Utterly terrifying might weighed down on Bing Xuan and the Gorb Demon like an iron anvil. Both of them screeched to an involuntary halt and stared at the slowly descending giant dragon claw with shock.

“Dragons!” Bing Xuan growled. “You should be good wyrms and remain holed up in your four immortal seas. How dare you set foot in the North Sea? Are you courting genocide?!”

“It’s not the dragons… not the dragons...” Petrified, the Gorb Demon looked at the claw in disbelief, his folds of lard jiggling with fear.

“Azure Dragon Divine King!!” he exclaimed when a recollection struck him. “Weren’t you sealed in the Skandha Extinction Tomb to curse the divines? Why are you here? Has the tomb broken?”

Bam!

The void shattered into pieces, torn apart by the dragon king’s suddenly rampaging power as the Gorb Demon’s words triggered his fury.

“Now’s my chance!” Noting the change in the newcomer’s emotions, the Gorb Demon’s eyes hardened with determination. His colossal body suddenly exploded, expelling countless souls in all directions.

They were the souls of everyone who’d ever been eaten by him.

Hum.

A mysterious power ignited and sacrificed them before the souls could escape. Consumption of these souls manifested a crimson force that strengthened the Gorb Demon. His power instantly reached an unfathomable height, allowing him to break open space and vanish.

Soul sacrifice!

He sacrificed all the souls he’d collected for a speedy escape. Such was his last resort and the final ace up his sleeve.

“Hahaha! I’ll remember you, Azure Dragon King. You better wash up well and wait for the day when I come eat you!”

……

The sudden turn of events left Bing Xuan dumbfounded and grappling to come to terms with the situation. He remained where he was with a blank expression.

Bam!

The Azure Dragon King’s claw knocked him into the ocean for good measure before slowly retreating back into the void.

After consuming the North Sea dragon vein, the dragon king’s injuries had recovered somewhat, and he was now able to momentarily tap into the power of an origin dao immortal. Nevertheless, he still couldn’t leave the Scroll of Shepherding Immortals, nor could he enter the minor world within the scroll.

Qing Han had had to pay a heavy price to channel the dragon king’s power. If Su Xiaoxiao hadn’t been with them, Lu Yun wouldn’t have let his friend do this.

……

“Did you recognize him?” Empress Myrtlestar approached the dragon.

“It looks to be an old acquaintance.” The Azure Dragon King laid on the ground with an impassive look on his face. “There’s something very familiar about him, but I couldn’t see through him.”

Empress Myrtlestar nodded and fell into deep thought. The Gorb Demon had just said the Skandha Extinction Tomb wasn’t merely a curse on the four cardinal divine tribes, but the entire divine race!

“So it wasn’t just a curse on the four tribes?” the Azure Dragon King muttered. “Can more than the fathers of us four be buried in the central tomb...?”

“Celestial Emperor of Exalted Major,” murmured Empress Myrtlestar.

……

“The Skandha Extinction Tomb is still there, so how did the Azure Dragon King escape?” The Gorb Demon reemerged at the edge of the North Sea near Nephrite Major, looking toward the human territory with surprised incomprehension. His meatball-like body had deflated, turning from a round ball into a flattened patty.

A shudder abruptly ran down his spine, and he whirled around to meet a pair of crimson eyes that had appeared in the air behind him and was staring at him calmly.

“Weren’t, weren’t you sealed away? How… how are you...” The Gorb Demon stumbled back from the scarlet sight, his face white as a sheet.

“Zhao Changkong said you were in the South Sea, which was inconvenient for me. There’s an old enemy of mine there, so I wouldn’t have been able to deal with you,” sounded a voice dripping with malice. “But then you came to the North Sea.”

The crimson eyes contracted violently and shrank into human form. It was the other Wayfarer.

“What?? How did you get out?!” murmured the Gorb Demon, face ashen with despair. “Weren’t you sealed on the Water Altar a thousand years ago? How did you escape as well?!”

Wayfarer smiled, his gaze unusually heated. It was the way the Gorb Demon had looked at the Deaf Prince and his companions.

“Too weak. You’re still too weak.” Wayfarer looked the Gorb Demon over rather than answer the question. “I can’t eat you until you pluck an origin dao fruit. Who would’ve thought the manifestation of the old man’s sense of taste would do nothing but eat?”

The Gorb Demon stumbled a few steps back again.

“Hehehe, I’ll give you a hundred years. If you can reach origin dao immortal in a hundred years, I’ll consider keeping a strand of your soul. If you fail, though, I’ll devour you whole and destroy every last vestige of you!” Crimson flooded his eyes again.

Trembling, the Gorb Demon realized, to his horror, that the man had left something in his own eyes!

“Run along now.” Wayfarer waved and popped the demon out of sight.

“The North Sea skydragon tomb…. Is it the same skydragon tomb left behind after the dragon king’s death?” Wayfarer frowned at the North Sea. “So I’ve found the old man’s sense of taste and smell. I wonder where his sense of touch and hearing are...”

He lowered his head and flashed a strange smile. “Wayfarer…. Ha, it was the very heavens and earth that wanted the divines to go extinct, but you went against the will of the heavenly dao. You painted the Scroll of Shepherding Immortals, leaving them a sliver of hope.

“And what good will that do, hmm? The divine race should never have appeared in this world.”

……

It was a pity to Lu Yun that the Gorb Demon had escaped, but at least he’d captured his true target—Bing Xuan—alive. He finally had an arcane dao immortal under his command, which strengthened his confidence somewhat.

The rimesnake king that he’d converted to an Infernum back in the Skandha Extinction Tomb had, with the help of the Tome of Life and Death, consumed Bing Xuan’s immortal energy and three arcane dao fruits. That allowed the snake to transform into another form and ascend to arcane dao immortal realm!

Beigong Yu was living proof that Infernum would recover to their peak cultivation once reborn, even if they’d severed their cultivation like he had. This precedent was why Lu Yun had the rimesnake king suck Bing Xuan dry and teetering on the brink of death before the young man took the monster spirit’s life.

It still took the rimesnake king a hundred years to digest Bing Xuan’s cultivation and dao fruit, even with the assistance of the Tome of Life and Death. The king was the sovereign of its kind, while Bing Xuan’s true form was only a normal rimesnake. Their innate hierarchy was why the snake king could consume everything that had been Bing Xuan’s.