Of course, there's also a whole bunch of not-so-common but still widely worshipped Ksitigarbha statues, such as the Ksitigarbha of Wealth, Harvest Ksitigarbha, and the Exam Ksitigarbha.

In conclusion, the variety of related Ksitigarbha statues is indeed diverse and colorful, and the only common point among this big bunch of Ksitigarbhas is that they're all called Ksitigarbha, but they have nothing to do with the Ksitigarbha that Zhang Yanhang usually encounters.

But this can be considered a regional feature, which Zhang Yanhang can somewhat understand. He feels it's like General Tso's Chicken, which is completely unheard of in the Empire but is very popular abroad.

Due to thorough localization, aside from the name, nothing else is retained, and even the name itself is somewhat ambiguous. But perhaps it's because of this that it has become very popular locally.

As for that ceramic jar filled with black garlic, Zhang Yanhang suspects that someone from the Ancient River Village once offered black garlic as a tribute, and then others just left it there, resulting in its long-term presence there, nourished by Spiritual Energy and watered by the Power of Faith, turning it into what it is now.

"Speaking of which, am I stealing offerings by eating this?"

Even though Zhang Yanhang said this, his hands didn't stop moving. He directly picked up the ceramic jar and swallowed it whole, then smacked his lips and said, "Stealing offerings tastes really good."

Because the Ksitigarbha itself is only the size of a figurine, this ceramic jar is actually not very large, containing only about a dozen black garlics.

Aside from one at the bottom which is the most effective, the others have effects too, but only slightly. Yet, a little profit is still profit, it's never wrong to eat them all, any small increase is still an increase.

With the digestion and absorption by the Stomach Space, Zhang Yanhang quickly felt a familiar warm current flowing through his body. As for defense enhancement, he's more than familiar with it since he consumes a lot of Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures that enhance physical strength and defensive power.

According to Zhang Yanhang's past experience, that most effective garlic, mentioned in the options as mutated black garlic, helped him increase his defensive power limit by about 20%, while the remaining dozen or so garlics, even counting the bonus from the Swallowing Heaven and Earth Skill, barely provided him with an additional 6% increase in defensive power limit.

"So, in conclusion, this whole jar of mutated black garlic only provided me with roughly a 16% defense enhancement, with the remaining 10% or so coming entirely from the bonus from the Swallowing Heaven and Earth Skill."

But to be able to casually eat a jar of black garlic and enhance the overall defensive power by a quarter, Zhang Yanhang is already quite satisfied. The only pity is that the whole jar of black garlic was absorbed by the Stomach Space, and he didn't taste anything. Had he known the effect was so weak, perhaps saving one for a taste would've been nice.

"Although I haven't been promoted for long, with the defensive power bonus gained from increasing the Skill Level of Technique Immunity, and the defense increase from Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures, I feel that even the normal attack of a Fourth Tier Late Stage monster shouldn't be able to break through my Energy Shield now."

Of course, if a monster uses skill attacks without fair play, he'd likely still lose some Shield Value since the defensive power bonus from his promotion to Fourth Tier wasn't that much.

At least compared to the previous Rank, it's definitely not much, perhaps even a little less. Further enhancing his defensive power is still needed to withstand skill attacks from Fourth Tier Late Stage monsters.

Moreover, Zhang Yanhang feels there's still ample room for growth in his current defensive power.

"So, here comes the question, what should I do next? Go to Lanshan Town? Then let's go."

Zhang Yanhang has a hunch that there should be other encounters triggering today. He plans to take a trip to Lanshan Town first, then return home to continue waiting for encounters.

Zhang Yanhang searched Lanshan Town's location on the map and found it was even farther than where he previously came from, at least 2,500 kilometers away. But luckily for him, it isn't a big problem now, so he quickly initiated teleportation.

......

October 31st, Saturday, the sixth day after the Double Ninth Festival, also the second day since Zhang Yanhang left the Ashen World. At 10:25 in the evening, in the Main World, Lanshan Town, the backyard of a house.

Zhang Yanhang had randomly chosen a direction and teleported, unexpectedly landing in a backyard. Luckily, it wasn't a big problem; he wasn't exactly a sneak thief, nor interested in committing acts upon the mistress or husband, only in Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures.

Moreover, with his power, mere ordinary people's backyards could never possibly detect his visit, so there's really no need to bother with it.

After all, as a high-level Awakener in the Immortal Land Realm, while he wouldn't completely disregard life, in cases like these, he's pretty indifferent.

Besides, since no one gets hurt, and he isn't after wealth, such incidents might be illegal but definitely do not constitute a crime, even if someone were to call the police, it'd be pointless.

It can be said that from an alignment perspective, Zhang Yanhang is definitely not considered good, but neither is he evil. He's probably neutral, but somewhat chaotic at times since being chaotic neutral can be immensely fun.

Thus, Zhang Yanhang overall is chaotic neutral, completely unrelated to lawful neutral alignments like a gentleman or absolute neutrality like balance masters.

As for what chaotic neutral is, it's roughly prioritizing personal interests and usually being too lazy to interfere with the outside world unless it pertains to himself, taking a neutral stance. But once he does interfere, he'll make it significant, like crashing into Greenland or similar acts.

Additionally, he could be considered a joker, enjoying not just his own fun but also whoever else's, including dark humor and laughing a little more heartily at it.

Overall, calling Zhang Yanhang evil definitely wouldn't be right, but calling him a good person is undoubtedly an insult — who on earth is a good person these days? Would you be? Not even a dog would.

In some sense, for the increasingly morally deficient modern individuals, Zhang Yanhang's comparatively aloof personality is far more common than good or evil alignments.

After all, ordinary people don't really measure up to so-called good or evil — they are just plain neutral, which arguably forms the most stable cornerstone of society.

After all, kindness isn't always a good thing; especially extreme kindness can easily turn into an animal rights movement or leftist ideology, which can lead to great social instability.

Therefore, relatively speaking, the neutral camp, which tends to sympathize with the weak while also admiring the strong, truly is the best choice for ordinary people.

But at the same time, goodness and evil are definitely not meaningless, because only through camp differentiation, creating diversity, can other camps feel that their ideas are more correct, and also live more comfortably while executing these ideas.

After scanning a wide area with the Seeking Fortune and Avoiding Evil Skill, Zhang Yanhang successfully discovered a somewhat unusual small mountain about seven or eight kilometers outside Lanshan Town. If nothing unexpected happens, this might be the small mountain mentioned in the options.

Regarding this result, Zhang Yanhang was quite surprised, after all, he was just casually looking around, but he actually found it?

"Clearly, I did not choose the second option, yet the Earth Vein Essence appeared right before my eyes. It seems this option was rather rare, triggered by real-existent Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures, so no wonder this choice is relatively weak."

That's right, what Zhang Yanhang first thought was that this option was relatively weak, which is why it led to its real existence. After all, for something like the Mother Clam Spirit Pearl, he happened to want to enhance his physical recovery speed, and then the fortuitous encounter 'coincidentally' triggered this option. Thus, this kind of option is clearly auto-generated by Multiple Choice.

But the Earth Vein Essence is different; he doesn't have a need in this area, nor is he enthusiastic about improvements in this regard. Therefore, the probability of this kind of option, which is unrelated to himself, being real-existent Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures is naturally much higher.

"Even though it's not of much use to me, since I've made the trouble to come all the way here, I definitely have to take it."

But Zhang Yanhang was pondering about just how to take it, after all, the previous options mentioned that he found it only after smashing the entire mountain, and now, the Earth Vein Essence he scanned is indeed connected with the entire small mountain, and it indeed needs to be destroyed before it can be taken out.

But although it needs to be destroyed, Zhang Yanhang quickly thought of a potentially more suitable method, "Well then, is there a possibility I could just swallow the whole mountain? This way it's most original and nutritious, 100%."

The mountain that Zhang Yanhang scanned was just about a hundred meters high, at Beiling Mountain level. With his current Stomach Space, accommodating tens of thousands wouldn't be a problem.

Thinking so, Zhang Yanhang immediately flew above the small mountain, "Although this place's name is Lanshan Town, it doesn't mean I have to really smash a mountain; swallowing it whole is also a good choice."

As soon as Zhang Yanhang activated the Heavenly Earth Skill, turning into a giant over three hundred meters tall, what originally seemed like a relatively towering nameless mountain was barely reaching his knee height, approximately the length of his calf.

After successfully entering the Heavenly Earth form, Zhang Yanhang immediately began using the Swallowing Heaven and Earth Skill. A deep, dark gigantic space tunnel appeared like a black hole at his mouth, endlessly sucking the small mountain below.

Soon, with a loud rumble, the small mountain below was uprooted and hovered high in the air. In just a few seconds, the hundred-meter-high mountain was completely devoured into Zhang Yanhang's Stomach Space and began the absorption phase.

Upon seeing the huge pit left by the forcibly removed mountain, Zhang Yanhang couldn't help but nod in satisfaction, "If this was before the Spiritual Qi Recovery, a mysterious disappearance of a mountain, leaving only a giant pit as a base, would certainly become one of the top ten unsolved mysteries."

But now, since it's the Spiritual Qi Recovery Era, people have become much more tolerant of such things. It seems no one would care about a missing nameless mountain in these out-of-the-way places, right? Well, probably not."

Considering whether or not he is immune to prophecies and divinations thanks to the blessing of the Supreme Will, Zhang Yanhang figured even if someone reported it, they certainly wouldn't be able to find out, after all, there's no surveillance in the wilderness; who would know he's been here? Even if someone wanted to catch him, it's impossible.

Thinking of this, Zhang Yanhang revealed a satisfied smile once more.

At the same time, Zhang Yanhang increasingly felt that he was entirely unconnected with the good camp.

After devouring the entire small mountain, Zhang Yanhang immediately deactivated the Heavenly Earth Skill and returned to his normal state. However, he didn't rush to leave; instead, he waited for a while, but no matter how he waited, the familiar warm current didn't arrive.

The previous Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures usually took a second or two for absorption, but the Earth Vein Essence had been over a minute and still hadn't been fully absorbed.

Or perhaps because the outer layer of the mountain was quite large, roughly ten thousand cubic meters, so in fact, the Stomach Space had been absorbing the outer mountain layer since the beginning and hadn't reached the inner Earth Vein Essence yet.

Since there was no reaction from the Stomach Space for the moment, Zhang Yanhang couldn't help but make an option, asking Multiple Choice how many years of lifespan the Earth Vein Essence could really increase.

After all, he's not familiar with this type of Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures; even if he could devour it, he couldn't really determine how much it increased. It's better to directly ask Multiple Choice for an approximate number.

As a result, Multiple Choice told him that this thing seemed to increase his lifespan by less than ten years?

"After all this effort, you tell me it can only increase my lifespan by ten years? Well, after all, it was just something obtained in a few minutes, and can be absorbed within a few minutes, it's Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures, so I shouldn't demand too much."

After all, lifespan is lifespan, and surely he wouldn't mind having more. It's pretty profitable to exchange a few minutes for ten years of life.

After a few minutes, the outer mountain made of ordinary soil and rock was finally absorbed by the Stomach Space, revealing the Earth Vein Essence Crystal inside.

It turns out this thing is surprisingly large, at least eight or nine meters tall, about the height of a three-story building, and nearly cubic overall, making it a gigantic Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures.

In terms of volume, it's more exaggerated than all the Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures Zhang Yanhang had found before. Thanks to the Stomach Space, otherwise, with over five hundred cubic meters, it would occupy more than half of the compartments in the Storage Box.

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