Lu Yun was losing his mind. He didn’t know what kind of place they were in, but he did know that if he lost track of the him ahead of them, he would die!
My soul!
His soul had somehow split off from his nascent spirit and transformed into someone who looked exactly like him. That was what was walking ahead of them!
He would be dead without a doubt if his soul dissipated. Even though the six paths of his nascent spirit were in hell, a special power had yanked his soul out from its position of safety. Despite the combined might of the Tome of Life and Death and kingdom of hell, they hadn’t been able to prevent it from happening.
The same thing had happened to Ying Luo by his side. Her soul had slipped off her soul lamp and once it dispersed, she would be thoroughly dead. She’d also discovered the same thing and subconsciously picked up speed, chasing after her soul.
Neither Lu Yun nor Ying Luo had reached third level mortal realm, which meant they hadn’t formed a true spirit yet. To them, their souls were everything.
Though the cultivation system of the chaos was different from the world of immortals, there was one point of commonality—chaos creatures didn’t form true spirits until third level mortal realm. True spirits in the world of immortals were formed by the energy of the land, whereas true spirits in this realm were forged by the chaos laws of order.
In the great wilderness, denizens were born with true spirits. However, this limited their future development. Formed naturally, their true spirits lacked any tempering whatsoever and thus their potential was constrained.
This was why very few latter-day descendants in the great wilderness, no matter how strong or weak, could reach chaos realm. The little fox was the sole exception to this as she’d been enlightened by Hongjun with a creation seed.
It wasn’t until the establishment of the immortal dao that the three founders used it to destroy the naturally occurring true spirit, leveraging the dao immortal realm to reforge the true spirits of all. That was the true way, just as it was in the chaos.
……
Lu Yun and Ying Luo’s souls were growing fainter, a sign that they were about to disappear.
“Freeze!” Ying Luo shouted as she brought out a treasure shaped like a box. Two beams of white radiance shot out from the box and held the two souls in place.
Unable to drift away, the two souls slowly solidified again.
Lu Yun darted forward and withdrew his soul back into his body, sighing with relief when it was complete.
“What was that? Why did our souls suddenly separate from our bodies?” Ying Luo took her soul back as well. She’d pulled Lu Yun backward earlier because she’d suddenly seen double of herself and the wanderer.
“The illusions.” Lu Yun didn’t fully relax until he called upon the Tome of Life and Death to send his soul back to hell. “Both of us were taken in by an illusion earlier. Though we woke up from it, its power still affected us and hooked our souls right out from us.”
He still felt a little off balance as that strange mental power remained inside his body, influencing his mind and trying to yank his soul out of hell again. He quickly sat down and called upon the power of inception to expel the intruder from his body.
Lu Yun and Ying Luo opened their eyes in unison after an indeterminate period of time, reading traces of horror in each other’s gaze.
“Do we… keep going?” Ying Luo asked hesitantly.
“We do.” Lu Yun stood up and said slowly, “The core of the realm monster is ahead. There should be a way out from there.”
“Alright.” Ying Luo nodded.
The two continued forward as the environment gradually changed around them. Murky currents cleared away to present their surroundings in clearer view. Humanoid sculptures encased in thick layers of ice appeared—their subjects were extremely lifelike, as if they were still alive. Their forms varied, but they all looked incomparably grave, as if they were facing a terrifying enemy.
“They… were all alive and died in an instant when the ice sealed them,” murmured Lu Yun when he took a closer look at them.
He was reminded of the Xuanyuan Clan in their ancestor’s tomb. They’d died from the same reason, but the sculptures here were a bit different from the clan members. Lu Yun could read from their death information that these were all beings that had lived inside the realm monster!
They’d all been slain by out of control arctic energy the moment their realm monster died. So there were living organisms inside realm monsters as well!
That’s right, a realm monster is a new kind of life and a kind of world as well.
“This…” Lu Yun gazed upon the varied humanoid sculptures. These people had all been just like him, living beings with emotions, thoughts, and dreams. They were all dead now, looking how they had when alive. He hadn’t been able to see them when he was outside the realm monster.
“Look over there!” Ying Luo suddenly pointed ahead.
A tiny ball of ice floated in the void. The corpses of four girls were beneath it, kneeling on the ground and cupping their hands below the ball as if they were holding it up. The ball was the heart of the realm monster and the source of its coldness.
“Don’t go over there.” He grabbed Ying Luo. “Do you remember what we saw when we first came inside?”
“Coffins!” she recalled.
“That’s right. This is a corpse coffin, so it must hold something.” Lu Yun nodded. “If my guess is right, that core is fake. Those four girls should be some sort of terrible vengeful ghost, so we should avoid disturbing them.”
Silencing Talismans appeared in his hand as he spoke and he attached them to himself and Ying Luo. The vengeful ghosts were currently asleep, but if they awoke, Lu Yun wasn’t certain that he’d be able to handle them without calling upon the power of hell.
Crackle!
Crisp sounds rang through the air as the humanoid sculptures of ice suddenly shifted. Chunks of ice fell off to reveal stark white flesh beneath.
“Shit!” Lu Yun looked around wildly. “Run!”
Throwing thoughts of everything else out of his mind, sword energy rippled over him and condensed into a golden dragon, encasing his body within. Ying Luo reacted swiftly as well, bringing out a long emerald green chain. It flew through the air like a snake, standing guard in her immediate vicinity.
The frost over the sculptures next to them had completely vanished, releasing stark white figures that pounced on the two.
Zombies!
These zombies all exuded piercingly cold air, so frigid that even Lu Yun found it difficult to immediately adjust to.
“Don’t touch them and don’t kill them!” he suddenly shrieked. “If you kill them, you’ll become one of them!”
