Chapter 724 – Reunion with Sheng'er, the Deathless Tomb's Trap - Part 2

Li Yuan recognized the tree immediately.

It was none other than Sheng'er’s last remaining Heaven Soul.

But the Deathless Tomb itself was nowhere to be seen.

That made sense. The Deathless Tomb was a realm of darkness, an

invisible world

. And by nature, such realms couldn’t be observed from the outside. That’s why it had taken him this long to even get close.

What finally gave it away was the color of the tree’s leaves, deep black, corrupted by something new.

Since Sheng'er’s Heaven Soul was here, then the Deathless Tomb couldn’t be far.

With his sermons over, Li Yuan returned briefly to the palace. He sat with Li Youning, quietly sharing a bowl of porridge. Then he personally guided Xie Yu and Lady Yu in how to break through to Greater Insight.

After that, he set his course for the void. One step, and he arrived at the foot of the towering black tree.

The moment he arrived, a strange, cloying sweetness wafted through the air.

He looked up and saw clusters of dark fruit hanging from the branches. They swayed in the wind, then dropped to the ground, bursting open on impact. From the pulp rose tendrils of pitch-black mist.

That mist was cold, so cold it seemed to pierce straight through the soul. An icy chill that made even his spirit flinch.

It was this black mist that had turned the tree's leaves dark. And it was this change that had finally allowed him to track it down.

But the mist hadn’t always been here.

It was new, something that had happened recently.

Yin energy

, Li Yuan thought.

Thick, oppressive yin energy. Did Sheng'er run into a terrifying ghost... on her way back to the Deathless Tomb?

He raised a hand and plucked a piece of fruit from the pagoda tree. The moment it landed in his palm, it dissolved into a swirl of black mist.

Within that mist, his hand began to twist and warp, his five fingers tangled together unnaturally, then suddenly

popped

and

swelled

, as if morphing into some kind of monstrous hoof.

But that wasn’t all. He could feel the black mist invading not just his body, but his soul.

This mist wasn’t merely capable of altering flesh, it could rewrite the spirit.

Something that changed the body alone was like the Yang flame reshaping the unborn in a womb, a transformation of the physical vessel.

Something that touched the soul is more like the Underworld reshaping the spirits of the dead, a haunting transformation that targets the newly departed.

But this mist? It did

both

.

Inside Li Yuan, a sudden flame ignited. Flames surged through him, entwining the black mist. From within that haze, faint outlines of ghostly black skulls emerged, flickering like shadows at the edge of vision. Then the forces of Yin and Yang surged through him and into the mist, devouring it.

Moments later, his hand was whole again, completely restored.

Of course, he didn’t

need

to go through all that trouble.

His soul was fortified by 138,800 ancestral seals, each one a divine safeguard. On top of that, his fate was intertwined with the destiny of the Ancestral Land itself. And more importantly, he had forged a direct link between Heaven and Man, allowing him to manifest a voidship to cross the cosmic sea.

To truly affect his soul, an enemy would have to first shatter the Ancestral Land, then destroy his voidship, and finally dismantle all his painstakingly nurtured ancestral seals, cultivated to the second rank level.

Only then, maybe, would they stand a chance.

His Life Star Art didn’t make him invincible. But it

had

carried him through the Great Upheaval of Heaven and Earth. It allowed him to step into true second rank, and granted his soul a kind of protection no one else possessed.

As for his body, he was long past the stage of

regrowing from a drop of blood

.

Now, it was more like

instant rebirth upon death

.

Unless someone could obliterate both his soul and body in one go, his physical form would just regenerate, tracing the signal of his soul back into existence.

At that moment, the ancient locust tree seemed to react. Its black fruits burst open one after another with crackling

pops

, releasing an even denser cloud of black smoke. The entire mountaintop darkened under the weight of it.

Within the black mist came sudden, chaotic sounds, hoofbeats pounding, wings flapping, footsteps thundering.

Li Yuan stood perfectly still.

From within the fog, he saw strange creatures emerge, ripping through the haze, just like the ones described in the ancient

Classic of Mountains and Seas

, particularly the

Western Mountains Scroll

.

Tulu

beasts.

Qinyuan

beasts.

He decided to just go ahead and call them that. After all, no one else had bothered naming them before.

Above each of their heads, floating like flickering projections, were fluctuating combat powers, some around 500, others nearing 2000. That meant they were about sixth rank, maybe fifth.

Li Yuan frowned slightly, but he didn’t move.

And before those terrifying giant bees and four-horned shadow goats could even reach him, they froze mid-air. Their wings buzzed weakly, hooves kicked uselessly, and strange cries rang out, like monsters suddenly thrown into a vacuum, their power rendered weightless and hollow.

This was

domain force

at work.

His domain, once a few kilometers in range at third rank, now spanned 50 kilometers.

This entire area was

his

.

And within his domain, it was as if the world itself obeyed

his

rules.

Li Yuan stood quietly beneath the ancient tree, enveloped in the thick black smoke. With a gentle wave of his hand, the dark haze parted and floated toward a spot he mentally designated in the air.

There, the smoke condensed into a dense, opaque black sphere, absorbing the rest of the mist still pouring from the locust tree’s bark and fruit.

He stepped forward, approached the base of the old tree, and with a bit of careful probing, uncovered a hidden entrance nestled beneath its roots, a passage into a dark realm.

It was small, compact. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t dangerous.

Li Yuan still vividly remembered the terror of the Deathless Tomb. Within its depths, Yin and Yang were neutralized, time itself could freeze. If he just strolled in without caution, he’d instantly be reduced to an ordinary mortal.

And right now, he had no idea what awaited him inside.

What if the crows had gone mad?

What if some unspeakable monstrosity had taken root there?

Even as a second rank cultivator, if he was caught off guard, he might still die in an instant. And then what? Eyes open, eyes closed, reborn again, who knew how many years would’ve passed in the meantime?

He paused at the entrance, then glanced up once more at the orb of black smoke suspended in the air.

Examining it closely, his expression grew grim.

He’d never seen the Dragon Vein in its true form, nor had he laid eyes on the Ghost Lake at full strength. But he had fought the beings of Happyland Zoo, and participated in the battle among the great taboo-level ghost domains. That experience gave him enough intuition to sense just how potent this Yin energy really was.

Compared to this black smoke, Happyland Zoo’s Yin energy felt like a child standing before a giant.

“Second rank,” Li Yuan murmured, the assessment forming in an instant.

He clenched his fist and lightly tapped his chin, thoughts flickering in his eyes.

So Sheng'er, on her way back to the Deathless Tomb...encountered a second rank ghost, one of terrifying power unlike anything before.

Was it because the Deathless Tomb lies too close to the Outer Region? Did a second rank ghost escape the shattered void beyond and slip through?

Or...

Suddenly, Li Yuan’s expression turned cold.

He understood now.

The Ghost Sealing Pagoda of the Radiant Treasure Sect. I thought the ghost sealed within had vanished. But in truth, it had hidden itself inside Sheng'er, lying dormant, recovering in secret. Then, as she neared the Deathless Tomb, it made its move, trying to take control of her. Only...

He stared at the dark realm nestled under the roots, piecing together the scene in his mind.

Sheng'er was caught off guard. But she wasn’t weak. In the struggle, she tumbled into the Deathless Tomb, dragging the ghost with her. The tomb’s laws suppressed the second rank ghost, but part of its power still remained outside.

At first, the Great Upheaval of Heaven and Earth had drained the world of spiritual energy. That power should’ve faded. No. Not faded. Not dead.

Li Yuan’s pupils suddenly narrowed.

He remembered something from one of the old travelogues he had read long ago, a mention of a sky tree.

The sky tree had been part of this world’s mirage realms. And even back then, creatures like the Tulu and Qinyuan had already begun to appear.

If those beasts already showed such high power levels at that time...doesn’t that mean the second rank ghost’s influence had already crossed the boundaries of spiritual energy? That even with Yin and Yang severed, it could still reach into the world?

The Radiant Treasure Buddha, one of the strongest pseudo-second rank ancient gods, had to extract stone from the ancient halls and open an entirely new realm just to seal this ghost away.

And now...it’s loose again.

It might not have been just the Radiant Treasure Buddha who acted.

Perhaps multiple second rank beings were involved.

Was this ghost a starkin, just like the Northern Dipper and Polaris, descended into the mortal world? Only, this one...might be even more powerful than either of them.

The thought gave Li Yuan a headache.

With a flick of his will, he summoned a few birds from the surroundings and instantly tamed them. They perched on his shoulders briefly, then, guided by his intent, flew into the entrance of the dark realm one after another.

His vision followed with them.

The passage was as it had always been: a long, labyrinthine corridor. But the air inside wasn’t cold. At the far end, the birds stopped, their eyes narrowing with a curious, wary intelligence, peering into the darkness ahead.

The twin-fish statues of black and white still stood vigil. The 6,974 hanging coffins remained undisturbed.

Li Yuan directed one bird forward into the interior while the others stayed behind, watching the one ahead.

But the moment the first bird passed deeper in, it grew uneasy. Li Yuan’s vision from it was cut off instantly.

So, he sent in more, one by one.