“Is the withered wood that terrifying?” Lu Yun’s soul projected a replica into his consciousness so he could quietly regard the trespasser.
The interloper was a middle-aged man dressed in purple robes and purple qi curling around him. Immensely dignified, he carried himself with an impressive bearing. It was very apparent that though he was dead, his tremendous soul force far eclipsed Lu Yun’s.
He was a supplemental grandmaster who’d reached the peak of the fourth realm. If he’d been in his prime, just his soul force alone would’ve crushed Lu Yun to death.
But currently, a powerful grandmaster who should’ve been coolly composed, unconcerned with anything, was pale and shaking. He ricocheted to and fro, trying to break out of Lu Yun’s consciousness and escape his body.
A segment of withered wood hovered in the middle of Lu Yun’s consciousness.
It was rotten, decayed, and heavily scored by the ravages of time. It looked like it would break apart at any second and crumble into dust. Yet, it was also this decrepit wood that induced extreme fear from a supplemental grandmaster!
“Do you know the origin of this wood?” Lu Yun’s soul force replica approached the wood and picked it up, bringing it to the plotter.
It’d originally been placed in the Pool of Karma in the kingdom of hell; he’d wanted to nurture it with the power of karma. But once Lu Yun deduced that everyone around him, including powerhouses like Fuxi and Daoist Ingress from the original Hongmeng or fourth realm, would die because of the withered wood, he took it out of the Tome of Life and Death and stored it in his consciousness. He would not allow it to bring about the deaths of everyone he cared about for a thirty-fourth cycle.
And to think that the plotter was afraid of the withered wood!
“You, you, you you you!!” The plotter backed up in alarmed panic; his perfectly coiffed hair turning into a disheveled mess. Though he was just an entity of soul force, that was no different from a primary body for a supplemental grandmaster.
“Do you want to be a walking instance of horrendous misfortune, or do you want to cause your own death?!” He finally managed to compose himself and directed a burning glare at Lu Yun.
“It’s not a bad thing to be misfortune on legs.” Lu Yun shrugged. This was a reference to an Earth saying, but it now looked like the idiom didn’t originate from Earth.
Earth was the root of the worlds and the original great wilderness, but the great wilderness that he knew wasn’t necessarily the one of the worlds. The traces of civilization found there stretched to the fourth realm—so the saying of something “on legs” belonged to the original Hongmeng.
At the same time, the core of the original Hongmeng was the worlds.
Lu Yun had visited the original Hongmeng in all thirty-three cycles he experienced, but it’d been so big that he hadn’t known what the immense world he’d seen in the long river of time was.
The plotter’s eyes darted around; he didn’t know what Lu Yun was thinking.
“You probably don’t know what that withered wood is, do you?” he suddenly asked.
“I don’t, I was just about to ask you.” Lu Yun nodded. “Also, what’s the Imperial Seal?”
“First things first, the wood!” declared the plotter. “That piece of withered wood carries the resentment of all beings in the original Hongmeng. Whoever holds it is tainted by that bitterness and cursed for it!”
The destruction of the original Hongmeng hadn’t just been the downfall of a world, but the end of an epoch, the oblivion of hundreds of billions of beings. What undefinable heights would their resentment reach? How much retribution would be involved in such an incident?
Virtue itself would be set afire from all the retribution!
Thus, Lu Yun hadn’t asked Mo Yi who’d used the Dragonquake Scripture to destroy the original Hongmeng. There wouldn’t be a hint of them left—retribution would’ve erased them from existence.
“Then what is the withered wood?” Lu Yun asked.
“A curse, of course. Whoever touches it will die!” the plotter proclaimed.
“What is it exactly?” Lu Yun scowled with annoyance.
“A curse, of course—”
Smack!
Lu Yun suddenly lifted his hand and slapped the plotter across the face, hitting him so hard that he went flying.
“How, how dare you hit me?!” The plotter clutched his face and gasped incredulously.
“You plotted against me, lured me into a trap, and almost made me lose my sense of self. Now you run into my body to try to steal it. What should I be doing instead of hitting you? Inviting you to stay for dinner?” Lu Yun rushed over and pummeled the man with kicks and blows.
The plotter yelped and howled with pain, but couldn’t return any blows in kind.
This was Lu Yun’s consciousness and the Tome of Life and Death floated over their heads. It was his source of strength, providing him with so much reinforcement in his mind that he’d thrash even a powerhouse who’d stepped into sequence.
After a hefty beating, Lu Yun demanded with a dark face, “Speak, what is the withered wood? It managed to retain a tiny bit of itself after weathering the resentment of a destroyed epoch. What is its main form and the five branches that make them able to endure incredible resentment?!”
The plotter finally understood what Lu Yun was asking.
“How… how do you know about the five branches?” he asked haltingly.
Lu Yun darted forward and stomped down on the man’s face. “Talk!”
“Just kill me!” The plotter’s temper flared to be humiliated like this. He couldn’t fight Lu Yun and he couldn’t force his own death. Out of options, he sat down on the ground and glared viciously at the young man.
“You’re made of soul force, aren’t you…” A cold sneer played on Lu Yun’s lips and he gently waved his hand. The six hellfires ignited in unison next to him, shocking the man on the ground.
“Hadal, Sanguine, Abyssal, Nihil, and Nether… are all on you! But there’s six flames, what’s the silver hellfire?! Why are there six hellfires?!” The plotter fell to the ground and he looked apprehensively at the jumping flames. Not only was he afraid, but he was more so mystified.
“The six paths of reincarnation and the order of reincarnation. Don’t you know this as a peak supplemental grandmaster?” Lu Yun sent black hadal hellfire to the plotter. “Out with it, what is the withered wood?”
“I see, I see… its five branches suppress the five hells and light the five hellfires. No wonder you know about them…” murmured the plotter. “I don’t know what it is, only that it was once rooted in the center of the original Hongmeng and supported the entire realm. It vanished on the eve of the realm’s destruction. The Hongmeng wouldn’t have fallen if it’d remained!
“It reappeared when the Hongmeng shattered and shouldered the collective resentment from the original Hongmeng and that epoch.
“Heavenly thunder roared and black lightning smited its main body, extinguishing its vitality. It withered away into wood that was thunderstruck…”
etvolare's Thoughts
Two things, I wonder if someone did that meaning to do good, and second, what if the original Hongmeng had to break for a better future and blahblah?
