“Hm?” Hearing Yu Hengluo’s murmuring, Lu Yun reflexively turned around with surprise. Protected by the light of Lu Yun’s talisman, she continued muttering unintelligibly, tears wetting her cheeks.
“Ah, so she hasn’t woken up from Ghost Deceives God yet,” Lu Yun sighed with relief.
The current circumstances were too bizarre, and he was worried that the girl suddenly waking up would lead to unforeseen consequences.
He’d failed to protect Zou Longxiu from being skinned, even with the Tome of Life and Death, because the Skinning Spike had struck too quickly. There was too much going on for him to be able to readily react to every development.
Yu Hengluo’s expression tightened with pain and her lashes fluttered slightly as she struggled to regain consciousness. A ghostly shadow took shape on her, keeping her consciousness under control. This was the true form of Ghost Deceives God; victims could only rely on themselves to break out of its hold.
Lu Yun had the Scaled-Dragon King remain on the Ingress Path to protect Yu Hengluo and the little nun. He himself jumped off to observe the layout of the tomb again.
It was bereft of any items or decorations. There were no formation runes or anything that would form a feng shui layout. However, the strange darkness seemed to have merged with the room, thus giving birth to a layout.
“It’s not dark simply because of the absence of light. It’s… another world entirely?” Realization struck Lu Yun and his brain went into overdrive, connecting countless dots and coming up with numerous speculations.
“Another world, it’s another world! I get it, I get it now!” His eyes went wide. “It’s my bad, I made a mistake. I thought the thief’s tunnel would allow me to safely bypass the boundary of life and death, but the other people, Ingress Path, Scarlet Ape, Kui, and the qilin tomb, turtle nest, and kunpeng nest are all part of the separation.
“I’m in the yang realm, while those things are in the yin realm! Maybe there’s countless eyes watching me in the world of darkness parallel to this world, and I just can’t see them. We’re no longer in the same realm.”
“Yin and yang are two sides of the same coin, and the world shrouded in darkness is the yin realm. What a clever trick! The tomb has been divided into two straight down the boundary of life and death, being turned into a yin tomb and a yang tomb.
“Once skinned, the cultivators and immortals enter a special state of ‘death’, and their flesh is transported to the yin realm.
“It makes sense to dig a tunnel into a regular tomb, but the yang tomb of the celestial master tomb is empty, used solely to create the Hell of Skinning. The yin tomb is where the treasures are! I was wrong, I was completely wrong!
“Fangyang Xing must know the way into the yin tomb and let the Hell of Skinning skin him with its rules. He’s dead himself and only manifested with the aid of something else. He’s not afraid of being skinned.
“How am I supposed to enter the tomb in the yin realm, though?” Lu Yun looked closely around him. More immortals had entered the Hell of Skinning through the thief’s tunnel, all of whom he ignored. “I’m still missing something…”
Brows furrowed, he took out his luopan and checked the local feng shui again. He could identify the feng shui layouts here, but he couldn’t find the key to breaking them. Although every single one of the layouts seemed to be damaged, the power they generated was flawless.
“A powerful feng shui master separated the tomb into two realms… just like the Formation Orb of Yin and Yang! That connate-grade treasure was divided into two too! The same thing’s happened here with the feng shui layouts.
“If I can somehow bring the two tombs together and merge yin and yang, not only will I break the Hell of Skinning, but I can also ‘resurrect’ the immortals who have been skinned.”
Encountering the Avici Hell in the tomb of the Dao Flower had left Lu Yun rather unnerved, and getting a clearer look of the Hell of Skinning now further roused an urge to destroy the entire place.
He had a feeling that if he didn’t destroy the tombs modeled after the layouts of hell, he would one day be buried in them with no chance of entering the wheel of reincarnation.
“This place must be destroyed!” Light flickered in Lu Yun’s eyes. “To that end, I must travel to the end of the tomb. Both the yin and the yang tombs must originate from somewhere. The Hell of Skinning hasn’t fully taken shape, which tells me the two haven’t been completely separated.
“If I can find their common origin, I’ll be able to destroy the layouts!” With a flip of his hand, he grabbed the luopan.
“Sir!” the Scaled-Dragon King yelled urgently. “Yu Hengluo has broken out of the talisman light!”
“What?” Lu Yun blurted out in surprise. He’d been preoccupied with studying the celestial master tomb and neglected his surroundings. Upon hearing his soldier’s words, he whirled around and saw Yu Hengluo floating down from the Ingress Path like a spectre.
She’d opened her eyes, and her face was covered in tears.
“Master… master…” She came up to the sarcophagus and pressed her hands on the lid, calling out like she was possessed.
Lu Yun’s scalp went numb.
Master! Yu Hengluo called the ball of skinless flesh her master! Who is it?
Yu Hengluo had two masters. One was one of the sovereigns from the Star Demon Sect, and the other was Wayfarer! The latter had taken her as a disciple after Wanfeng.
“Wake up!” Lu Yun snapped to wake her up, his voice thundering.
However, Yu Hengluo remained in a trance, pushing hard in an attempt to open the lid.
Lu Yun replaced the luopan in his hand with the Tome of Life and Death, but made no move to stop her. He wanted to see what she was going to do. Was she acting on instinct, or was she still under the control of Ghost Deceives God?
There was also another possibility—that the flesh buried inside was indeed her master’s.
Rumble.
The lid opened once again. However, unlike the last time, there was no pungent blood oozing out, just a ball of desiccated flesh.
“Master!” Yu Hengluo cried out with great sorrow, throwing herself onto the coffin and bawling.
Lu Yun walked up to her and took a look inside the coffin. Therein laid a skinless, shriveled corpse. Rotten and dried tendons and flesh stuck firmly to the bones, but what captured his attention was the lack of facial organs.
The body had no eyes, tongue, nose, or ears. However, Lu Yun remembered the ball of flesh staring at him with pupiless eyes…
“This is your master?” He went up to Yu Hengluo and lightly patted her shoulder.
“Yes!” She’d broken out of Ghost Deceives God.
“He’s…” Lu Yun paused for a good while before continuing, “Wayfarer?”
Yu Hengluo nodded. “Yes!”
Lu Yun sucked in a breath.
Wayfarer lacked the five senses; he couldn’t see, hear, smell, touch, or taste. Just like the dried corpse here. It had no eyes, ears, nose, tongue, or skin, signifying a lack of the five senses.
Is this really Wayfarer? But why would he be buried here? Lu Yun’s heart quailed.
Half a month ago, he’d worked together with Wayfarer to create an interment of heaven and earth and build a bronze palace of grand influences. He’d sensed the ripples of life coming from that Wayfarer then. Weak, but undeniably real.
This skinless corpse with no organs of the senses, on the other hand, had been dead for who knew how long… Its death could be traced back to at least before the Primordial Era.
Lu Yun could clearly glean its information. It looked just like Wayfarer before his death, but his real name wasn’t Wayfarer. Unfortunately, Lu Yun couldn’t see his real name clearly. One thing was for certain, though, the corpse was certainly who he knew as Wayfarer.
“Master is long dead.” Yu Hengluo wiped away her tears and glanced at the cowering skins around them. “The master you saw is just like them.”
“He’s a piece of skin?”
Yu Hengluo nodded.
“His eyes, ears, nose, and mouth have all grown into separate entities. Only his skin retains who he was before death,” she spoke softly.
“I… I’m going to take the corpse back with us. Once it’s merged with master’s skin, maybe he’ll remember who he was before!” She was about to hop into the coffin and grab the corpse when Lu Yun quickly stopped her with a tight expression.
“Don’t touch him!”
“Sect Head…” She gave him a pitiful look.
“This body remains one with the Hell of Skinning before the layout is broken. Just like the other skins here, it can’t leave this tomb.” Lu Yun took a deep breath. “Even if you take it with you now, it will still come back here.
“Only by breaking the Hell of Skinning layout and merging the tombs in the yin and yang realms will the other layouts here be breakable.”
Lu Yun had identified the crux of the problem and needed to locate the origin of the tombs to tear down the Hell of Skinning. Only then would the tombs on the two sides of yin and yang come together.
The key parts of several layouts had been separated into the two parallel worlds when the tombs had been divided. However, this also kept them in a complete state, thus making it impossible to break them in their current state.
