“He’s here for me, alright!” Lu Yun narrowed his eyes at the peculiar young man.
Deep within the ground, Jin Naluo exploded into rays of bloody shadow and charged the strange newcomer from all sides.
“Don’t go toe to toe with him!” Lu Yun yelled. “This young man’s dao is strength, you won’t beat him with pure strength!”
Jin Naluo paused, but the young man had cocked his arm back with the large ship and swept it through the air, brushing away the countless snarling replicas.
“You little bastard!” Jin Naluo raged. “I’m your daddy and a seventh step king! My speed and strength will never be less than a puny first step king!”
His body reformed in the void and a current of blood-red air rose from his body. He expanded more than three times his regular size, rippling muscles nearly bursting through his robes. Roaring, he shot at the young man again.
“Heh heh heh!” The youngster cackled and whipped the ship around in circles, crudely smashing it down on Jin Naluo again like before.
Jin Naluo… was sent flying once more. But this time, he managed to get a few blows in himself.
……
“Um…” Lu Yun sighed. “Man, he’s a fool to fight straight on with that little monster.”
“Do you know who the young man is?” Azureclad quickly asked.
“Most of the kings in the Hongmeng have gone down the wrong path,” Lu Yun nodded. “What we call first step kings, second step kings… Though they’re delineated by different numbers of dao rules, that’s not an indication of cultivation level. It’s just a quantification of their battle strength and how strong or weak they might be.
“That young man, however, walks the right path. Though he’s just a first level king, he’s a true king.” Lu Yun frowned at the seemingly malnourished boy. “He definitely comes from a great background. I don’t know how the path to true Hongmeng kinghood was broken, but the road he walks was never severed!
“I strongly suspect that when he ascended to kinghood, he didn’t even need the Hongmeng Tower. He formed his own dao rules and broke through to true king.” He stared fixedly at the young man, whereas Azureclad and Qing Ting were scared witless by these revelations.
Superior realm cultivators required coronation from the tower in order to become a king. The tower also helped them form their dao rules—this was a basic fact etched into the souls of all denizens within the Hongmeng.
But now, Lu Yun was saying that it was possible to be a king without the tower? That was completely impossible in Qing Ting and Azureclad’s worldview. To them, the Hongmeng Tower was the most supreme existence of the realm, the one that dictated everything.
……
“Good thing he walks the path of strength and only has brute force. If he was also skilled in combat arts, I’d have to go to some effort to take him down.” Lu Yun flipped his hand over and materialized a chunk of purple crystal.
He used it to create a formation without foundation in the void, weaving a purple net from the great formation and gradually enveloping the local area.
Within the net, Jin Naluo and the young man were having a grand time punching and kicking each other. Both of them were battered and bruised, landing blows on each other with full strength. The Eternal Life Glory was a splintered wreck, completely ruined beyond repair.
“Ayayaya!! How dare you hit this young master!” shouted the young man as he flared with a burst of fire. His disheveled black hair turned into the color of fire.
“Get out of the way!” Lu Yun roared.
Jin Naluo’s eyes widened with surprise and he trembled, knowing that Lu Yun was ready to make his move. He quickly backed off and fled the battlefield.
“Where do you think you’re running to?!” The young man’s eyes spat flame and he readied his fist, wrapping himself in a ball of fire and hurtling after Jin Naluo.
“Retract!” Lu Yun hovered in the air and crossed his arms in front of his chest, releasing rays of purple luminescence that melded into the net.
Qing Ting and Azureclad held their breaths. Though they were close friends with Lu Yun, this was the first time he was demonstrating his Immortal King aspect to them. The shockingly strong young man who could eat the Eternal Life Glory couldn’t muster any resistance when caught in Lu Yun’s net.
What looked like an enormous net was actually a great formation. It negated all of the force that the bony young man was bringing to bear when he pummeled it with blows. It seemed more like he was hitting a ball of cotton and receiving no feedback whatsoever.
The net slowly constricted and forced the young man’s overflowing strength back, ultimately confining it within his body. The formation then transformed into purple rope and tied him up, sealing away his terrifying strength.
“Ayayaya!! Let go of me!” The young man struggled and howled at Lu Yun. “Immortal King, you’re bullying the weak with this ambush! What kind of lousy display is this?? Let me go if you dare and we’ll go for three hundred rounds!”
Being uncommonly durable, Lu Yun’s formation turned the young man into an ordinary person once he couldn’t access any of his strength.
“Me… bullying the weak?” A smiling Lu Yun walked over and sized up the stranger. “I’m less than five hundred years old, so how am I bullying the weak?”
“Five hundred thousand years? This young master is less than ten thousand!” the young man caterwauled. “…eh? No, you said five hundred?”
Even Qing Ting, Azureclad, and Jin Naluo were startled by this. “Less than five hundred years old??”
“That’s right, I’m around three hundred years old.” Lu Yun nodded. “Give or take, I don’t know how old I am since I’ve never really counted.”
Five hundred years… didn’t even make one a baby in the Hongmeng. When Qing Ting and Azureclad were five hundred years old, they were carefully sheltered and protected by their entire faction.
It was a bit too much to take in.
“But there’s no sense of time in the Hongmeng and we grow and develop through the order of growth, not time. The strong bullying the weak is honestly just a joke.” Lu Yun shook his head. “Out with it. Where are you from and who sent you to find me?”
“Hmph!” came a proud snort and no answer.
