The two-headed zombie was dead; there were no further ripples of life from the phoenix and dragon heads.
Lu Yun didn’t spare the other immortals a glance. With a wave of his hand, a white path manifested before him and punched a hole through space, spanning across the tomb to reach the ghost tree, where Qing Han waited.
The Ingress Path.
The Nephrite treasure was the only thing capable of transcending space and connecting the two places.
Qing Han was currently suppressing an endless swarm of ghosts and evils at the tree with the luopan. The two-headed zombie may have fallen, but other unearthly creatures, including the ghost tree, had grown only fiercer.
Ghost Dragon’s face was so pale that it was translucent. A vast water realm had appeared by his side, within which a ghastly white ghost face was slowly stirring to life.
“Take this.” Lu Yun readied himself to throw the zombie’s body to them with a wave of his hand.
“Wait!” Ghost Dragon shouted urgently. “Cut off its phoenix head and throw just that to us. Don’t let its body shift to this place!”
After a startled blink, Lu Yun dropped the zombie and slashed at the phoenix head with a burst of sword energy from the Sugato Sword.
Clang!
Sparks flew as the sword connected the phoenix head’s neck, but it failed to decapitate its target.
“Hurry up!” Ghost Dragon urged when he saw Lu Yun fail. “Or it’ll come back to life again!”
Lu Yun had noticed the slight wave of energy rising from the dead zombie. If it resurrected, his layout of heaven and earth wouldn’t be able to keep it down again.
Swoosh!
Fey purple light flashed in Lu Yun’s hand. Violetgrave!
The moment Violetgrave was summoned, Lu Yun felt a slight tremor pass through both the phoenix nest and the dragon nest on the other side of the Ingress Path.
Violet sword energy slashed at the phoenix head, and, with a thud, black blood geysered out of the cut surface. Violetgrave had sliced through the zombie that had stumped the Sugato Sword like a hot knife through butter.
“Violetgrave….” Ghost Dragon stared at the sword with a trace of fear.
He hadn’t ever seen or even heard about the sword, but somehow, the name came unbidden to him. Something about the ninth-rank sword radiating a strange violet light evoked an instinctual fear in him.
“Take it!” Lu Yun kicked the head to the other side of the Ingress Path. Then, the treasure slowly retreated.
“I’ll return once I find the Skydragon Pearl and the Skyphoenix Pearl. Be careful, don’t pull any punches if dangers arise, and… keep an eye on Ghost Dragon.” A little spark of black flame carried Lu Yun’s message to Qing Han’s mind. He hadn’t transmitted directly to his friend since Ghost Dragon had already shown he could intercept transmissions.
Qing Han nodded and looked meaningfully at Lu Yun.
……
The immortals that’d already been present in the altar gaped at Lu Yun and the hundred and eight peerless immortals guarding him. What exactly was going on here?
They’d stumbled into the phoenix nest by accident and discovered the graveyard here. Since then, they’d been raiding the burial pits and handful of ancient tombs in a nonstop frenzy. As they’d been on the Fire Altar, they were cut off from the outside world by its power. None of them had any idea what’d happened in the dragon tomb.
“What the hell are you up to, Lu Yun?” An immortal in black robe with a fine sword on his back scattered the group of peerless immortals with a great swell of power. It was Canghai Xi, an eight-fruit arcane dao immortal from the Dark North Sword Sect and the father of Canghai Chengfeng and Canghai Chengkong.
Rather than fall under the North Sea Court’s rule, the sect was one of the legs in the triumvirate ruling over the North Sea. They’d formed a united front to exert authority over the vast sea, or the North Sea would’ve long been invaded by other factions.
An enemy of the North Sea court was an enemy of the Dark North Sword Sect and Ingress Island.
Canghai Chengkong gave Lu Yun a pleading look, nervous that his father was about to make a move against Lu Yun.
“What can a mere cultivator like me do? There’s opportunities and treasures left by ancient immortals everywhere here. Don’t you think you’re being paranoid in going after me, a cultivator, rather than looking for treasure?”
That gave the approaching immortals pause. Not everyone here saw him as an enemy. In fact, most only gave him a cursory glance before returning to what they were doing.
Hum.
From the northern part of the void came a phoenix cry while crimson light surged and reached for the dome. A powerful treasure had been unearthed!
Canghai Xi stopped in hesitation. In the end, he rushed toward the red light. Judging from the energy the light emitted, the treasure must be at least connate grade! Many elites were already facing off over it.
“What are you still dithering around for?” Lu Yun looked at the peerless immortals around him. “Go find yourselves some treasures!”
The peerless immortals blinked, cupped their hands at him, and scattered.
With the power of the altar dissipating, he could finally get a good look at the phoenix nest. It was a graveyard, but also a battleground.
Here rested the elites of the phoenix clan, serving a similar role as the burial chambers in the dragon nest. However, the nest itself had later become a battlefield for many an epic clash. Lu Yun activated his Spectral Eye and scanned dense clusters of information about the dead. What caught him off guard was that there were humans, monster spirits, demons, and many other strange races he’d never heard about.
More importantly, their death dated back to vastly different eras. Some were from millions of years ago, while some were from hundreds of thousands of years ago. There were even deaths from ten thousand years ago.
Are the dragon and phoenix nest not closed off? Is there another exit? Curiosity struck Lu Yun.
That can wait, though. The nine-headed phoenix said the Skydragon Pearl and Skyphoenix Pearl can be found at the intersection of the two tombs. He quirked his brows bemusedly.
The intersection referred not to where the two tombs physically met, but where the energy radiating from the two tombs met, and created a resulting world. The place he’d found the two-headed zombie was his destination.
However, it’d vanished into thin air the moment he killed the zombie. It wouldn’t be easy for him to locate it again.
“Ah, wait… Xiaoxiao should be able to find it!” Lu Yun’s eyes lit up.
“Hmmm,” a strange, lazy voice burrowed into his ear before he could summon Su Xiaoxiao.
