“But senior brother, while this coffin has been sealed away, it hasn’t been fully taken care of yet.” Lu Yun stroked his chin with contemplation and changed the topic.
“What’s the point of taking care of it? We’re here to hunt for treasure, not do good deeds.” Xing Wuliang heaved a slight sigh of relief to see that Lu Yun really didn’t intend to head to Ingress Sword Island.
“This isn’t purely a tomb.” Lu Yun shook his head. “This is the land of inheritance for the Hallowed Emperor. Though it holds his body, it also holds his legacy!”
Brightheart’s eyes lit up. “You don’t mean…”
“This coffin is plainly a cancerous tumor from outside and is eating away at the tomb at every second. If it destroys the tomb, it destroys the legacy,” Lu Yun continued. “If we excise these tumors, we might win the tomb’s approval and share the spoils!
“If I’m seeing things correctly, this was once an enormous garden. All sorts of strange and exotic plants flourished here, but the coffin and gray fog destroyed everything.” Lu Yun looked down at his feet where a withered plant root drifted.
The coffin hadn’t been truly resolved. It was still a poisonous tumor on the premises, just prevented from releasing its fog and turning everything into zombies. But as time went on, the things inside would break through the seal from the compass world and ravage the tomb again with fog.
“The coffin isn’t the source, what’s inside is the source,” Xing Wuliang suddenly spoke up. There seemed to be another pair of eyes opening within his pupils, ones that swayed with strange ripples.
Lu Yun’s eyes were the size of dinner plates; when Xing Wuliang displayed his innate abilities, not even Lu Yun could see through him.
He was right, coffins were just a tool to buy the dead. No matter how strange that one was, the dead buried inside was the source of everything.
Lu Yun could clearly see that this coffin forty-five thousand kilometers tall buried a world—a massive world that not even the compass could contain.
“How do we take care of it?” Brightheart wasn’t well versed in feng shui. She looked at Xing Wuliang, who looked at Lu Yun.
Lu Yun held his forehead.
“Coffins should go where they belong.”
“Where do coffins belong?” Brightheart didn’t understand.
“A tomb!” answered Xing Wuliang. “This coffin is from another tomb. It inspires backlash from this tomb because it doesn’t belong here. If we use this environment and lay down a tomb within a tomb according to the principles of burial, we’ll solve all our problems when we bury this coffin!”
A tomb within a tomb!
“Since it’s a tomb within a tomb, we have to use a mother and child layout. The Tomb of the Hallowed Emperor is the mother, the tomb within a tomb is the child!” Lu Yun and Xing Wuliang looked at each other with the appreciation of finding one of their kind.
Xing Wuliang’s eyes within his real eyes were still open.
“I have a feeling, senior brother, that if you bury this coffin, you’ll become a grandmaster!” Though Lu Yun was a Nihil World Sovereign, there was no hierarchy when it came to learning. Whoever grasped understanding first was the teacher. Xing Wuliang’s supplemental dao, particularly of formations and talismans, was superior to Lu Yun’s. He well deserved the senior brother honorific.
In the same vein, nearly all of Lu Yun’s current understanding of the fourth realm’s supplemental dao came from Xing Wuliang. The latter had scribbled his own notes in the margins of The General Principles of the Star Sect Formations and The General Principles of the Star Sect Talismans.
“Alright!” Xing Wuliang had the same premonition. It hadn’t been long since he’d set foot into ninth step soul force, at least according to the standards of the fourth realm. But now, he had a sense that he was about to break through again.
Bury the coffin and his soul force would reach grandmaster level!
“Lend me your hand, junior brother!” He hovered in the air and directed changes in this world’s topography.
The world inside the tomb was boundless without end, but also connected to multiple other worlds. Those worlds were as if different burial chambers, and people that entered this area immediately jumped into another world without hesitation.
The fourth realm’s supplemental dao was a very expansive field. Lu Yun had yet to make a thorough study, so he couldn’t derive many things even with formula dao. There was also no formula dao in this realm.
The way of burial had much to do with the dao of formations, separating it into distinct sections of feng shui and formations.
The General Principles of the Star Sect Formations recorded only rudimentary formations and didn’t even mention feng shui. Meanwhile, Lu Yun could only set up tombs of the third realm and not the fourth, which was why he had Xing Wuliang do the deed.
The second Xing Wuliang buried the coffin, he would be rewarded by feedback from the Tomb of the Hallowed Emperor and reach grandmaster level. Thus, Xing Wuliang started his preparations with Lu Yun helping him off on the side.
Or rather, Lu Yun was learning about the formations, feng shui, and burial of the fourth realm. Advanced formations required high level soul force, but Lu Yun’s was so formidable that certain qualitative changes had taken place in it.
Hummmm.
After a loud reverberation, a world that’d been eroded by gray fog cleared up. A dense vitality flooded out of an unknown source and filled the world.
The tomb in front of them fully took shape. It was a simple and even somewhat crude affair, but even the simplest of tombs were a tomb that could bury this coffin. A coffin was a seal for what was inside, and what lay inside was what truly needed to be buried.
Xing Wuliang ascended to grandmaster level without fanfare. Outsiders couldn’t tell what’d changed about him, but he was now a supplemental grandmaster in both formations and talismans.
“Congratulations to senior brother for becoming a supplemental grandmaster!” Lu Yun raised a cupped fist salute. Supplemental grandmasters were exceedingly respected in the fourth realm. Nihil World Sovereigns would also show him enormous courtesy now.
There were no supplemental kings in the fourth realm, grandmaster was the highest title for supplemental dao.
Xing Wuliang took a deep look at Lu Yun and remarked, “Junior brother Feng must’ve benefited greatly as well.”
“Not much, not much,” he twinkled merrily. “My soul force is eighth step now.”
And not just eighth step! Excising this tumor meant that he could use his full strength in the tomb now. Whoever dared provoke him would face the wrath of a Nihil World Sovereign.
Of course, no one would dare give them trouble with Xing Wuliang next to them.
“We should also take care of this tomb. Otherwise, latecomers won’t know what took place and will just dig up the coffin again,” Brightheart said worriedly.
“Don’t worry, they’ll never be able to do it!” Lu Yun laughed with delight. The second he could use his full strength when the tomb was completed, he’d slipped the coffin away with the Gates of the Abyss.
