Carmine Eternal was seconds away from being crushed into dust by that horrific point, but the Bridge of Forgetfulness barreled out at a crucial moment.
“What is that?!” The shadowy finger jerked back, as if electrocuted, and the figure swiftly dodged to the side, evading the blow by the skin of its teeth.
Sadly, the bridge couldn’t exert even a thousandth of its power here. If it did, the Tomb of Heaven and Earth would instantly explode at the seams, but it would also take the figure with it.
However, the figure still sensed the terrifying depths of the bridge and turned pale with dread.
“Lu Yun, he’s the one behind the Blood Sea in Life Province!” Carmine Eternal swiftly hopped onto the bridge when she had a moment of breathing space and gasped out this tidbit with the last of her strength.
And then she collapsed, having fainted dead away.
Lu Yun stood at the top of the bridge and narrowed his eyes at the figure. It didn’t seem to be actually alive—it was more a shadow projected into their realm through the void. Hazy and indistinct, Lu Yun couldn’t make out its face.
He could tell it was humanoid, but nothing else.
Two beams of light shot out from the figure’s eyes and fixed onto the Bridge of Forgetfulness. It didn’t pay any attention to the insignificant entities on the bridge.
“What are you?” the figure asked warily.
Lu Yun stepped on the bridge a few times, conveying his intentions. An enormous face floated onto the Bridge of Forgetfulness.
“And who are you?” it asked in return.
“Hmph!” snorted the figure instead of answering. Its form grew fainter and slowly faded away.
“Wait, that’s it? That’s all it took to scare it off?” Lu Yun blinked with great surprise.
“Its plan to capture the Blood Sea has failed and the bridge demonstrated strength on par with it just now. There’s no point in it further remaining here,” Qing Yu breathed out with relief.
The bridge hadn’t been able to deploy all of its strength because for one, the tomb was unable to withstand its full might, and secondly, its spirit was too weak to control its entire body.
Forcing that impossibly strong existence into a retreat was the best outcome for them. Lu Yun didn’t want to really fight the figure either. One was never afraid of thieves stealing away goods, but of thieves committing their marks to memory.
“Can you tell where it comes from?” Lu Yun asked the Bridge of Forgetfulness.
“No… No such being exists in the fourth realm, and it’s not strong enough to go there either.” Though the bridge wasn’t a great heavyweight in the fourth realm, it didn’t number among the weakest, either. While it’d once turned into a zombie bridge and used the ghostface maggots and corpse flies to hunt for food, it still possessed its own barometer of strength.
“The third realm, then?” Lu Yun and Qing Yu looked at each other, both thinking of the little girl in a red dress.
She’d said that a great war had once taken place in the third realm and devastated it entirely. The realm was almost entirely a collection of tombs, and the Bridge of Forgetfulness had also called the strange little girl a tomb keeper.
“He should be.” The bridge’s giant face sank into deep contemplation. “When I was one of the most sophisticated beings in the fourth realm, the war in the third realm had already ended. It’d turned into a massive mausoleum, and the only being I found alive was the little girl.”
The bridge was too ponderous and its true spirit much too weak. It couldn’t move the bridge a single inch and had only met the little girl because she’d visited the fourth realm multiple times to interfere in its hunts.
“I’m not sure who the little girl in the red dress is either,” the bridge said with some frustration. “I don’t know what’s in the third realm, but I’m certain that there’s people alive there.”
“The great war of the third realm…” Lu Yun and Qing Yu looked at each other, reading anxiety in each other’s gazes.
“Our only advantage now is that we’re weak,” Qing Yu whispered. “We’re weak, so certain people won’t pay too much attention to us.”
“Quietly making a fortune is the true way.” Lu Yun nodded. “But sometimes, we need to take the fight to them. Passively getting beaten up all the time isn’t my style.”
The Bridge of Forgetfulness was one of his biggest trump cards, and he was equally unafraid of the third realm. When his death arts were deployed to their utmost and hellfire powered them, both guided by the Tome of Life and Death, even the bridge couldn’t touch him then.
……
Free of interference, the Blood Sea retreated along its usual path. It wasn’t claimed by the shadowy stranger, nor was it taken by Lu Yun. Their attempt had failed, but another set of statements from Carmine Eternal when she awoke ignited new hope.
The Blood Sea in Life Province was meant to direct the real version into the world of immortals!
If they obtained the Blood Sea there and delivered it into hell, then Lu Yun could utilize the Tome of Life and Death to retrieve the real entity. However, where it resided in Life Province was currently a restricted area. Even great emperors couldn’t easily set foot in it.
In the twenty or so years since Lu Yun departed from the world, many more stunning geniuses had ascended to great emperor realm. There were also many with great ambitions to fill in the Blood Sea.
In pursuit of the cause, three great emperors once led an expedition of eighteen grand pure immortals into the Blood Sea—whereupon they all perished. And in retaliation, bloody clouds enveloped Life Province and rained a scarlet rain for three days straight, enabling countless Blood Sea creatures to come ashore.
In the end, Ge Long had to emerge from hell with the four evil coffins and brandished them at the banks of the Blood Sea, both to suppress it and to force the rain and creatures to retreat.
The four coffins were tempered by their long vigil at the edges of the Hadal Hell, and the four swords within had long absorbed some of that strength, transforming into terrifying weapons. The creatures within the Blood Sea couldn’t withstand this level of force.
……
Carmine Eternal returned to hell while Lu Yun, Qing Yu, and the little fox left the Tomb of Heaven and Earth. It had decoupled from the chaos and officially come under the underworld’s jurisdiction, also leading many chaos creatures to discover the underworld’s secrets.
The previous sacred lands had renamed themselves to the nine divine sects. They immediately gathered their armies to conquer this new realm, but the underworld had been reinforced with fresh recruits.
The mausoleum keepers recently freed from the Tomb of Heaven and Earth could absolutely rival chaos realm and even creator realm. That was the highest level in the battlefield as the even stronger immortal lords and eternal overlords didn’t join the fray.
