Chapter 161. The Three Immortal Islands Submit, Peerless Under Heaven, the Strongest Expert!

When Lu Yuan unleashed his aura, he protected the golden eagle. After all, the Great Sun's Furnace was beyond what an ordinary beast king could withstand.

The golden eagle had carried him all the way here, and he couldn't let it come to harm.

However, the people of the Three Immortal Islands were strangers to him.

The moment the Great Sun's Furnace manifested, the surrounding temperature soared drastically. Under the terrifying heat, portions of the sea down below began to literally boil.

The fusion of the Eleven-Tier Blood Pagoda and the Great Sun's Flame Divine Furnace gave birth to a divine artifact beyond human comprehension.

The golden vital qi throughout Lu Yuan pulsed and billowed out. In that single instant, everyone from the Three Immortal Islands felt an intense, crushing pressure bear down on them.

Lu Yuan chose to remain silent no longer. He raised his palm, and arcs of electricity converged on it.

Rumble!

Dark clouds gathered in the sky as lightning brewed in the heavens above.

This is bad!

The face of Penglai's Sect Master changed drastically. Together with the others, he summoned his Dharma Avatar, and colossal figures materialized, standing proudly between heaven and earth, radiating various brilliant lights.

Golden Body Realm experts mainly used Dharma Avatars to crush those weaker than them, but against Lu Yuan, they were nothing.

When the Jade Emperor's Divine Thunder Art manifested, lightning converged on him. Twelve experts from the Three Immortal Islands stood before him, and twelve bolts of lightning appeared in the clouds above.

Each bolt of lightning measured dozens of meters in diameter. When they descended, they carried with them the overwhelming aura of absolute destruction.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Thunderous booms reverberated; the sea was blasted apart, sending towering waves in all directions. The twelve Dharma Avatars couldn't avoid the attack. It came too fast and was too sudden. In mere moments, they shattered into pieces.

The Twelve Golden Body Realm experts trembled violently, and they flew across the skies like kites that had lost their strings.

"Isn't he at the Unfettered Realm? How can he be so powerful?"

"Thunder Arts?! He knows Thunder Arts, too?!"

𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞

"Hurry up and retreat!"

As experts at the Golden Body Realm, they were only wounded, but upon witnessing Lu Yuan's power, their natures ensured they could not even entertain the thought of fighting back.

Their ancestors had been a certain kind of people, and apples wouldn't fall far from their tree.

As expected, their first thought was to flee.

Of course, Lu Yuan wouldn't give them that chance. With a casual flip of his hand, the Heavenquake Bow appeared. Then, he drew the bow, took aim, and let go of the string in one fluid motion.

He knew that he had to kill a few of them to make them submit.

Whoosh!

An arrow made of Heaven-Earth Spiritual Energy transformed into a streak of light that flew across the skies. The unfortunate expert standing at the front exploded into a bloody mist upon getting hit in midair.

Lu Yuan drew the bow again, aimed, and fired.

Splurch!

A second Golden Body Realm expert was shot dead. He couldn't resist at all, and his lifeless body fell into the sea.

"All of you will die if you move even an inch further," Lu Yuan calmly said.

The Sect Masters of Penglai, Yingzhou, and Fangzhang came to a screeching halt and began trembling like aspen trees. They knew that the man before them would show no mercy whatsoever if they were to refuse to heed his words.

"I-I'm willing to submit! Just don't kill me!" exclaimed the Sect Master of Yingzhou. He was genuinely terrified. He had never imagined that such a powerful being existed on the mainland.

Hadn't the Global Awakening just begun?

The Sect Masters of Penglai and Fangzhang as well as the survivors abandoned all thoughts of resistance. They seemed to believe in the idiom about how a man capable of bending in favor of his circumstances was a wise man, and it was proven by how they immediately surrendered to Lu Yuan.

In their eyes, it'd be great enough to survive.

As for their dignity, it ceased to exist when their ancestors fled calamity and hid during great wars. To summarize, they bullied the weak and feared the strong. As for the legends surrounding the Three Immortal Islands? They had no hand in it whatsoever, as history had merely shaped the islands into what they were today.

"Good choice." Lu Yuan put away the Heavenquake Bow. Even though he was still at the Unfettered Realm, he was already invincible against Golden Body Realm experts.

If he were to make use of everything in his arsenal, he believed he could even fight those at the fifth stage of the path of evolution—the Venerable King Realm.

The idea of fighting someone an entire realm higher than oneself was inconceivable for any other people, but Lu Yuan had absolute confidence that he could do something like that.

Lu Yuan emptied his mind and swept his gaze across the Sect Masters. Then, he quietly modified the Blood Bond to work on humans. Without the Blood Bond, this group of people could easily stab him in the back.

The three Sect Masters hesitated in the face of the Blood Bond. Upon seeing Lu Yuan's gaze brimming with killing intent, however, they followed their survival instincts and agreed. At least, they would get to keep their lives.

Lu Yuan was satisfied. He had already planned their future. A portion of them would assist the officials as fighters and instructors at the branch academies.

They had a good amount of experience in the path of evolution, decent strength, and complete breathing techniques as well as visualization techniques. They were ideal for training the next generation of Awakened. The Blood Bond also prevented them from causing any trouble.

As long as their lives were in his hands, there would be no problems whatsoever.

Furthermore, Lu Yuan intended to hand the Blood Bond over to Elder Ji and Elder Yun, allowing them to maintain control over these people.

He had no desire to handle such matters personally, and he believed it was better to leave such matters to the specialists.

This would also allow the officials to become even stronger as soon as possible.

Those from the Outer Cosmos would soon descend, after all.

After making the arrangements, Lu Yuan toured the Three Immortal Islands with the Sect Masters. They were eager to share stories, even mentioning the historical figure Xu Fu.

During the pre-Qin era, the so-called qi refiners were actually just Awakened. The First Emperor's search for the elixir of immortality had actually happened as well.

Beyond that, there was little to learn. The islands had been isolated for ages, and their resources were utterly exhausted at this point.

They could no longer accommodate any Awakened.

Lu Yuan examined the islands with Fuxi's Bagua Diagram and confirmed that the islands had become devoid of divine artifacts.

Spiritual fruits had also become extremely scarce across the islands. It was no wonder they decided to emerge and venture into the mainland. Finding nothing noteworthy, he instructed the three Sect Masters to contact the mainland and left.

***

The battlefield on the Bohai Sea coastline was finally cleared, and the wounded had already received treatment, yet Elder Ji, Elder Yun, Ice Fairy, and the others had chosen to stay. Their gazes were still transfixed on the distant islands.

They believed in Lu Yuan's strength, but worry still gnawed at their hearts. Hence, they decided to stay and await his return.

After roughly half an hour, Lu Yuan finally appeared on the golden eagle.

He still looked the same as when he departed for the Three Immortal Islands. Everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief at the sight, and they knew for sure that the issue was resolved.

Of course, the fate of the Three Immortal Islands still eluded them.

Fortunately, Lu Yuan got straight to the point. He told them that people from the Three Immortal Islands would soon arrive to work with the officials, bolstering the nation's strength.

They would then become instructors of the Aurora Academy's branches all over the nation to ensure the nation's future through the younger generation.

Elder Ji and the others were all stunned. After all the fighting, the other side had actually chosen to submit?

In response, Lu Yuan said, "I just taught them a few proverbs to live by."

After that, he discussed the Three Immortal Islands with the two elders before setting off once more. This time, his destination was Mount Tai.

Since the issue was finally resolved, what came next required no personal input from him. All that remained was to wait quietly. Once the second Global Awakening was complete, boons would appear all over the world once again.

Unfortunately, it would be accompanied by the appearance of beings from the Outer Cosmos.

Lu Yuan was indeed powerful, but he had to be sufficiently prepared against them.

***

Several days later, the Sect Masters of the Three Immortal Islands visited the mainland. They had no choice, as none of them dared to defy Lu Yuan.

Following Lu Yuan's instructions, they expressed their intention to cooperate with the officials and even donated their inheritances as a gesture of goodwill, essentially draining the Three Immortal Islands' resources to bolster the mainland's strength.

Elder Ji and Elder Yun naturally had no objections. The Three Immortal Islands had provoked them first, and they were merely sprawling out on the bed that they had made for themselves.

Both elders were shrewd old foxes who knew Lu Yuan's intentions, and they gratefully followed his instructions. Of course, they were also aware of the fact that the world was going through some changes.

Just like that, the Three Immortal Islands incident came to a complete close.

The officials released the news online with a powerful headline.

King Lu Forces the Three Immortal Islands into Submission—Alone

The netizens closely monitoring the situation erupted into cheers upon reading the news. Many were worried that the Three Immortal Islands would prove far too powerful to defeat, even for the officials.

In the end, King Lu settled everything by himself, at that.

The Three Immortal Islands submitted to him outright.

└I'd expect nothing less from King Lu! He can do anything!

└When King Lu makes a move, demons, monsters, and evil spirits... whatever they are, they are mere rabble!

└Does he even have a peer at this point? That's right, he's peerless! Peerless under heaven!

The thrilled netizens left comment after comment. At this point, everyone believed that Lu Yuan was truly invincible. Some even proclaimed him to be "Peerless Under Heaven," "the Strongest in the World," and the "Strongest Expert!"

***

Within a secluded villa somewhere in Hu City, Zhou Yunqiong lounged lazily on a sofa, dressed simply in a shirt and jeans. A mysterious aura emanated from her, and her hair shimmered with a faint light, making her appear like a goddess that instilled awe and respect in anyone's heart.

Just then, her elegant brows furrowed, and surprise flickered in her eyes. Zhou Yunqiong had just seen the news about how Lu Yuan had single-handedly forced the Three Immortal Islands into submission.

When she scrolled to the comment section and saw people declaring him to be "Peerless Under Heaven" and the "Strongest Expert," Zhou Yunqiong sat up straight.

"Lu Yuan... your achievements have truly exceeded my expectations. It seems it's about time I make a move as well," she murmured with a glint flashing in her eyes.