The left side of Di Ling’s face gradually began to turn as well. Her gentle features started to vanish, replaced by a snarling demonic face.
“We need to stop it!” Qing Yu’s eyes widened. If the demon of the immortal dao fully devoured Di Ling, then they would never be able to claim the Blood Sea. More importantly, once Di Ling was subsumed, the curse on the emperor title would be reignited and completely integrated into the immortal dao as a curse of eternity.
She rushed forward and brought her hand down on the demon’s head; the Dao Flower bloomed to protect her body.
However, that didn’t shake the demon at all. An eerie smile still clung to its face as it watched Qing Yu while still consuming Di Ling.
“Let me.” Lu Yun threw out his hand to stop her second charge and pulled her behind his back. “The demon’s target is you. It knew we would come, so it came to the Blood Sea to finish assimilating Di Ling. Everything she said just now was under its influence.”
He stared fixedly at the demon and concentrated all of his energy to his right hand, forming an ancient spear—Heavenfall.
Whoosh!
Lu Yun stabbed forward at an unmoving target. Instead of dodging or evading, the demon smirked to see the spear come toward it.
Hummm.
Instead of biting into Di Ling, the spear flared with the purple radiance of a combat art when it neared the demon.
Time Reincarnation!
Lu Yun sealed away the demon of the immortal dao with a time domain formed by this combat art.
“Lu Yun, should I say you’re an idiot or adorable?” the demon snorted with laughter to see this combat art, of all things, being used against it. “My existence pervades the entire immortal dao. No time beneath it can contain me.”
The demon was born of the immortal dao, and any demon originating from the immortal dao was also it, whether in the past, present, or future.
“Besides, I’m the one who invented your time combat art and taught it to that group of fools. You want to use my own art against me?” The demon’s unnatural smile deepened with weirdness and it stretched out misshapen fingers to flick the time domain.
Pop!
A tiny ripple undulated over the pale purple domain after a crisp snap and then… nothing. The smile slid off the demon’s face; it was suddenly all business.
“I might have truly been helpless if I’d met you before visiting the chaos, but you’re just a demonic whelp in my eyes now.” Lu Yun barked with laughter as lights of six different colors swirled in his eyes.
The orders of inception, ethos, burgeon, creation, opposition, and nirvana materialized as a perfect circulation in his body.
“I don’t even know how many demonic brats like you I snuffed out in the mythological realm, and you want to use a trifling replica to scheme against me and my dao partner?”
“Mythological realm? Who are you?!” The demon began to struggle, but the time domain entirely surpassed the limits of its replica and gradually closed around it.
“You know about the mythological realm, so you really have been to the Tomb of Heaven and Earth. You’re the one behind that kind of zombie in there, aren’t you? You wanted to make use of that opportunity to gain the powers of the chaos,” Lu Yun muttered to himself and ignored the demon’s struggles.
The demon had indeed visited the tomb before, but hadn’t been able to penetrate the interior of the tomb with its level of strength. It could only leave behind those peculiar zombies in the outskirts. While it was invincible within the immortal dao, it was just an ordinary demonic spirit outside of it.
The immortal dao of the mythological realm had long been corrupted and heavily cursed to the point where it didn’t dare connect with it either.
“Wait, wait, don’t you want to know the secrets of this Blood Sea and the immortal dao??” It quickly offered when it saw that Lu Yun was about to destroy its replica.
It hadn’t been afraid before because it would assimilate Lu Yun if the slightest brush of energy touched it. Even if Lu Yun killed it, that would just mean that Lu Yun would replace Di Ling as the demon’s replica.
However, the ugly reality was that Lu Yun’s power exceeded the range of it’s knowledge and couldn’t be assimilated or replaced!
“Nope,” Lu Yun responded matter-of-factly.
Pop!
He snapped his fingers and sent the light purple domain into motion, reversing time. His Time Reincarnation had truly attained the effect of reincarnation and he could rewind time within a radius of three meters.
Once his strength reached the level of the fourth realm and the Tome of Life and Death became his nascent spirit, and hellfire his power, then he could likely reverse everything in existence with a simple thought and have it all start anew.
That wasn’t just the power of time, but of reincarnation.
Befuddlement appeared in the demon’s eyes as its body morphed from the image of a demon back to Di Ling. Wisps of bloody light swam out of Di Ling’s body and collected in a bloody pearl that was the size of a fist.
At the conclusion of the time art, the pearl dissolved and the demon’s replica was no more. Di Ling reappeared with a face of pain and sorrow.
“If you kill me, you will be able to obtain the Blood Sea and the last of the curse on the immortal dao will vanish.” She repeated the same words she’d said while under the demon’s control. Her thoughts just now had been the same as the demon’s, which was why it’d so easily assimilated her at the end.
“If you don’t kill me, I will kill you… and become a demon that is the enemy of the entire immortal dao.” The anguish in her voice echoed that of her face.
As a creature of the Blood Sea, she was under the control of the being from the third realm and had long lost her sense of self. She could retain the barest sliver of her being only when she was close to Lu Yun, because the Tome of Life and Death awoke her.
Carmine Eternal walked out from behind Lu Yun and took Di Ling’s hand.
“Come with me and let’s send this Blood Sea to where it should be.” Having been born of the Blood Sea, Carmine Eternal was the walking essence of these waters. Whether it was the Blood Sea in front of them or its main body, both were under Carmine Eternal’s authority.
She sent her power into Di Ling’s body through their connected hands and freed the latter from the bonds of the Blood Sea. The Gates of the Abyss ponderously swung open and the Blood Sea agitated, surging through the doors.
An enormous human face suddenly appeared in the skies over the Blood Sea.
“Di Ling, how dare you betray me?” it demanded coolly.
