Necropolis Immortal

Chu Xingran was in no hurry either. Lu Yun refusing to subdue the king soldier was another one of Yun Yi’s miscalculations. He’d read Lu Yun’s personality incorrectly.

The young man would indeed risk his life to save Chu Xingran and Xie Tianxun—of that Yun Yi had determined correctly, but Lu Yun wasn’t the sort to lose his head when he saw treasure. He was very well aware of what he could and could not take.

In the great burial mound of the Myriad Formation Summit, he’d given the Scroll of Shepherding Immortals to Qing Yu without even knowing who she really was. Though he’d wanted it, he knew that he had to keep that greed in check. Such was the instinct of a tomb raider.

If the goods were unevenly divided in an excavation, or if the tomb raider took too much, that would attract disaster.

Capturing the king soldier would bring the core essence of the Firmament Prison into Lu Yun’s hands, combining the three hells as one and manifesting the true power of reincarnation. However, the young man refrained from doing so. He had his own plans.

In short, Yun Yi had miscalculated.

At the same time, he didn’t anticipate that his spacetime tide would summon countless headless supremes and an even more bizarre young man in white. He and the realm monster were now preoccupied by the young man.

If ants weren’t dragged into the fights of gods, then they might very well benefit from the confusion.

“You guys aren’t going back in, are you?” Xie Tianxun wanted to cry. He’d excavated tombs of countless heavyweights in the chief worlds, but these ruins were the most uncanny of them all. It was thanks to the Resurrection Talisman that he was still alive, or he would’ve died ten times over already.

A place that ensured the death of a sequence cultivator was no laughing matter. Lifeline Talismans were useless in a location like that as there were many dangers that could destroy both talisman and owner in one blow.

“No,” Chu Xingran shook his head. “Yun Yi hasn’t really done anything because he doesn’t want to form karmic ties to this place. He’s just being a middleman and connecting all of the plots together. But he himself is steering clear of everything. If there comes a time in which he’s forced to take action himself, all of us will have no choice but to stay here.”

“Mmhmm,” Lu Yun nodded in agreement.

“Then what are we waiting for?!” Xie Tianxun itched to knock both of them out and drag their pretentious asses out of here. He couldn’t leave by himself because the way back was too dangerous. They needed to travel together—or at the very least, he needed Chu Xingran.

“The realm monster put a layout on me,” the king soldier finally spoke up. “I cannot undo it, but you must take me out of here.”

“Understood,” Lu Yun nodded. The king soldier was a puppet manifested from a yin spirit instead of a real living. If he wanted to refine the soldier, he would have to do so using his own mind and immortal force. But in the process, Yun Yi could use whatever was in the soldier to control Lu Yun.

Lu Yun hadn’t noticed anything off about the king soldier through his own observations; he’d deduced through formula dao that Yun Yi and the realm monster had set something up. There should be no issues if he simply departed with the king soldier and did nothing else.

“Be careful of Yun Yi planting spatial coordinates on him,” Chu Xingran raised worriedly.

“I’d be more concerned if he didn’t,” Lu Yun grinned. “Come on, let’s go. We won’t get to the bottom of anything if we stay here guessing. Fellow daoist in white!” he suddenly called out. “My thanks for getting in Yun Yi’s way. If we so happen to meet again, I would be happy to be your strategist. I just don’t want to stay in this endlessly dark Firmament Prison.”

“Deal!” came the young man’s voice. “I will tell you my name next time we meet!”

Yun Yi’s furious thought ripples flooded over them, but he didn’t have the energy to spare for anything else. If he relaxed his guard ever so slightly, the young man in white would slay the nascent realm monster.

“Let’s go,” Lu Yun nodded to the king soldier. The soldier would lead the way.

Thanks to the king soldier’s guidance, they met no danger on the way back. The four quickly exited the Firmament Army Pagoda.

“King soldier of another pagoda,” the Firmament king soldier immediately identified when he saw his kind waiting outside.

“So you haven’t come under Lu Yun’s banner yet, hmm?” the Soldier King smiled.

“You… you’re alive again?” The king soldier lit up. Being a puppet of the pagoda like his men, returning to the land of the living was a farfetched dream beyond his grasp. But here was a living, breathing sample of his brethren! He looked at Lu Yun in a different light.

“There’s something else on you still, I don’t dare resurrect you yet. C’mon, let’s go.” The death arts returned to Lu Yun’s command and he summoned the Gates of the Abyss with a wave. Instead of the kingdom of hell being on the other side, it was Lu Yun’s origin hell.

The group entered hell after Lu Yun stowed the Army Pagoda; the gates vanished after the last person walked through. As they did, a pair of crimson eyes opened in the void. They were the same as the Firmament king soldier’s eyes.

……

“We won? Just like that? We won over Yun Yi??” Xie Tianxun plopped onto the ground after they entered the origin hell, his eyes full of incredulity.

“Won?” Lu Yun and Chu Xingran looked at him as if they looked at an idiot.

“This isn’t winning, this is called running away with our tails between our legs. It’s fleeing helter-skelter!” Chu Xingran snorted with laughter. “He’s got us in the palm of his hands and you’re talking about winning?”

Lu Yun curled his lip as well. “If it wasn’t for the unknown young man, it’d be up to Yun Yi’s mood of the day as to whether or not we made it out alive.”

Xie Tianxun swallowed hard.

“We only made it out of one of his plots, who the heck knows how many he’s got waiting for us? I actually have another thought—maybe he let us go on purpose. Maybe we would’ve been able to leave with Lu Yun even without the young man in white he speaks of,” Chu Xingran’s tone took a dark turn. “Maybe he wanted us to bring the king soldier here.”

Everyone looked at the king soldier from the Firmament Army Pagoda. He quietly met their gazes.

“Even if he is one of Yun Yi’s pawns, he is no longer one anymore,” the Soldier King chuckled. “Right?

The king soldier rolled his eyes. “I just want to live.”

“Looks like it,” the Soldier King laughed heartily.

“There’s finally living people here… Yo master, do you know how boring it is to talk to yourself?” A lazy voice carried from the depths of hell. Its owner seemed to have just woken up.

A yawning, grumbling Diexi walked into view. As the new resident sprite of hell, she oversaw every part of it. The three hundred and sixty-five zombie kings and their formation had also entered hell. They safeguarded the premises from the eight directions

Lu Yun’s ten Yama Kings had also been in residence, but with the increasingly chaotic situation in the fourth realm and outsiders infiltrating the world of immortals, they had to take their halls back to the kingdom of hell and oversee things there.

There was an ascension pool in the kingdom that led to the mortal world. The ramifications would be enormous if anyone from the outside realm snuck into the mortal world. As it was, the mortal world was the foundation for the world of immortals, its source of replenishment. It was to be safeguarded at all costs!

Lu Yun had been at ease when Chen Xiao and Qing Buyi were the guardians of the ascension pool. But after their primary bodies left the world of immortals, the Yama Kings had to fill their shoes.

“Didn’t I send Violetgrave in to keep you company?” Lu Yun looked blankly at Diexi. “Where is she?”

“She’s asleep,” Diexi fidgeted awkwardly. “I’m suppressing her with my empyrean crystal coffin. The god of Mount Tai has compromised her replica—I’m worried he’ll do something and corrupt Violetgrave as well.”

“Good call,” Lu Yun nodded. “How about I leave the Firmament king soldier here to keep you company too?”

He winked at the king soldier, but the latter was staring fixedly at Dixie and beginning to tremble.

“Do you know her?” Lu Yun asked curiously.

The king soldier nodded with an extremely unpleasant expression. “To think that she’d escape from the coffin’s seal!” he voiced with thick horror.

“I didn’t escape, there’s still a skeleton inside. It’s probably mine.” Diexi merrily skipped up to the king soldier. “Tell me, who am I?”

The king soldier frantically backed away, his face as white as a sheet.