Time trickled past slowly, but with inexorable speed.
With the world of celestials as the battlefield, the human race and connate demon gods clashed in a ghastly war.
There were also native lifeforms and connate races in the world of celestials—they’d all flocked to the celestial court’s banner to defy humanity. Despite the grim and gruesome battles that ripped through both armies, Lu Yun didn’t interfere.
He’d done enough. Humanity’s matters should now be resolved by humans themselves, not have the solution delivered to them on a silver platter by a future descendant.
The birth of the underworld, the formation of hell, the process in which empyrean masters became great emperors, and how the inexhaustible numbers of connate demon gods would eventually go extinct…
All of these had to be given room and space to develop on their own. Though Lu Yun really wanted to see everything for himself, he’d run out of time. He hadn’t even made it to the birth of Eternal and Arbiter, or learned why their surname was Carmine. Those were questions that would be answered in the future.
……
“Your return is nigh, is fellow daoist eager to be on your way?” a clear voice suddenly traveled into Lu Yun’s ears.
He lifted his head to see a smiling, purple-clad Hongjun walk toward him. Lu Yun nodded gently.
“To be frank, there is one question I have.” Hongjun looked at the youth with some incomprehension. “Fellow daoist has collected the soul force of everyone around you and even my three disciples, so as to preserve a ray of hope for them. Why haven’t you done the same for your disciple Tianqi?”
“I trust that he won’t die.” Lu Yun smiled faintly.
“Oh?” Hongjun blinked.
“He will not die, because he is my disciple.” Tremendous confidence blossomed on Lu Yun’s face—faith in Tianqi, the hell of human dao, and the wheel of reincarnation that would be constructed. He had unwavering belief in the future Great Emperor of the Eastern Peak who would set forth heavenly rules regarding punishment, reward, and define good and evil.
Tianqi wouldn’t die!
“The path nears, will fellow daoist go bid them farewell?” Hongjun sighed expressively.
“I’m afraid I’d be tempted to stay in this era.” Lu Yun shook his head slightly. “I have ties and relationships to this time period now, but I also have people I can’t bear to give up in my time. Therefore… let’s forgo farewells.”
He looked at the strands of soul force wrapped around his fingertips. “Besides, we’ll meet again, won’t we?”
Hongjun smiled. “Say hello to Violetgrave for me when you return to the future. Tell her that an old friend in the chaos is waiting for her return.”
“Are you the one who made the first transaction with Violetgrave?!” Lu Yun’s eyes shot wide open. The first person to transact with the sword and obtain the Nether Fire had become the greatest existence in the world. They’d even destroyed the hell of human dao with their own strength.
Lu Yun had once met the mysterious person when he probed great god Pangu’s body inside the ancient tomb. Was that person Hongjun??
“No.” Hongjun shook his head. “I believe Fuxi once told you that there are only two creators in the three realms of the great wilderness—Pangu and God. He didn’t list me as one of them, did he?”
Lu Yun nodded as he recalled what Fuxi and Wahuang had once said to him.
“That’s because I’m not a life form of the great wilderness, just like Violetgrave and the one you saw in Pangu’s tomb isn’t either,” Hongjun sounded melancholic.
“Are you a survivor of one of the worlds that’s now a realm monster?” Lu Yun asked subconsciously.
“Yes and no,” Hongjun sighed. “The chaos… is much more complicated than you imagine. Akasha ghosts and akasha souls are just minions in the grand scheme of things. You must be much stronger if you’d like to safeguard this realm.
“Ah, the path is at hand. I shall see you off, fellow daoist.” He bowed to Lu Yun, who returned the gesture.
“Hongjun!” The little fox climbed to Lu Yun’s head and couldn’t help asking, “Were you the one who enlightened me all those years back?”
“That I was.” Hongjun smiled. “But you aren’t my disciple, little daoist, but my fellow daoist. If my three disciples see you, they actually need to call you martial-aunt.”
“Why?!” the little fox followed up hastily, but a haze of light had obscured Hongjun and this patch of space.
He and the surroundings suddenly seemed illusory and rapidly receded into a faraway point in the distance. The cosmos, planet, and every being in this realm faded into a mirage. Only the little fox, Lu Yun, and the blood demon were real.
Changes filtered rapidly through heaven and earth while various fantastical images blurred in front of them.
This was the development of history and evolution of life. The group wanted to observe and learn, but the scenes transformed too quickly for the mind to process. A blink of the eye was a hundred million years, and even Lu Yun with his supreme abilities couldn’t force the pictures into clarity.
However, three enormous figures shot upward at a certain point in time and cut down a pair of frigid eyes, snuffing its light out and making way for a vast and magnificent great dao to traverse the void.
The Three Purities acting in concert to slay the akasha ghost and establish the immortal dao!
It was the only event that Lu Yun could make out before a mammoth shadow came yawning up to them. The shadow was the world of immortals! It grew steadily bigger, and bigger, and bigger… until it finally swallowed them whole.
“The world of immortals?!?!?!?!” A dumbfounded Lu Yun goggled at his home when he gained a clear look. “How is this possible?! The world of immortals!” His voice had gone shrill with shock.
“What is it?” the little fox asked urgently when she saw Lu Yun like this. “Is something wrong?”
“The world, the world of immortals!” Lu Yun struggled for air, incredulity trembling in his eyes. “The world of immortals is a tomb, it’s a massive tomb that’s buried all life! We, we are all burial goods in the tomb that is the world of immortals!”
It was due to his grasp of the Dragonquake Scripture that he could see the world’s layout in its entirety. The nine majors, ten lands, and four immortal seas, as well as the Central World that Qing Yu had refined were thirty-three levels of burial chambers, while the four great oceans were the tomb’s walls.
“A tomb within a tomb!” Lu Yun gasped again. “The nine majors are nine main tombs and the ten lands are the central points of ten other tombs!”
Xuan Yuan’s tomb was located in Heaven Locus Land and the other nine were also final resting places of other staggering great masters.
“So it turns out that we’re all residents of a tomb… We’re all insignificant life forms eking out survival…” Lu Yun murmured to himself.
“Lu Yun!” The little fox reverted to his real name at this point. “I know you’re skilled in the dao of burial, that you’re even better than Fuxi at it! If you can build a tomb, you can also destroy it.
“Since the world of immortals is a tomb, then you can destroy it and return it to its core essence. You can restore it to being a real world again!”
She looked at him unblinkingly with her baby-blue eyes.
“…yes.” Lu Yun nodded stiltedly. “But… I’m more worried about those who turned the world into a tomb… what insane level of skill does that require? It would seem that even more horrifying existences were born in the world after the extinction of the demon gods… and I suspect that humans somehow brought this down upon ourselves.”
He thought of certain things that Qi Hai had once said and the string of preparations someone had left on Qing Yu. He also thought of the shamanic divines and particular actions taken for revenge after the destruction of human dao.
But it’d never occurred to him that the greatest undertaking of them all would be to fashion the world of immortals into a tomb!
The mausoleum in the skies of the great wilderness was to protect it, but this tomb for immortals was to bury all life.
