“A living soul, but one who can devour both yin energy and spirits born of that energy.” The human demon shook his head, bemused.
He could devour yin energy as well, but he was a zombie rather than a living being. He had no true form. The body he assumed, other than the Exalted and Nephrite Celestial Emperors, was created by the restriction against immortals.
Guarding it was his duty in the ancient tomb.
Ge Long had moved out of the zone of golden light emitted by the feng shui compass and entered the looming darkness of the land of yin. Incessant shrieks and screams sounded from the shadows as Lu Yun moved steadily forward with the luopan in hand.
“What is happening?” The human demon’s pale face stilled. “The spirits and creatures of the tomb are slipping free of my control.”
“That’s because the tomb owner wants you dead,” Lu Yun murmured without thinking. “They were sleeping at the heart of the tomb, but Scarlet Ape startled them awake when it invaded Dusk Province and attempted to gain control of the Dusk River.”
They had been in slumber. To tomb raiders, all those buried in ancient tombs were merely asleep, and one misstep was all it would take to wake them.
“They discover another being in their tomb after waking up… What do you think they’ll do? Destroy the outsider, of course!”
The human demon and Mo Yi listened to Lu Yun without a word.
“Finally, someone who’s mastered feng shui!” Excitement overtook Lu Yun’s face. He was very certain that the extinction layout was the tomb owner’s doing! This was the first person Lu Yun had encountered that understood feng shui since he’d arrived in the world of immortals.
“But strange, how very strange… The extinction layout here will not only destroy Senior Human Demon, but also the tomb owner themself. If they really knew feng shui, they wouldn’t have made such a basic mistake.”
He’d fully mapped out the structure of the layout that enveloped the entire tomb. If the layout was activated, everything within the tomb, or even bearing any connection to it, would cease to exist, the tomb owner included.
“What am I missing?” Lu Yun’s mind went into overdrive, analyzing the information presented to him. “Is it because of the restriction against immortals? Is that what they’re trying to destroy?”
He shook his head slightly. The immortals in the world wanted the restriction lifted so they could freely enter Dusk Province and lay hands on whatever they wanted. Without the restriction, they wouldn’t fear Lu Yun’s weapons of war.
“I’ll have my answers once I see the tomb’s owner.” Lu Yun inhaled deeply and moved along the path Ge Long had opened.
“Stop!” the human demon exclaimed suddenly, pulling Lu Yun back. “Ahead lies forbidden ground for cultivators. Those who haven’t ascended to immortality will be killed upon entry.”
The human demon’s expression turned extremely grave. They’d reached the heart of the tomb—a large clearing where the restriction against immortals was. On the other side of the clearing was where the tomb’s owner was buried.
“Ge Long!” Lu Yun called out.
“Don’t come any closer, milord… This old servant… is trapped.” Ge Long struggled to get his words out before something covered his mouth. There was a muffled grunt, then silence.
But Lu Yun knew that his old servant was still alive.
A dragon sleeps in mountains coiled,
Those deathly cliffs with mysteries roiled.
Danger shies if mountains hide,
Flowing water and wind do danger foil!
He silently chanted the Dragonsearch Invocation, prompting the indicators of the luopan to rotate at a mad pace. Its golden light surged again, ten times stronger than its previous activation. However, a strange force fought the luopan’s light. The indicators on all three layers of the compass kept circling in a frenzy.
“Transform!” Lu Yun snapped.
Crackle!
From the three-layered compass emerged the images of one potential, two principles, three essentials, four divisions, five elements, six directions, seven stars, eight trigrams, nine sectors, and ten orientations, encircling Lu Yun.
The three layers of the luopan symbolized the manifestations of all things within the universe.
The compass then broke apart and reassembled in midair. Three layers became nine, then sixty-four, then eighty-one… In the end, there emerged three hundred and sixty-five layers of the compass—a nod to a most significant number of the greater universe.
The three hundred and sixty-five layers of the luopan rotated relentlessly, projecting ten feng shui layouts around Lu Yun that constantly disassembled and reassembled themselves according to the compass’ gyrations, deducing all possibilities that were ahead of them.
The human demon and Mo Yi were flabbergasted.
Mo Yi was the greatest genius in the world of immortals, and a powerful formation grandmaster in her own right. Even Lu Yun had needed her help to complete the Great Formation of Heavenly Spirits and Earthly Demons. Meanwhile, the human demon had lived through countless aeons, from the era of human dao to the present. However… neither of them had ever seen anything like this.
Bathed in aureate light, Lu Yun hovered in the air with the multi-layered luopan on his palm.
Symbols representing the heavenly stems and earthly branches, yin and yang, the five elements, eight trigrams, and countless other symbols that Mo Yi and the human demon couldn’t understand flurried around Lu Yun, breaking apart and coming together in a mixture of bizarre layouts.
The golden light grew increasingly stronger, fighting the darkness on the other side.
“Dammit!” Lu Yun suddenly landed, and the golden light of the luopan—and the images it created—vanished. His face was pale and his forehead was covered in sweat. His clothes were drenched, too.
“What happened?” Mo Yi frowned. It seemed that something had attacked and interrupted Lu Yun. The attack was so foreign that even she hadn’t sensed the source.
Lu Yun allowed himself a moment to recover before taking a pill and letting out a sigh.
“My cultivation is too lacking to stop the thing in the dark.” He’d noticed something watching him from a hidden corner of the tomb previously; that was what’d interrupted his invocation the moment before.
