but they were suppressed by the incense deities in time, but it must be said that the frequency of black goats appearing was getting higher and higher.

After reshaping the world, the Daoist sect had not experienced a Heavenly Dao-level disaster.

Not only would the deaths and injuries be unimaginable, but the duration might be as long as thousands of years, and a slight carelessness would result in complete annihilation.

As a result, even with the help of the Forbidden Soldiers Hall, the Daoist sect lost one-third of its territory in the north in just fifty years.

The places occupied by black goats had their ecology turned into flesh, and even if the Daoist sect had the strength to counterattack, it was useless.

After these fifty years, the Daoist sect did learn some lessons, but its territory was still shrinking.

Fortunately, the grain output was sufficient for tens of millions of civilians due to the blessing of the spiritual energy recovery.

The Forbidden Soldiers Hall had long since joined forces with the acquired Dao bodies, but the problem was that the resources produced in the stomach world had the effect of distorting the body and soul, which would make the humans in the outside world no longer pure.

Zhou Zuosan originally thought that if he gave the Daoist sect another hundred years, they could completely stabilize, and then it wouldn't matter if they persisted for five hundred years.

Five hundred years...

Calculating it, Ren Qing would be about to leave seclusion by then.

Bang bang bang!!!

But the Buddhist sect did not give the Daoist sect a chance to breathe; the Supreme Heavenly Devil was obviously forcing the Three Dao Ancestors to appear, and the Eighteen Arhats took the lead in heading north.

After the eighteen thousand-meter giants took a step at the same time, the ground could not help but vibrate.

The Daoist sect did have the strength to fight against the Arhats, but it could not kill them in a short time, and the latter could easily destroy the towns.

The black goats were immortal and indestructible; once mortals were exposed to the flock of goats, it meant that there would be hundreds of thousands more enemies in the future.

For the Forbidden Soldiers Hall, the Daoist sect was the last sluice gate for the flood, but they could not intervene, after all, the goal was to delay time.

While the immortals and gods were still hesitating, Zhou Zuosan had already taken action.

Countless nodes lit up underground in the east, west, south, and north of the outside world, and accompanied by the movement of the earth's crust, a crack actually opened at the junction of the north and south.

With Zhou Zuosan's thinking speed, even if he only comprehended the Heavenly Dao in his spare time, he would have far more gains than ordinary people.

If his cultivation was not stuck in the Underworld Emissary realm, he would probably have become an immortal.

But comprehending the Heavenly Dao was not useless; at least Zhou Zuosan discovered the laws of natural operation in it.

The methods he had the immortals and gods arrange seemed meaningless, but in fact they were secretly promoting changes in the earth's crust, influencing the situation with his own strength.

And the last string that Zhou Zuosan plucked was just an ordinary stone rolling down the mountain from the top of a mountain in the southwest.

His unpredictable methods even amazed Real Man Great Dream.

Only Zhou Zuosan's disciples looked extremely sad, because the magical artifact attached to their brains showed signs of collapse, indicating that their souls were becoming increasingly unstable.

The gap at the junction of the north and south slowly cracked, directly turning into a ten-thousand-meter abyss.

The location of the crack was above the spiritual vein, and substantial spiritual energy soared into the sky, forming a huge aurora-like barrier.

Zhou Zuosan spat out blood.

He looked at the sky outside, and four divine shadows were faintly visible; they were the Three Dao Ancestors and the Supreme Heavenly Devil, watching the chessboard.

"You are also afraid?"

"So you are also afraid."

"Now is not the time, we must wait until Senior Ren breaks through, and there is still a big gift."

Zhou Zuosan hysterically shouted, "Immediately start the fourth stage of modification, not enough, far from enough!!"