His friends and family would leave him one after another. Lu Yun nearly went spontaneously insane to recall the soul-wrenching anguish that was to come and how it would eventually be dulled by bleak, suffocating loneliness.
In those thirty-three eras, he became a walking harbinger of misfortune wherever he went after he reestablished order in the Hongmeng. He seemed to be cursed to deliver disaster no matter where or who he visited.
He hadn’t known the particulars at first, thinking it was a curse from the Curse King or some other enemy. But now as he looked into the eyes of the overlord of Ice, he knew the reason behind it all.
The withered wood!
Lu Yun hadn’t possessed the Tome of Life and Death in those past eras, much less hell or the Karmic Tree. Though he’d seen traces of them as he journeyed through the eras, they hadn’t belonged to him.
The withered wood!
He likewise hadn’t seen the wood on the him of those eras, but he could clearly sense its existence. When he’d locked eyes with the overlord, the hairs had stood up on the back of his neck.
Just as the overlord of Ice said, the withered wood would bring misfortune to Lu Yun. Perhaps the bad luck wouldn’t touch him, but everyone close to him would be affected by it.
In this cycle, the wood was resting in the karmic pool in the kingdom of hell. He’d sent it into the Tome of Life and Death instead.
……
Lu Yun wandered aimlessly through the fourth realm. He didn’t know where to go or what to do; he just knew that he couldn't return to the Hongmeng.
“The Curse King probably knows that I’ve left the Hongmeng by now…? Mo Yi and the Dao King are both in the Disordered Hell. If he wants to move against Mo Yi, he’ll have to come for me first since I’m the only one who can access that hell.”
Lu Yun had left the plane of Ice and come to a place he was unfamiliar with. He sat down cross-legged in the void, thinking over things. The six hells were becoming the six paths of his nascent spirit, but that didn’t mean that the Disordered Hell was part of his nascent spirit.
It was similar to how he’d manifested the six hells, but the Hadal Hell had become the nine hells of the world of immortals and the Nihil Hell continued to devour the Sanguine Hell. It also maintained a steady stream of ghosts and yin spirits in space, and the Nether Hell had become Violetgrave.
She’d once said that wherever hellfire burned was hell.
Lu Yun looked around, the fourth realm no longer an empty void in his eyes. Countless beings went about their business, just as their counterparts would in the worlds, chaos, and Hongmeng. This was also a world where life forms abounded. If one was big enough and strong enough to find a footing here, one would see the truth of the realm.
As he wasn’t native to the fourth realm, he could only see its true form when he reached a certain cultivation level.
Where his eyes rested on was a magnificent mountain rooted in the void, emanating its aura in all directions. It was so big that he wouldn’t measure up to it even if he released all of his strength and grew to his maximum size.
“There’s… tombs in the fourth realm?” Lu Yun blinked. That mountain was plainly a tombstone! “Well, it makes sense. Powerhouses of the fourth realm die as well. The civilization here is the same as that from the worlds, chaos, and Hongmeng.”
He stroked his chin thoughtfully. “All living beings share common characteristics, no matter where they live. They will walk the same path if they live under order.”
Just as on Earth, the same practices had arisen on various different continents despite their lack of exchange. There had been language, writing, numbers, culture, customs, and habits. Livestock was domesticated, horses became steeds, bone and stone were tools, and gold was precious.
There was war, there was peace. Homes and cities were built. Morals, ethics, marriage, calendars, and holidays followed.
Though there were differences, of course, what they represented, the restrictions they gave rise to, and the future they defined were startlingly alike.
Take the human form—while regional differences gave rise to different skin colors, the human form looked the same. Such was the order of civilization and life.
Under the same order, even if the four realms didn’t interact with each other, the path taken by their denizens would be the same. That applied to the worlds, chaos, Hongmeng, and even the fourth realm. If everything was erased and life started anew, civilization would still evolve along the same path.
……
“I wonder what the tombs of the fourth realm are like.” Lu Yun dismissed his mental tangent and leapt into the air, crossing an indeterminable distance and arriving in front of the tomb.
Life forms jostled each other in front of it, all of them different, but all in human form. The master of the original Hongmeng had been humanity, thus the final form of all living beings in the third and fourth realms was human shaped.
This order had never been broken.
“I wonder whose tomb this is?” Lu Yun murmured as he joined the crowd and peered at the mountain.
“Hoi little brother, you can tell this is a tomb?” Startled, a man in silk robes cast a glance at Lu Yun.
“I am Feng Feifan and know a little bit of feng shui. I can tell this is the tombstone for a tomb,” Lu Yun chuckled and introduced himself.
The man sized up Lu Yun and answered with a smile. “Brother Feng has a keen eye. I am well versed in feng shui and the art of burial, but wouldn’t have been able to tell this is a tomb if I didn’t already know.”
“Already know?” Lu Yun blinked.
“This is the Tomb of the Hallowed Emperor. Legend has it that it’s the final resting place of the last Nihil World Sovereign of the Di Clan, also known as the Hallowed Emperor. ‘Di’ as in ‘emperor’, you see?” explained the man instead of introducing himself. “It’s rumored that this tomb is located in this Broken Primeval Plane, but it suddenly appeared a few days ago.”
“So this is the Broken Primeval Plane.” Lu Yun thought back to the books he’d read in Dragonmountain Clime. This was a plane very far from the planes of Ice or fire. It was an abandoned plane, supposedly the site of an ancient battlefield so incredible that it’d destroyed the locale.
Since the battle had occurred so far in the past, it was termed “Primeval”. Since the plane was wasted, it was affixed with “Broken”.
The Broken Primeval Plane.
“Tomb of the Hallowed Emperor… the last Nihil World Sovereign of the Di Clan…” The clan’s name touched a chord within Lu Yun’s heart.
The man laughed heartily when he saw Lu Yun deep in thought and left. He had no intention of befriending this stranger.
