That the newcomer had easily ripped apart Jin Naluo’s forcefield meant that he was also a very strong sixth step king. Tall and muscular, he wore a black combat outfit and his eyes glittered out of his face like the night stars. They were fixed on Lu Yun; if it wasn’t for Jin Naluo’s presence, the newcomer would’ve already torn Lu Yun to pieces and sifted through the wreckage of the city lord’s body for the key to the Hongmeng Tower.
Regardless, Lu Yun could feel an overwhelming pressure bearing down on him. It slammed against his heart and mind, trying to crush his psychological defenses.
“Enough.” Jin Naluo suddenly rose to his feet and stood in front of Lu Yun, shielding him from the terrifying pressure.
Large beads of sweat dotted Lu Yun’s forehead. The pressure exerted by a sixth step king was so indomitable that it’d almost frozen his thoughts! Since he was only in the common realm, he didn’t even count as an ant to a sixth step king.
“Do you want to know what we were just talking about?” Jin Naluo kept Lu Yun firmly behind him. He wasn’t so naive that he would mention that Lu Yun had given him the key to the Hongmeng Tower.
“The Blood Sea,” Lu Yun forced out through his teeth. “I was just asking the Butcher King about the Blood Sea.”
Jin Naluo shifted uncomfortably when he heard Lu Yun refer to him as the Butcher King. He plainly didn’t like the title very much.
“The Blood Sea?” The man’s eyes widened.
After burying numerous ninth step kings, the Blood Sea was a taboo in the Hongmeng. Most kings were unwilling to discuss it, but Jin Naluo was an exception. He’d tried to subdue it more than once, but all of his attempts had ended in failure.
He was the only king in the Hongmeng to live after provoking the Blood Sea. As a result, most of his peers avoided offending him, or avoided him entirely. Even the Redbud King kept her distance.
There were already several fifth and sixth step kings gathered in the City of Immortals, but since Jin Naluo was the first to set foot into the city lord residence, the others waited outside for now.
But when he saw Jin Naluo suddenly release his forcefield, the man in black threw caution to the wind.
“That’s right, the Blood Sea,” Jin Naluo admitted readily. “This little guy’s lord is an old acquaintance of mine, so of course we need to chat a bit when we see each other. It’s just the ole Blood Sea, heh heh heh!” He laughed gaily.
The man snorted derisively. “Old acquaintance? You have acquaintances in the Hongmeng?”
“Of course not!” chuckled Jin Naluo. “But my replica has lived for a hundred million chaos tribulations in the second realm and naturally made many acquaintances there. It so happens that this particular acquaintance is also especially interested in the Blood Sea.”
“Do you mean the Purple King?” The man’s face tightened when he heard the chaos mentioned and he narrowed his eyes at Lu Yun. “Are you a descendent of the Purple King?”
“No.” Lu Yun shook his head. “I’m his father.”
Jin Naluo cut off mid chuckle, a state of incomprehension echoed by the man in black.
“I mean that the Purple King is my son, of my bloodline,” Lu Yun added.
Rumble!
A bolt of purple lightning slashed through the sky, seemingly in reaction to his words.
The man’s face whitened and he glared viciously at Lu Yun, then immediately left without a glance backward.
“Why’d he leave?” Lu Yun turned to Jin Naluo with surprise.
“…I want to leave too,” Jin Naluo ground out through grit teeth. “You’ve got some balls, kid, to make up something about the Purple King. I just wanted to use his name to scare off the Nightglow King, but you, you just had to go and—”
“Is the Purple King that scary?” Lu Yun was taken aback by the reaction. The Karmic Tree had clearly captured the man’s terror just now, which was why Lu Yun had elaborated about his son. Who would’ve thought that would actually scare off the Nightglow King?
Even Jin Naluo spoke of the Purple King in an awkward way, a sign of his own unwillingness to offend the great personage. But in Lu Yun’s eyes, all three were sixth step kings. There was no need for the other two to be so afraid of the Purple King.
“Scary?” Jin Naluo curled his lip. “Do you only use scary to describe the Purple King?
“Do you know why the Nightglow King is so terrified of the Purple King? Before the latter came into his fame, he was a city lord of a Multitude City. The Nightglow King once attempted to make trouble for him, but ended up chopped into a hundred and eight pieces and buried beneath a hundred and eight cities. He was freed only after the Purple King escaped into the chaos because he was being hunted by all of the kings in the Hongmeng for possessing five keys.
“The Nightglow King was already a sixth step king then.
“The Enforcer Alliance sent three sixth step kings into the chaos a while back. They were to do something about the Purple King, but he almost beat them to death instead.” Derision floated onto Jin Naluo’s face. “Perhaps it’s been too long since his legends were fresh in everyone’s minds, so all of the idiots outside of the Multitude Region have forgotten about his horrors. But us kings in here, none of us have forgotten about him.”
Lu Yun smacked his lips and didn’t respond.
“You should be glad that the Purple King isn’t in the Hongmeng. Otherwise, you’d already be dead as I wouldn’t be able to protect you either,” Jin Naluo said solemnly to Lu Yun.
“Mm, I understand.” Lu Yun nodded.
“The tenth key to the tower has caused too much of a disturbance. How are you going to handle it?” Perhaps it was due to Lu Yun outright gifting him the key, but Jin Naluo was acting ever more like an actual ally.
“I don’t know.” Lu Yun shook his head. “I’d planned on giving the key to the first person who showed up and then staying out of whatever happened next. But from the looks of things, you don’t look like you’re going to play along.”
Jin Naluo shot a sideways glance at Lu Yun.
“Then the only choice is to reveal everything about me and let you sixth step kings investigate things, so you can then spread that the news about the key was fake.” Lu Yun spread out his hands.
“Reveal everything about you?” Jin Naluo snorted. “They’ll slice you into thin pieces and extract your true spirit, then wring out every last bit of memory since your birth. Do you think you’d still be alive then?”
He carefully observed Lu Yun’s expression as he talked, noting that there was no sign of panic on the human’s face.
“…what’s your actual plan?” Jin Naluo frowned, a foreboding feeling looming over his heart.
“What else could I have planned? We can all go down with the ship.” Lu Yun bared his teeth in a leer. “You’ve seen the strength of my bridge. Since this is the Hongmeng and not the world of immortals, I don’t need to worry about filling this realm beyond capacity. It’s just killing some sixth step kings, no biggie.
“This young master will smash them all with my bridge, whether it’s ninth step kings or even that Hong!”
