Growwwl!!

Following a hoarse, raspy utterance from the pitch-black cave, a yellow-gray claw stretched out of the opening and dug into the ground.

“Hahahaha! All of you can just wait for your deaths now!!” Seeing the results of her handiwork, Ge Yanxia screeched with laughter. She glowered at Yin Qingran and Qing Yu with incomparable malice, then swelled back into the form of a fur seal and escaped without further ado.

“Has… has the demon fetus arrived in the world?” an immortal asked in a shaking voice.

“No, it’s the zombie inside that hole that’s crawled out… Prepare for battle!” Qing Yu warned after glancing stealthily at Lu Yun and seeing him winking back at her.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Craaaaack!

Cracks snaked through the land, shaking and tearing it apart. A terrible creature more than forty meters tall crawled out from underground. Possessing four heads, eight arms, and oozing corpse water, it wore ragged cloth armor that plainly didn’t belong to the current age. Instead, it was… a divine!

A divine that’d died when they still ruled the world, becoming a zombie after its death!

Roar!!

The divine zombie howled its fury to the skies the moment it showed itself, and the energies of earth, air, fire, and water madly converged upon it to form a giant vortex.

“What? How can a zombie command the power of the elements?!” the Exalted celestial emperor exclaimed in shock. What made zombies so fearsome was their impregnable flesh and irresistible strength. A zombie that could command the elements would be terrifying beyond compare.

Earth, air, water, and fire—those were the elements once grasped by the divine court. Just as the current five elements of metal, wood, water, fire, and earth served as the basis of immortal dao, the four elements constituted the foundation of divine dao.

Hence, when faced with a zombie that wielded the four elements and could gather elemental energy around itself, even the Exalted celestial emperor felt a mounting pressure. They hadn’t seen the demon fetus yet, but the foe in front of them was already fearsome enough. How terrible would the budding demon god itself turn out to be?

Growl!!

Before anyone could react, the zombie launched itself at the crowd and sent blood, limbs, innards, and nascent spirits spraying through the air. A cacophony of pain and fear arose, and a hundred immortals perished in no more than ten breaths.

“Vermin!” the celestial emperor bellowed in anger and hurled the Exalted Chart at the zombie.

For her part, Zhao Wushuan withdrew to the side. Though a void-ascended immortal now, she was still no match for their foe. This undead creature had attained the strength of an origin dao immortal at the very least!

Her retreat was replaced by Lu Yun joining the fray. Though his strength wasn’t much since he’d barely set foot into the realm of a void-ascended true immortal with the Demonic Sovereign Cauldron’s help, still he stepped up to the line.

The Divine Fire Bead flared with searing heat waves that coalesced in the air as energy of pure yang. Encased by the energy, pitch-black smoke steamed from the zombie’s body amid wails of pain and anger.

“Four heads, eight arms, and commanding the four essences… this is the primordial divines’ last divine emperor!” Zhao Wushuang shouted suddenly.

The Exalted Divines had established the divine dynasty in the Primordial Era, but their influence and authority had gradually withered, until one day, even the imperial throne was wrested away from them. As it happened, the zombie in front of them was the last divine emperor of the primordial divine court.

Divine reign was simply one blip of time among many in the endless river of immortal dao. While divine dao had supplanted immortal dao for a while, it was still considered part of the river of immortal dao.

In those days, legends of Emperors Fall had faded into the mists of time, and no one knew that the title of ‘emperor’ represented an omen of misfortune. Whether one ruled over the divine or immortal court, all liked to style themselves ‘emperor’, just like with present practices. Divine emperors of the age were roughly comparable to a human king from the era of human dao.

“Ready your formation!” Qing Yu commanded softly.

She raised her hand and sent a myriad of talismans dancing through the air, while Lin Yu and Lin Xuan hastened to deploy a formation without foundation and arrange the zombie-subduing talismans into a massive talisman formation. Positioned according to the constellations, a full three hundred and sixty-five talismans drew out a starry sky.

When everything was in place, pillars of bright yellow light fell from the formation and imprisoned the zombie in their midst.

Ouuuuu!

The cry of a tortoise sounded out as the previously shattered Black Tortoise Formation once again projected a giant black tortoise wading through empty air. This time, the hazy figure of a man appeared atop the tortoise’s head. While his silhouette was hard to distinguish, one could clearly spot eyes as bright as the stars gleaming out of his face. In his hand, a longsword glinted with frosty light.

This was… an art from Earth, the Ninth Heaven’s Demon-Destroying Patriarch! [1]

The archives of Lu Yun’s sect noted a way to summon the Demon-Destroying Patriarch. Only, there hadn’t been any qi on Earth to call this mighty character into being. Lu Yun had taught the method to Lin Yu and Lin Xuan, but hadn’t expected the two brothers to actually be successful in their summons.

“So it’s really possible!” Lu Yun retreated from the battlefield, retrieved the Divine Fire Bead, and looked dazedly at the hazy figure.

“If we can summon the Demon-Destroying Patriarch here, can I also bring out Sun Wukong and Erlang?” [2] Lu Yun shook his head, a wry smile on his lips. Of the ‘daoist arts’ written down in his sect’s records, the Demon-Destroying Patriarch was the only one mentioned.

“But… why do I sense a familiar aura from the patriarch...?” Lu Yun’s head hung low in thought, a frown on his brow. No matter how hard he wracked his brains, he couldn't remember where he’d seen the august figure before.

“Die, dastardly wretch!” The patriarch soared high in the air, his voice as clear and sonorous as the sound of the world’s grand dao.

Startled, the celestial emperor and nearby immortals subconsciously made way for him.

Swish!

The patriarch’s sword arced through the sky and landed heavily on the zombie imprisoned within the talisman formation.

Crackle!

An incandescent yellow flame ignited on the zombie, abruptly stilling it like it’d been frozen. It just quietly stood there and allowed the yellow fire to incinerate it without any resistance. A hundred or so breaths later, the zombie fell apart into ashes.

The Demon-Destroying Patriarch hovered in midair, his starlit eyes surveying the surroundings. When his gaze landed on Lu Yun, he gave a shallow nod, then faded into nothingness.

“Disposed of so easily… Who was that just now?!” A chill ran down the celestial emperor’s spine. Even with the help of his heavenly mandate and Exalted Chart, a fight between himself and an origin dao immortal zombie would’ve resulted in a pyrrhic victory, if he could even win at all. However, the man who’d suddenly appeared had destroyed it with a single stroke of his sword!

Who in the heavens was it? If there was truly such a heavyweight in the world… at the very least, it’d be someone on par with the silver scarlet ape of Levitating Island!

“That senior is a patriarch of our sect, the Ninth Heaven’s Demon-Destroying Patriarch!” Lin Xuan closed the thick book in his hand with a solid thump, his voice filled with pride.

1. This is a character mentioned in the Chinese classic Journey to the West. Also known as Xuanwu, who is depicted as a northern king in the novel, he’s also a high-ranking deity in Daoist mythology.

2. Sun Wukong and Erlang are also characters from Journey to the West. Wukong, the monkey, is the main character of the novel, while Erlang, another god in Chinese mythology, is depicted in the novel as a nephew of the Jade Emperor, the supreme ruler of the immortal court.