“Aaaaaah…” a long, nasally yawn followed; it sounded like a girl stretching lazily after a catnap.
“Violetgrave!” Lu Yun’s eyes lit up. “Have you slept enough?”
“No…” Violetgrave murmured in a distinctly languid, coquettish sort of way. “I sensed... someone familiar. I… just wanted a look.”
“Someone familiar? Who?” Lu Yun blinked. He scanned his surroundings, but only saw the watchful silently Situ Zong nearby. There was no one else.
“I woke up… late. He left already.” Violetgrave yawned again, her voice growing fainter and fainter. “Oh well… ‘m goin’… back to bed.”
“Hold on!” Lu Yun cut in hurriedly. “There’s a secret realm here, can you find it for me?”
Hum...
In the next moment, the sword in his hands discharged a ray of hazy violet. It sliced across what seemed to be empty space, revealing an enormous dimensional fissure before him.
“Ah, you got it. Thanks!” The young man’s gratitude went unanswered; Violetgrave had already gone back to sleep.
“That ‘someone familiar’… could it be Qi Hai, or the other person latched onto his spirit?” Lu Yun frowned slightly, but promptly stepped into the fissure. Now wasn’t the time for such deliberations.
“Look! Lu Yun’s found a completely new secret realm. There must be valuable treasure inside!”
“Come, let’s follow him!” The immortals who’d been keeping an eye on Lu Yun all this time were quite excited. They tried to stay on the young man’s heels, but Situ Zong and the cannon he carried stood in their way as a powerful deterrent. When the old man pointed its barrel at them, their faces colored in instinctive fear.
“Let those suicidal fools come in, Situ,” Lu Yun said, noticing the goings-on outside.
Nodding in deference, Situ Zong leaned to the side to permit passage.
……
The young man ignored the would-be freeloaders, focusing intently on the Dragonsearch Invocation to lead him to the Skydragon and Skyphoenix pearls.
But…
There were no tombs to be found here.
No… hmm... they shouldn’t be inside a tomb…
The pearls are treasures created by a dragon and phoenix above the dao immortal realm. If they were buried anywhere, they should’ve been with the burial mounds out there.
A sparkling coin appeared in his hand: the Treasurefall Coin.
He’d stuck it on the Fire Parasol Tree earlier, but the coin had fled back to him when the illusion was dispelled by the ghost tree. As soon as he produced the coin, it floated into the air. However, something seemed to trouble it from there on. It fluttered left, then right, uncertain of which direction to go.
“There are two treasures here of equal value, but they’re scattered in two different directions. That’s why the coin is having trouble,” observed Lu Yun. Remembering a joke from back on Earth, he followed up with a sheepish laugh. “What, is the Treasurefall Coin a Libra or something? Everyone knows that everyone with that horoscope is wishy-washy and sucks at making decisions.”
“Look, everyone! That’s the legendary Treasurefall Coin! If it’s acting like that, there must be treasure here!” Some of the immortals who’d followed after him were quite knowledgeable and quickly grasped what was going on.
“The Treasurefall Coin can’t decide between left or right… which means there’s treasures in both directions. Let’s get them!” Splitting into two frenzied hordes, the immortals bayed with greed and charged down two opposite routes.
“Aowrrrrr!” Resounding roars boomed through the realm, followed by a dozen two-headed zombies popping into existence, each of them at least as strong as a peerless immortal.
They were identical to the one Lu Yun had seen in the tomb of yin and yang back on Levitating Island. Those caught off-guard by the zombies were promptly torn apart, and their damaged spirits eaten before they could flee.
“Lu Yun!” screamed a golden immortal whose arm had been chewed off. “You meant to harm us after all! You led us here to feed the zombies!”
He was loud enough to project his voice out of the demiplane and into the graveyard outside.
“How absurd!” Before Lu Yun could reply, Situ Zong snickered on his master’s behalf. “You followed us of your own accord. What does your decision have to do with my sect head?”
As he spoke, he squeezed a two-headed zombie so hard that it exploded. Being a peak aether dao immortal, he found the zombies here trivial to deal with.
“Scram!” In the next moment, Situ Zong unleashed his full demonic aura as a Star Demon heavyweight.
“He’s a dao immortal of the Star Demon Sect… run!” an immortal shrieked in terror.
The Star Demon Sect was notorious for the amount of bloodshed it had caused in the world of immortals, so much so that countless people would blanch at the merest mention of its name. Simply revealing his origin was enough for Situ Zong to daunt these immortals.
“Lu Yun is the head of the Star Demon Sect?! So we were right all along about him being a plague upon the world!” many wailed as they ran for dear life.
The Fire Altar had sealed off communication before, which prevented the immortals here from learning what had happened outside. Now, hearing someone from the Star Demon Sect hailing Lu Yun as ‘Sect Head’ had both frightened and shocked them, and they scrambled out of the minor world as quickly as they’d come.
The eyes of the dao immortals outside shone with avarice, but no one took a step into the fissure. Their senses told them there was a great horror within the minor world that Lu Yun had opened up. There was treasure there, yes, but also something horrendous enough to make their hearts tremble.
The two-headed zombies weren’t the cause. There was another, more sinister evil lurking in its depth!
Lu Yun had noticed it himself, which was why he’d told Situ Zong to let the immortals in. If they wanted to die, he certainly wasn’t going to stop them. Most of those who’d come in after him were hostile to him in some way, anyway.
There was something else to preoccupy the dao immortals outside, however. The fiery connate treasure had finally come out into the open, burning like a small sun in the air above them.
Even more immortals bolted for the treasure in an attempt to acquire it, while several arcane dao immortals began blatantly cutting down the crowd. After all, acquiring a connate-grade treasure required sufficient strength in addition to luck.
……
“The Skydragon and Skyphoenix pearls have formed a seal of water and fire. That’s what’s keeping the great horror here, in the intersection between the dragon and phoenix nests.
“What… could it be?” Lu Yun began sweeping the place with his Spectral Eye.