Somewhere in a corner of the tomb realm, the four high priests were gathered together with ugly looks on their faces.
“It looks like the priest of flame’s already fallen to their evil schemes… I’d thought Lu Yun was going for the spleen, but it turns out his real target was us! He wants to have that connate treasure on the verge of evolving into a connate spirit treasure devour us and swallow our heritage…” Looking like he’d seen a ghost, the unsettled priest of earth glanced back in the direction of the volcano with his heart still racing furiously.
“That may not be the case, I really do sense the presence of the world’s organs in his body.” The priest of ocean had recovered from his injuries; his body seemed to be made of water and could reassemble itself in a split second, even when it’d been broken apart earlier.
“So he really is going to try for the spleen then! We used the worship of the Xuan Yuan Slaves to raise it to godhood when it took shelter, now it’s time for it to repay us!” A cold light glinted in the eyes of the priest of earth. He couldn’t enter the yin tomb, or he would’ve laid hands on the altar of earth that housed the recuperating spleen a long time ago.
“Honestly, we have another way of entering the yin tomb.” Silent all this time, the priest of forest finally spoke up. Clad in a jade-green silk dress, she was a woman with green eyes and lips. Dark-green locks reached to her waist, and she emanated a powerful vitality at all times.
“The mother altar!” her brethren spoke in unison.
“But the mother altar has been quiet for a very long time…” frowned the priest of earth.
“Then we sacrifice all of the Xuan Yuan Slaves here to awaken it!” Bloodlust flashed through the priest of forest’s eyes. “Such is the sole purpose of their existence anyway. Once we obtain the altar of earth, take down Lu Yun, and collect all of the world’s organs, we’ll be able to summon the other elemental altars and win our freedom. We won’t need those Xuan Yuan Slaves anymore and won’t have to guard the tomb of a damned dead man.”
“That would be wonderful and our intentions as well!” the priests of ocean and blade laughed uproariously.
……
Situ Zong devoured the altar of flame, but it would take countless months to fully refine the power within it and complete the evolution of the Pelagic Orb to a connate spirit treasure.
However, since the kingdom of hell was fully formed now, time in that realm was no longer of significance to Lu Yun after the six paths of his nascent spirit took up residence in the underworld. He could adjust the flow of time according to his whims and fancies, slowing it down or halting it entirely.
His grasp over hell as a whole was much less thorough, so he always returned to the outside world at the point of time in which he flashed into the netherworld. Once his cultivation reached a certain point and his control improved, the flow of time in hell would fully synchronize with the passage of time in the outside world.
Meanwhile, the six paths of his nascent spirit accelerated the flow of time within the netherworld so that the Pelagic Orb would fully evolve and meld with Situ Zong. In the outside world, Lu Yun brought Ashu, the Venerated Sacrosanct Demon Sovereign, and priest of flame back into the deep pit in the ground.
The torch dragon cracked open one eye, swept it over Lu Yun, then closed it again to practice the nascent spirit observation method. However, Lu Yun glimpsed a hint of dissatisfaction in that eyeball. The torch dragon seemed irked that it hadn’t seen the young man make a fool of himself.
……
In actuality, the door in front of them wasn’t the entrance to the yin tomb. It was a yin-yang door that offered passage between the yin and yang tombs. Roughly eighteen meters tall, it was pure white and covered in certain strange patterns that imparted to it a sinister air.
When Lu Yun saw the door, his eyes widened with deep disbelief.
“What’s wrong?” Ashu asked when he saw the change; he rarely saw such an expression cross the young man’s face.
“Did you see when the Xuan Yuan Tomb appeared during your time on top of the underworld’s sacred mountain?” Lu Yun asked stiltedly as he looked at the holy lord. “Did it appear before Emperors Fall or after?”
“Before Emperors Fall or after?” Ashu shook his head blankly. “I don’t know, it seems to have suddenly appeared out of nowhere…”
“This door is made out of bone bricks similar to the ones in the celestial master tomb, but those were refined out of the skeletons of ordinary beings.” A black light flashed through Lu Yun’s eyes as he narrowed them at the white door that didn’t look all that tall. He inhaled sharply, “The door in front of us was refined out of the skeletons of the torch dragon tribe. When they were all still alive.”
Ashu, the demon sovereign, and the priest of flame shuddered in unison. They knew what that tribe of beasts represented. Born in the hell of human dao, they were extraordinarily frightening connate divine beasts. Delivered into the world with the cultivation level of primeval human kings, the greatest of them came as great emperors.
But now, Lu Yun was saying that this pinnacle faction seated at the apex of the world, a prodigious tribe of connate divine beasts, had been made into a large door while alive! And not just one or two of them, but their entire tribe!
Though the torch dragons possessed unparalleled potential, their bloodline wasn’t prosperous. Even their peak saw only a hundred or so of their numbers, which was why they’d signed a contract with the human race and why humanity had leveraged all of the power in hell to nurture the torch dragons. But a hundred torch dragons on par with the primeval human kings, and three more that were great emperors to boot, were absolutely a colossal force that would reign supreme in a corner of the world.
“Emperors Fall and the demise of the torch dragons… who did all this?” Lu Yun murmured to himself. Through the Spectral Eye, he could clearly see that a hundred and eighty five torch dragons on the level of human kings, and three that were great emperors, had been combined into this door!
Ashu shook his head blankly. Emperors Fall was a taboo of the world, and even the sacred mountain of the underworld wasn’t able to peer into its specifics. Much of that battle and many of the details surrounding great emperors had become taboo subjects after that time. Anyone who dared speak of them would find themselves beset by calamity and slain by an unknown existence.
It wasn’t until this era, with the founding of the immortal dao and its gradual stabilization defying the unknown terrors in the world, could Lu Yun and Ashu speak freely of such matters. If they’d lived in the times before the immortal dao, they would’ve probably already died grisly deaths by now.
Lu Yun lifted his head to look at the imprisoned torch dragon up in the air. “He knows this door contains his kin, which is why he’s willing to remain here. Otherwise, the dragonbolt pillar wouldn’t be enough to keep him trapped here after all this time,” he sighed softly.
Down in hell, Fuying also sank into despondent silence. The torch dragon’s experience was so much like her own. Her clan had also been slaughtered and buried into a tomb in the Primordial Era.
“Let’s go.” Lu Yun motioned for the group to walk through the door refined from torch dragons.
