Hazy light blossomed as a flamboyantly dressed young man with green hair rolled out from the petals of the Emperor Sunflower.
“Mercy, oh eminent one! Please spare this lowly one! This little monster spirit didn’t know that the heir of Celestial Master Zhang had come. Please be lenient of this humble one’s ignorance!” The young man fell to his knees the second he showed himself and smacked his head repeatedly into the ground, sobbing for mercy all the while.
Lu Yun and the youth in green from the Green Firmament gaped at the sight.
The true form of the young man in front of them was an enormous water snake, and an incomparably dominant one at that. Fangs glinting dangerously, his nascent spirit poison had reached preposterous heights.
If it hadn’t been for Lu Yun letting loose with the three immortal fires, allowing them free rein with enough momentum to destroy the entire world, they wouldn’t have been able to withstand the tremendous poison this monster spirit spewed.
“The heir of Celestial Master Zhang?” Lu Yun’s projection of Zhurong looked down his nose at the big snake. “Did the celestial master arrange for you to be here?”
“Yes, Celestial Master Zhang had me stay here to guard the immortal emperor’s coffin.” The green-haired youth almost tripped over his tongue in his haste to answer. “Before he left, he said that if someone comes using the Emerald Mistfire, Lucent Voidfire, and Daevic Skyfire at the same time, then that person is his heir and has the right to inherit the Emperor Sunflower!”
Lu Yun coolly assessed the snake while the six paths of his nascent spirit communicated with the Karmic Tree. Only fear and unease exuded from the snake when he faced Lu Yun; there were no other undertones.
However, that wasn’t enough to make Lu Yun relax his guard.
“The celestial master went missing before the great war… How did you evade it and manage to survive until now?” The Spectral Eye clearly outlined to Lu Yun that the water snake’s true cultivation level was at the ingress realm. This was a king of the Primordial Era, not a contemporary powerhouse who’d reached the ingress realm under the current immortal dao!
“In response to the great master, this humble one doesn’t live beneath the immortal dao. I died when the immortal dao was being created. Celestial Master Zhang came here three months ago and revived me, bestowing upon me the knowledge of how to walk the immortal dao as well. He commanded me to guard the Emperor Sunflower and wait for his successor.”
“What??” Lu Yun and the green-clad youth looked at each other. “Died when the immortal dao was being created?”
“Impossible!” shrieked the green-clad youth. “Any living being that died at the immortal dao’s founding was swallowed whole by the immortal dao to fortify itself. Not even a trace of your true spirit would’ve been left behind, so how could anyone revive you?!”
“Anyway, that’s enough for now, I don’t really care about any of this.” Lu Yun frowned. “What of the divine spirit of the kidneys?”
In his eyes, their first priority was the kidneys of heaven and earth. Once it nursed itself back to full health and recovered its strength, the world of immortals would likely be next on its menu. In the split second when it broke free, Lu Yun had gained the full picture of its boundless malice and destructive lust.
It was no wonder, since it’d been suppressed for the past five thousand years and subjected to a daily regimen of roasting by the Sol Truefire. Its hatred and resentment were easy to imagine, and if it didn’t fully vent its ill will, it would become an evil god even more monstrous than the demon god.
“It’s… in the world of the Emperor Sunflower. This lowly monster spirit is too weak to enter that world…” His eyes darting around, the green-haired youth obviously had something else on his mind as well.
“You want to enter the world of the Emperor Sunflower?” Lu Yun arched a brow.
The ten connate spirit roots were called such not only because of their prodigal energy and unique attributes, but also because they each nurtured a world within themselves. In contrast, though the Ancient Tree of Life possessed just as much strength as the ten, it wasn’t included on the list because it wasn’t endowed with a standalone world of its own.
The Fusang Purewood, Moon Osmanthus, and Embittered Bamboo all contained their own worlds—Qing Yu was simply too weak to utilize any of them at the moment.
However, the Emperor Sunflower before them had no master, so its world was open to all to freely enter as they would. It innately repelled the big water snake, which was why the monster spirit couldn’t make its way inside.
The kidneys had nurtured a divine spirit that’d evolved into a water god. It only needed to partake of the Emperor Sunflower’s petals if it wanted to draw on the spirit root’s power. But for the yin-attributed water snake, it would have to consume the spirit root’s core for the same effect, thereby making it extinct in the world.
Therefore, the Emperor Sunflower instinctively barred the water snake from entering.
“Is there someone else inside?” Lu Yun suddenly asked.
“Yes… they’re all waiting for the divine spirit’s wound to flare up so they can eat it!” The water snake licked his lips, plainly wanting to devour the divine spirit as well.
“We’re heading in!” Lu Yun yanked the green-clad youth with him in a large stride over the snake, then bounded into the world of the Emperor Sunflower.
After he vanished from sight, the snake’s eyes turned flat and cold. “…that brat didn’t fall for it…”
……
“Why didn’t you bring him with us?” The green-clad youth was struggling to wrap his mind around things.
“Snakes are cold-blooded creatures, and that one was also full of bullshit. He was intimidated by the mention of Celestial Master Zhang, but his face screamed his treachery to the high heavens,” snorted Lu Yun. “As cold-blooded creatures, they don’t have such violent emotional upheavals. Even if they faced death, they would remain as coolly aloof as ever.”
Since he had two rimesnakes for subordinates, he’d grown very familiar with the nature of snakes. When he’d interrupted the big water snake and stopped him from talking more about Celestial Master Zhang, that’d been a sign that Lu Yun didn’t believe him.
“I might’ve actually believed him had I not known who the celestial master is… Alas, Celestial Master Zhang is dead.” Lu Yun sighed. The celestial master in question was Wayfarer!
His senses were now independent, complete entities of their own free will. If Celestial Master Zhang were to come back to life, his five senses would return to him and the two saints of the Nephrite court would no longer be in residence.
“That snake spouted off that crap because he wanted me to take him into the inner world of the Emperor Sunflower. If my guess is correct, he came from outside the tomb as well.”
……
A wheel of a resplendent sun hung in the center of this world, dazzling and arresting to the senses, just like the Emperor Sunflower coffin in the main burial chamber. However, this sun wasn’t the spirit root, but its core essence.
“The sun collected by the Fusang Purewood was just the sun of a minor world, coalesced into being by certain laws. It wasn’t a blazing sun that could illuminate the multiverse, but the core of this Emperor Sunflower is a real sun star!”
Lu Yun sucked in a surprised breath when he saw the star with his own eyes.
Three dark figures stood around it, forming a perfectly balanced tripod. The demon god, the divine spirit of the kidneys, and… a middle-aged nun.
The little nun’s master.
