Chapter 295: They Are Using Mortals To Replace Their Childbearing Issues
“After this battle, Diting was also severely injured, almost dying and his Dao dissipated. Even though my master… Medicine Saint Yixu remade his physical body for him, his cultivation dropped from the early Tribulation Crossing stage to the early Mahayana stage. However, he still dutifully watched the Three Lives Stone to prevent the tragedy of the Pure Yin Maiden from happening again.”
Tan Zhu’s voice lowered:
“Until, he heard the wail of Youdu Mountain again.”
This ghost beast, who had almost died in the Pure Yin Ground, still chose to go to Youdu Mountain without hesitation. In the end, he was nowhere to be found, and not even a shred of news was sent out to the outside world.
“Logically speaking, he has always been steady and should have sent a message to Medicine Saint Yixu beforehand. But Medicine Saint Yixu received nothing. Only after a full thousand years, when Yixu finally finished remaking Feng He’s physical body, did she plan to contact old friends and then discovered he had long disappeared.”
Ming Zhaoshuang murmured softly, “So, Medicine Saint Yixu didn’t die in the alchemy tribulation either?”
“No, she died in the alchemy tribulation. She used phoenix bones, phoenix feathers, and even phoenix blood to refine a divine body for Feng He, which was equivalent to ‘God Creation’ in a reborn state. Therefore, dying in such an alchemy tribulation was within expectation.”
Tan Zhu shook her head towards Ming Zhaoshuang, her eyes narrowing slightly, and said softly, “But Yixu cultivates the Dao of Life and Death. For her, life or death is just a single thought.”
Therefore, Medicine Saint Yixu knew at the time that something had happened in the Underworld and deliberately used the alchemy tribulation as an accident to abandon her physical body and disappear from everyone’s sight.
It was just that Tan Zhu obviously did not want to expose Medicine Saint Yixu’s existence in front of two outsiders, Xingyun and Liushui, which was why she said that.
“But this also led her to discover earth-shattering news: the one who colluded with Emperor Fengdu back then came from the Upper Realm, and from Penglai Immortal Island in the Upper Realm.”
Tan Zhu pursed her lips, “This is why Yixu did not receive Diting’s message back then.”
Because while Yixu was wholeheartedly remaking Feng He’s physical body and pursuing their ideal, the Penglai Immortal Island she controlled was already riddled with holes, deceiving those above and below, and colluding with the Ghost Realm.
She and Diting were not close, so naturally, she wouldn’t proactively contact them. Therefore, it wasn’t until Diting disappeared for a full thousand years that she realized something was wrong.
Then, the Three Lives Stone in the Underworld could not be left unattended. Yixu decisively abandoned her physical body and came to the Underworld to continue guarding the Three Lives Stone, occasionally visiting Youdu Mountain to see if anyone was causing trouble.
Then she discovered Tan Zhu struggling in Youdu Mountain. Seeing that this little girl had a unique bone structure and was a good candidate for alchemy, she simply took her as a disciple.
Shen Yuyin turned her head and looked at the pill cultivators in Sang Biao’s memory, her gaze somewhat vacant:
“You mean, all these people are pill cultivators from Penglai Immortal Island?”
Penglai Immortal Island actually colluded with the Ghost Realm!
“Yes,” Tan Zhu sighed, “I should have realized it earlier. I had come to the Youdu Mountain Summit before and found traces of Penglai Immortal Island there. But I was troubled by inner demons at the time and didn’t dare to investigate further. I didn’t expect that after nearly two hundred years, this place has actually become a demonic den.”
As she spoke, Tan Zhu’s hands began to tremble.
She reached out, pointing at the painfully suffering mortal women in Sang Biao’s memory, her voice becoming impassioned:
“Indeed, after Ou Ziye’s mess, no matter how much Youdu Mountain borrowed power, it would be impossible to create a Pure Yin Ground and a Pure Yin Maiden again and again. But this matter is no less significant than the existence of the Pure Yin Maiden!”
“They captured these mortal women and turned them into tools for breeding the immortal embryos they were cultivating!”
At these words, the surroundings fell silent.
Only Tan Zhu’s voice exploded in this dark and gloomy environment, shaking everyone’s hearts like thunder from a clear sky:
“In the history of Penglai Immortal Island, there was a Great Expert who sought a child for three thousand years without success. Thus, he thought of a way to circumvent the rules of heaven and earth—that is, to use the characteristics of mortal women, who have no cultivation and are good at childbirth, to gestate the embryo formed by him and his Dao Companion!”
What did this mean?
Facing the confused gazes of Ming Zhaoshuang and the others, Tan Zhu’s voice became somewhat agitated.
“We all know the rules of heaven and earth. It is not easy for cultivators to give birth. Even those above the Body Integration stage are nearly sterile. This is because during the process of their union, either one party’s power is too strong and suppresses the other, making it difficult for the embryo to form; or both parties’ powers are very strong and mutually repel each other, making it difficult for the embryo to develop.”
“Therefore, that Great Expert from Penglai Immortal Island came up with a method—external fertilization.”
Ming Zhaoshuang’s head swam, “You mean they are doing IVF in the cultivation world?”
Has this world become so fantastical?
In this era, the cultivation world is not focused on how to cultivate, but instead on biology and science?
“What is IVF?”
Tan Zhu and the others, being native cultivators, clearly did not know this concept.
Ming Zhaoshuang thought about the biology she had learned before, “I went to a Secret Realm before, and the people there valued science. This is how they viewed childbirth.”
“They call the part produced by the woman that is used for embryo development ‘egg cells’, and the part produced by the man that is used for embryo development is called ‘sperm cells’. The combination of the two is called a fertilized egg, which is the beginning of life.”
“Because many people in that Secret Realm have difficulty combining sperm and egg cells through normal means for various reasons, some people would resort to external fertilization—with the help of some Magical Artifacts, they would extract egg cells and sperm cells and let them combine within the Magical Artifacts. Once they develop into early embryos, they would choose to re-insert them into the Mother Body through a catheter for development.”
Tan Zhu nodded gently upon hearing this, her eyes half-lowered, “Yes, that was the method adopted by that Great Expert from Penglai Immortal Island back then.”
Ming Zhaoshuang gasped.
Shen Yuyin’s willow eyebrows slightly raised, seeming a bit puzzled, “Even with external fertilization embryos like this, they wouldn’t be able to survive, would they? Combination is combination, and development is development; the two cannot be conflated.”
Shen Yuyin was also a Medical Cultivator. She clearly knew that in the cultivation world, even if the problem of embryo combination was solved, it would still be impossible to safely give birth to a healthy child. This was because the Mother Body was too strong, and the embryo was too fragile. During their struggle, it would also cause damage to the child.
Unless…
Shen Yuyin seemed to have thought of something, her lips instantly turned pale, “You mean, they didn’t transplant the embryo into the original Mother Body, but transplanted it into a more fragile Mother Body, so fragile that it could be a Mortal?”
Since the embryo could not develop stably because of the strong Mother Body and fragile embryo; since they could not improve the fragility of the embryo, they could just improve the problem of the strong Mother Body.
For the all-powerful cultivators, wasn’t this an easy task?
“They are using mortals to replace them for the problem of childbirth.”
