The Path of Ingress was here, but Lu Yun’s branch had given him no indication of it at all.
The Scaled-Dragon King and Beigong Yu sprinted upon the path, evidently in quite a predicament. Many other immortals were fleeing madly alongside them.
“Aaah!”
“Help!”
“Noooooo…”
A wave of anguished shrieks rose and fell upon the treasure.
Lu Yun opened his Spectral Eye just in time to see immortals being ripped apart left and right.
“Zombies!” His face colored. “Corpse divines!”
It’d been this tomb that’d turned Kui into a corpse divine. A single wisp of lingering obsession had enabled it to keep all of the abilities it’d had in life. If even Kui had succumbed, none of the other zombies would be spared.
“These corpse divines are all in uniform armor!” Standing at the end of the Path of Ingress, Lu Yun peered at the tide of corpse divines from afar.
Though their armor was dented and mottled with rust, they were clearly relics of the primordial immortal court. The damaged weapons they wielded were similarly consistent. Moreover, they were all peerless immortals.
However, these peerless immortal corpse divines cut down their living peers with indescribable ease. They didn’t even fear some of the dao immortals, either. The Scaled-Dragon King and Beigong Yu barely managed to get through the crowd with their combined strength.
“The corpse divines are the ancient primordial court’s heavenly army!” Lu Yun drew a sharp breath. “Those interred out of loyalty included more than the three hundred and sixty-five star divinities, or Fengbo and Yushi. Even the primordial heavenly army was buried alive for the Monster Celestial Master!
“If Kui and these heavenly soldiers were transformed into corpse divines, what about Fengbo and Yushi? And the Monster Celestial Master, is he dead or alive?” The young man fixed his eyes upon the ivory path; the gap between the corpse divines and the fleeing immortals was rapidly decreasing.
“Run, milord!” Beigong Yu and the Scaled-Dragon King scrunched up their faces in great anxiety when they saw Lu Yun.
“The corpse divines are terrifying! An eight-fruit Ling arcane dao immortal also fell under their coordinated assault,” the Scaled-Dragon King babbled out.
“The direction ahead leads only to death,” Lu Yun replied somberly.
The end of the ancient tomb lay in front of them. The harried immortals would soon be backed into a corner.
“Come!” he called out suddenly. The Divine Glory appeared in midair, lighting up the sky with its weapons of war.
“That’s Lu Yun’s ship! We’re saved!” The panicked immortals charged toward their new beacon of hope with a burst of speed.
In the ancient skydragon tomb, Lu Yun had saved a number of immortals from Scarlet Ape with his ship. Hopeful that he would do so again, goodwill streamed to him through the air. The Sal Tree of Life and Death inside him grew lusher and more vigorous, slowly forming a karmic fruit on its branches. When enough goodwill condensed into virtuous merit, a fruit eventually formed.
Lu Yun’s appearance at the end of the immortals’ rope gave them a new lease on life. Even the most malicious and villainous among them would feel immense gratitude; it was an instinctive reaction.
However, he didn’t fire the weapons immediately as many immortals were locked in melee with the corpse divines. Only eighteen war treasures remained upon the Divine Glory, in any case, but there were more than a million corpse divines. It would be difficult to repel them all.
What he could do was create a barrier with the war treasures’ combined power. Encompassing a kilometer and a half around the ship, it was a new invention from him, Feinie, and Huangqing. Because the barrier was still in an experimental phase, he couldn’t guarantee just how well it would hold, but it was at least something.
A number of immortals rushed into the defensive barrier of the Divine Glory.
“Sir Lu Yun…” Some of them came to the base of the ship, looking hesitantly up at him.
“Recover as much of your strength as you can. I don’t know how long this’ll last.” Standing at the bow, Lu Yun glanced at the teeming flood of corpse divines with considerable worry.
He converted as many of the immortal crystals he carried as he could into immortal qi, then injected it into the Yin Yang Formation Orb. It cost too much energy to activate the orb at its full power; his personal qi was a drop in the bucket compared to even the maintenance cost.
The corpse divines were already at the gates and rammed the barrier with heavy thumps. The barrier created by the Divine Glory would permit the living to pass, but not the dead.
“Don’t try to run off, it’s a dead end behind us,” Lu Yun remarked coolly to a few of the more furtive immortals peering behind the fortress ship.
“Ah, yes!” The statement caused the jittery immortals to change color several times before taking out pills and crystals to heal and recharge. They had no reason to doubt Lu Yun. If there was a way out, would he still be here?
The Scaled-Dragon King and Beigong Yu pelted in, too. They looked at their master with great elation. They’d thought they were entirely dead, but Lu Yun’s reunification of the yin and yang tombs had resurrected them.
“Sect Head!” a loud cry sounded from further away as Situ Zong and the rest of Star Demons came careening in, protected by the shield of the Pelagic Orb. “You should leave as soon as you can, Sect Head! There’s a big one coming!” The old man sounded quite apprehensive about what he had seen.
The corpse divines pounding against the barrier suddenly came to a complete halt, then formed neat phalanxes and stood at silent attention.
“What remarkable discipline!” Admiration flashed across Lu Yun’s face.
The primordial immortal court was far stronger than the modern one. Its heavenly armies were composed of golden, arcane, and peerless immortals. Even after their death and transformation into corpse divines, they retained their impeccable military training.
A bone dragon more than three hundred meters long slowly approached from further down the path with a slender figure standing upon its gigantic head—another corpse divine. She was dressed in armor that shone as brightly as her flowing silver tresses and cut an immensely dashing figure.
Lu Yun paled as soon as he saw her face.
“Yuchi Hanxing?!” The corpse divine upon the bone dragon looked identical to the Dusk Phalanx commander, Yuchi Hanxing. The only difference was the livor mortis upon her skin.
Right now, Yuchi Hanxing was garrisoned at Sword Lake in the south of Dusk Province alongside her million soldiers. She couldn’t possibly be here, nor would she be a corpse divine.
Moreover, she’d only recently reached golden immortal. This divine, on the other hand, had reached dao realm! A primordial dao immortal turned corpse divine!
“Attack!” The corpse divine that resembled Yuchi Hanxing produced a pike and uttered a hoarse shriek.
“Attack!” Half a million corpse divine soldiers answered her call. Their formations swiftly merged into a much larger wedge and hurtled toward the barrier.
Boom!
The translucent wall rippled at the impact, and even the Divine Glory trembled.
“Thank heavens that the primordial court didn’t have military formations!” Lu Yun breathed a sigh of relief.
Military formations were a distinctly modern invention. Just like weapons of war, the Primordial Era didn’t know of such things. If the hundreds of thousands of corpse divines formed a military formation, the Divine Glory’s barrier would be instantly pierced through.
Nevertheless, the soldiers were tough contenders indeed. The barrier quivered violently under their successive collisions.
By now, five thousand immortals had managed to retreat to safety. Those who weren’t here by now had either avoided the corpse divines altogether, or perished beneath their heels.
Each individual impact against the barrier weakened it the slightest bit, sending collective shudders through the immortals inside. Even arcane dao immortals looked like they were at their wits’ end. After all, the Ling eight-fruit arcane dao immortal had died right before their eyes.
“Milord!” Beigong Yu and the Scaled-Dragon King stepped forward and looked at Lu Yun with postures of eager confidence. “We request to take to the field!”
The immortals around them widened their eyes in disbelief. For a brief moment, all eyes were upon them.
“Traitors of the North Sea,” a giant octopus muttered.
Most monster immortals who used their true forms belonged to the North Sea’s Levitating Island, and a large majority there came from the North Sea monster court. These in particular hated their former colleagues to the bone.
Hum…
A white light appeared inside the barrier and flung the octopus outside via a tremendous force, whereupon the mass of corpse divines mobbed it.
Pop!
A bloody mist was all that was left of the hulking monster spirit after mere seconds under the assault of the corpse divines. The barrier shrank slightly, but the fading radiance upon it grew brighter.
