Lu Yun plopped on the ground and waved at Haidong Lin. “Come help me up, I’m having trouble standing.”
Haidong Lin walked over with a rueful chuckle; a strange noise suddenly sounded in the air.
Ker~ pfth!
Something wet shot out from an unknown direction and smacked both of them in the face.
“What was that?” Lu Yun rubbed his cheek.
“It’s a little sweet and a little fragrant… is it… honey?” Haidong Lin looked around blankly.
The void of the Abyssal Hell was colored a black-gray that was similar to its hellfire. The area around them was unusually deep; the duo could only make out the gray dirt beneath their feet and the dark depths of the space around them.
There was nothing else.
Honey?
Haidong Lin touched his cheek again, the trace of water was gone.
Lu Yun was still sitting on the ground and surreptitiously called upon hell dao, absorbing some of the Abyssal Hell’s energy. He stood up when some color returned to his face.
“Where is the true world of order?” Haidong Lin recomposed himself.
“Not in the innermost depths of this hell,” Lu Yun shook his head. “The core essence of this Abyssal Hell is a layout and some changes have occurred in it. Although it maintains the complete form of an Abyssal Hell, it’s changed on a fundamental basis.”
The Abyssal Hell contained bodies. When something died, their bodies were conducted to the Abyssal Hell and held there. In other words, there would be no zombies roaming around the planes of existence if all was right with this hell. Every single dead body would be safely stored away. The Abyssal Hell seemed to exist to prevent the appearance of entities like zombies, and to keep them inside.
But now, zombies could be found in all the realms and were even a life form in the fourth realm. At the same time, they were much more violent and ruthless than regular life forms. This was a clear indication that something had happened to the nature of the Abyssal Hell and dead bodies were no longer in its safekeeping.
Of one thing Lu Yun was certain of, and that was the hell they were in was the very first Abyssal Hell that the god of Mount Tai had once controlled!
“If the Abyssal Hell has changed, what of the other hells? Why did the god of Mount Tai die, and why were the five Karmic Trees destroyed? What is the relationship between the Karmic Tree and the divine tree?” Lu Yun murmured to himself.
Haidong Lin didn’t have anything to offer. The divine tree had been a perpetual existence since time immemorial. Its roots were planted in the void before the age of the original Hongmeng came to be.
“I’d once thought that the five Karmic Trees and hell existed so someone could revive the tree god. It looks like that’s not the case,” Lu Yun shook his head again. This particular Abyssal Hell was older than the original Hongmeng; its origins could be traced to an era prior to the start of the loops.
That had been the limits of his knowledge, once upon a time. But as his cultivation advanced and his breadth of vision developed, staggering changes occurred in his comprehension.
“Someone’s changed the layout of this particular Abyssal Hell so that it’s turned into one of nurturing a world,” Lu Yun sighed as he ran his eyes over their surroundings. “There should be an extremely terrifying entity buried here as well, turning the hell into a tomb. Only a tomb can give rise to something new.
“The extremity of death is life.”
Haidong Lin didn’t fully understand Lu Yun’s words. The latter was thinking of the great tomb beneath Myriad Formation Summit in Dusk Province of the world of immortals—it’d contained a resurrection layout.
The death qi required to nurture a world was greater than one to resurrect a living being. Ordinary tombs and tomb owners could not satisfy that condition. Therefore, the Abyssal Hell was the most optimal choice. It contained innumerable bodies of dead beings to begin with and possessed the densest accumulation of death qi out of the five hells. With it modified into a layout of burial and an entity great beyond imagination buried here, its death qi was unparalleled.
The tomb owner’s death qi combined with the tomb of the Abyssal Hell could certainly give rise to a world of sequence. This world wouldn’t be an objective one—it was a subjective one made possible by living beings.
“You… figured that much out from a single glance?” Haidong Lin’s jaw dropped as he listened to Lu Yun’s murmuring.
“I cultivate the six paths of hell dao and am skilled in the Dragonquake Scripture. Given those two conditions, it’s impossible for this kind of layout to escape my eyes.” Lu Yun nodded. “This tomb follows the layout of a yin tomb. A yin tomb… yang tomb… We’re currently in the yin tomb, so we see the original form of the Abyssal Hell. We’re not the only ones here, but the original and Sea Emperors should be in the yang tomb.
“The world of sequence should be where the two tombs intersect, but how do we make it to the yang tomb?”
Since Haidong Lin understood neither feng shui nor the Dragonquake Scripture, he couldn’t grasp the difference between the two tombs.
“Actually, there’s no need to go to the yang tomb, we can just go to the world of sequence.” Gray abyssal hellfire flared to life on Lu Yun’s body and crept over to include Haidong Lin.
For anyone else, the yin tomb would be a true place of death. A place where even the emperor of the original Hongmeng didn’t dare tread was as safe as blinking to Lu Yun. The original Abyssal Hell was contained here and he was afraid of none of it.
On the contrary, the yang tomb seemed to be more dangerous. Lu Yun didn’t fear the dead, it was the living that posed more of a threat. There were likely more than just fourth realm denizens in the yang tomb; it was very possible that entities outside the loop of reincarnation were present. The entrance to the Abyssal Hell had been covered by a massive boundary to prevent fourth realm beings from entering—not even the Curse King could enter.
The two vanished in a streak of light.
……
“ROAR!!” The gray earth split open as a large hand covered with green fur reached out, swiping at the void.
Shocked, Haidong Lin hastily adjusted his orientation and punched back at it. A mushroom cloud rose from the ground when the two forces met and a zombie covered with green fur crawled up from below. It spewed corpse water from its mouth and its scarlet eyes stared balefully at the duo covered by hellfire.
Lu Yun jumped with surprise as well, he hadn’t expected a zombie to suddenly jump out.
“Sea Lord Mayfly!” Haidong Lin cried out with sorrow when he took a good look. This was one of his fellow lords under the Sea Emperor’s banner!
