Reeling from shock, Xing Wuliang closed off the pores and openings of his body. His soul force would have to be his eyes and ears for now.
Lu Yun once more released the world of water virtue from the Water Virtue Orb and brought it down around them, isolating the trio from the strange gray fog.
A wordless Xing Wuliang restored his bodily functions.
“Just how much soul force do you have, kid?! When I use the orb, I exhaust all of mine in less than a hundred breaths!” He looked Lu Yun up and down. “Or have you eaten some other incredible treasure?”
He’d been startled by his new junior brother’s soul force when he passed on the Three Thousand Soul Daos, but to think that’d only been the tip of the iceberg!
“Some things are affected by innate talent,” Lu Yun chuckled. “My potential is stronger than yours, it’s just that I’ve never cultivated supplemental dao before.”
“Perverse monster!” Both Xing Wuliang and Brightheart cursed.
“Come on, come on, we need to get going. We’ll be targeted by that thing in the center once we catch its attention!” Brightheart put thought of rescuing others out of her mind. That would only result in her own death.
“No, we need to go right to the center and piss it off!” A cold light shone in Lu Yun’s eyes. “That thing doesn’t belong to this tomb. The Tomb of the Hallowed Emperor was created to preserve the Hallowed Emperor’s legacy and await the one who shares his destiny. As dangerous as this place might be, no undead should be here!
“We’re going to take it out!” he declared with finality before running off.
“Lunatic!” Xing Wuliang grit his teeth and chased after his junior brother. Lu Yun had the Water Virtue Orb on him and could release its strongest power. There was nothing he could do other than follow the young man.
Brightheart set her jaw as well and chased after them.
“You’re not thinking you share a destiny with the Hallowed Emperor, do you?” she asked, seemingly jokingly.
“We’ll know once we head inside.” Lu Yun responded noncommittally. “But if we excise the poisonous tumor inside this tomb, the emperor and Cloud Sovereign’s spirits will thank us if they’re still around!”
It didn’t matter if they did, to be honest, as long as the tomb no longer rejected Lu Yun. He wanted to be able to release his power without the tomb blowing up the next second. Once he eliminated the danger and obtained the tomb’s approval, he would be able to do whatever he wanted in here.
There were certain things of interest to him as well that he wished to check out.
Sounds of fighting traveled through the fog—the young man with the sword hadn’t left. He was fighting whatever was in the gray murkiness. As the fog grew ever denser, Lu Yun contracted the world of water virtue by a tiny bit.
“This is a pill to recover soul force!” Xing Wuliang suddenly handed a pill to Lu Yun with grave solemnity.
“Huh.” Lu Yun popped it into his mouth and swallowed it, recovering some of his moderately depleted soul force.
“Is that a huge mountain ahead of us?” Xing Wuliang murmured uncertainly as he looked at a patch of fog that seemed thicker than the rest.
“It’s a coffin,” Brightheart responded. “A coffin hovering in the air. The young man with the sword on his back is fighting whatever’s crawled out of it. That thing is the source of the gray fog around us.”
Since she was stronger than Xing Wuliang, she could naturally see more than him.
“Bastards! What are you doing here?!” the young man roared angrily when he saw the trio. His tone shifted into surprise with his next words. “Hang on, you can deploy the world of water virtue from that orb?”
The world was still keeping the gray fog at bay and keeping the trio safe.
“Good, very good! You have incredible soul force at just seventh step. …catch!” The young man flung his hand out and threw his Metal Virtue Orb across the world of water virtue. “As strong as the world of water virtue is, it’s less than the world of swords from the Metal Virtue Orb. Ah, I turned the world of metal virtue inside the orb into one of swords because I sent my sword dao into it. If you have energy to spare, deploy the world of swords to help me!”
The young man’s sword once more shot out of its scabbard as he clashed with a mammoth gray creature. It released gray fog at every second and dimmed the surroundings.
“Okay.” Lu Yun nodded and flooded the Metal Virtue Orb with his soul force after he caught it. Golden sword upon golden sword blossomed out of the orb while he concurrently retracted his soul force in the Water Virtue Orb.
He could easily keep both orbs activated at the same time, but that feat would be insanely out of reach for regular fourth realm beings. He didn’t want Xing Wuliang to actually think he was a freak as he still wanted to go to the Star Sect and learn the fourth realm’s methods.
The world of swords instantly illuminated the vicinity when it erupted, the sword dao within vaporizing all of the gray fog. That also enabled Xing Wuliang and Brightheart to clearly see the source of the fog.
It was a gray humanoid figure wearing tattered armor; they could glimpse gray bones through the cracks in the armor.
“This armor is very old and probably goes back to the era of the original Hongmeng!” Widely read, Xing Wuliang quickly identified their opponent.
“This thing mutated from one of the immortal race’s powerhouses, the ones that ruled the era before the original Hongmeng shattered!” panted the young man as he sent the gray zombie reeling with a mighty slash of his sword. “This zombie looks like it was one of their generals in life and was buried after his death. Someone must’ve dug him up and sent him here to breed zombies.”
The young man could kill three Void World Kings with one stroke, but he was a bit out of his depth against the zombie. His incomparably sharp sword felt like a dull blade thudding into hay when he connected with it.
The result was the same when the golden swords of the world of swords crashed into it.
Unbidden, Lu Yun released the Metal Virtue Orb and let it hover in the air to protect Xing Wuliang and Brightheart. He took a step out of the world of swords.
“What are you doing?!”
“Get back here!” the two gasped with horror.
“Stay here, I’m going to help!” Brightheart quickly followed Lu Yun out of the cocoon of safety. As a Void World King, she wouldn’t be zombified by the fog.
She turned into wind the moment she left and charged the gray zombie. It was pointless to give instructions to Lu Yun, he must be confident of his chances if he dared come out. Helping the young man eliminate the zombie was the most pressing task.
“Shit, I’m the most useless one out of the bunch!” Xing Wuliang waved the cube around, but didn’t know what to do. “Eh? Where are you going?” he asked reflexively when he saw Lu Yun head for the coffin instead of the zombie.
“The source of the fog is the coffin and not the zombie. Taking care of the coffin will disperse the zombie.” Lu Yun observed the coffin for a long moment before turning back. “Lend me your cube.”
