Roaring and howling with disbelief, it’d never occurred to the crimson monster that Lu Yun would detonate himself on a whim! The human blew himself up so thoroughly there wasn’t even a shred of a soul fragment left behind in the dust!

……

The immortal emperor’s tomb, outside the confines of the Dao Tree.

Wu Tulong, Mo Qitian, and Zi Chen cut sorry figures, trapped as they were inside the world of immortals manifested by Lu Yun’s nascent spirit. However, they were slowly gaining the upper hand by coordinating their efforts. Numerous powerful combat arts sailed out in tandem, battering the image again and again. Soon, it seemed, the nascent spirit art would finally crumble.

Hum!

Lu Yun’s nascent spirit suddenly contracted on itself and dispelled the world, even as his physical self slowly coalesced into existence.

“My nascent spirit is inside hell and I’ve stored all my valuables inside the Tome of Life and Death. Even if my physical body dies, I can reforge it with the power of reincarnation. To top it off, the physical body purified by reincarnation isn’t even a new body, but my original one… I suppose I’m as good as ‘undying’ at this stage,” Lu Yun murmured to himself as he hovered in the air.

“But that’s still no reason to be careless! There are many powerhouses out there who can attack my nascent spirit through my physical body.” He heaved a long sigh. Had he been truly caught by the crimson monsters, they could have located his nascent spirit through his body. In all likelihood, they probably had a special method that would enable them to pull his nascent spirit out of hell and trap it inside his body.

“What are you talking about? Undying?” Wu Tulong and the other two had heard every syllable he’d uttered.

They looked at him in shocked stupefaction. He’d obviously left his nascent spirit behind with them, but his physical self had also reappeared out of nowhere. Such a phenomenon defied their comprehension!

“It seems to me that you three serve neither Sword Divine nor Lu Shenhou… You tried to stop me from entering that realm so that I wouldn’t be caught by the long-haired monsters, correct? You already knew the truth of that place.” Lu Yun cocked his head and observed the three men. “Senior brothers, I can sense a power inside each of you that influences your mind. Allow me to—”

Swish!

His hand shot forward and clutched the air and a bronze spear appeared in his grasp. His nascent spirit shook inside hell and circulated a prodigious amount of immortal force within his body at great speed.

“Time Reincarnation… kill!” With another whisper, Lu Yun took careful aim and struck decisively.

“What?!” Wu Tulong and the others froze in place, caught off-guard by Lu Yun’s sudden attack, and through a dao weapon, no less!

The power of time revolved around Lu Yun and froze everything within twenty meters around him! He thrust forward three times in quick succession with the spear, each movement landing at the center of the men’s brows with pinpoint accuracy. The time domain shattered after the span of a breath, leaving a pale Lu Yun trembling and shaking.

Thud!

The young man panted heavily and took a knee.

“I can only use the time domain for the duration of a single breath, and it’s consumed all of my energy after doing so!” He’d continuously studied the two dao weapons after obtaining them, calling them the time spear and space axe. After ascending to immortality, he’d used formula dao to infer two stunning combat arts from the two weapons: Time Domain and Space Domain.

Inside the kingdom of hell, with the power of an entire world at his disposal, he could deploy these two domains at will. Time Domain, in particular, could stop and even invert the flow of time.

But outside the netherworld, he could only rely on personal reserves of energy, so his freezing of time lasted for all of one second and consumed all of his immortal force in the process.

“It looks like I really shouldn’t rashly resort to these two combat arts before I reach the dao immortal realm.” Lu Yun took a few pills to restore some immortal force, then bounded in front of the three men.

“I don’t know who’s pulling your strings, but since we restored the Dao Flower together, I can’t just idly sit by and watch you be under someone else’s thumb,” he heaved a sigh.

They should’ve been Dao Sovereigns as well. But after falling victim to the soul seeds, the flower’s blessing upon them had been dispelled and converged instead on Qing Yu. By tapping their brows with the time spear, Lu Yun had sealed away their nascent spirits, an action that couldn’t be undone unless by another time combat art.

“Thankfully, my nascent spirit observation art expended most of your strength, or my Time Domain might not have held any of you in place.” With a wave of his hand, he sent the three young men into his kingdom in hell. Or, more precisely, into the domain of life born out of the resurrection layout.

“I feel like Ge Long had me go after that thing just so I would find out what it really is…” He felt like he finally understood the old servant’s intentions.

It was impossible to refine the Dao Tree. Without the limitations of the immortal dao, the long-haired monsters would swarm the land as far as the eye could see. Whoever tried to refine the treasure would quickly find themselves on a death mission.

However, if he could slip inside the Dao Tree realm through his ten Yama Kings, there’d be a chance for him to destroy the tree there.

Since the world itself was protecting the tree and preventing anyone from uttering its name, Ge Long had had no other choice. In order to convey the truth of the matter to Lu Yun, the only resolution was to enter the Dao Tree’s world. Only there could its name and the method to destroy it be spoken.

“But that still doesn’t answer why the immortal emperor wanted me to go there… Well, since the Dao Tree is a no-go, I might as well go get me an Immortal Subjugation Seal!” Lu Yun looked up at the center of the tomb.

There, the Immortal Subjugation Seal illuminated the firmament with its glorious radiance. Above it, the faint shadow of a great seal could be seen. It didn’t possess the same high and mighty aura exuded by the Skyturning Seal, but there was an otherworldly quality about it, as if it stood above all living beings.

“Heh… some little rats want to take the Path of Ingress from me, hmm? Is this how you express your thanks?” A sneer suddenly floated on Lu Yun’s lips. Beckoning with his hand, he turned the treasure connecting the Dao Tree to the tomb back into a beam of white light that flew back to his palm.

As he did so, a full hundred immortals followed the path and surrounded him.

“Hand over the Path of Ingress… Wait, it’s you, Lu Yun!! You’re not dead?!” The immortals froze when they recognized him.

“I’d already figured out the truth behind that place, so I simply sent in a replica to bring all of you out.” Lu Yun didn’t bat an eye before delivering a blatant falsehood. “Are you here to steal my treasure now? Talk about gratitude!”

Swoosh!

A bewitching purple light flashed between his fingers as Violetgrave appeared in his hand.

“Get lost!” he ordered coldly.

“There’s no need to be afraid of him!” someone urged. “Don’t forget, our clans have formed the ‘Lu Yun Killers’ alliance! Here he is, right in the flesh!”

Purple lightning wreathed the speaker, as if he were bathed in electricity. He was someone from the Zi Clan of the Thundergale Major!

“There’s a hundred of us and just one of him. In fact, all of us are true immortals too. Are we supposed to fear him all by his lonesome?”

Those who could enter the immortal emperor’s tomb were all elites of their factions and genuine void-ascended immortals. Moreover, quite a few were dao immortals who’d severed their cultivation to step into the void realm.

Anyone brave enough to do so was an exceptional figure of great resolve and willpower, so of course they wouldn’t obediently toe the line before Lu Yun.