Guanqing’s glance backward had struck horrified terror into the Deaf Prince’s heart. He’d thought himself superior to immortal ghosts after defeating Tinglan so easily with his Celestial Exorcism Armor, but when faced with Guanqing's strange smile, his skin crawled.

Lu Yun shook his head and covered the Deaf Prince’s eyes. The prince abruptly expelled a mouthful of tainted air from his lungs and regained some clarity. The most powerful trick immortal ghosts could use was to hoodwink a person’s senses and identify their weaknesses in order to control them.

She’s powerful enough to affect the Deaf Prince through a minor world, Lu Yun registered with apprehension. Guanqing is not to be underestimated. The Corpse Refiners are in deep trouble. Never enter the fake tomb under any circumstances! Never!

Through the bubble, he’d made an initial determination of the feng shui in the fake tomb and realized it was an independent ecosystem. The entire fake tomb was a formation that nurtured Guanqing’s spirit. Lu Yun would have no choice but to resort to brute force if he wanted to fight her.

She’d easily dealt with the immortals from the North Sea court simply by possessing Beigong Chonglou. If she tapped into her terrible poison, who knew what else she’d be capable of?

Lu Yun wasn’t the least bit inclined to face a poison ghost like her.

……

Thick yin energy spun in the pitch black depths of the water tomb. The compass in Lu Yun’s hand gyrated wildly, attempting to determine where the tomb’s owner was. However, the feng shui in the tomb was chaotic and the indicators of the luopan kept shifting without stop. Oftentimes, the Deaf Prince complained that they were going around in circles.

As they searched for the coffin, Lu Yun saw bubbles containing various treasures pass by. Each was a natural mirage reflecting everything in the fake tomb, attempting to lure immortals from the real tomb to the fake one.

The fake tomb had originally been safe, but was now dangerous after Lu Yun had summoned Guanqing. Under the luopan’s guidance, the group traveled further into the tomb and into denser clouds of yin energy.

Previously, the Deaf Prince’s armor had been able to clear out an area roughly a kilometer wide. But now, under the pressure from the thick yin energy, the golden barrier was suppressed to a light orb of only a few dozen meters in diameter, and it continued shrinking at a visible pace.

Strange shadows flickered in and out of existence within the looming darkness. Every once in a while, a pale arm would shoot out and attempt to break through the barrier, eliciting screams and shrieks from the little fox. 

She was hardly the brave sort.

Despite ascending to the golden realm, she was still easily startled. When the poison ghost had killed the North Sea monster spirits, she’d curled up in a ball and hidden in Qing Han’s hair, too scared to even look.

“This water tomb is far less dangerous than the burial mound and you were never afraid there, so why are you this scared here?” Qing Han seized the opportunity to make fun of the little fox. Serves her right for calling him ugly all the time!

“I was in the burial mound for a very long time,” grumbled the little fox, “and I knew the place like the back of my hand. What’s so scary about that? Here, though… eek! Help!”

The little fox shrieked and slipped into Qing Han’s clothes, avoiding a long pale arm that’d shot out from the gloom and somehow bypassed the armor’s golden light, targeting the little fox. The owner of the arm must have sensed her fear.

Qing Han sidestepped and growled, then raised his hand and sent a large purple palm strike at the arm.

Bam!

The motion pushed away the seawater around them, creating a vacuum and knocking the white arm back. Qing Han had deployed the same combat art back in the Sword Pavilion to rescue Lu Yun, breaking apart the formation set up by the nine Feng august immortals. The disguised girl was now more than ten times stronger than back then, and the palm strike would be enough to kill an ordinary august immortal. However, it merely knocked the arm away.

“Zombie!” Qing Han transmitted with a frown. “There’s a zombie in the yin energy, and it’s very powerful!”

“Hmph!” The Deaf Prince felt personally affronted. His armor specialized in destroying zombies and ghosts. Even immortal ghosts weren’t its match, yet a zombie had broken through its golden light!

Hum.

Intense golden light flared from his body, driving away the yin energy and revealing a giant head. Roughly thirty meters in diameter, its features had rotten away. Instead of a body, the zombie possessed eight arm-like tentacles, like an octopus. It was a zombie with a human head and an octopus-like body!

“Waugh! Waugh! Waaugh!” No sooner had the head emerged than it opened its large maw, releasing an inky black yin aura to protect its enormous head. Thin, pale arms whipped around in the golden light, grabbing at the little fox again. She was its only target.

“Dammit, what the hell is that?!” The Deaf Prince’s voice broke as he yelled, his eyes opening wider. He’d raided his fair share of tombs before, but never had he seen anything like the monster. An octopus with a human head? It’d released yin energy like an octopus would release its ink, too!

“It’s a mutated zombie!” Lu Yun’s expression shifted drastically. “It’s been here for many years, and is completely adapted to its environment. Be careful, it’s more at home in the deep sea than we are.”

Its shape was more appropriate here than if it’d been in a human form. Lu Yun turned to the Deaf Prince; although he was the xiangliu divine beast, he wasn’t the zombie’s match here in the deep sea, especially in depths permeated with yin energy.

Swoosh!

Holding his luopan in one hand and taking out the sword pagoda with the other, Lu Yun called upon the treasure to form a tremendous sword made of aura.

“Hoh!” Before Lu Yun could make a move, Qing Han spat out a syllable to summon lightning and cast another palm strike, this time greyish-cyan rather than violet.

Bam!

The giant hand whipped through the water and slammed into the yin energy the octopus monster had excreted. Its eight tentacles suddenly retracted, and it shrieked with terror when it was hurtled back.

“Ha! Cha!” Qing Han spat out two syllables, blasting out with a violet and a cyan palm strike, shattering the thick yin energy around them and revealing hundreds of octopuses with human heads. Their black eyes stared unblinkingly at the intruders.