Longevity Strange Immortal-Chapter 32: The Crazy Heart Beast Black Market

Li Mo felt that the black market was definitely not as simple as it seemed on the surface.

It was even possible that the two-hundred-mile radius surrounding Rong Town might be the ruins of the Heart Beast Sect, though what the black market represented remained unknown.

Swoosh, swoosh, swoosh...

Just as Li Mo was lost in thought, several cultivators rushed overhead.

The cultivators maneuvered Magic Artifacts resembling beastly limbs as they headed for the Heart Beast Black Market. However, upon reaching a certain range, they switched to traveling on foot.

Li Mo did not immediately approach the market but chose instead to observe it closely from a high vantage point.

He noticed that compared to Rong Town, the Heart Beast Black Market was far more chaotic, and thus cultivators entering and leaving were exceedingly cautious, almost invariably wearing long robes to conceal their appearances.

At the same time, the degree of deformity in the cultivators’ bodies exceeded imagination.

Some cultivators had become so grotesque in form that they could no longer maintain a human shape, moving across the desolate and vast plain in bizarre, twisted postures.

Li Mo shook his head, switched to a fresh Human Skin, and donned a wide Daoist robe.

He waited until twilight fell before heading to the Heart Beast Black Market.

Cultivators purposefully kept their distance from one another, with bones half-buried in the mud hinting at frequent occurrences of murder and treasure theft.

Li Mo was mentally prepared for this.

According to memories that had steadily emerged from the Creation Book, even in ancient times within the cultivation world, the survival conditions for Loose Cultivators were just as brutal.

Li Mo arrived unobserved at the front of the black market, where dense black mist loomed, isolating everything within. Occasionally, cultivators could be seen entering and exiting.

He hesitated for a brief moment, then lowered his head and stepped into the mist’s confines.

It felt as though the world spun violently, his vision consumed by darkness, and the surroundings fell into absolute silence—as if he had descended into a small world nestled deep in an abyss.

Li Mo’s Five Senses gradually returned, and mocking voices rained down incessantly from above.

"Pour Spiritual Power into your eyes—don’t even know such a basic Magic Technique?"

"Hurry up and adapt, or you’ll end up as just another corpse on the roadside."

"Hahaha..."

The voices rose and fell, and Li Mo, without needing further prompting, had already infused his eyes with Spiritual Power. He was simply struggling slightly with the corrosive nature of the Mist Fog Spiritual Power.

"Youngling!"

"Today, I’ll do you a favor. Remember to repay me someday, alright?"

The dense mist cleared, revealing the black market in radiant clarity.

Li Mo glanced upward and saw that the entrance of the black market was adorned with hundreds of muttering severed heads.

The heads were threaded together with iron chains piercing their temples. Their cultivation levels, at minimum, must have reached the completion of Five Internal Organs Spirit Root Transformation; otherwise, they wouldn’t have survived long after detachment.

Li Mo ignored the heads.

Surveying the surroundings, he realized that the Heart Beast Black Market was essentially an endless street—here, there was no distinction between day and night, only bloodlust and greed filled the air.

The street was flanked by scattered shopfronts and numerous roadside stalls.

Li Mo observed the wandering cultivators. Their mouths opened and closed, yet no sound could be heard.

Clearly, the Heart Beast Black Market intentionally suppressed the cultivators’ Five Senses to ensure that identities could not easily be exposed.

The street had been transformed via Arrays into a marketplace suited for underground transactions, with countless sordid deeds playing out both in the open and covertly.

The black market’s enforcer must at least be a cultivator of the Thirty Years Old Stage (Golden Core Stage).

Li Mo, having not mastered Eye Techniques, found his vision restricted—anything beyond a hundred meters blurred into obscurity.

Even so, he couldn’t help but notice the frenzy of the Loose Cultivators within the black market and discern that the Magic they wielded bore some connection to Rong Town.

If Rong Town Magic focused on using Alien Spirit Energy to fuel Beastification without harming the cultivator’s foundational vitality, then...

The black market’s Loose Cultivators fully embraced extremes, pushing limitations to their breaking points.

They ignored foundational stability; even when their bodies couldn’t endure modifications, they pursued short-term gains without hesitation.

"Roar...Roar..."

A Loose Cultivator walked past, his neck surgically grafted with a Mountain Demon’s head—an interface grotesquely entwined with countless threads, blood perpetually seeping out.

If Han Cai were present, he would surely shake his head at such crude surgery.

Li Mo cast a glance at the two-headed cultivator.

He observed that the Mountain Demon’s head seemed to exist solely for cultivation, its remaining consciousness inhaling and exhaling specific Alien Spirit Energy.

The cultivator occasionally fed the Mountain Demon’s head, indicating that the human and beast heads did not share a single network of Five Internal Organs and Six Viscera.

Perhaps this separation was designed for easier future removal.

Li Mo felt his scalp crawl as he watched.

Only the maddening pursuit of immortality could drive cultivators to desecrate their bodies in such ways. Should the Mountain Demon’s head lose control, death would claim its host instantly.

Loose Cultivators like this were a dime a dozen within the black market.

One cultivator had even relocated their own heart outside their body, wearing it openly at their waist like an ornament, with crystalline blood vessels attached.

When the heart stopped beating, the cultivator would casually replace it with a fresh one.

They treated their heart like a consumable, merely using it to delay the onset of Death Disease and to grant fleeting, fragile vitality to their bodies.

Li Mo was just about to search for a shop selling Deceit Beast corpses when the severed heads at the entrance began asserting their presence again.

"Youngling, the inn is three hundred meters ahead on the left, the Treasure Pavilion is seven hundred fifty meters ahead on the right, the Magic Hall is..."

An elderly, long-bearded head cackled after boasting about its familiarity with the market, proudly swaying back and forth. "I remember you now, youngling."

"If you’re feeling generous, give me a segment of your spine as thanks—a child’s spine will do; old Yue isn’t picky."

"Don’t listen to him! Give the spine to this old lady instead, and I’ll recount all the salacious tales from my lifetime for you, hahaha!"

"You’re nothing but a head now—what salacious tales? Have you no shame?!!"

The heads began quarrelling, their clashing voices multiplying, as though they would brawl if not tethered securely by iron chains.

Li Mo shook his head, preparing to leave the entrance, when a figure stopped beside him.

Shrouded in a Daoist robe, it was only from the voice that Li Mo discerned it to be a female cultivator: "Don’t mind the ghost heads—they owe the black market tremendous debts and have had their organs confiscated as collateral."

"Their request for your spine is merely a desperate gambit to piece together complete bodies and escape the fate of hanging at the market’s entrance for countless years."

She spoke briefly before vanishing into the depths of the black market.

This triggered jeering curses from the ghost heads, some even using their half-decayed tongues to spit rotting blood toward her retreating silhouette.

Li Mo glanced at the female cultivator’s fading figure, catching a whiff of an inexplicable stench wafting through his nostrils.

He followed her deeper into the black market. No wonder Jin Li viewed this place with such dread—this sinister locale was brimming with temptation, as though Spirit Stones could purchase any resource imaginable.

Yet simultaneously, the Heart Beast Black Market concealed untold dangers, where the slightest mistake could result in utter destruction.

It wasn’t until Li Mo delved further into the market that he grasped why debt might arise—numerous storefronts displayed fluorescent signs hanging above their entrances.

[Selling original hearts, priced based on vitality—starting from twenty Mid-Grade Spirit Stones.]

[Offering bone healing pills for cultivating limbs; buying quality intact limbs—starting from five Mid-Grade Spirit Stones.]

[Hiring Medical Hall doctors skilled in Universal Skillful Hand magic; salary negotiable—minimum ten-year Spirit Contract.]

......

"Why does it feel like the black market has completely diverged from Rong Town?"