In the Bitter Life Mountain Range, the wind stopped blowing, the sand stopped moving, and everything was silent.
Only the crimson red sky was like light or blood, constantly churning and spreading, as if the sky was injured, dying the surroundings with blood.
On the roof, the heir's voice echoed. In this silent world, he talked about karma related to gods.
"I'm not a god, and I don't have divine sources in my body."
"However, I also have authority, but it's different from gods… It didn't come from the ignition of the divine fire but from the blessing of the Wanggu Heavenly Dao."
"Therefore, I can't help you with how to control your divine source. I can only give you a direction, and that is hunger."
The heir stared at Xu Qing.
"Hunger?" Xu Qing fell silent. A moment later, he glanced at the captain.
In his memory, every time the captain saw the flesh of gods, he seemed to be extremely hungry.
The captain blinked but didn't speak.
Xu Qing fell into deep thought.
"Xu Qing, we don't have much time left." On the roof, the heir retracted his gaze and looked at the bright red color spreading over from the horizon. He then took a step forward.
At the next instant, his figure disappeared from the world. Xu Qing also disappeared.
The captain wasn't surprised by their departure. He stretched lazily and opened his storage bag, rummaging through it.
A long time later, he found an iron box.
'The heir is too anxious…'
The captain muttered inwardly, bit his tongue, spat out a mouthful of blood into his hand, and placed his hand on the iron box.
"No other choice, can only use this. But speaking of it, the old man really predicted it accurately. He gave me this thing just before we left Fenghai County."
"At that time, he said that this was Fourth's anchor…"
"I can only open it with my blood and send it to Fourth when he gets lost."
The captain glanced at the iron box and wanted to open it in advance. However, he knew how important this item was, so he suppressed his curiosity.
At the same time, in the depths of the green sand desert, in this endless desert, the figures of the heir and Xu Qing appeared from the void.
As soon as he landed, Xu Qing immediately sensed his surroundings.
The distant sand dunes remained motionless, the absence of wind rendering the desert silent. The greenish sand underfoot inexplicably took on a grayish-white hue.
It gave off a feeling of death.
Xu Qing had been here before and knew that it was a desolate land that was several months away from the Bitter Life Mountain Range.
"This place is good enough."
The heir calmly spoke and looked at Xu Qing.
"I'll ask you one last time. Are you sure?"
Xu Qing lifted his head and looked at the crimson sky. He sensed the restlessness of the Purple Moon's power in his body. It was an urge to leave his body and return to the sky.
Xu Qing didn't want to give up on the Purple Moon, so he knew that he actually didn't need to make a choice. Hence, he looked at the heir and nodded.
"Good!"
The heir's gaze was deep. He lifted his right hand and grabbed at Xu Qing.
No aura spread out, no fluctuations of cultivation, and no aura erupted. However, just this simple grab caused Xu Qing's body to tremble.
He could clearly sense that the fire of his life had instantly dimmed. The life force in his body seemed to possess its own will and became an independent entity, turning into fog that rapidly spread out from the surface of his body.
The white fog continuously seeped out, emanating from every inch of Xu Qing's body—his pores, his seven apertures—flowing outward, directly towards the right hand of the heir.
In this process, Xu Qing's body began to wither, his hair started to wither away, and waves of weakness emerged throughout his entire body, becoming increasingly intense.
A while later, the white fog finished gathering on the heir's right hand and he lowered his hand.
Xu Qing staggered and took a few steps back, panting heavily. At this moment, from the outside, he no longer looked like he was 20 years old. He looked more like an old man in his twilight years.
More than half of his hair had fallen off, and the rest had turned gray. His body was as skinny as firewood, and even his cultivation base had become fragile. In fact, his teeth had even loosened.
His eyes also were dim. This was caused by 90% of his life force being extracted.
A feeling of emptiness surfaced in Xu Qing's perception, transforming into coldness that caused him to feel hunger.
However, Xu Qing felt that this wasn't enough.
Hence, he looked at the heir and spoke hoarsely.
"Senior, I know you have your own selfish motives and I also understand that you hope that my Purple Moon power can be stronger. I can even guess that this has something to do with saving your siblings."
When the heir heard this, he didn't hide anything and said in a deep voice.
"Xu Qing, I do have selfish motives. I hope that your Purple Moon power can grow a little more and become stronger, and that you can truly control it…"
"In that case, please continue. This is because I also want to grasp the power of the Purple Moon. I want to see the true appearance of this world even more." Xu Qing's voice was weak as he smiled.
The heir fell silent. After a long time, his left hand formed a seal and pointed. Immediately, a seal of the Soul Accumulation landed on Xu Qing.
"I'll deprive you of your life force and turn your life into a void."
"I'll strip you of your cultivation and dry up your spirit energy."
"Deprive you of your recovery, making it impossible for you to restore yourself."
"Lastly, I'll deprive you of the possibility of survival, making it impossible for you to move or resist. You can only wait for death to arrive."
Xu Qing's mind rumbled. At this moment, his mind was blank. He didn't know when he lost his balance and fell heavily to the ground, lying in the desert.
The heir sighed softly and cast a deep glance at Xu Qing. He then turned and walked toward the sky. Step by step, he gradually left.
Only this quiet desert was left, leaving behind a lonely figure lying there.
Xu Qing liked silence because it helped him think. He liked to think.
However, at this moment, in this silent world, he didn't even have the ability to think. He felt extreme weakness and couldn't move his fingers.
He also felt the coldness that he hated the most.
"It's been a long time… a long time…" Xu Qing muttered weakly in his mind. It had been a long time since he had experienced this icy coldness from his childhood.
The coldness in his body invaded his soul. The cold from the inside out caused his body to shiver uncontrollably.
His consciousness started becoming blurry.
Vaguely, Xu Qing seemed to see many scenes. In one of them, a dirty and ragged youth crawled out from countless corpses, struggling hard to move forward, just to survive.
"Actually, I already had this feeling when I was young… more than once."
Xu Qing mumbled.
Countless times, he was so hungry that he was about to die and countless times, he felt despair in his heart.
In order to survive, he had eaten everything in the past. Tree barks were already a very luxurious thing. When he was extremely hungry, he even ate soil to satisfy his hunger.
"So, the heir was actually wrong. He should have let me have some strength, so that I could feel hunger on a deeper level."
Xu Qing forced a smile and trembled as he lifted his withered arm. He tried his best to place it in front of him and bring it to his mouth.
His eyes gradually revealed madness, bloodshot veins emerged, and with all his gathered strength, he forcefully opened his mouth and bit down on the arm.
The blood flowed along the lips and teeth of Xu Qing, but before it could drip down, he inhaled and swallowed every drop.
At the same time, he also swallowed a piece of flesh on his arm that he had bitten off.
Xu Qing didn't need to chew too much. His throat moved and he ruthlessly swallowed it.
As the flesh and blood slid down the esophagus into the stomach, the inexhaustible squeezing and gastric juices, like the drought-ridden earth receiving rain, surged up.
Xu Qing grinned, his mouth full of blood, feeling the struggling in his stomach, the familiar sensation making him smile.
"That's more like it. To starve, you need to have some strength at least."
However, this smile was a little terrifying. As he smiled, Xu Qing's eyes turned even redder and his breathing became hurried. As his strength recovered a little, the hunger brought about by the coldness and emptiness also became increasingly intense.
Xu Qing's body trembled and the blood color in his eyes intensified. He felt that at this moment, it was as though an endless void had appeared in his body. The suction force emitted by it caused the world in front of him to distort.
However, Xu Qing had a lot of experience in this.
He looked at the sky and suddenly cursed.
"Son of a bitch, fragmented-face!"
When he was young, every time he was hungry to this extent, he would curse like this. It was the same now.
As he cursed, Xu Qing's thoughts slowly returned a little. He finally restrained the madness in his heart.
"This hunger that can be restrained is clearly not enough."
"This is the hunger of the body, not the hunger of the god that the heir mentioned."
"As for the feeling of hunger, I have other experiences as well."
Xu Qing recalled the time when he devoured the cultivators from the Red Moon Shrine. At that time, an intense impulse had risen in his heart, as though he was addicted and wanted to devour more. He still remembered that feeling.
"At that time, although I controlled myself, if I continued to devour, I might not have been able to control myself…"
"There's also Eldest Senior Brother's hunger and Ancient Spirit Emperor's hunger!"
"There's also the hunger of the Crimson Goddess' clone, Zhang Siyun, in the Immortal Forbidden!"
"Their hunger is similar but also different from mine."
Xu Qing mumbled.
"Then, what if I don't restrain myself?"
Xu Qing fell silent. After a long time, he gave up on restraining himself and instinctively lowered his head. His breathing was hurried and the feeling of hunger suppressed his rationality, replacing everything.
He suddenly opened his mouth and bit his arm again, as though it wasn't his own flesh.
He took one bite after another. He slowly lost his rationality and his instincts gradually drove everything.
At this moment, he was like a wild beast!
In fact, when some of the blood landed on the sand, Xu Qing instinctively lowered his body and greedily swallowed the sand tainted with blood.
However, even so, the feeling of starvation didn't reduce at all.
"Hungry… hungry…"
Xu Qing trembled, crawling forward with determination. He wanted to eat more.
However, the surroundings were desolate, and there was not a single beast in sight. After crawling a few yards, Xu Qing lay there, engulfed by darkness, overwhelmed by madness.
As weakness and death spread through his entire body with increasing intensity, Xu Qing's mind sobered up for a moment.
"The heir said that it's the overlapping of humanity and divinity…"
"Right now, I'm bestial."
"To be able to wake up means that this is the fusion of humanity and bestiality. It also means that my method is wrong."
"So, what is humanity? And what is divinity?"
Xu Qing muttered weakly.
Time flowed by and three days passed.
While Xu Qing was feeling this starvation in the green sand desert, because the light of the Red Moon appeared on the horizon, the races and all living beings in the entire Moon Worship Region fell into despair.
Chaos was the companion of despair.
The entire Moon Worship Region began to descend into chaos and insanity became the main theme.
Since their final fate was destined to be death, anything was possible at this last moment of life.
Burning, killing, humiliating, raping, and looting could be seen anywhere in this region.
The evil inherent in the nature of life unfolded infinitely at this moment, released and immersed without restraint.
All constraints ceased to exist, and all inhibitions turned to ashes.
Wails and pain transformed into a storm that swept through everything.
Human nature was collapsing.
Goodwill was dimming.
Bestial nature was spreading.
Madness was erupting.
It was the same for the cultivators as well..
