You Si’s eyes blazed with hatred when they fixed on the priest standing atop the altar of earth.

“I’ll give you one more chance, priest of flame...”

“You misspoke. I am not the priest of flame, I am You Si.” Her voice was as cold as ice, and she didn’t even attempt to conceal blatant killing intent as she glared murderously at her former peer.

“Why did you do it?!” she roared. “The Xuan Yuan Slaves have guarded this tomb for hundreds of millions of years. They are our kin!!”

The other high priests frowned.

“Wrong, they weren’t our kin, but tools to be wielded by our hands,” interjected the priest of forest. “Our bloodline originates from the true Xuanyuan Clan rather than those pathetic slaves who were worse than dead. The only purpose and value that the slaves possessed were as sacrifices to open the door to the yin tomb.”

You Si fell silent while an inferno burst out from her body and the Fire Altar emerged beneath her feet. Lu Yun, the demon sovereign, and Ashu stepped back to give her room. This was her business, so it wouldn’t be appropriate for them to interfere.

“The Fire Altar! The real Fire Altar!” Face darkening, the priest of earth warily regarded the change in situation. The altar of earth he stood on radiated power as well, but it wasn’t under his control. It’d long been refined by the young daoist in a brown dao robe beside him—the divine spirit of the world’s spleen.

“I won’t interfere in your fight. You may use this altar for now.” He made a placating gesture and pushed off gently with his feet, flying from the altar to Lu Yun.

“Eeeyah!” You Si shrieked piercingly as the Fire Altar surged in power and slammed into the altar of earth like a shooting star. The priests of forest, ocean, and blades panicked, and the Fire Altar barrelled into them as well before they could react.

Boom!

An enormous mushroom cloud rose into the sky. The altar of earth shook violently as the priest of earth took the brunt of the impact, blood bursting out from every pore in his body. The other three priests fared no better, and they all turned to You Si with looks of sheer fear.

“How is she so powerful? How?? She’s the weakest of the five of us!” snarled the priest of earth. Ignoring his injuries, he spun the golden staff in his hand with gusto and launched a counterattack with the altar of earth.

……

“The Fire Altar is no longer the Fire Altar,” said the daoist that was the spleen’s manifestation upon examining the structure supporting You Si. “A mysterious power has descended upon it, transforming it into something else.” The man turned to Lu Yun. “That change comes from you, doesn’t it?”

Lu Yun shrugged in lieu of a response. He’d met the divine spirits of the lungs and kidneys—both violent spirits possessed by rampaging killing intent. The divine spirit of the spleen, however, was completely different. There was a distinct lack of fury, and Lu Yun detected no malice with the Karmic Tree.

“You’ve met Xiaoyue, haven’t you?” the spirit asked suddenly.

Lu Yun exchanged a glance with Ashu before nodding. “We did, she wanted to be with her clan.”

The daoist sighed, his face shifting into a solemn expression. “I can give you the spleen, but you must make a promise in return.”

There was a turbulence to the man’s energy, something wild and terrifying brewing beneath the calm facade that was simply suppressed by the daoist’s will. Otherwise, he would’ve attacked Lu Yun and his companions as soon as they arrived.

“You’re not the divine spirit of the world’s spleen!” Lu Yun realized with a start. His head snapped up and his eyes searched out the crimson coffin in the mouth of the snake outer-coffin. He blurted out, “You’re Xuan Yuan!”

After a brief pause, the daoist nodded. “I am. I am the dead man named Xuan Yuan. It’s been a very long while, Ling Weiyang.”

“So it is you, Xuan Yuan.” Ashu’s expression tensed when the man called him Ling Weiyang, but he didn’t comment on the term of address.

“The world has indeed changed,” Xuan Yuan remarked. “We old men have become cowardly and shrink into ourselves, so much so that we don’t even dare admit who we are.” He looked up at his coffin and settled into a prolonged silence.

“Senior Xuan Yuan.” Lu Yun’s heart spasmed.

Xuan Yuan! The name was something of a religion to him. Emperor Xuan Yuan, also known as the Yellow Emperor, was the forefather of ancient Chinese culture—he who forged the five thousand years of glory and honor. It was a name most sacred to every child of China.

However, Lu Yun didn’t know what relationship existed between the Xuan Yuan before him and the Xuan Yuan in the legends of Earth, if any. Earth’s history placed the Yellow Emperor at roughly forty-seven hundred to five thousand years ago.

Five thousand years marked an unbearably long period of time for Earthling. Titles such as “primeval” or “primordial” could be applied to those eras. In the world of immortals, however, five thousand years was but the blink of an eye. Such a span of time was nothing to write home about, and the Xuan Yuan before him was from hundreds of millions of years ago.

Master and sovereign of the world before Emperors Fall, an utmost peak existence from the Primeval Era! Anything so far in the past that it couldn’t be quantified was grouped under this period.

“You are indeed from the ancestral planet.” Seeming to sense the agitation deep within Lu Yun’s heart, Xuan Yuan nodded at him. “Promise me that when the cataclysm descends upon the ancestral planet, you will protect it even at the cost of your own life.”

Ashu listened in silence. Earlier on, he’d ended the conversation prematurely when Lu Yun mentioned he was from the ancestral planet. He didn’t expect Xuan Yuan to talk about it here in such an open manner!

“The ancestral planet is protected by the Great Formation of the Nineheavens Gates,” the holy lord finally broke his silence. “Even the five of us together wouldn’t be able to break through the formation and land upon it!”

“Everything decays and changes in the long river of time...” Xuan Yuan turned to the high priests battling in midair. The five of them had once been kind caretakers who cared for their subjects like their own children. They would’ve given their own lives without hesitation in order to protect their people.

Now, though, they’d sacrificed all of the Xuan Yuan Slaves guarding the tomb for their own gain. They’d failed the test of corruption administered by the corrosion of time. To Xuan Yuan, the great formation protecting the ancestral planet was no different. It would decay and eventually be destroyed.

“Ear—the ancestral planet is my homeland.” Lu Yun nodded. “If a calamity befalls her, of course I will protect it with my life. It’s not a promise to you, but to myself.”

A smile tugged at Xuan Yuan’s lips. Immediately after, however, black smoke puffed out from him and a sinister voice traveled forth, “You won’t be giving my body to anyone, ghost of a dead man! Your true spirit is here, old tree! Eat it now!” 

The divine spirit of the world’s spleen leapt out, seizing a momentary lapse in Xuan Yuan’s control.

Boom!

A thunderous rumble exploded as a giant black tree burrowed out from underground. It was the zombie tree! It came with a gray fire that was the corpsefire that Lu Yun had encountered before.

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