“What’s with you?” Bai Zhaoju waved his hand in front of Lu Yun’s face, pulling him out of his reverie.
“What happened just now?” Lu Yun turned to Bai Zhaoju, confused. He couldn’t tell if it’d all been an illusion.
When he tried to recall the interaction that’d just taken place moments ago, he found himself unable to remember what Yinglong looked like. Even the faint memory of her figure was slowly fading away.
Deep within his mind, though, was a star map marked with regions of safety and danger in the cosmos… as well as some forbidden grounds that he should avoid. Lu Yun pinpointed the greatest danger on the map… There lay an enormous body—not that of Taiyi, but of Xing Chen.
“It was all real.” Lu Yun looked down at the little fox, who’d popped out of his arms to meet his eyes. She was holding two eggs about the same size as her, painting a comical scene. “These are the children of Yinglong and Taiyi. Why would they be entrusted to you?!
“Wait, don’t say anything out loud,” the little fox continued softly in Lu Yun’s consciousness. “The karmic repercussions are too great for them. Other connate gods would use these children’s bodies to be born into this world. Don’t put anything into the spoken word, and don’t reveal their existence!”
The Bell of Chaos dangling before her chest emitted a faint haze as it collected the two eggs. Hailed as the top connate-grade treasure, the Bell of Chaos contained countless worlds within it. The little fox thrust the two eggs into a world located in the deepest part of the bell.
Lu Yun breathed out a sigh of relief. By now, Yinglong had completely faded out from his memory, along with what she’d said to him. All he knew was that he must take the two eggs to where they should be, and…
“Realm monsters!” He remembered the beings that Ashu viewed as nightmares. “It wasn’t the little fox who caused Yi and Taiyi’s death, but the realm monsters.”
The little fox nodded seriously.
“What are the two of you talking about?” Bai Zhaoju cast Lu Yun and the little fox a confused look.
“It’s unspeakable and undefinable.” Lu Yun shook his head. “Let’s enter the tomb!”
Realization of a sort dawned on Bai Zhaoju, and he nodded in understanding.
Gone was the giant tombstone. In its place was a great archaic door, which creaked open on its own before they approached, revealing a long, winding stairway that led underground.
Lu Yun took a deep breath and walked up to the stairs, Bai Zhaoju followed close behind him.
Whoosh!
Whoosh!
Whoosh!
The door behind them disappeared as soon as Lu Yun and Bai Zhaoju set foot on the stairs. Crimson flames bloomed one after another to illuminate their way. Lifelike paintings adorned the walls above the railings; Lu Yun and Bai Zhaoju found themselves instantly captivated.
“It’s Taiyi and Yi.” The little fox gazed at the figures on the walls with misty blue eyes, her expression mournful.
“They didn’t die because of No-Good Tushan?” Bai Zhaoju’s eyes shot open as he scanned the contents of the murals, his tone making clear his shock. “What are those things? How… the great god Kuafu wasn’t killed by the nine suncrows, but those things??” [1]
The little fox nodded gently.
“White Emperor… Where would you say the netherdark is?” Lu Yun muttered, his eyes glued to the paintings.
“Netherdark?” Bai Zhaoju frowned. “It’s under Mount Buzhou. Above the mountain are the nine heavens, and underneath can be found the netherdark. Why do you ask?”
“Mount Buzhou?” Lu Yun nodded. “It’s said that there’s another world below the earth, so I was curious, nothing more.”
Falling silent, he shifted his attention to the paintings on each side of the stairway. They depicted an earth-shattering war, featuring many figures he’d only heard about in legends and myths.
“The suncrows were corrupted by those things, which was why the Great Yi killed them…” Bai Zhaoju sucked in a breath, visibly shocked.
According to the legends of the great wilderness, the catalyst for a great war hundreds of thousands of years ago was nine suncrows killing the great god Kuafu as he pursued the sun. As a result, the Great Yi shot down the nine in a fit of fury. That in turn gave rise to celestial emperor Taiyi’s wrath and he led hundreds of millions of soldiers down to Suncrows Plain, battling Yi to the death.
In the end, Taiyi won a pyrrhic victory and the Yi Clan was slaughtered. However, what the murals depicted was a completely different story.
Hundreds of thousands of years wasn’t that long a period of time in the great wilderness. Many powerful beings counted their closed door cultivation at million year increments. Thus, many still remembered the ins and outs of the great war.
“This… what these say can’t be true,” Bai Zhaoju protested weakly.
“The powerhouses of the great wilderness must give this tomb a wide berth because they know the truth differs from mainstream knowledge. They don’t want to risk their lives in coming here.” Lu Yun muttered to himself instead of answering Bai Zhaoju. “Luo Houluo must also know about the true history of the world, which explains his careful behavior.”
He couldn’t think of anything other than the realm monsters that could instill such fear in Luo Houluo.
Bai Zhaoju shut his mouth. The human youth was right. There were many things in the world that were considered distant secrets by the latecomers, but were nothing to the connate demon gods.
The demon gods dictated what the living knew. If they wanted to change history or hide something from the world, then the world’s denizens had no choice but to be obediently ignorant. If they said the great battle of Suncrows Plain had been between Taiyi and the Great Yi, then of course it had been, and not one with these strange monsters recorded by the murals.
The little fox also nodded in grave agreement.
Lu Yun and Bai Zhaoju followed the stairway downward for quite some distance before they finally reached its end. There, a palm-sized bird enveloped by flames hovered quietly.
It looked like a crow on fire, but under its belly were three thin legs… a suncrow.
However, it was dead and completely devoid of any life energy. It appeared to be nothing but a ball of crow-shaped flame.
It was a suncrow spirit, a living soul that Taiyi had awakened from the Fusang Purewood with his own blood. It carried his bloodline, making it one of the princes of the celestial court.
According to the murals, however, the three-footed suncrow had been corrupted by the realm monsters and ultimately slain by Yi.
“You mustn’t go.” The suncrow spirit looked up at Lu Yun with dim eyes. “The cosmos has become the territory of the realm monsters. You will die if you enter.”
1. Kuafu is a giant in Chinese mythology who wished to capture the sun.
