Lu Yun had officially commenced forming the hell of order after subduing the order of time.
Last time he unleashed ten inches of time, he’d simply set it free to wreak havoc and employed a time combat art to confine it to a million kilometers of space. It was free to do whatever it wanted within those bounds.
This time, his ten tendrils of order jumped and focused the power of time on his hand, condensing it into a sword of time.
He chopped off one of the chaos dragon zombie’s heads with a single stroke. Since there was no order of time in the chaos and Hongmeng, he could counter anything from these realms with time. If he wanted to do so with anything else, he would have to utilize the fire of order to impose his will. However, his fire would have to be stronger than all of the orders in the Hongmeng for him to manage the feat.
He would succeed only if his cultivation level reached the fourth realm—but if it did so, then none of their current struggles would mean anything.
……
“I… I didn’t mean it that way,” Ghost Dragon said dumbly. He’d been of the mindset that he’d held back that day in Coiling Dragon City, that he would’ve easily killed Lu Yun otherwise.
Lu Yun lopping off one of the dragon zombie’s heads with one stroke completely upended his understanding of the young man. He also hadn’t known that the renowned Immortal King was Lu Yun!
……
The remaining two heads howled with fury and shook their tremendous body, once more pouncing on Lu Yun. He brandished his sword of time and summoned intersecting beams of pale purple sword light, covering himself with a robe of pale purple.
A sword robe.
The chaos dragon zombie didn’t understand combat arts—all it possessed was utterly terrifying speed and strength. It arrived the moment Lu Yun’s sword robe took shape.
However, its unusually swift gestures seemed to be slow as molasses to Lu Yun. His sword robe was coalesced from the power of time. Guided by the fire of order, it formed a small boundary around him that ran six hundred kilometers across.
When the dragon’s claw entered the boundary, it sank into a mire of time.
Whoosh!
Lu Yun swung again and severed the claw with a purple flash of incomparably sharp sword qi of time.
“Time isn’t just the most toxic poison in the Hongmeng, it’s also the sharpest of sword light!” Lu Yun vanished on the spot after he decapitated the claw and reappeared behind the dragon zombie.
“Die!!” he roared. The sword of time expanded explosively into thirty thousand meters of sword light and descended upon the dragon zombie.
Thirty thousand meters of sword light alone were slightly insufficient for the task, given the dragon’s bulk, but the stroke came too quickly and too keenly. The dragon zombie didn’t have a chance to turn or even identify where the sword light was coming from before it was hit squarely in the back.
Grayish-yellow dragon blood sprayed through the air. Lu Yun had struck where he’d severed the first dragon head and sliced the dragon zombie into two halves, each with one dragon head.
This severity of injury was fatal to a chaos dragon zombie.
Chaos dragons possessed three heads, three tails, twelve claws, but only one body. Lu Yun had forcefully sectioned it through the middle into two parts. Though this specimen was a dragon zombie, it could no longer move once it lay in half on the ground.
“Even ultimate treasures of the Hongmeng find it difficult to pierce through the defenses of a chaos dragon zombie. You handled it with three strokes!” Ghost Dragon gaped, incredulity filling his eyes.
Lu Yun retrieved the ten inches of time with a wave of his hand and resealed it into a karmic fruit. The mark that he’d left in the lost ancient city had been erased. The city lord couldn’t have done so, so it must’ve been Hong.
His water from the river of time dwindled whenever he used it, thus it would be wise to conserve his usage. This was a life-saving trump card to be preserved for the most perilous situations.
“It’s not dead yet.” Twin black sparkles flashed through his eyes as Lu Yun looked upon the towering halves of the chaos dragon zombie. The Spectral Eye gave him no information about this creature.
“Is this the thing controlling you?” He turned around and looked at Ghost Dragon.
Ghost Dragon gently shook his head and began fading out of existence; he seemed ready to dissipate as smoke. Lu Yun looked on in silence, not doing anything to stop him. Copies of Ghost Dragon overlaid each other. He was both him and not him.
Lu Yun disabling the dragon zombie seemed to be some sort of trigger. Apart from Ghost Dragon, the scroll painting also shifted into nothingness, as if it was ready to leave.
Roughly three breaths later, both Ghost Dragon and the painting had vanished into the void.
“He’s gone.” Qing Yu walked over.
“Mmhmm.” Lu Yun nodded. “But they haven’t left the Hongmeng, they’re still here somewhere… This is just a stop on their itinerary.
“This is the entrance to the big grave and the painting was here forming the influence of dragon and phoenix. They wanted to use the power of dragon and phoenix to break apart the tomb and claim whatever’s inside.” Lu Yun looked around as he analyzed, “They don’t have enough strength of dragon, which is why Ghost Dragon went to Coiling Dragon City to participate in the Dragonling Assembly. He’s after the azure dragon’s ancestral blood as well.”
“This dragon zombie… was a patriarch of the chaos dragons,” said the little fox. “After your past self turned into a dao fruit, I took Lu Qing on a journey through the chaos and mythological realm. We saw many powerhouses in our travels.”
Lu Yun’s past self couldn’t form any karmic ties, but the same was no longer a concern to the little fox and Lu Qing after he transformed into a dao fruit. She would’ve brought Lu Qing and Qing Han on a trip throughout the multiverse if only to lay a strong foundation for her son’s future.
Lu Yun nodded silently.
“The dao fruit of my future self should be here too,” he suddenly realized. “I can sense it… but there’s another powerful existence here apart from my dao fruit.”
“Shall we go take a look?” Qing Yu and the little fox brightened.
With the disappearance of the scroll painting, the vast clearing showed its true form—a lake of boiling magma. The crimson magma dyed the air red; where Lu Yun and the others had stood had been a fabrication from the painting.
Large bronze doors stood on the other side of the lake—the true entrance of the grave.
