A group of void-ascended fur seals… no, they couldn’t be called void-ascended immortals, but connate immortals. They were born into immortality and grew up under the influence of a complete immortal dao. As such, they were stronger than even Zhu Yan or Yue Longsha.
But to Lu Yun, they were nothing more than a group of wild beasts. Yes, their strength was nothing to sniff at, and their cultivation was in the immortal realm, but they knew very little of immortal methods.
They didn’t even know how to fly.
“Hahaha!” Ge Yun stood on the crest of a wave and threw its head back with hearty laughter. “Lu Yun, I’m going to eat you, since you dared hurt me! Children, capture this lowly human!”
“Augh woorgh aaaargh!” The seals frothed at the mouth like rabid beasts and set foot on the waves, throwing themselves at Lu Yun.
For its part, Ge Yun stayed away from the human. Losing more than fifty kilograms of flesh from a single sword stroke had truly spooked it. Had his sword penetrated a little deeper, the youth might truly have injured its essence.
Fur seals were nothing more than ordinary beasts back in the primordial times. Of course, since immortal dao had been complete back then and woven into the fabric of the world itself, even the most common animal had been an immortal beast in that era.
When the world of immortals had fragmented, the fur seals were, by chance, swept into a larger shard retaining a complete immortal dao. In fact, the environment inside was entirely identical to that of the ancient primordial world.
So the race had continued on in the same way as they ever had, and newborn calves came into the world as true immortals. Conversely, the tribe had mastered very few cultivation methods, so those who reached dao immortal realm were one in a million.
Someone with Ge Yun’s cultivation was an extraordinary figure among its kin. Nevertheless, it’d been scared witless by Lu Yun’s earlier attack, so it chose to unleash the fur seals inside the water jar—its descendants—and use them as cannon fodder.
Though ordinary fur seals couldn’t transform into other species, they still possessed a complete immortal dao and mighty physical strength, so even someone like Lu Yun felt threatened by the combined assault of several hundred of these beasts.
“Damn it!” He paled when he noticed several fur seals rushing toward the Arcane Yin Tree, only to be instantly churned into bloody mist by the black halo of light emanating from the tree and their souls devoured.
“Vermin… scram!!” In a fit of anger, he gestured with his hand and summoned the last of his cannons to his side.
Boom!
The cannon fired a blast worth a full billion immortal crystals, evaporating seawater and fur seals alike. The Lake of Yin trembled, and the fissures on the lakebed widened substantially, draining the boundless sea water underground.
In return, after being swallowed entirely by the Arcane Yin Tree, yin energy once again came gushing out.
“What is this, what in the heavens is this thing!!!” Mouth agape, Ge Yun looked in horror at Lu Yun’s weapon of war. “Mom said that immortals these days are useless trash, and that all of the war treasures have been ruined… So what in the heavens is this thing that you brought out?!”
As it yelped, it subconsciously sank downward in search of seawater to hide itself in. However, the water it immersed itself in wasn’t quite seawater anymore. Corrupted by dense yin energy, it was now water of extreme yin.
As a result, Ge Yun howled with pain the moment it entered the water, its immensely rotund body withering at a speed visible to the naked eye. Flesh, essence, soul, and nascent spirit were all swallowed by a strange force.
Suddenly pale, Lu Yun abruptly whirled around. On the Arcane Yin Tree, the Arcane Yin Fruit was as red as fire and bounced on the branches like a dancing flame.
His blood ran cold. The fruit had matured, but the tree hadn’t withered!
What he’d been most afraid of had occurred. An eye had appeared on the fiery Arcane Yin Fruit, which now closely resembled a fiery-red eyeball. For its part, the diminutive tree had become a thing of shadow.
“Waaaaaargh!” Without warning, a scarlet mouth grew on the tree’s trunk and issued an ear-splitting shriek. Every living creature around the lake, other than Lu Yun, was blown to pieces by the sound ripples.
Be they immortals or fur seals, their blood essence and souls all landed inside the tree’s mouth. Frozen stiff, Lu Yun didn’t dare twitch a single muscle.
The Arcane Yin Fruit’s enormous eyeball stared fixedly at him, looking him up and down with a gaze that was ghostly, icy, and evil all at once.
“Hahahaha!” a deafening laugh came from the tree as it turned into a shadowy blur and disappeared from sight.
Thump!
Lu Yun plummeted into the Lake of Yin and fought to regain his breath.
“It left me alive on purpose. That shriek was more than enough to shatter me as well!” His entire body felt numb, as if he’d plunged into an icy hole. It took a long moment for the sensation to fade.
“The Arcane Yin Tree is definitely stronger than the two scarlet apes! Even the two empress soul fragments might not be its match! Too bad…” Lu Yun smiled wryly. “A treasure of this magnitude isn’t something I can touch right now. Even if I obtained the fruit, I wouldn’t be able to refine it.
“…hmm?” He suddenly froze. A tiny dot of red light was glowing from the tree’s previous position. Upon closer inspection, it was a small fruit slowly surfacing from the mass of yin energy.
“This is…” Lu Yun’s eyes widened. “An Arcane Yin Fruit!”
A second one! And this one too was already mature.
He stood up and carefully moved closer. An ice cold aura spread from the fruit the moment he grabbed it and entered his body. He shook as his soul trembled with bliss.
“This fruit really has matured not long ago!” He saw minor debris on the ground, leftovers from a dead Arcane Yin Tree. “Er… if I have the fruit in my hand… what’s with the other tree that ran away just now?”
Nothing about recent events made sense.
He was certain that the fruit he held was the one he’d originally glimpsed. Through the Spectral Eye, he could see the same exact grain pattern and aura upon it.
He looked up, his gaze blank with incomprehension. All of the immortals in the vicinity were dead, and Ge Yun’s water jar drifted aimlessly in the lake of yin energy.
“Sure enough, this celestial master tomb is very bizarre and full of dangers. Not even the soul of a primordial empress dares do whatever she wants.” He inhaled sharply, then beckoned with his hand and tried summoning the big water jar.
“What the…” He felt his energy being drained, but it didn’t elicit any reaction from the jar. “It must be similar to the World Chests!”
Heart pounding, he hastily forced away the surrounding yin energy and made his way to the jet-black water jar. Roughly seven meters tall and three meters wide, it was as dark as the night and decorated with simple engravings.
He tried imbuing his energy into the jar, but found that the origin source inside it appeared infinite, as if it was an entire world. In addition, he could sense pure demonic energy pervading the depths of the jar and nearly assimilating his energy.
“Ge!” He saw the name ‘Ge’ etched in unadorned letters on the other side of the jar.
