Time to exit the tomb!
The Dao Flower had divided itself into four parts to enter Qing Han, Wu Tulong, Zi Chen, and Mo Qitian. Only after the four of them left the isolated tomb would the flower once again bloom in the outside world.
……
“It won’t be as bad as when we entered the tomb, is it?” Mo Qitian shrank in on himself when he thought back on their journey through the tomb. It was the singular most terrifying exploration he’d ever conducted.
Lu Yun frowned and examined the area through his luopan. The four layers of coiled mountains are whole again! His heart quailed.
The four coiled mountains comprised the Door of Demise. On their journey inside, he’d destroyed the green lanterns, formation of coffins, foggy maze, and the Avici Cell, essentially deactivating the layout. It hadn’t disappeared completely, but it shouldn’t pose any threat.
Now, however, his compass told him the Door of Demise layout had been activated again, and the four coiled mountains had been repaired! Can the layout recover on its own? Wait, Huangqing and Ge Long are still outside!
Ah… no, they’re dead. Lu Yun’s heart sank. He’d left the two of them outside to guard the tunnel in case anything happened. However, a mysterious death had visited them while he was protecting Qing Han and the others.
They could be resurrected through the Tome of Life and Death, but the fact that they hadn’t even managed to sound a warning meant that they’d been killed in the blink of an eye. How was that possible, when Huangqing was a blood phoenix who could rival Aoxue in power?
The governor’s dark scowl alerted his four companions to the severity of their situation.
“There’s no path for the living past the Door of Demise…. It looks like I underestimated the danger of the layout. Something must have happened outside as well.” Lu Yun looked up. “We can’t go back the way we came in, we have to keep pushing forward!”
“What?!” Wu Tulong started. “Push forward? You mean the third chamber isn’t the end of the tomb?”
“That’s right.” Lu Yun nodded. “This tomb is an island in the Ten Yins Estuary. We have to cross the ocean of blood to get out of here!”
“The ocean of blood....” Qing Han couldn’t suppress a shudder when his mind strayed to the waters behind the bronze door.
Suddenly, Lu Yun started; Aoxue had just returned to hell. She’d blocked the Qing entrance for an entire month, not moving an inch even on the day of Zhao Shenguang’s coronation. That’d pushed the Qing Clan to the edge, but they hadn’t made a move.
The Lu ancestor, arcane dao immortal Qing Ruyan of the Panorama Pavilion, and the mysterious Wayfarer all supported her actions as a blatant form of payback for them being prevented from rescuing Lu Yun. Moreover, another powerful faction had shown its face to take Aoxue’s side.
The Skandha Range. Aoxue was the mistress of the Skandha Range!
Immortals following an unorthodox dao and otherkind cultivators joined in the fray, targeting not only the Qing Clan, but also the Feng Clan, the Exalted Immortal Sect, and even House Donglin in a show of savage violence.
A month-long blockade was a round of hearty face slaps and thorough humiliation to the Qing Clan. They were at their wits end in their search for a solution. In sheer fury, the clan listed Lu Yun as its foremost public enemy and issued a handsome bounty for his head. They then branded Qing Han as a clan traitor and exiled him.
The Feng Clan had even put aside their differences with the Qing Clan to form an alliance with them. Along with the Exalted Immortal Sect, the three factions sent their experts after Aoxue and defied the Skandha Range.
With his four hundred and eighty million lightning strikes, Lu Yun had killed, or severely injured, eighteen dao immortals and disintegrated fifteen hundred more golden and peerless immortals. That’d taken a heavy toll on the three factions.
However, they couldn’t go after him, since he’d been missing for a year. Thus, they shifted their target to Aoxue and those dear to the Dusk governor in an attempt to force him to show his face.
Lu Yun frowned upon hearing his envoy’s report.
A year. Time had unwittingly flown by beneath the Dao Flower’s power. It’d taken Qing Han and the others a year to deduce the void realm and repair the path of cultivation. What Aoxue relayed next stunned Lu Yun even more.
Half a year ago, an ocean of blood spanning ten thousand leagues had crept into the southeast corner of Life Province, and nothing could survive there. The monsters emerging from the ocean devoured any living souls who dared approach.
Six dao immortals of the Nephrite court had ventured into the ocean, never to return. The spirit jade slips they left behind shattered as well, signifying their deaths. All six of them had died in the ocean.
“The estuary’s balance of yin and yang have been disrupted, returning the ocean of blood to the real world. No wonder the Door of Demise reactivated, and Huangqing and Ge Long were killed without warning!” Understanding dawned on Lu Yun.
The ocean of blood behind the bronze door was a feng shui layout fostered by the Ten Yins Estuary. Now that the layout had become the real deal, the other layouts set up by the estuary had come to life as well.
Lu Yun had thought the bronze door was just a byproduct of the layout, but no... it was the Door of Demise itself, built in the image of the Gates of Abyss! Hell had been destroyed, and someone wanted to recreate it. This thus was a corner of the new hell.
“The ocean of blood is behind the bronze door. If we cross it, we’ll be able to leave this place!” A sneer flashed over Lu Yun’s face. Recreate hell? As the overlord of the real hell, a counterfeit was absolutely nothing to him.
"To draw the patterns of mountains coiled,
“Those deathly cliffs with mysteries roiled.
“Danger shies if mountains hide,
“Layers of locks do heaven and earth ride."
Rumble.
The luopan burst into golden light as it rotated, showing how the room had changed again. A hidden path emerged beneath their feet, marking a winding way toward a bronze door.
Endless corpses crawled over the path that was interspersed with giant coffins and a disorienting maze. Green lanterns floated in the air, sickly pale ghost faces howling and snarling within.
The coiled mountains that Lu Yun had destroyed had reemerged as one, creating this path. What he’d feared the most had come to pass. The full power of the Door of Demise had been unleashed with the synergy of all four layers of coiled mountains.
However, he perked up when he noticed the Dao Flowers blooming and shielding his four companions. The monsters on the winding path scattered and fled when they sensed the power of the flowers.
“The great dao protects us from all evils!” Mo Qitian laughed proudly. “We’ll protect you this time, senior brother Lu!” He stepped onto the path, then immediately scrambled back, shrieking in fear, “Mommy, there’s a ghost over there!”
“Man, that’s embarrassing.” Zi Chen looked away.
Wu Tulong and Qing Han exchanged a glance, pretending they didn’t know Mo Qitian.
“I mean it!” Mo Qitian said with a trembling voice. “It’s the ripped-mouth ghost that senior brother Lu dealt with before. She’s at the end of the path again!”