“Sir Lu Yun?” His daydreaming didn’t go unnoticed by the immortals following behind. They mustered their courage to hesitantly come forward.
“Is the interior of the celestial master tomb behind this wall?” The immortal that was speaking was a monster spirit immortal of the ten lands, and he looked at Lu Yun with intrepid eagerness.
The young man nodded in confirmation.
“Aha! Please, feel free to rest for now. Leave the wall to us!” The monster peerless immortal peered at the human youth with a hint of ingratiation.
Lu Yun had drawn a formation of heaven and earth for Zhao Zhicheng with the most casual of gestures. If he could get the human in a good enough mood, perhaps he would also be given one.
“Leave the wall to you?” Lu Yun blinked twice in surprised succession. The thief’s tunnel was only a few meters wide, but several hundred immortals were crammed in the small space.
“All of you should leave for a moment, you won’t be able to get through. Come back in when I open the wall up, alright?” He shook his head.
“I may not have experienced the void realm, Sir Lu, but a wall really shouldn’t be much of a problem…” The peerless immortal was a little miffed.
He was a monster spirit with several millennia of reputation, a renowned monster king of the ten lands. He was every bit as famous and strong as the Scaled-Dragon King, and Lu Yun’s dismissal ignited his competitive spirit.
The young man shrugged, then gestured toward the wall invitingly.
Grinning dashingly, the monster king produced a silver halberd. A flash of cold light later, an icy tempest slammed into the wall of bone.
Boom!
The entire tunnel trembled at the impact. If Lu Yun hadn’t reinforced it during the Scaled-Dragon King’s digging, the attack probably would’ve collapsed it outright. And yet, the wall of bone seemed completely unharmed. There wasn’t even the smallest scratch on its surface.
The monster spirit reddened.
“I, ah, I was worried I’d destroy the tunnel, s-so I held back there,” he stuttered.
“Don’t worry, give it all you’ve got this time! With my formations in place, even a dao immortal would have a hard time destroying the tunnel,” Lu Yun said through a half-smile.
“Alright!” The monster king took a deep breath and his halberd began glowing with the light of a combat art a second time. This time, a blurry image manifested behind the monster spirit; it looked like a huge beast made of snow and ice.
The temperature in the tunnel plummeted quite a few degrees when the image appeared, and frost crept over the surface of the ground.
“Open up!” the monster king roared.
Gleaming steel stabbed viciously into the wall of bone, sending ripples of energy outward. Some of the weaker immortals were sent flying by the mere aftershocks. A pale green light appeared upon the Scaled-Dragon King, extending out to guard Lu Yun and his two fans.
He’s about as strong as Jiangchen Xie, I think. Lu Yun gave his judgment after close scrutiny. A peak returned void cultivator looked to be as strong as a peak peerless immortal.
Unfortunately, the bone wall was just as unharmed as before, its smoothness almost mocking. The monster king gaped at the sight. The wall looked rather flimsy, honestly, so why…
“Why isn’t it budging?” He’d put all of his strength behind the attack just now; it was powerful enough to annihilate a city!
“Anyone else want to try?” Turning, Lu Yun glanced at the rest of the immortals.
Complete silence answered his question.
“Well, then. Out, please!” Lu Yun waved a hand. “Scaled-Dragon King, bring the girls outside too.”
“Yes, sir!” The monster Infernum obeyed every command to the letter and ushered the little nun and Yu Hengluo out.
The other immortals didn’t want to leave, but the Scaled-Dragon King’s example meant they didn’t have a choice. Lu Yun was probably going to use a secret technique that he didn’t want anyone else to steal!
……
When the tunnel was finally cleared, Lu Yun summoned an aura of enveloping hellfire. He put a hand on the wall of bone once more.
Fwoosh!
The wall instantly caught fire. The immeasurable resentment it contained became fuel for the inexorable hellfire.
Ker-chunk!
The barrier of bone bricks—one so sturdy that even dust hadn’t been shaken loose earlier—crumbled into a heap of fragments.
Fweee—
The moment it did so, a terrifying gust of yin wind surged forth from the other side. It condensed into a vicious current of black air that only grew stronger with each second. Lu Yun was well prepared, and a mantle of hellfire descended over him and protected him from the black wind as well.
The wind howled past him and filled the tunnel, then followed it to the outside world.
Thump.
The whole mountain trembled, and immortals outside the tunnel saw a pillar of black smoke blast out from the tunnel entrance, billowing into the sky.
Some who were too close to the entrance, instead of keeping their distance, were disintegrated by the wind’s touch. Astounded, the survivors scuttled further back right away. Now they understood why Lu Yun had told them to exit the tunnel.
After more than a hundred breaths, the wind finally began to calm.
“Alright, all of you can come back in now.” Lu Yun’s voice boomed through the tunnel back to its entrance.
But now, reluctance dogged the crowd’s footsteps. Perhaps… Lu Yun was dead? That blast of yin wind looked far too scary for anybody to survive; it’d scoured multiple peerless immortals in the blink of an eye.
“Cowards.” The little nun stomped in with a harrumph, followed by the Scaled-Dragon King and Yu Hengluo.
The bone wall blocking their progress had been replaced by a pitch-black hole. The entire tunnel was filled with an indescribable chill, a breeze that constantly whispered past them. The two girls wrapped their clothes more tightly around themselves.
“Aaaaaah!” the nun shrieked suddenly. Shivering, she dragged Yu Hengluo away with a hop backward. Yu Hengluo gasped when she realized why.
“Are… are you d-dead or a-alive?” she stammered at the Scaled-Dragon King.
The Infernum’s body was all rotten and half of his face had become frightening bone. There was an inky green liquid clinging to his form, almost like some sort of lethal venom…
This was what he had looked like before death. Back on Levitating Island, Lu Yun had killed him and his army using poison and Ghost Yanking Feet.
The Scaled-Dragon King paused for a moment. He touched his body gingerly, then saw a reflection of his appearance in the girls’ eyes.
“This is all an illusion,” he sounded perfectly calm. “The formation here depicts and manifests my greatest fear.”
As Lu Yun’s ghostly servant, the Scaled-Dragon King existed through the Tome of Life and Death. Even if he died, Lu Yun could revive him instantly if he so wished. Deep down, his greatest fear was death—it was both his greatest flaw and limitation. Thus, he was being shown the first time he died.
There was great tempering and horror to be found at the precipice of death. As for exactly which one ended up being the case, that depended on the person. The Scaled-Dragon King didn’t have Lu Yun’s mental fortitude, so he only experienced the latter.
The nun and Yu Hengluo remained mildly suspicious and didn’t dare get any closer to the Scaled-Dragon King. The trio slowly inched forward in the tunnel.
“Uoooooh—” A muffled groan from the Scaled-Dragon King caused him to disappear in a puff of smoke.
The thief’s tunnel plunged into darkness.
“Heheheh…” Malicious laughter echoed through the space. “You two fell into my hands in the end, after all.”
