Volume 4, Chapter 69 – Without the Dao

Selling organs… what did that have to do with cultivation?

Bai Xiang could understand every part of what the dark-skinned monk was saying, but taken together, it made no sense to her. Instinctively, she tried to seek the truth through the memories she had acquired earlier, and was startled to discover that even in the old Shenwu Heaven, the residents of its towns should not have looked like this.

Demons differed from demons, and demonized people differed from demonized people.

Daoist Fengxu was a demon, while Jing Lanyu was mixed-blood and thus counted as one of the demonized people, yet both of them looked entirely human, without any remaining demonic traits at all.

The same had been true of the cultivator armies Shenwu Heaven had sent before. Their leaders and officers had mostly looked human as well. Only a very few—like that elephant demon—had shown their true forms. The others who revealed their original forms had all been low-ranking Dao soldiers.

And even those Dao soldiers, when Bai Xiang had seen them, could still be roughly identified by certain prominent features as belonging to one kind of demon or another. They were nothing like what she saw in this town, where the mutated tissues growing on every demonized person were all so bizarre and nauseating.

And when she added that to the “outsiders” the dark-skinned monk had mentioned, she could not help forming further suspicions.

“Hm?” The monk saw her confusion and raised his brows. “What’s so hard to understand? The immortal masters from outside are saving us. They say that only by cutting away certain things can we gradually seek higher realms. Everything you see here is the result.”

Immortal masters from outside…

Bai Xiang said nothing. Instead, she fixed her gaze on the crowd of people lined up ahead. At the end of the queue was a simple raised platform, and behind it sat a demonized person with a human appearance, yawning.

Below the platform, a demonized boy was trembling as he climbed the steps. His body was gaunt, as though he had endured a long period of hunger. Thick, coarse spikes had grown from every joint in his body, his skin was an unhealthy gray, and on his bald scalp had sprouted seven or eight retractable eyes like those of a snail. All of them were extended now, darting about anxiously.

“All right, all right…” said the yawning human-looking demonized man impatiently. “Spit it out. What are you selling this time?”

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“I…” The boy curled back slightly, then gathered his courage and said, “If I want to buy old organs, how many eyes would I have to sell to exchange for them?”

“Old organs? Dream on.” The demonized man burst out laughing. While staring at the boy, he raised his voice loud enough for everyone around to hear. “I already told you my rules long ago. Selling them to me is one thing, but if you want to buy them back, it won’t be at the same price…”

“How many eyes would it take?” the boy pressed.

“One eye is worth 150 void crystals.” The demonized man frowned, his tone growing more impatient. “There are five kinds of old organs, and every single kind costs more than a hundred thousand. Even if you sold everything, you still couldn’t afford them.”

The boy let out a stunned “Ah,” clearly having never imagined the price gap would be so absurd. He froze on the platform, completely at a loss as to what to do.

“Poor child…” The dark-skinned monk was watching the scene too, shaking his head with a sigh. “I’ve seen him before. He came with his mother. Judging by this, something must have happened at home. He’s trying to exchange for old organs to save someone, that’s why he’s doing this.”

Bai Xiang watched as the demonized man on the platform stood up from behind the table and kicked the frail boy off it. Her own brows drew together unconsciously.

In other words, most of the people in this town, including that boy, had originally not been all that deeply affected by the Void Tribulation. The distortions in their bodies had not been severe either. Instead, it was because they had followed the demands of those “immortal masters from outside,” selling their own organs in exchange for “cultivation resources,” that they had gradually turned into these disgusting shapes?

She used the Jade Spirit only to record the dark-skinned monk’s muttered remarks, but her eyes remained fixed on the platform. She saw another demonized young man hurriedly shoved forward, and he quickened his pace toward the human-looking demonized broker.

“What are you selling?” the broker asked lazily, his attitude somewhat better than before.

This young man really was different from the others.

If the degree of mutation had an index, then most other people would have been around 1. This young man, however, had steadily gone past 2.

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There was not much left of him that could still be called a human body. His entire face was wrapped in spreading tentacles, and gaping mouths covered his shoulders, arms, and thighs. He looked like some monster from a body-horror film.

“My skin,” the young man said, his voice coming at once from many mouths. Then he added, “All of it.”

“Hm?” The human-looking demonized broker had just been about to flare up, but on hearing that, his eyes widened at once. Beaming, he rubbed his hands together. “…Now that’s a serious transaction. Wait here, I’ll go ask the price.”

He rose and ducked into a small tent behind the platform. He stayed inside for less than ten seconds before hurrying back out and holding up five fingers to the young man.

“Five thousand void crystals. If you agree, it’s a deal.”

“Fine.” The young man nodded, crisp and direct.

A wave of alarmed cries rose from the crowd. Many people looked at him with horror, as though selling his skin was an extremely terrifying thing to do.

“Old skin is already one of the few organs left that can still protect the whole body,” the dark-skinned monk explained to Bai Xiang. “Normally, people might sell a hand or a leg, but they won’t touch their skin. He probably has something he’s prepared to risk everything for. He doesn’t plan on leaving himself any way back.”

Protect the whole body?

Bai Xiang immediately thought of the blood-colored sky she had seen after entering Shenwu Heaven, along with the foul smell hanging in the air.

Those were all forms of contamination from Loss of Order. The former was the projected light cast inward by the deep violet haze wrapped around Shenwu Heaven, and it had to be resisted by the skin. As for the latter, she did not yet know its source, but presumably it had to be processed by the lungs.

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That being the case, local residents without skin would probably suffer an even deeper degree of distortion. Judging by their expressions, they knew that too.

Then the only reason to choose this would be if one truly had something worth staking everything on.

With the deal made, the human-looking demonized broker directly drew a skinning knife from his waist. He flicked and slashed it toward the young man, then reached out and tugged. The young man’s entire skin peeled away like a bolt of patterned silk, exposing blood-soaked muscle beneath and making him look even more hideous and terrifying.

The process was probably painless at first, but very quickly the young man’s body began to tremble. Because his bare muscle tissue was directly exposed to the red light and the air, tiny fleshy buds began to sprout across it without cease, bringing him intense itching and agonizing pain.

“I also want to buy… an Immortal Heart…” he said through the pain, one word at a time. Then he pulled another pouch from his robe and poured it out onto the table. Inside were countless tiny crystal fragments no bigger than grains of rice.

“With the money for the skin added in, you’ve gone over ten thousand. That’s enough.” Folding the skin as he spoke, the human-looking demonized broker looked at the young man with keen interest. “Implanting an Immortal Heart really can strengthen your cultivation a great deal and give your output a marked boost. But your new core hasn’t been refined enough yet. It probably won’t be able to bear that kind of power… Have you really thought this through?”

“Yes…”

“All right, then.” The broker nodded briskly. Lifting the tablecloth, he bent down, and soon came back up holding a tray, on which rested a writhing ball of flesh.

With another slash, he cut open the young man’s chest and implanted the flesh ball into his body. Then he quickly took out corpse-stitching thread and similar tools, sewed up the wound, and stepped back to observe his condition.

“Ugh… nghhh—!”

The young man looked to be in extreme agony. Accompanied by his screams, his bones began to lengthen, his flesh proliferated, and his body grew taller. Within a few seconds, his entire size had doubled. His left arm and both legs completely fused into his flesh, swallowed up by the bloated fat that kept growing over them. Only a single oversized, powerful claw of a right arm remained exposed. Below the waist and abdomen, he had turned into a mass of densely packed fleshy legs like those of a caterpillar.

The crowd cried out in alarm once more. Bai Xiang paid especially close attention to the subtle expressions on every face, and found that although most were horrified, a very few also showed envy and longing.

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So this was what they called “advancing in cultivation”…

The “immortal masters from outside,” the “outsiders,” should mean people like her—outsiders not native to Shenwu Heaven, but from beyond the void, from other Illusory Realms.

From what she could see, these people clearly had no intention of helping the Shenwu Immortal Dynasty maintain and prolong the lifespan of this Illusory Realm. It was more like they were treating this place as a resource destined to be abandoned.

The land here was a resource. The water was a resource. The air was a resource.

Then of course, life was a resource too.

For the moment, Bai Xiang did not know whether only one group of “outsiders” had occupied this place or whether there were many groups. She could only analyze what she had observed, and she suspected that whoever ruled this town was working both ends at once.

On one side, they purchased the locals’ old organs, which were probably worth far more than the locals imagined.

On the other, they told the locals that implanting new organs contaminated by Loss of Order would help them “advance in cultivation.”

In that way, they could buy old organs at extremely low prices while also having the locals incubate and nourish new organs for them. The latter could presumably be sold as well.

In other words, for every local who stepped onto this path, the final outcome was already destined.