The land and skies slowly returned to peace. Cut off from their source, the flood of scarlet yin spirits was entirely extinguished.
In the firmament, the enormous graph of yin and yang rotated slowly. Almost everyone believed that the crack had been sealed shut again. When they saw that Lu Yun really did intend to prepare Qing Long and Feng Xiao for burial in stone sarcophagi, two arcane dao immortals of their clans couldn’t help but leap into action.
Of course, while they looked like they were preventing Lu Yun from burying two of their kin alive, their goal was very apparent: the Embittered Bamboo!
Face tinged with a black pallor, a dark, poisonous miasma wreathed Qing Han’s body. From their positions in the Scroll of Shepherding Immortals, the Azure Dragon King and Empress Myrtlestar poured forth their efforts into keeping the poison under control.
“Stop them!” Lu Yun roared, but no one moved a muscle.
Wayfarer was fully preoccupied at the moment, still embroiled in the finer details of the layout of burying immortals. If he struck out in defense of the two youths, flaws would appear in the layout and invalidate all of their previous efforts.
Up in the sky, the unsteady yin-yang graph began to tremble.
Arcane dao immortal strength was simply too overwhelming, while Lu Yun’s cultivation was too weak—the yin-yang layout he’d set up was similarly constrained by his capabilities. Adding to that its incomplete status, it meant he was unable to fully deploy the power of the land.
As the two arcane dao immortals came bearing down on him, their explosions of energy shook the yin-yang graph greatly. Repercussions were immediate—the previously obstructed scarlet yin spirit tide came flooding out again.
“What? No!” Numerous dao immortals struck battle stances again, attempting to stem the tide.
“Lu Yun, you’re taking public revenge for a private slight!” hectored the Qing dao immortal. However, he didn’t halt his actions. After clearing the space around him, he was less than three hundred meters away from Qing Han—spitting distance for arcane dao immortals. Insatiable greed glinted out of his eyes.
“Qing Han, you little bastard, it was your great fortune to survive the poison from back in the day. Let’s see who can save you today, hahahahaha!!”
This Qing dao immortal had plucked eight arcane dao fruits and was one of the peak experts of the world. Though he appeared benevolent and refined, he was the mastermind behind some of the Qings attempting to kill Qing Han with rimesnake poison. The poison spirit root within her was her greatest souvenir from that attempt.
Immortal sword scintillating with piercingly cold light, he closed the distance to Qing Han like he was stalking prey. The Feng dao immortal had arrived as well, and stood in a marvelous spot that just so happened to block all of the immortals behind them.
They’d reached an agreement in the second it’d taken them to flash to the youths. The Feng and Qing Clans would subdue the connate spirit root together, marking the formal alliance of the two clans with joint possession of the Embittered Bamboo.
Both of them were eight-fruit arcane dao immortals, and heavyweights that stood at the top of the world. Their statuses within their clans were second only to their forefathers, so they absolutely had the right to make decisions on their own. Their agreement today was the precursor to official partnership between the two clans.
“Qing Yuezhe, Feng Wuxian, stop! Both of you, stop!” Zhao Changkong’s uncle called out urgently when he took stock of the situation. However, he too couldn’t spare further effort from the new siege of scarlet yin monsters surrounding him. “Lu Yun and Qing Han really are presiding over the formation. If any flaws develop within it, that will be the prelude to great disaster!”
“Heh heh heh, that whelp Lu Yun is greedy and cruel like a wolf with a savage heart. Don’t you see that he’s purposefully opening a portion of the formation to release the spirits? This is how he plans to hold the imperial court hostage,” chuckled the confident Feng Wuxian. “Don’t worry, this seat is a formation grandmaster as well. After killing Lu Yun and Qing Han, I can naturally take control of this formation and seal off this place completely!”
He performed a pincer movement with Qing Yuzhe, gradually closing off the avenues of escape for Lu Yun, Qing Han, and Wayfarer. The remaining Feng and Qing dao immortals gathered ‘round as well, but no one else dared move.
They’d discovered that whenever they deployed their own energy, the resulting ripples in the qi of the land shook the yin-yang graph and spewed forth another rush of yin spirits.
Many had already retreated thousands of kilometers back, so they could do nothing about the alliance forming right before their eyes. Even if some of them coveted the Embittered Bamboo as well, they didn’t dare approach. Where the connate spirit root was would be a spot of unmitigated death if there was another explosion of yin spirits.
However, the two clans cared not about this at all. Just as Feng Wuxian had said, he was a formation grandmaster, so he could absolutely take over from Lu Yun and seal away the tomb.
……
“Die!” No longer hesitating, Qing Wuxian brought his sword down on Qing Han. Frosty light carved a sinister curve through the air, slicing down on the youth’s head. If this stroke connected, Qing Han would be cleaved in half.
“Scram!”
Boom!
The ground trembled as an earthen-vein-evolved dragon burst forth, shattering the ground it’d come from.
Rumble!!
The layout that Wayfarer had painstakingly set up broke apart amidst loud cacophony. A mouthful of fresh blood followed as the ancient expert wilted visibly. The backlash of nature’s forces wasn’t something that a personage at his level could endure, either.
Beneath the earth, the gradually closing crack split open once again, allowing entrance to even larger numbers of scarlet yin spirits from the tomb. Numbers newly refreshed, they barreled straight into the yin-yang graph in the air.
“How dare you destroy the formation, Lu Yun! Do you want to be condemned as a sinner for the ages?!” Feng Wuxian roared when he saw the formation suddenly break apart, rudely shaken out of his engrossment in how to gain control of it.
Lu Yun ignored him, watching the yin-yang graph revert back to the four divisions, eight trigrams, and finally sixty-four earthen dragons.
……
Wham!!
The ancient tomb exploded open and cratered into a deep abyss that yawned open fifty kilometers across. Countless black, scarlet, and even purple spirits charged out of it.
Up in the air, Qin Sheng and Art Saint looked on in dismay and horror. Due to the vibrations of the earthen veins after the two dao immortals intervened, the ruins of the ancient tomb had been entirely shattered to pieces. The crack that it’d been sealing shut was now a large door that’d been flung wide open.
In the span of a breath, all of Azure’s cities—save for her capital—were toppled, and hundreds of millions of lives torn apart and devoured.
“Lu Yun… you are humanity’s sinner for the ages!!” howled Feng Wuxian. He, too, was surrounded by a dense tide of yin spirits, and casualties instantly claimed more than half of the Feng and Qing immortals.
Thankfully, the sixty-four earthen dragons dove down from the skies at just that time, bringing with them tremendous power from the land to protect the local vicinity and sparing the rest from further harm.
“Lu Yun, you demon!!”
“Shut UP!” Qing Han’s eyes shot open when she heard the clans continue assigning blame to Lu Yun. Her eyes and lips were a blackish-green and her presence had expanded to the level of an arcane dao immortal. Most curious was the energy within her body—it’d morphed into a peculiar poison and was circulating through her body, spirit, and soul.
“Don’t kill them!” Anguish shone in Lu Yun’s eyes when he weakly turned his head at Qing Han. She’d made use of her final option and become one with the poison. The disguised girl was only one step away from becoming a poison fiend, thus losing herself like the monster in Lü Guhong’s Wheel of Poison.
“That crack broke open because of the Qings and Fengs. If we want to seal it, we need people of their bloodline!” Lu Yun waved a hand, surrounding himself and Qing Han with the sixty-four dragons through aid of the Embittered Bamboo.
“You two up in the sky!” Hellfire exploded from Lu Yun and soared through the clouds, breaking through the surge of endless yin spirits and carrying his voice out. “This location has a great karmic relationship with the Fengs and Qings. It can’t be sealed without their bloodlines. Please go to Xiankan and fetch their forefathers, then select thirty-six dao immortals and three hundred sixty-five peerless immortals as well. The stronger the better!”
Amplified by hellfire, Lu Yun’s voice traveled all throughout Azure Province.
Qing Yuezhe and Feng Wuxian shuddered when they heard the request, color draining from their faces. Everyone had noticed that there were two powerhouses up in the skies; though they hadn’t made a move, ever-present zither melodies continuously refreshed the Azure defenders’ stamina and kept them at peak condition.
Lu Yun wanted those two heavyweights to capture the Qing and Feng forefathers from Xiankan?
“NO!!” Qing Yuezhen screamed with despair. “Everything that happened here is because of Lu Yun, we should be taking his blood kin instead!”
Feng Wuxian had already struck against Lu Yun, but the boy was protected by sixty-four earthen dragons at the moment. The power of the land was at his beck and call, so not even someone like the Feng dao immortal could break through the defenses of the veins.
Wielded by Qing Han, the Embittered Bamboo fully unleashed its powers and blessed Lu Yun with them.
The youth’s condition was currently invincible.
Of course, it was also because they were where they were. With the destruction of the layout to bury immortals and scattering of the yin-yang graph, their strength fell under the luopan’s jurisdiction and was directed to Lu Yun.
This condition couldn’t be maintained for long before it, too, dispersed, but it was more than enough to handle the two clans. With a casual flip of his hand, he suppressed the remaining Qing and Feng immortals around him and shoved them all into stone sarcophagi.
……
“This is an opening to the world of immortals, and a place sanctified by the will of immortal dao and the world. The Fengs and Qings really were looking to die when they interrupted Lu Yun and Qing Han just now, and they dragged the rest of their clans down with them,” Qin Sheng sighed. “This is a crime against the heavens and karma that will be inflicted upon their bloodlines. If we don’t do as Lu Yun says, the Qings might be fine enough in the future, but the Fengs will cease to exist in less than a hundred years.
“Alright then, let’s go to Xiankan.” Qin Sheng clapped the Art Saint’s shoulder and the two vanished together. However, his words echoed long after his disappearance, intertwining with the sounds of zither music.
