Wang Ergou had been in the dim prison cell for several months.
He could no longer distinguish between day and night; all he did was sleep, and even when he could fill his stomach, it was with spoiled rice, with not even a shred of hope in sight.
Wang Ergou knew he was on the road to death.
If it were just petty theft, at most he would be locked up for ten days to half a month; in more serious cases, he would be sent to the iron mine outside the city for labor.
For someone like Wang Ergou, held indefinitely, there was usually only one outcome, to be dragged out for public execution.
So he had already given up, just waiting for the meal before his beheading.
But on this day, the sound of a club striking the bars rang out, and a jailer shouted loudly: "Wang Ergou, stop sleeping, Lord Li is here to see you."
Wang Ergou opened his eyes in a daze, muttering a few words under his breath.
"I've slaughtered who knows how many fat sheep, Lord? What damn Lord Li? Probably here to drag me to the execution block."
Peh!!
Footsteps gradually approached, and a bit of light came into the dark prison corridor.
Wang Ergou instinctively fixed his gaze. A tall figure slowly approached, bringing with it an invisible but terrifying pressure.
The figure stopped at the corner just before the cell.
"You're Wang Ergou, right?"
Wang Ergou didn't speak. He was genuinely a little frightened, because the shadow on the ground was too horrifying.
Lord Li's neck was several times thicker than normal, and his head hung like a lantern, just like the rumors of an evil spirit escaped from the underworld.
Lord Li continued speaking: "Let me ask you, do you want to live or do you want to die?"
Wang Ergou was briefly stunned. The figure asked again, making his heart itch, and so he opened his mouth and answered.
"Lord... of course I want to live, who would want to die?"
Lord Li let out a few strange laughs, then continued walking toward the cell.
Wang Ergou saw him getting closer and couldn't help but swallow, his eyes filled with fear as he watched that eerie shadow.
Lord Li came to the door of the cell, and only then did Wang Ergou fully see him.
A tall body with a head far larger than ordinary people, his forehead covered in bulging veins, making his facial features appear extremely unnatural.
"Uh, sav-"
Wang Ergou had just started to speak, but heard Lord Li calmly say: "Sleep."
Bang.
He collapsed to the ground cleanly and neatly, soon emitting thick snores, his chest rising and falling rhythmically.
The prison door was opened, and Lord Li walked in, squatting beside Wang Ergou.
He extended his palm and placed it on Wang Ergou's face, causing the latter's skin to gradually change, wrinkles smoothed out, and the texture became like an aged, yellowed book.
Lord Li opened the book Wang Ergou's head had become, and saw that the pages were full of text, representing his memories.
He casually flipped through them and began editing with a writing brush.
With the text being added and removed, Wang Ergou's body began to change accordingly.
His height shrank slightly, his originally rugged features became delicate; just moments ago he had been a burly man, and in the blink of an eye, he had become a woman.
Although traces of the original appearance could still vaguely be seen on the face, the change in gender made it impossible for anyone familiar to recognize him.
Moments later, Wang Ergou's head returned to normal.
Lord Li took out a glazed bottle from his robes, inside of which was a clump of black-gray substance, constantly twisting and wriggling.
If one looked closely, they would find that the substance was composed of densely packed insects, with a purplish-red piece of flesh the size of a fingernail at its core.
Lord Li stared at the glazed bottle for a long time, then poured it into the man's mouth, the gray-black substance fusing into his flesh and blood.
"That should be enough."
He nodded slightly, and then left the prison.
When Wang Ergou woke up, he only felt a splitting headache, his expression extremely dazed, and he didn't even know why he was here.
At that moment, two jailers opened the cell door. Without saying anything, they supported him and brought him directly to the outside world.
Wang Ergou came back to his senses, only to find he had changed into an ordinary set of cotton and linen clothing, standing on a bustling street.
He walked like a corpse, as if there was a voice in his head guiding him.
And for some reason, the direction Wang Ergou walked toward was the temple fair, except his pace was extremely slow, staggering with every step.
...
Inside the Corpse Burners' Hall at the yamen.
Ren Qing sat cross-legged and swallowed a Stone Eye, the warmth in his stomach spreading throughout his body.
Relying on the Stone Eye's effect of restoring strength, he summoned the Dragon-Snake Spine in the side room, controlling its twists and turns with his mind.
The Dragon-Snake Spine occasionally struck furniture, its sharp bone blades easily slicing through, but there was nowhere else to practice.
Unless it was nighttime.
After a few days of nurturing, he discovered the Dragon-Snake Spine was constantly undergoing transformation, also nourishing the bones throughout his body.
Ren Qing also explored a new usage for the Dragon-Snake Spine.
With a thought, the entire spine made sounds of bones colliding.
The gaps between the joints closed together, forming a fierce-looking bone blade.
Most importantly, this bone blade could extend without limit and transform into a chain at any time, greatly increasing its flexibility.
Even though the Dragon-Snake Spine was still physically oriented at present, Ren Qing was still confident that, after three Weird Mutations, it would be completely transformed.
Ren Qing retracted the Dragon-Snake Spine back into his spine, then prepared to visualize the Blindless Method.
Perhaps because the Taotie Method had already advanced to the Ghost Envoy realm, the Blindless Method was progressing gratifyingly.
Even without using information flow to consume lifespan, he was still confident in making a breakthrough within two to three months.
However, his other techniques, due to various reasons, were not showing much progress.
The Divine Leg Sutra was slightly better, mainly because it had stalled due to the lack of wolf blood. Once he gathered resources at the next Ghost Market, it could be resolved.
As for the Human Skin Book, a self-tormenting type of technique, unless he practiced it in a cave using recoil force, there was simply no way to proceed.
After cultivating until night, Ren Qing prepared to eat something and rest for a while.
At that moment, the cawing of a crow sounded.
The paper window was broken open, and the Underworld Crow flew in from the outside and spat out a slip of paper.
Bang!!
The Underworld Crow's self-destruction was even more unexpected than before, but fortunately, Ren Qing was prepared.
The alien mouth in his palm opened in advance, repulsive force enveloping the room, absorbing all the flesh and blood into the Prison Within the Abdomen.
Ren Qing opened the paper and looked it over.
The mission location was the Fertility Goddess Temple, and it was the final day of the temple fair, involving a festival.
The main part of the festival was to open the altar and hold a parade, inviting the statue of the deity from the western city's Fertility Goddess Temple to the south of the city, only then would it be considered complete.
The Restraint Officers' Hall required people to stay around the temple fair. The contents of the slip didn't reveal much else.
Ren Qing guessed that the Restraint Officers' Hall was starting to prepare to close the net, and they must be fully confident, not to the point of letting the Earth Lord's death turn the place into a forbidden zone.
Naturally, he wasn't going to miss the chance to earn blood crystals.
Ren Qing had heard from Bo Feng that the celebration at the Fertility Goddess Temple each year was a major event, even more lively than the New Year.
However, he didn't rush to scout the site, and first went to warn Xiao Wu and the others, lest they accidentally get caught up in the Restraint Officers' Hall's mission.