The declaration crashed into the world of immortals like a thunderbolt. Proclamation complete, the Scarlet Ape resumed its carnage. Every single human currently in the North Sea, whether cultivator or immortal, fell to its staff.

The ape killed everything in its way in a bloody progression to the shores of Ingress Island.

Thousands of kilometers across, the island was the size of a large province in one of the human majors. Gleaming with the hue of precious gems, a rich spiritual aura permeated the air. This island was a pearl of the North Sea, one of its most fertile regions.

Fire erupting from its eyes, the ape looked coldly at the vast island.

“Senior, Ingress Island is our ally!” Beigong Xuan hastened to say, still following behind the Scarlet Ape. The two other great factions of the North Sea—the Dark North Sword Sect and Ingress Island—weren’t pure monster spirit factions, but included humans as well.

The Scarlet Ape glanced back and leveled a glare filled with utter malevolence at the blackwater snake. Beigong Xuan’s mind immediately went blank and he shrank in on himself from trepidation.

“Do you wish to imitate the dragons, phoenixes, qilins, and tortoises in becoming humanity’s flunkeys?” Cold and eerie, there was a murderous undertone to the ape’s raspy voice.

Beigong Xuan looked down, afraid to utter another word.

This Scarlet Ape was a survivor of a distant era far, far in the past. If one were to describe that era with words, it could be called ‘primeval’, and what the ape spoke of was obviously a secret from those primeval times.

What made Beigong Xuan’s heart tremble was that... the four true spirits were humanity’s lackeys?

He, too, didn’t hail from the current era. He’d once been the spirit pet of Qi Hai, the foremost pill master of the ancient era, and had followed him into the dragon tomb. That was how he’d survived the great immortal war.

True, the ancient dragons and phoenixes had been subordinates of the immortal court, but said court hadn’t been a human dynasty, but had encompassed every race of the immortal world. Humans, monster spirits, and divines alike had made up the ranks of the immortal emperors.

While the current relationship between monster spirits and humans was indeed antagonistic, the Scarlet Ape’s vehemence seemed to go far beyond that.

“We monster spirits possess hearts of steel and an unyielding spirit. Why do we need to ally ourselves with humans?” A round of black waves billowed erupted from the staff in its hand as it swung it down at the island.

Boom!

Faster than one could blink, formations and restrictions on the island shattered one after another from the impact, crushing too many cultivators to count.

Monitoring the island from the shadows, Su Xiaoxiao tensed. Without a word, her figure gradually faded into nothingness as she returned to the netherworld.

Behind the ape gone berserk, the cape fanned out multicolored lights that surrounded the creature’s golden figure in what resembled balls of flames, while formidable waves surged from the staff—a perfect combination of fire and water.

Boom!

Seaquell was now more than three thousand meters long, and the impact from it slamming into the island produced a tremendous fissure that ran from one end of the land to the other.

“Humans on the island, scram from the North Sea. Else, die!”

Rumble!

Shooting forward, the Scarlet Ape announced its landfall with a tremendous roar that ripped through the island like rolling thunder. However, a pair of hands hundreds of meters wide formed in response and slapped down at the ape with an imposing momentum.

The master of Ingress Island had finally shown his hand.

Upon revealing his power, clouds and winds surged in the sky and dimmed the world, and the lifeforce of the land around the Scarlet Ape was expelled, so much so the area around the creature almost seemed disconnected from the world.

“Ingress realm?!” Scowling at the giant hands in the sky looming over him, the ape growled as if deeply insulted. “How dare a mere ingress realm human attack me!”

It stuck its staff into the ground and spread its arms wide, compelling Seaquell to swell into an enormous mountain range that faced the island master’s hands head-on.

Boom!

Within a radius of fifty thousand kilometers, seawater and hundreds of millions of living creatures exploded violently when mountain met hands. Legs sunk deep into the ground, the Scarlet Ape’s golden fur was now dyed by the scarlet of its blood.

Hum...

The droning hum of a sword rang out as a grey sword appeared from nowhere and slashed at the Scarlet Ape.

Clank!!

A metallic clang echoed when the weapon neared the ape, unceremoniously halted by the blazing cape. A man clad in grey materialized and retrieved the immortal sword, joining the giant hands in the sky in an offensive against the giant ape.

Roar!!

The raging Scarlet Ape threw its head back and howled its fury at the sky, its golden fur glinting sharply. In the next moment, two extra heads and four extra arms grew out of its body.

Three heads and six arms!

The strength of its aura increased once more, and the black staff in front of him rippled with light as it split into three identical copies. Thus bolstered, the ape leapt in the air to do battle with the grey-robed immortal and the pair of giant hands.

……

Inside the North Sea capital seas, a great white path suddenly broke through the water’s surface, immediately followed by dozens of thousands of immortals and a black fortress ship.

In the last moments of the dragon and phoenix nest’s destruction, Lu Yun had summoned the Path of Ingress once more and brought the surviving immortals away from the crumbling tombs.

“Ingress Island and the Dark North Sword Sect have both made their moves!” The immortals sensed the great battle over Ingress Island as soon as they emerged.

This was a fight between formidable powerhouses at the very top of the world’s pecking order! Shockwaves from the clashes shook the waters a million kilometers away.

“These giant hands… that’s an ingress realm powerhouse!” Lu Yun murmured in shock, sizing up the hands that were keeping up a relentless offensive against the Scarlet Ape. “And the grey-robed sword immortal, while he isn’t at ingress realm yet, is in the same league as the celestial emperors of the nine majors!”

He suddenly recalled what Empress Myrtlestar had once told him, that the dread zombie born from her corpse was no great threat to the immortal world because there existed too many beings who could subdue it.

And now, he was seeing a pair of ingress realm and a sword immortal who could rival a celestial emperor!

Hum...

A giant curtain of light rippled through the air as a black dragon thousands of meters long burrowed out, viciously slamming itself against the giant hands.

“Old fart of Ingress Island, you secretly helped the blackwater worms against my North Sea dragons that year! Today, I will not rest until I see you dead!” Ghost Dragon howled in anger. Behind him, a nine-headed phoenix bathed in flames also made haste to join the fierce fight against the giant hands.

After slaying the ghost tree and the ghost in the Realm of Unearthly Water with the help of the zombie phoenix head sent by Lu Yun, Ghost Dragon and the nine-headed phoenix were now entirely free.

In fact, the Fire Parasol Tree that’d been swallowed by the ghost tree had returned to its origin as a peerless treasure of the phoenixes.

Hence, dragon and phoenix now fought the ingress realm hands together. However, the two of them hadn’t yet recovered their full strength. Even coordinating their actions, they barely managed to suppress the hands.

“Dragons and phoenixes, dogs of humans! You deserve nothing but death!” roared the Scarlet Ape as it flung its three black staves at the dragon and the phoenix.

The battle above Ingress Island dissolved into a chaotic melee, even as the several-hundred-thousand-kilometers-wide island slowly sank below the sea.

……

“Since when were there so many powerhouses in the immortal world?” Shudders traveled down the Witherdew emperor’s spine. He’d thought that after becoming a celestial emperor, he’d only need the help of Witherdew Major’s heavenly mandate and some further meditation to pluck an origin dao fruit and reign invincible throughout the world of immortals.

But now he’d suddenly run into five powerhouses, all of whom were stronger than a celestial emperor, just in the North Sea alone!

The more the golden-furred ape fought, the more valiant it became. It hadn’t been long since it’d been released from its seal and it was continually recovering by absorbing the vitality of the land in its surroundings.

“The North Sea is now a hotbed of trouble. We shouldn’t stay here for long. Ladies and gentlemen, this is where we part ways!” Standing on the Divine Glory, Lu Yun split open the void and disappeared from the sea region, along with all followers of the Star Demon Sect.

“I do hope that Lu Yun can truly do something with the Great Formation of Heavenly Spirits and Earthly Fiends…” quite a few immortals murmured to themselves, entrusting their hopes to him.

……

Lu Yun sailed the ship to the formation space he’d previously created and brought the little fox and Xing Mou aboard the ship. As for Feinie, she’d already returned to hell. Soon after, the pitch-black Divine Glory broke its way through the waves and sped toward Dusk Province.

A battle between five pinnacle powerhouses was most dreadful indeed. No heavenly mandates protected the North Sea, so the entire ocean was almost flipped upside down, and lives were lost to raging waves, horrifying currents, and seawater detonations with each passing minute.

Trying to take to the air was meaningless when an appalling storm made the skies even more dangerous than the colossal waves down below.

In such an environment, dao immortals were the only ones who could barely manage to survive. They shielded their factions’ disciples and fled the North Sea, while those below the dao immortal realm didn’t even have the luxury of fleeing.

The entire North Sea seemed to have capsized, and countless islands shattered. Even some palaces at the bottom of the ocean weren’t lucky enough to escape this disaster.

“That’s Lu Yun’s ship… Lord of Dusk, please save us!” Many cultivators floundering in the sea cried out for rescue at the top of their lungs when they spotted the black ship. These were all wandering cultivators seeking a livelihood in the North Sea. They had no powerful backers, so of course no dao immortals would appear to rescue them.

Wham!

A group of immortals disappeared as a massive wave crashed over them.

Lu Yun sighed and released the Path of Ingress with a wave of his hand. It split into countless avenues to various regions of the North Sea, extending into the waters in order to rescue the immortals struggling for their lives.

But their numbers were too great, and to save them all was simply impossible. Moreover, the battlefield was constantly shifting as the powerhouses moved and fought in turn, their zone of combat encompassing almost all of the North Sea.

Lu Yun deployed ten more fortress ships and rescued more than a million immortals, but had no choice but to vacate the North Sea in the end.

When the fleet of ships approached the edge of the North Sea, a mist of silvery luminescence emanated from the nearly ruined Levitating Island. The already sunken floating isle once again took to the sky, and palace halls densely dotted its slopes.

And then… a magnificent figure materialized.

It was a woman of extraordinary beauty. Lu Yun could swear that, even after living two lifetimes, he’d never seen such a stunner. Even Empress Myrtlestar and his Envoys of Samsara paled in comparison with her matchless features.

Hers was an absolute, unequivocal beauty that brooked no doubt. It could suffocate someone or drive them mad.

Resting in Qing Han’s arms, the little fox stared blankly at the figure, a hint of bewilderment emerging in her eyes despite herself.

“How beautiful…” The numerous immortals of the ships stared, entranced, bewitched, and ensnared by the figure.

“The monster spirit ancestor!” Su Xiaoxiao and Cangyin murmured inside hell when they saw the figure. “This is the monster spirit ancestor’s true form.”

Lu Yun looked at the fox in astonishment… Err, is this how the furball used to look?

Hum...

The monster ancestor pressed gently downward with her slender hands. A silver ripple spread out and pacified the endless winds and waves it met, slowly soothing the North Sea to its previous stillness.