The black eyes looked down dispassionately at the ten Yama Kings. The ladies met it tit-for-tat and regarded it frostily back.

“So you ten are still alive.” An immense will exuded from the eyes.

“The ten you speak of are dead, we are we,” Yuying responded calmly as the scroll returned to her hands.

The pair of eyes looked deeply at them, and the hint of a sneer seemed to waft through the void. And then…

Light abruptly returned overhead and the tribulation clouds dissipated, silencing the thunder and lightning. With peace restored, the pair of eyes were nowhere to be seen.

The mythological kingdom of hell disassembled in the next second and returned to the ten Yama Worlds, which swiftly vanished as well.

All was as if it’d never taken place.

……

“Was that really the mythological kingdom of hell… and its ten rulers?” Enormously shocked, Wahuang looked at her father with confusion.

“She was right, the ten rulers are dead. These are their own people,” Leize responded slowly. “What kind of person is Lu Yun? Not only did he dispel the curse on the chaos dragons, he can summon these ten masters to come to his aid and resolve the tribulation of the forbidden.”

Leize knew that Lu Yun’s past self had been part of the mythological realm, but a past self was a past self. Everything stayed in the past and karmic relationships were forbidden with the present. Otherwise, if the past affected the present, then Lu Yun’s past self would be a fruit of malevolence, instead of a dao fruit.

Regardless, the Inception monarch spoke no more. When he next looked at the young man, Lu Yun had reached peak grand pure realm and was only half a step away from empyrean realm.

He’d devoted everything and brought out every trick in his book to study the Dragonquake Scripture, enabling his breakthrough to empyrean realm in the shortest period of time possible. At the same time, the dense presence of the immortal dao flowed from his body and permeated the chaos, creating a starting point for the immortal dao in the chaos.

A smile finally graced Leize’s face, and Wahuang breathed out more easily as well.

“Dad, how did you choose Lu Yun back in the day?” Wahuang asked with sudden curiosity.

It hadn’t been Fuxi’s idea to send Lu Yun to the great wilderness; everything had been orchestrated by Leize and Huaxu. Even characters like Hongjun and Pangu had received pointers from Leize when it came to their plans.

“I didn’t choose him, he chose me.” Leize slowly lifted his head and looked into the boundless chaos. There seemed to be a tiny purple flame there, retreating into nothingness.

He’d always thought that Lu Yun was the important pawn of a great master in the third realm, but when the ten Yama Kings showed themselves, he realized how ridiculously wrong he’d been.

“Everything he is today is his alone. No one can dictate Lu Yun’s actions, not even him.” Leize was still looking at where the purple flame had disappeared.

……

Rumble—

Peals of thunder roared out from Lu Yun’s body. The peak of grand pure realm was great emperor!

When he broke through to this realm, he abruptly woke up. Two rays of hazy black light flared from his eyes—hellfire. If he wanted to change great emperor realm back to empyrean realm, he had to borrow the strength of hellfire.

Another pillar of light erupted from Mount Xuanhuang in Dusk Province, transcending the limits of space to hurtle straight through the chaos and connect with Lu Yun.

Currently, all was not well in the world of immortals.

They’d received word of chaos creatures attacking the underworld with dead spirits, but this wasn’t a battle that immortals could involve themselves in. If they entered the underworld, they would be treated as another enemy by the living dead and destroyed as well.

However, that didn’t prevent them from setting up layers upon layers of formation at the end of the East Sea, trying to repair the boundary riddled with holes that was all that stood between them and the underworld.

Thus, no one paid much attention to Mount Xuanhuang erupting again. Last time it’d done so, it hadn’t affected the world of immortals that much.

They were all wrong this time.

RUMBLE!

Thunder howled and lightning crashed in the world of immortals. Qing Yu’s dao fruit—the Dao Flower, materialized in the sky and blossomed throughout the world.

“What’s going on?!” All of the great emperors in the world lifted their heads in unison to look at the flower. Some changes seemed to be taking place with their cultivation level and a vague, negative emotion departed from their minds.

“The great emperor realm… has been modified to the empyrean realm!” All of the former great emperors inhaled sharply. Though the title of great emperor seemed glorious, there was too much of an imperceptible and inexorable burden that came with it. It was too heavy to bear for the privilege of the title.

In the era of the human dao, all of the great emperors alive perished in the battle of Emperors Fall and transformed into akasha ghosts.

In this era, the immortal dao thrived and prospered, seeing to the revival of great emperors in the world, but the name still clung with a heavy weight.

In the eighty-third year of the Xuanhuang calendar, the Dao Flower bloomed once more and the great emperor realm… vanished!

“From henceforth, the great emperor realm is renamed the empyrean realm. There will be no more great emperors in the immortal dao!” Lu Yun’s voice echoed from the Dao Flower and traveled to all corners of the world.

“The empyrean realms means the ultimate peak of heaven and earth!”

The immortal dao shook and trembled as the great emperor realm was refashioned into empyrean realm.

“For the good of all!” Fuxi and Hongjun smiled at each other on Mount Buzhou. Elsewhere in an unknown part of space, God and Pangu also smiled broadly with great relief.

“The empyrean realm is nigh, we can return home now.” In the chaos, Qiang Liang and three thousand connate demon gods gingerly approached a towering figure.

“Not yet.” Wielding Quietus, an aloof Tianqi shook his head at them. “Another seven years.”

“…understood.” Qiang Liang nodded. There was no sense of time in the chaos, so seven years in the world of immortals was nothing.

……

“If I may be so bold, Headmaster, what comes after empyrean realm?” A celestial lord of the nine majors in the world of immortals called out.

This was an era of great growth and development. Being close to the heart of things, the nine celestial lords easily reached empyrean realm and consolidated their authority as the true masters of their domain. Thus was the balance of power between the nine majors, ten lands, four immortal seas, and four great oceans truly restored.

“The chaos realm,” sounded Lu Yun’s voice. “Why chaos? In this realm, one ascends beyond the world, withstands the chaos tribulations, and journeys the chaos with complete freedom.”

Hummmm!

The chaos realm appeared from the unknown and emblazoned itself into the immortal dao, becoming a fully integrated part of it!

In the eyes of the empyrean immortals, another clearing had appeared in indistinct road ahead, highlighting what it was they should strive for.

Chaos realm!

Qing Han released everything that the creator in the Tomb of Heaven and Earth had left them and assimilated it into the immortal dao.

No one in the world of immortals had expected that after his prolonged absence, the headmaster of the Dao Academy would reappear to delineate new cultivation realms in the immortal dao.

“And what after chaos realm?” came another question.

“Creator realm,” Lu Yun responded. “To create something from nothing, to be capable of all things, to be a creator of life!”

This realm sent the world into an uproar. Creator realm had always been a myth, a legend that people barely believed in. To think that this realm was real and within reach!