Two enormous heads rolled across the table, stopping only when they bumped against ceramic teacups.

Chu Yin was suddenly startled, and Shi Qi’s eyelids twitched.

Zhu Xuemin, however, remained completely unruffled. He retrieved a tool kit from his backpack, calmly put on a mask and rubber gloves, and began to examine the severed heads with metal tweezers.

The smaller head had the face of an old man.

His skin was a sickly pale white, and his eyes were lifeless.

He had no hair or eyebrows, and not even a trace of hair follicles could be found in his skin.

Eight pairs of narrow fangs extended from his lips, proving his inhuman nature.

The larger head resembled that of a common praying mantis.

It was translucent green, shaped like an inverted triangle,

with two antennae, two large, transparent compound eyes, and strangely shaped mandibles.

Green fluid remained on the severed surface of the neck.

Chu Yin approached the table, suppressing her disgust and asking curiously, "Are these the other two items?"

"Should be right."

Xun Zian nodded. "I used the Feng Shui compass, searching slowly, place by place. I only acted after confirming it was correct."

According to the previous divination results, Zhu Xuemin believed that the three elements needed to open the third layer of the Sheng Nan King's dream realm were located in Luzhou, Fengzhou, and Qizhou, respectively.

Therefore, he created the Feng Shui compass

and had Xun Zian take it to Fengzhou and Qizhou to search for abnormal elements.

"These two monsters are quite strange. Their strength isn't very high, but they always give me an eerie feeling,"

Xun Zian frowned as he recounted his experiences to his companions.

Several months ago, the youngest son of a rural manor owner in Fengzhou tossed and turned in bed, unable to sleep. He felt that there was something in the darkness outside.

In the middle of the night, he got up and looked out the window, only to see an old man in white standing in the courtyard, expressionless, motionless, staring intently at the house.

The child was young and terrified, unable to speak.

He watched helplessly as the old man in white "moved" towards the house on tiptoe,

gently pushed open the door,

reached out and grabbed the neck of the maid who usually took care of the child and was now asleep,

bit off her head, gutted her, and ate her clean before turning to look at the child.

The child finally screamed,

and the adults in the courtyard rushed over, only to see a room full of blood and the child sitting in the pool of blood, completely terrified.

The Tiqi of the Wu De Guard arrived but found no demonic aura. After a fruitless search, they had to seal off the manor and let the family move away.

Xun Zian used the Feng Shui compass to find the location of the manor. After hearing the story from others, he sneaked into the manor alone at night.

He took a dead pig carcass from his backpack, processed it with a special affairs bureau prop, disguised it as a living person, and placed it in another room.

Sure enough, the old man in white reappeared in the courtyard. He didn't notice Xun Zian hiding in the closet and went straight to the dead pig, hugging the corpse and devouring it haphazardly.

As a result, Xun Zian attacked him from behind, cut off his limbs, and stuck talisman on him, preparing to take him back to Chenzhou City for Zhu Xuemin to identify.

Unexpectedly, as soon as he walked out of the courtyard, the old man in white's neck automatically snapped, and he died.

"The mantis monster in Qizhou is the same."

Xun Zian said in a low voice, "The Fan family's daughter-in-law in a certain village was giving birth,

and had been in difficult labor for three days and three nights, exhausting all her strength. The family was also anxious and exhausted, so they had to ask the neighboring sisters-in-law to watch over her for one night.

The neighboring sisters-in-law readily agreed.

However, the neighbor Sun's husband was away from home, and her young son was still young. Not wanting to leave the child alone at home, she had the young son wait in the outer room while she kept watch,

The child loved to read, so he brought a book to pass the long night.

Unexpectedly, when the Fan family's mother-in-law got up early the next morning to visit the delivery room, she found the room silent. The six neighboring women and the parturient were all dead, without any wounds on their bodies,

and the little boy was sitting in the outer room, holding a book in his right hand, with the left half of his body completely charred."

He paused, then slowly said, "When I arrived in Qizhou, I heard that a woman in the neighboring village was also about to give birth, and had also been in difficult labor for two days and two nights.

So I went to the village and waited outside, and I waited for this mantis that was as tall as a person.

It also didn't have any demonic aura,

and it also inexplicably snapped its own neck when it was being taken away from the village."

"..."

Zhu Xuemin listened quietly to Xun Zian's account, sighed, and said calmly, "I have never seen these two types of monsters in the Alien Society's document library.

There's nothing like it in the data collected by this world either.

And from the spiritual sense results, they are not demons."

"Not demons?"

Chu Yin exclaimed in shock, "Then what are they?"

"Cultivators,"

Zhu Xuemin said indifferently, "Or rather, once were part of cultivators."

?!

Seeing the astonished expressions of his companions, Zhu Xuemin said solemnly, "When a person dies, the form is as if alive, the skin of the feet does not turn blue and rotten, the eyes are not destroyed, and the hair falls out completely, all of these are *shijie* (corpse liberation).

To leave during the day is called *shangjie* (upper liberation), to leave in the middle of the night is called *xiajie* (lower liberation), and to leave at dawn or dusk is called those who are in charge of the underground.

Taiyi guards the corpse, the three souls manage the bones, the seven spirits guard the flesh, and the fetal spirit records the vital energy, this is what is called *taiyin lianxing* (Great Yin Body Refinement)."

This roughly means that after a person dies, the body still wants to live, the skin on the feet does not rot and turn blue, the eyes do not decay, and the hair falls out. This is called *shijie*.

Dying during the day is *shangjie*, dying in the middle of the night is *xiajie*, and dying at dawn or dusk is called the master of the underground.

And if Taiyi guards the corpse, the three souls guard the bones, the seven spirits guard the flesh, and the fetal spirit absorbs spiritual energy, this is *taiyin lianxing*.

Taoism calls the act of abandoning the physical body after attaining enlightenment and ascending to heaven, or not leaving a body and instead faking an object (such as clothes or a sword), *shijie*.

The principle of *taiyin lianxing* is similar to that of *shijie* Immortals.

It is when aging cultivators, when their lifespans are about to end, bury their bodies underground,

allowing Taiyi to guard the corpse, the three souls to manage the bones, and causing the body to continue to grow while it rots,

until the internal organs are completely replaced,

and the body is reborn and renewed,

and then the primordial spirit returns to its place, resurrected from the filthy earth.

"Although the method of *taiyin lianxing* can allow cultivators to establish themselves after destruction and glimpse the realm of immortals,

the conditions for use are extremely harsh. Throughout the entire process, the cultivator is ignorant of the outside world and has no ability to resist. Once interfered with, they will be doomed.

Only those aging, weak cultivators whose lifespans are about to end and have no hope of becoming immortals will take the risk and try *taiyin lianxing*."

Zhu Xuemin pursed his lips and said in a low voice, "Of course, the aging and weakness here is relative.

Cultivators who are qualified and capable of performing *taiyin lianxing* are only a few steps away from transcending tribulations and ascending to immortality,

and are already powerful beings sitting on the clouds and overlooking the tiny common people in the mortal world, only one of whom appears every few hundred years.

The last recorded *taiyin lianxing* practitioner was an elder of the Longhu Mountain three hundred years ago."