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It’s your death or mine.
That was the current situation between the chief worlds and the land of darkness. It was reflected in Lu Yun’s inability to recruit the two pure endarkened even with the Tome of Life and Death. They dispersed upon the wind after death as there was no hint of succumbing to a chief world denizen in their mind.
The creatures of darkness in the Dark World had been tainted by the orders of the realm, they weren’t pureblood anymore.
Cen Sui didn’t know what to say. Lu Yun was the leader of a realm and the inventor of immortal dao. He’d led the immortals to ending the Land of Reincarnation, so his vision naturally extended further than his.
A civilization’s prosperity, the development of morals, and the proliferation of emotions such as pity and empathy were predicated on survival. Only when a race survived and propagated did it have energy for other matters.
The current chief worlds, however, only looked affluent on the surface. They were protected by scant few powerhouses and if the greenhouse was broken, the vast majority of its inhabitants—including those such as Cen Sui—lacked the ability to protect themselves from a vicious onslaught beasts and terrifying blizzards.
……
As he looked into Lu Yun’s eyes, Cen Sui felt that the long speech of principles and logic that he’d prepared was superfluous. The kid wasn’t a rigid pedant, his awareness and the understanding of the situation was stronger than anyone’s.
“Does everyone have to experience that place at least once?” Lu Yun asked.
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“No,” Cen Sui shook his head. “I think… the venerable Tailong prepared that for you.”
Lu Yun started with comprehension. Since Tailong wanted him for a strategist, that meant they would face far more than the land of darkness in the future. There were more enemies waiting for them in the forest and any hesitance or waffling could implicate the entire chief worlds, resulting in their complete demise.
With the immortal dao’s official addition to the chief worlds, that made the World of Immortals part of the realm too. If Lu Yun was to be their strategist, then he must demonstrate pivotal value. There was no room for pity or mercy.
That had been a test for his heart that Tailong had set up. If Lu Yun hadn’t passed or showed mercy to the endarkened, Tailong would certainly have other methods to temper the young man’s spirit.
“Let’s go,” Lu Yun waved his hand.
The mountain sharpened into focus when they reached the halfway point of the golden bridge. It was a landmass wreathed in blazing fire that leapt and roared with ferocity. Illumination from the flames also brought the layout of burial into clear view.
An Enneawyrm Coffinbearers layout.
“Fuck. Me. This isn’t a tomb, it’s a burial mound!” Lu Yun started trembling.
“What?!” Cen Sui jumped with surprise. “The primordial heavenly emperor… an empyrean supreme… is buried under a pile of dirt?? Impossible!”
“The Enneawyrm Coffinbearers… layout!” Lu Yun sucked in a sharp breath.
It was no divine mountain in front of them; it was an incredibly large burial mound on fire! Intersecting order and disorder had formed a forcefield around it that concealed the truth of the place, preventing people from seeing its real form. Now that it was apparent, Lu Yun could clearly discern that this was no mountain, but a burial mound!
It was incredibly huge and most of it embedded in the void. The Enneawyrm Coffinbearers was a type of burial layout and also an outer-coffin.
It was beneath this mountain.
A large burial mound and a familiar layout by themselves weren’t enough to scare Lu Yun. The implications were what horrified him. If the Enneawyrm Coffinbearers were here, then so would there be the Nine-Phoenix Casket, Enneaqilin Coffinbiers, and Ninefooted Turtle Cist!
In the World of Immortals, Daoist Yuyu had killed the ancestors of the dragon, phoenix, qilin, and turtle to refine them into outer-coffins. They suppressed the blood demon and also nurtured his four swords.
However, the blood demon later employed other methods to raise a blood dragon, phoenix, qilin, and turtle from the coffins. Those later became Lu Yun’s Yama Kings. So what did it mean that they were in the tomb of the empyrean supreme?
Had someone placed the primordial heavenly emperor’s corpse into the coffin to breed another demon?
The Enneawyrm Coffinbearers was present in its entirety, so the other three must be around somewhere. Perhaps they nurtured the remnants of the emperor’s other parts or perhaps… they held three other personages on par with the emperor?
Was the primordial heavenly emperor the only empyrean supreme in the chief worlds? Get outta here with that bullshit. The appearance of the Disordered Empyrean supreme was proof that there’d been more than one empyrean supreme in the past chief worlds.
Lu Yun was even thinking that perhaps the other three didn’t hold empyrean supremes from the chief worlds, but other locales!
His brain was about to burst from all the implications of seeing just Enneawyrm Coffinbearers. The truth behind any of the wild possibilities he calculated was too fearsome to bear.
Pinpricks of horror also traveled down Cen Sui’s back when he heard Lu Yun’s muttering. He’d heard of all four of these evil coffins before—grand supremes would turn tail to run if they encountered them.
Those were demonic breeding grounds.
“So what do we do now? Do we continue?” Cen Sui swallowed uncertainty.
“Coward,” Lu Yun rolled his eyes. “Aoxue, you’re up.”
“Aoxue greets the master!” Dressed in crimson robes, Aoxue appeared out of thin air and swept a graceful curtsy.
“Grand supreme!” Cen Sui gasped. A grand supreme was kneeling in front of Lu Yun?!
He’d always thought that the peak grand supremes favored the young man because of his potential. But the sudden appearance of a grand supreme only a hair weaker than him and kneeling at Lu Yun’s feet made him abruptly reconsider his impression.
No one could force a grand supreme to kneel at the feet of an ordinary being—not peak grand supremes, not empyrean supremes!
Cen Sui followed by Lu Yun’s side because of pressure from the peak grand supremes, but he treated the young man like an elder would a junior. And since they’d gotten along well in the Disordered Sea, he wasn’t opposed to the arrangement.
But he would never kowtow to the young man.
As the scene happened right in front of him, Cen Sui regarded Lu Yun with shocked incomprehension.
“Come on, let’s go.” Aoxue quickly stood up with her master’s wave and took point.
The Yama Kings were Lu Yun’s strongest subordinates. With the completion of hell dao and the release of the power of reincarnation from the Tome of Life and Death, the first beneficiaries were the ten Yama Kings.
After he became a high supreme and recorded the life form of a grand supreme, the treasure relayed that knowledge to the Yama Kings and raised them to grand supreme. Their ascension had no effect on immortal dao since they’d always been under the Tome of Life and Death and not immortal dao.
When Lu Yun saw the Enneawyrm Coffinbearers layout, he brought forth Aoxue—she’d been born from it. Perhaps she could unlock the secrets within.