“You subdued the realm monster?” Ashu looked incredulously at Lu Yun. He knew full well just how terrifying realm monsters were; even great emperors would be ripped apart like paper when encountering these horrors!
Lu Yun shook his head slightly in response, not willing to speak more of this matter. Too much was tied to the Embittered Ocean—if the person who set all this up was still alive, then he had just thrust himself to the forefront of danger.
Taking stock of the situation, Ashu very smartly pressed no further.
Up on the peak of the mountain, Xuanyuan Xiaoyue stood forlornly in front of her ice coffin. Her long hair was the color of snow and her skin resembled ice. She was so pitiful that sympathy bubbled up in anyone that saw her.
The realm monster had left, the Embittered Ocean had been sent to hell, and she’d returned to normal. She was no longer cold, but a frosty bleakness filled her eyes still. The Xuanyuan bloodline had ended. Even she herself had died and become a ghost.
“Xiaoyue.” Ashu walked up to her and patted her lightly on the shoulder. “We have our ways if you want to return to life.”
“Uncle Ling…” Xiaoyue looked at Ashu and shook her head. “It was destined that our clan meet its doom. It was corrupted after my father died, and nothing will bring it back even if I come back to life.”
Ashu sighed softly and had no response to that.
“Do you know who set everything up in the tomb?” Lu Yun came flying up to them.
Xuanyuan Xiaoyue looked out over the world, at how the realm of ice and snow was beginning to melt with the departure of the Embittered Ocean and the realm monster. The sculptures of the frozen Xuanyuan members softened and sagged to the ground, swiftly decomposing and filling the realm with the pungent stench of decay.
She shook her head. “All of this happened after I died. Maybe whoever killed me did it.”
“Whoever killed you…” Ashu frowned.
Xuanyuan Xiaoyue said a name, but it didn’t have time to travel through the air before a mysterious power scattered it.
“Uncle Ling, you should know who I spoke of. He’s listed himself as taboo, which means no one can say his name as long as he’s alive.”
Ashu nodded solemnly. He’d listed his own name as taboo a long time ago. Apart from his kin and friends, no one could talk about his existence at all.
“Alright then, these high up muckety mucks have seriously got too much time on their hands.” Lu Yun sighed with resignation. These so-called great personages were really too petty—listing their name as taboo so they could melt into the backdrop of the world?
Oh, give me a break.
“Lu Yun!” Ashu turned seriously toward the young man. “You should know how large the world is and how many combat arts there are beneath the heavens. There are certain terrible factions with particular combat arts that can capture a whiff of your presence just by saying your name. With that capability, they can then injure or even kill you by reaching across multiple major worlds!
“Many great experts throughout the worlds have hidden their true names and only go by their daoist name or titles. Do you really think it’s because they have too much time on their hands?”
Lu Yun shuddered with recollection. The shamans! They definitely had such an art; they could curse someone through space if they knew their target’s name.
“It looks like I need to get myself a daoist title in the future as well,” he grumbled.
Ashu flicked a sidelong glance at him. “You’ll be fine.”
Lu Yun ignored him.
“The entrance to the yin tomb is there.” Xiaoyue pointed to the patch of chaotic space beneath the mountain. “Go through there to find the passage to the yin side of the Xuan Yuan Tomb. You should be on your way now, I need to bury my clansmen.”
They weren’t in the tomb anymore, or the internal world manifested by Great Emperor Kunpeng. That world had died and become a realm monster, while the island was an entrance to this world—a world that had once been a paradise for the last of the Xuanyuan Clan, but was now dead.
There was nothing keeping Lu Yun and the others here. Xuanyuan Xiaoyue was dead, as was her heart. Remaining here to safeguard her people and father was the best decision for her. Taking stock of their current situation, they headed for the foot of the mountain.
As she watched the group leave, Xiaoyue’s ruddy-faced complexion drained to a stark white. Color leached out of the world while two balls of ghostly fire ignited in her eyes; she waved a hand and raised scores of burial mounds and tombs from the ground. The new structures swallowed the corpses littering the earth and buried them within their final resting places.
If any of the immortals struck down to mortality after the great war a hundred thousand years ago saw this scene, they’d surely erupt in shrieks and disbelief. The very same had occurred during that time!
However, those who’d survived the great war had paid for it with their immortality and their memories of everything having to do with the war.
……
An ill wind blew within the yin tomb and everything was varying shades of monochrome. Broken and dilapidated burial mounds slanted every which way along the earth, while a dark shadow loomed in the distance, blotting out everything like a towering mountain without a peak in sight.
“That mountain is the snake outer-coffin!” Lu Yun took in a deep breath when he pointed to it.
The outer-coffin was refined from the moat snake’s body and what he'd seen from the Heaven Locus Marsh. After countless numbers of trials and hardships, he’d finally made it here.
Explosions suddenly rang by his ears while he took in the sight and the earth rumbled before an enormous, ghastly white hand blotted out the sky, slamming down upon Lu Yun and the others.
Zombies!
Zombies of the titan race!
They were more frightening than the giants of the Xuan Yuan Slaves. Wreathed with dense corpse energy and gray corpsefire, it plowed right through the group before they could react, pinning them to the ground.
Rummmmmmble!
Another tremendous disturbance shook the gray earth as a gigantic skeleton rose from the ground, shaking off the zombie that was a full five kilometers tall.
It was the Venerated Sacrosanct Demon Sovereign’s body of white skeleton; the Hadal Bonefire burning in his eyes was more than twice as strong as before. After devouring the frosty air within the Embittered Ocean Orb, it was traveling down an unknown evolutionary path. While still the same flame as before, it was now a fire of pure cold.
The demon sovereign stepped forward and punched the zombie square in the chest, scattering the corpsefire around it. The zombie immediately froze into a statue and then… cracked into pieces all over the ground.
The group blinked at the anticlimactic result as the demon sovereign stared dumbly at his hands, unable to process what had just happened.
“Is this the zombie we had so much trouble with before?” He returned to human form with glee flooding his face.
“What a tremendously strong cold fire! So this is the strength the Hadal Bonefire has gained after devouring connate cold energy!” Incredulity flashed across Ashu’s face as well.
Though the Hadal Bonefire was powerful, it was just an ordinary flame in his eyes. After its latest supplement, however, it wasn’t far from becoming a true peak flame.