The knowledge beyond the chaos contained within the sword wasn’t a cultivation method or a combat art. It was an understanding of life itself; it could only be comprehended, not taught. Different parties would read different things from this knowledge, including cultivation methods or even combat arts.
Since Lu Yun had fully refined the sword, he could manipulate its contents and imprint them into the minds of the other five.
They sank into a contemplative state of meditation and focused on digesting this profound knowledge. Caught up in the intricacies of this new wisdom, they would be preoccupied for a long time.
Lu Yun waved his hand and summoned rays of sword light from his new treasure, protecting the five in their distracted state.
And then, he quietly left.
……
“I wonder how the little fox, Qiu Luoyu, and those two chaos creatures are doing.” Lu Yun opened his arms wide and sucked in a deep breath of not-so-pristine air. Thoughts of his other companions rose unbidden in his mind.
He hadn’t heard from them since setting foot into the tomb. The little fox was the first to move on from the first test while Qiu Luoyu, Dawnruin, and Merefrost had been ejected from his inner dimension after he entered the tomb.
“Dawnruin and Merefrost’s prospects are probably dim… but the little fox and Qiu Luoyu should be handling things fine. Too bad the little fox reached chaos realm outside, or I’d probably be able to find her in here. But…” Something suddenly occurred to Lu Yun. “If the little fox and Qiu Luoyu made it inside, they probably ended up at the creation seed!”
He jerked his head up and looked in the direction of the wood element—to the east. All was a scene of verdant green light in that area, a place where vibrant vitality pulsed.
“That’s the center of the huge burial pit. I’d be walking over the corpses of countless beings if I go there,” Lu Yun murmured. “But each of the five directions in this place is overseen by an ultimate treasure. …the one to the east is the creation seed!
“In that case, that makes the five directions the testing grounds for chaos realm experts. Their mission is the five treasures, compared to that huge zombie for us. In comparison, whatever lies inside the pit is far inferior to the five treasures.
“The nine sacred lands are in for it after everyone leaves the tomb. The creation seed’s actually a treasure beyond the chaos, it’s just that no one’s noticed that all along.” Lu Yun called upon the Wandering Step and headed to the east.
Infinite numbers of experts from the mythological realm lay buried in that pit. Though they were dead, their wills lingered on and they constantly searched for an heir to their heritage.
With help from the rules of trial, the enormous pit created illusion after illusion to test the adventurers. The rules also guided the loitering wills back to sanity—with some exceptions, such as the creator that’d been waiting for Lu Yun and the faceless woman.
Lu Yun was now a particle of dust skipping through the void with the aid of the Wandering Step; he moved toward the creation seed at a fast clip. He wasn’t worried about Ying Luo and the others. Having fully released the power of the sword, even creators wouldn’t be able to approach them.
……
“Master?” An ethereal, lilting voice suddenly sounded by Lu Yun’s ear.
He jerked to a halt and whipped his head to the side. He was the size of dust and his Wandering Step traveled fifty thousand kilometers with each step. However, there was a young girl keeping pace and standing next to him.
She was very pretty with delicately arched eyebrows and black hair floating down over a white dress. She regarded him with a complicated expression.
“Who are you and why do you call me master?” Lu Yun returned to regular size, a move echoed by his newly gained shadow.
The girl pursed her lips and raised her right hand.
All of Lu Yun’s hairs stood on end and his mind blared with alarm. The young girl clutched a brush in her hand, one that dripped with ink that looked like blood.
“It’s, it’s you! …you?” He stared blankly at the young girl—the faceless woman. She’d been surrounded by a layer of mist before that concealed her true features. Now that she was a charming young girl and standing right in front of him, he didn’t know what to do.
“The hadal hell exorcised the power of the akasha ghost from me, so I became me again.” The young girl asked mournfully, “I’ve waited here for you for so many years. You’ve finally come back, but do you not recognize me anymore?”
“Me? Finally come back?” Lu Yun blinked. “I’ve been here before?”
The young girl looked silently at him and didn’t respond.
“Er, alright… who are you? Why are you calling me your master?” he pressed.
“I’m Qing Han, your fourth disciple,” came the answer.
Lu Yun’s heart skipped a beat when he heard the name “Qing Han”. Wasn’t that the name Qing Yu used when she took male form?
This girl is Qing Han? My fourth disciple? What the hell?
When he thought back to the creator that’d been waiting for him before, Lu Yun had to consider the possibility that he really might’ve visited the tomb sometime in the past, and that he hadn’t realized it yet at this point in time.
“You say you’re my fourth disciple, so who are my other three?” Lu Yun frowned at “Qing Han”.
“Senior sister Liu Qingmiao, second senior brother Zou Longxiu, and third senior brother Tianqi.” A regretful smile appeared on Qing Han’s face. “To think that I almost killed my master when I was controlled by the brush.”
The brush in her hand was an ultimate treasure born out of this realm. But after the realm’s destruction and the death of all who called it home, the resentment of an entire realm polluted the tip of the brush and turned into vermilion ink.
After Qing Han’s soul slipped out of her old body, she came under the brush’s control as a faceless woman with an incomplete soul. She’d searched for ways to make her soul whole again ever since.
It wasn’t her intention to absorb the fresh blood of the beings here. That had been a compulsion from the brush. When Lu Yun opened the Gates of the Abyss and released the presence of hadal hell, it’d scattered the lingering resentment within the brush and enabled her to regain mental clarity.
Lu Yun stared dumbly at her, not knowing what to say. Her name made things a bit awkward as he wasn’t sure how Qing Yu would react.
“I’m an orphan you raised and named Qing Han. You told me that was a name that milady, your wife, once used. That you missed her very much and she was in a very far away place, that you would never be able to see her again.
“Therefore, you focused all of your yearning into this name,” Qing Han explained quietly. “Sadly, I was just your disciple and could never fill the hole that your wife left in your heart.”
Lu Yun was beginning to believe this Qing Han and her story.
“The sword in your hands was something you refined for me, the treasure that protected me throughout my life. And yet, I died to my own sword in the end.
“You once said that the day we met again would be the moment of my rebirth. Now I am reborn, and you have come back.” Qing Han suddenly knelt in front of Lu Yun and hugged his legs, breaking out into tears. “Master, your disciple has missed you.”
……
Lu Yun froze in place, at a loss of how to face his fourth disciple. He could feel the waves of emotion from Qing Han, but… he was unable to answer in kind.
Can it be that I travel back to the past again in the future, to this mythological realm? But this time, I’m unable to get back to my time? Lu Yun frowned ferociously.
How much despair must he have felt to find an outlet for his loneliness by raising a disciple and giving her the name of Qing Han? Even when he’d been blasted back to the great wilderness, he’d always firmly believed that he could make it back to the world of immortals.
“Qing Han, have I ever said anything else to you?” Lu Yun reached out and gently smoothed the girl’s hair. Though he didn’t feel a true kinship for this girl who’d waited countless eons for him, he couldn’t bear to hurt her feelings.
“Your body!” Qing Han exclaimed. “Master, I’ll take you to your past self!”
In her eyes, the Lu Yun in front of her was the reincarnated self of her master.
“You also said that I should take you to your body when you return. All will be understood then!” She could also feel the aloofness when Lu Yun interacted with her. This saddened her somewhat, but hope still poked its head out from her heart.
“Alright then, take me to it.” Lu Yun nodded and took a deep breath.
“But you’re such a player, master. You missed your wife, but then found another one and created my junior brother with her,” Qing Han grumbled.
“Eh?!” Lu Yun’s jaw dropped. What other wife, what junior brother?
Qing Han didn’t give him further time to react as she took his hand and the two vanished from the premises.
……
The emerald green creation seed turned the murky sky a brilliant green. Countless experts were gathered in front of it, including a Qiu Luoyu covered in blood. He didn’t dominate his opposition, but he firmly defended the creation seed with everything he had.
