Immortality Through Array Formations

Chapter 1082: Chapter 674: Enlightenment of Dao_2 Chapter 1082: Chapter 674: Enlightenment of Dao_2 In extremely dire situations, one might even be forced to parasitize flesh and blood, transforming into an Evil God…

However, this was merely Mo Hua’s current speculation; whether it was true would require verification when there was time.

Aside from deities, there were also ghosts among the Divine Thought beings in the world.

Ghosts, however, were different from deities.

Mo Hua propped his chin on his hand, recalling all the Evil Spirits and ghosts he had encountered thus far and verifying them mentally one by one.

First was the Black Mountain Stronghold, the Little Green-faced Ghost from the Landscape Taoist Child Painting.

The little ghost was a ghostly Thought parasitizing an object—the Landscape Contemplation Map.

Ghosts had their own distinct characteristics.

In Mo Hua’s memories, there were still some fragmented pieces left behind.

These fragments emerged one by one in his mind after he devoured the Evil Thoughts of the little ghost…

Deep in the mountains, a young Taoist Child followed a Taoist in learning immortal cultivation.

The Taoist was reading a strange book, and the young Taoist Child read along with him. As they read, their smiles gradually turned eerie—they both began to crave human flesh.

The Taoist Child and the Taoist colluded, deceiving wandering cultivators and consuming them.

As they ate, they lost all semblance of humanity.

One turned into a Fierce Ghost with a crimson face and sharp fangs; the other, a Little Green-faced Ghost with similar fangs.

Then, a white-robed Sword Cultivator descended from the clouds, slashing the Fierce Ghost born of the Taoist with a single sword strike.

The Little Green-faced Ghost that the Taoist Child had become, however, managed to escape, fleeing into the painting and becoming sealed within a Taoist temple…

…

According to what Lord Yellow Mountain mentioned about deities and ghosts, Mo Hua roughly speculated that the book the Taoist and the Taoist Child were reading might have been a Demon Path cultivation technique for ghost cultivation.

After learning this technique, the two became “Ghost Cultivators,” their bodies transforming into Fierce Ghosts.

This so-called “consumption” of humans likely referred to consuming human Divine Sense.

Furthermore, according to Lord Yellow Mountain, when ghosts consumed humans, they would first consume their closest kin…

Mo Hua pondered for a moment and considered a distinct possibility.

The Taoist Child was likely the Taoist’s own son.

The Taoist, after practicing Ghost Techniques and fearing that he would become a Fierce Ghost, prone to consuming his own son first, deliberately introduced the Demon Path Ghost Cultivation technique to the young Taoist Child.

Thus, the “father and son ghosts” formed—a father and son becoming ghosts together to “consume” others.

The Taoist was the father, the Crimson-faced Fierce Ghost.

The Taoist Child was the son, the Little Green-faced Ghost.

Their shared bloodline and identical cultivation technique meant the ghosts they transformed into were tied by the same origin.

Later on, when the Sword Cultivator slew the ghosts, the extremely powerful Crimson-faced Fierce Ghost was killed. But the significantly weaker Little Green-faced Ghost survived—an anomaly in itself.

The explanation likely lay in this…

The Taoist, transformed into the Crimson-faced Fierce Ghost, knew his own death was inevitable. Thus, he sacrificed himself to hold off the formidable enemy, ensuring that his son, the Little Green-faced Ghost, could escape.

*Though they were evil ghosts, wasn’t there still a trace of… “human sentiment”?*

Mo Hua paused, momentarily at a loss for what to make of it…

There was another detail that caught Mo Hua’s attention.

The white-robed Sword Cultivator slaying ghosts…

If he could annihilate ghosts with Sword Qi, could it mean that this white-robed Sword Cultivator practiced the method of turning Divine Thought into swords?

Could he possibly… be a senior Sword Cultivator from Taixu Gate?

Mo Hua opened his mouth, shocked by his own conjecture.

“Surely it’s not such a coincidence…”

He frowned, thought it over, then shook his head.

Conjectures remained conjectures, after all.

Now the Crimson-faced Fierce Ghost was dead, the Little Green-faced Ghost had been “consumed” by him, and the figure of the white-robed Sword Cultivator remained blurry and unidentifiable, making it difficult to verify anything.

Still, this had little impact.

Mo Hua retraced the sequence of events, nodded slightly as he reviewed it.

With his newfound understanding of the divine and the ghostly, he gained much clearer insight into the Landscape Taoist Child Painting and the transformation of the Green-faced Fang Ghost.

Past experiences, once vague and obscure, now made sense as his cultivation journey deepened and his knowledge grew.

Mo Hua faintly felt a sense of intuitive clarity dawning within him—*a spark of connection, a moment of illumination.*

After the Contemplation Map, the second Evil Spirit appeared in South Yue City—the ancestral painting belonging to the Corpse Cultivator Zhang Quan.

Zhang Quan, along with his generations of ancestors, were technically “zombies” in life and, strictly speaking, “ghosts” in death.

However, after death, they manifested corporeally in the form of various zombie-like entities.

But this raised a question:

“If ghosts consume their closest kin first, why didn’t the family of ancestral Corpse Ghosts from Zhang Quan’s ancestral painting devour him first?”

Mo Hua furrowed his brow.

Could it be that the Zhang family’s mortality rate, leaving only Zhang Quan behind, was because…

They had secretly been “consumed” by their own ancestors?

Leaving only Zhang Quan behind in the end.

If Zhang Quan were consumed as well, then the Zhang family would have no descendants.

Perhaps the Zhang family patriarch exercised “long-term foresight” by restraining the ancestral Corpse Ghosts, preserving Zhang Quan as the sole seedling to carry on the lineage?

Or could it be that Zhang Quan’s “ancestral painting” was uniquely special?

Was this Contemplation Map inherently suitable for hosting ghostly parasitism?

Mo Hua felt profoundly curious.

He wished he could question Zhang Quan, or perhaps the ancestral Corpse Ghosts woven across the family line—but regrettably, they had all been completely “cooked” and subsequently “consumed.”

*By the time he “devoured” them, Mo Hua’s Divine Thought had grown immensely powerful.*

These ghostly remnants from the Corpse Cultivators had been almost entirely obliterated, leaving few memory fragments behind for him to glimpse.

Mo Hua felt it was a shame.

But the matter of Zhang Quan’s ancestral painting served as a reminder to him…

Mo Hua recalled that after the extinction of the Zhang family’s Corpse Ghosts, the now-blank Contemplation Map remained hidden away in his Storage Ring.

What’s more, the Map had acquired a new inhabitant—a peculiar, eye-like Five Elements Source Pattern belonging to the Five Elements Sect…

Mo Hua froze, a chill creeping through his heart.

The uncanny, eye-like presence…

An entity with its own evil thoughts, capable of division and parasitism, brimming with the Five Elements Law…