The zombie king trembled. Though he’d never seen the Sanguine Flame before today and didn’t know what it was, full understanding dawned the moment he laid eyes on it. He knew that it could thoroughly destroy him—it was destiny.

His birth was meant for the blood-red flame in front of him.

……

“Don’t come any nearer!” he shrieked. “I’m evolved from the body of God. If you destroy God’s corpse, God will die as well!”

Lu Yun came to an abrupt halt. He thought of what God had told him before, that the four Abysses of Divine Burial needed to be filled in. But with the zombie king here, the abyss would continue to appear throughout the world and never be fully erased. This wouldn’t change unless the zombie king died.

God hadn’t told Lu Yun anything about this zombie king—everything was a result of his own calculations. However, he hadn’t considered that God and the zombie king shared the same roots. That if the zombie king died, so would God perish.

Lu Yun hesitated.

As he paused with indecision, the zombie king suddenly leapt into motion and melded into the void as a shower of crimson light. He’d reach the highest level of being a zombie and actually exceeded that level of existence. When he ran into danger, he could turn light and vanish into the air.

This was an innate talent of the zombie kings.

Boom!

The void trembled as a surge of mammoth strength exploded from nowhere. The crimson light that’d become part of the air was rejected and bounced back.

“What?! This isn’t possible!” Reforming into a solid entity, the zombie king looked at the Bridge of Forgetfulness with confusion and bafflement.

He knew of the structure floating in the air. Once an important treasure of the human dao hell, its true strength was on par with an ultimate treasure of the chaos. But his was an existence beyond the chaos and having reached the third realm. How was he unable to contend with the bridge?

Plainly, the bottom of the abyss was the zombie king’s birthplace—a layout for the tomb of the living. It was his domain, so the bridge couldn’t harm the zombie king, but neither could the zombie king escape the area.

This tomb of the living had become a huge prison.

“God will die if I kill you?” Lu Yun advanced upon the zombie king with the oil lamp in land.

Intense fear flooded out all other emotions in the zombie king’s eyes. The approaching Sanguine Flame pounded with the ominous footsteps of fate, continuously burning away his thoughts and reconsigning him to nothingness.

This zombie king was the first existence beyond the chaos in the worlds, but destiny seemed to have played an extreme joke on him. He hadn’t had the chance to emerge in the world and display his might in the third realm before his fate arrived with finality.

“That’s right!” The zombie king forced himself to calm down. He could tell that Lu Yun cared very much about God.

“Though you’ve ascended beyond the chaos and your strength has reached the third realm, you’re still a little bit off.” Lu Yun frowned slightly. While he couldn’t call upon his full strength, he could use the cultivation realm of his past self—which had been solidly beyond the chaos—to identify the zombie king’s flaws.

“You still reside in this abyss and create more Abysses of Divine Burial to control divine spirits and bury divines not for the world of immortals, and not out of service to the heavyweights of the Hongmeng, but because of God.” He looked deeply at the zombie king. “If you eat the reborn God, then you’ll truly reach the third realm and even become one of its kings.”

The zombie king’s expression shifted again and again, but fear remained on it all the while.

Black fire burned in Lu Yun’s eyes as he stared unblinkingly at the zombie king. Since the zombie king wasn’t a creature of the third realm to begin with, it was just a zombie come to life after finding its sentience.

“Just spit out whatever you want, stop playing at being mysterious!” The zombie king finally cracked beneath enormous fear and pressure. In contrast to the lizard-dragon that Lu Yun and beaten silly, the zombie king had discovered that Lu Yun’s true cultivation level wasn’t just an empyrean realm immortal, but a heavyweight even stronger than him.

“What do you think I want to do?” Lu Yun grinned, very pleased at this comprehension.

“You want to threaten the lizard-dragon through me and have it swear fealty to your banner…” The zombie king finally understood what the human had in mind.

Lu Yun had come down here purely to nip trouble in the bud. The zombie king wouldn’t live past the day no matter what he tried. Lu Yun had just wanted to wring one last bit of value out of the zombie king and intimidate the lizard-dragon to finally truly subdue it.

Though Lu Yun had destroyed the lizard-dragon’s will and dignity, he was still a ways away from actually recruiting it.

“Not bad, you’ve got a decent brain after all.” Lu Yun looked up to see the lizard-dragon peering down at the happenings in the depths.

Shock flashed through the creature’s eyes. This abyss had been created by the dual efforts of a king from Dragonhollow Mountain and the zombie king. During that exercise, the zombie king hadn’t shown any hint of deference or humility to the lizard-dragon’s king.

But now, the zombie king was afraid.

……

“God will die if I die!” The zombie king repeated as he continued retreating from the Sanguine Flame. He could read Lu Yun’s resolute intent to kill him; he didn’t know what to make of this. Lu Yun plainly cared very much about God, and God would die if the zombie king died. But the human’s resolve to kill him wasn’t wavering.

It was a terrifying killing intent that couldn’t be suppressed or denied. As he closed in on his quarry, the Sanguine Flame in Lu Yun’s hand exploded outward and projected a face that looked the same as Lu Yun.

“God is the guardian of the immortal dao, a gap will form in it if he dies!” screamed the zombie king.

“That’s just the karmic repercussions of heaven and earth. You and I have long ascended beyond the chaos, so avoiding this kind of karma is a very simple task.” Lu Yun smiled when he heard the zombie king’s struggles.

He reached out and split off a tiny spark from the Sanguine Flame, shaping it into a pair of crimson scissors. He waved the creation gently in front of the zombie king.

Snip!

Something nebulous and intangible seemed to have been severed. The pair of scissors faded away and the spark returned to the Sanguine Flame.

Horror crept over the zombie king’s face.

“You don’t need to threaten me with Diexi or Jing Dichen. Their tiny bit of connection to you has just been cut off.” Lu Yun grinned.

The zombie king’s eyes were stark white. He hadn’t had time to bring out his final trump card before Lu Yun had seen through it!

The Sanguine Flame shrieked with glee and pounced forward, swallowing the zombie king whole. He was fully consumed amid cries and wails of agony and desperation while Lu Yun remained expressionless. Severing karmic ties was a combat art from his past self.