Upon hearing Lu Yun’s words, Ying Luo forcefully retracted her strength. It rebounded onto her and she spat out a mouthful of blood from the recoil.
Lu Yun grabbed her arm and dragged her over to him. The ice zombies were still lurching their way, looking to rip them to shreds. He didn’t dare come into contact with them and supported Ying Luo with one hand as he darted between the zombies, evading their pursuit.
By this point, Lu Yun was absolutely certain that he’d met these incredibly uncanny zombies before. Targets were assimilated into zombies if there was physical contact, and killing them would also turn one into a zombie.
He would never forget the aura they exuded.
Up in the air, the vengeful ghosts in the form of young girls also opened their eyes. Their eyeballs were stark white, as if ice balls had been inserted into their eye sockets. Brimming with a polar air, the frigid eyeballs stared fixedly at Lu Yun and Ying Luo as the four assembled themselves into a row.
The ice ball over their heads had vanished.
……
“They’re ghost kings!” Ying Luo suddenly exclaimed with deep despair. “We’re dead, there’s ghost kings here!”
“Ghost kings?” Two black beams shot out of Lu Yun’s eyes and he glared ferociously at the four young girls.
The four ghost kings trembled from what his glare entailed.
“Piss off!” Two pillars of black flame ignited in his eyes. He couldn’t afford continuing to hide his abilities, so hellfire slowly rose in his eyes.
Fear replaced every other emotion in the ghost kings’ eyes and they gently landed from the air. Sweeping a graceful curtsy at Lu Yun, they waved a hand and sealed the ice zombies away. And then, they disappeared as well.
Ying Luo gaped at Lu Yun.
“I saw two pillars of cold black fire in your eyes just now… What was that?” She was extremely conflicted. She knew that it wasn’t done to pry into someone’s privacy, but she was very curious.
Lu Yun glanced at her without responding. Ying Luo lowered her head sheepishly.
However, Lu Yun also relaxed inwardly. So Ying Luo didn’t recognize hellfire or the power from the Tome of Life and Death that he’d released just now.
The Tome of Life and Death, presence of hell, and hellfire… All of them can restrain the ghosts and creatures of the chaos.
He could finally truly be at ease now, but he still remained alert. While Ying Luo didn’t recognize hellfire, that didn’t mean others might not. Ying Luo was just second level mortal realm. While her breadth of knowledge and experience was extraordinary, most of it came from the records in the sacred palace. She’d never seen hellfire with her own eyes before.
So the source of those creepy zombies that can turn the living into themselves lies within the chaos.
Zombies counted as life forms in the chaos, a special type of existence. But in the worlds, they were abandoned by heaven and earth and forced to drift between life and death, forever tormented by both sides.
It now appeared that there was a reason for that. Zombies were chaos creatures to begin with, the type that could enter the worlds, but pay the price of endless torment.
……
“The monarch once mentioned,” Ying Luo brought up, “that if we met someone with cold black fire in the chaos, we were to help him without question if he met with danger or difficulty…”
“What?” Lu Yun started. “Help someone with cold black fire? Your monarch said that?”
There were thousands, if not tens of thousands types of cold black fire in the worlds and chaos. Just giving that descriptor was truly too vague. It wasn’t like Lu Yun would suddenly reveal everything about himself either, just because Ying Luo had said that. Subconsciously, he still viewed everyone from the nine sacred lands, six sacred palaces, and even the entire chaos as his enemy.
“Yes.” Ying Luo nodded and moroseness crept into her tone. “So I helped countless people with cold black fire along the way here.”
Lu Yun grinned, his skepticism vanishing. He didn’t know what the monarch of Creation Palace was thinking, but he could understand Ying Luo’s current mood.
“Let’s go. If my guess is correct, we shouldn’t meet with any danger after this.” Lu Yun didn’t fret over the conversation topic, but Ying Luo was looking at him with new eyes. The wanderer was now her… quest item?
In Ying Luo’s heart, this was most likely a tempering mission that the monarch had set for all of the palace disciples. They were to help those with cold black fire this time, so next time it’d be those with cold white fire.
Yes, that’s right. That’s absolutely right.
Such were Ying Luo’s thoughts, ones that Lu Yun had already picked up on.
……
The two walked forward for an indeterminate distance before a palace carved from ice appeared in front of them. The four ghost kings that’d left earlier were standing to the sides of its entrance, reverted back into ice sculpture form.
This was their true form, instantly frozen to death by glacial temperatures.
“A palace outer-coffin.” Lu Yun took a deep breath when he looked at the translucent palace of ice. Zhao Qing had once been buried in a palace outer-coffin.
All was deathly still around the palace. There wasn’t even a ghost to be found, much less anything alive. Since it was translucent, its inhabitant was visible with a quick glance.
A woman wearing snow-white robes lay on a resting platform in the center of the palace.
“A coffin exterior and outer-coffin interior… This woman is no ordinary person,” Lu Yun whispered.
Due to the obstruction of the ice palace, he couldn’t read any information about the woman. However, there were still clues to be gleaned from the layout here.
A coffin on the outside and an outer-coffin on the inside meant that an ordinary burial layout couldn’t hold its inhabitant. Her identity must be so stunning that if she’d been buried within an ordinary coffin, she would’ve immediately erupted out of it as a creature of immense resentment and violence.
“She was a sovereign,” Ying Luo suddenly murmured. “She was a sovereign of the mythological world, an amazing, wondrous titan of indescribable talent. What a pity that she died in the last battle.
“If my guess is right, this palace is carved out of the realm monster’s core,” she said slowly and pointed at the palace outer-coffin in front of them.
The core of a realm monster was so big that a small shard was enough for a palace like this.
There would be other shards in other areas.
