Chapter 1723: Mutation

With each harboring thoughts of their own, the three discussed several possible plans before ultimately deciding to venture into the deepest reaches of the Grand Illusion Realm.

That was because their time was limited. The three of them working together were also far stronger than an ordinary Immortal. Even if that Cloud God was a true Godly Immortal, they should still have enough strength to protect themselves. After considering these factors, they found it was worth making the attempt.

Thus, the three of them passed through the Main Altar of the White Cloud Sect and arrived at the entrance to the great mountain.

From the mountain valley, they could see snow swirling all around. It resembled a vast snowfield stretching endlessly into the hazy distance.

However, before they had actually stepped inside the valley, someone emerged from the wind and snow within. This person ended up delaying them for half a day.

There was nothing particularly unusual about this in itself. People from Incense Halls throughout the pocket realm would regularly journey into the great mountain to pay homage to the Cloud God. After receiving the Cloud God’s enlightenment, they would emerge from the mountain again. Once they had attained sufficient cultivation, they would once again return to the mountain’s depths, only to never emerge.

But the strange thing was, this man appeared to be pregnant.

According to what the man later recounted, he had journeyed into the great mountain with his companions to worship the Cloud God. On their way back, he had failed to keep up with the group and subsequently lost his way in the mountain. As a result, he emerged several days later than the others, just in time to encounter Qi Xuansu’s group as they were preparing to enter the mountain.

At this moment, the man looked listless and exhausted, while his lower abdomen bulged conspicuously.

There was nothing strange about a man having a belly, but this one was abnormally large, to the point that it was already hindering his movements.

Since Qi Xuansu’s group possessed extraordinary cultivation, they sensed something peculiar about the man’s aura and took a closer look. That one look immediately revealed something amiss. His aura was chaotic, with yin and yang hopelessly intermingled, almost as though he had cultivated the Yin-Yang Unification Method. Upon examining him more deeply, they discovered that he was actually pregnant, which was truly bizarre.

Men and women had completely different physiology. If a man became pregnant, where would the fetus be? Could it possibly be inside his stomach?

Admittedly, there were some people in this world who were naturally born with both male and female characteristics, but such individuals were exceedingly rare, perhaps one in ten thousand.

This piqued Zhou Mengyao’s interest. She simply used her Immortal divine powers to examine the man thoroughly and discovered that he possessed none of the female reproductive organs, nor was the fetus inside his stomach or intestines.

The fetus was embedded directly within the man’s flesh and blood, as though it had been embedded into his body.

It gave the impression that the man’s body was nothing more than a garment, or a protective shell for the fetus within to grow. This fetus would grow until it completely filled the shell from the inside out, replacing the man entirely and wearing the man’s skin to become a brand-new, independent individual.

What was this supposed to be? Could this be the Cloud God’s so-called enlightenment?

Zhou Mengyao inevitably thought of the Demon Embryo Planting technique that she was proficient in. However, this method was far cruder and more brutal.

Meanwhile, Qi Xuansu was reminded of the humanoid insects.

This was truly nothing new. In the end, the methods employed by these Godly Immortals always seemed to converge toward remarkably similar forms.

The others who had gone to worship the Cloud God showed no such abnormalities and appeared no different from ordinary people. It was probably because this man became separated from his group that some special circumstance might have prematurely activated the fetus inside his body.

The incident caused quite a stir within the White Cloud Sect.

After several rounds of discussion, the Sect Leader decided to cut open the man’s abdomen and extract the fetus.

As a result, Qi Xuansu’s group had to wait another half a day.

The entire process was exceedingly bizarre. When someone from the White Cloud Sect cut open the man’s abdomen, they discovered that the rapid growth of the fetus had completely deformed his chest cavity and pelvis. The fetus itself was difficult to describe. In any case, it looked nothing like a human fetus.

Zhou Mengyao personally destroyed the horrifying fetus.

Meanwhile, Su Yuanzai temporarily preserved the man’s life.

After the members of the White Cloud Sect dug the strange fetus out of his abdomen, they questioned the man in detail. But they learned almost nothing. The man was already delirious, and according to his incoherent, muddled account, he had seen something while lost in the mountain. It was this thing that had caused the fetus inside him to develop, or rather, to mutate.

From this, they could infer that the others who had entered the mountain to worship might also have been implanted with an embryo. However, those embryos simply had not begun to develop yet. Even if they did develop, they might not necessarily manifest in the form of pregnancy.

The crucial question was, what exactly had this man seen in the mountain?

No one knew.

Zhou Mengyao did consider attempting a soul search, but the man’s soul had already been shattered into pieces. It seemed that the intense shock and overwhelming terror he had suffered had reduced his mind to a jumble of chaotic, indecipherable fragments.

Before long, the man’s vitality began to decline rapidly, and he entered the final fleeting resurgence before death. He first prayed to the Cloud God, then cried out for the Heavenly Mater to receive him into the Void Homeland and grant him salvation.

The man rapidly aged, and in the blink of an eye, he looked like a 100-year-old man, as though all of his essence, vitality, and spirit had vanished along with the fetus.

In a sense, he had reached the point where even a deity could not save him, so Zhou Mengyao gave up. Seeing this, Su Yuanzai, who had a habit of taking notes, recorded the entire incident.

Qi Xuansu even felt that this incident was somewhat ominous. If anything were to happen to the three of them, wouldn’t these notes become the final clues they left behind for those who came after them?

This interlude cast a foreboding shadow over the trio. Even so, they still set out on the path into the mountain.

No one knew what exactly lay within the mountain, since the entire mountain was shrouded in mist. All they could see was a single peak protruding above the sea of clouds, resembling a solitary island.

There was also something profoundly mysterious about this path into the mountain. Viewed from outside, it appeared to be nothing more than a valley, its ground blanketed in snow and its skies filled with an endless expanse of white clouds. Yet once they truly entered, it was an entirely different matter. This place was an immense, snow-white plain stretching endlessly before their eyes, with no boundary or end in sight.

The wind and snow howled around them, obscuring their vision.

However, there was a lantern every 500 meters, flickering in and out of sight amid the wind and snow, guiding those who entered the mountain to worship along the proper path.

Su Yuanzai warned, “We have now entered the Grand Illusion Realm.”

Zhou Mengyao showed no particular expression. Qi Xuansu was somewhat apprehensive, but he said nothing.

The three continued onward, following the guidance of the lanterns deeper into the snowy plain. Although they did not fly, they traveled at tremendous speed, faster than fine steeds galloping at full strength.

But even after walking for an hour, their surroundings remained an endless expanse of white. They had not encountered the slightest rise, depression, or irregularity in the terrain. Everything just seemed monotonously identical.

Accumulated snow lay beneath their feet, and clouds hung above their heads while icy winds blew directly into their faces, chilling them to the very depths of their souls.

After all, this was a pocket realm left behind by a Second-Tribulation Immortal, and it could not be underestimated in the slightest, not even by Immortals and Pseudo-Immortals. Moreover, the Ancient Celestial Court had been closely connected with the Ancient Wuist Sect, which had been particularly adept at all manner of bizarre and uncanny arts. Coupled with the pregnant man and that grotesque, inhuman fetus, it was no wonder Su Yuanzai was so wary of venturing into the depths of the mountains alone.

Fortunately, Su Yuanzai had been to the outer region several times before, so he was quite familiar with the area.

According to him, he had deviated from the path several times in the past to explore this snowy plain. During those explorations, he discovered a palace belonging to the King of Chu, where he obtained medicinal pills refined by Wu Yang, as well as divination tortoise shells left behind by Wu Yang.

This stirred a thought in Qi Xuansu’s mind. Long Xiaobai’s dragon lair had been converted from the King of Chu’s palace, where she found Wu Yang’s totem. Could there be a similar palace here as well? Had the Cloud Lord incorporated part of Yunmeng Marsh into his divine kingdom back then? Or had the King of Chu built his palace within the Cloud Lord’s pocket realm?

However, judging from Su Yuanzai’s words, he had already taken everything from the King of Chu’s palace.

Qi Xuansu asked, “During the Chu Kingdom era, the Ancient Wuist Sect was at its heyday, so their practices flourished. Were there any totems or other ritual objects inside the palace?”

Su Yuanzai gave a definite answer. “There were no totems.”

Qi Xuansu was somewhat disappointed. If Su Yuanzai was not lying, then it meant that the different King of Chu’s palaces served different purposes, much like the distinction between a study and a bedroom.

After traveling like this for another two hours, Zhou Mengyao suddenly stopped.

Immediately afterward, Qi Xuansu and Su Yuanzai, whose cultivation was weaker than Zhou Mengyao’s, also sensed something in succession and stopped as well.

They saw the mist ahead gather to form a mirage that eventually took the shape of an enormous human face.

However, compared with an ordinary human face, this one was grotesquely distorted.

At first glance, it resembled a bloated face, like that of someone who had been deformed due to prolonged immersion in water.

Anyone accustomed to seeing dead bodies would know that if a corpse was not preserved within five to ten days of death, the corpse would progress from ordinary decomposition into advanced decay. Large quantities of foul gases would accumulate within the body, causing the entire corpse to swell into a massive, bloated form.

At this stage, the face would become severely swollen, the eyeballs would bulge, the lips would thicken and turn outward, and the tip of the tongue would protrude from the mouth. The abdomen would become distended until the abdominal wall was taut, while the skin would take on a filthy green hue, with a web of decomposing veins visible beneath it. The flesh under the skin would become bloated with gas, the limbs would be thicker, and the skin on the hands and feet might fall off like gloves and socks. The entire corpse would swell into a gigantic form, making it almost impossible to recognize the person’s original appearance when they were still alive.

This human face looked exactly like that. It even appeared to have a beard. But upon closer inspection, those were actually tentacle-like appendages.

This face had been magnified many times over, spreading across more than half the sky like some colossal god or demon.

The sight alone would have been enough to drive an ordinary person completely insane.

Fortunately, all three possessed extraordinary cultivation and had seen much of the world, so they were not that affected.

Su Yuanzai’s expression turned grave. “I have never encountered such things during my previous visits, including the pregnant man from earlier.”

Zhou Mengyao said thoughtfully, “There can be no waves without wind. The Grand Illusion Realm seems to have been stimulated by something. It’s like a stone falling into water, bound to send ripples outward.”

Qi Xuansu added, “We still haven’t encountered anyone from The Inn.”

This reminded the other two of something. Su Yuanzai said, “Could the Innkeeper have arrived here ahead of us, thereby triggering all these unforeseen changes?”

Zhou Mengyao said, “He is the only one among us following the Shaman lineage, so we cannot rule out that possibility. The only question is whether the consequences of these changes will ultimately be beneficial or harmful.”

In truth, Qi Xuansu had left half of his thoughts unspoken. Besides the Innkeeper, he had yet to see Long Xiaobai either.

Was it possible that Long Xiaobai and the Innkeeper had not arrived late at all, but had instead reached this place even earlier? Or perhaps they had been transported directly here, or even somewhere deeper within, thereby setting off this entire chain of events.

Zhou Mengyao looked once more at the enormous face sprawling across the sky, as though something had suddenly occurred to her. “An Extraterrestrial Heavenly Demon?”