Chapter 1858: Cause and Effect

“Yun Yi took over these ruins a long time ago, he knows them like the back of his hand. The first one to explore this place and receive the primeval court’s heritage wasn’t me, but Yun Yi,” Chu Xingran murmured.

Xie Tianxun jerked with shock. The inheritance of the primeval heavenly court that shook the chief worlds was with Chu Xingran? And it sounded like Yun Yi had gifted it to him?

“The second was also not me, it was the Huangpang Supreme,” Chu Xingran continued. “Yun Yi gave the heritage to the supreme and tried to sacrifice her to the realm monster.

“But the supreme quickly grasped the situation and severed her karmic ties with the dragons, turning her back on them. She was the eldest princess of the yellow dragons and changed her name to Huang Pang. Prior to that, she and Moran Qingfei—a stunning genius of the Moran Clan—loved each other. However, their factions opposed the match and their relationship had been forced to come to an end.

“But when Huang Pang left the yellow dragons, Moran Qingfei also severed his connections to his clan and took the name of Mo Fei, continuing his bond with Huang Pang.”

“Well, he is certainly a loyal man,” Xie Tianxun took a sharp breath. He’d visited the Firmament Prison before during another spatial tide and had heard of the strange legends surrounding Huangpang major world. He knew of the might of its ghostly capital city.

It wasn’t until now that he understood why.

“You know everything after that. Huang Pang became a supreme and is a dragon, so she can no longer be a sacrifice. Therefore, Yun Yi stirred up trouble and made her nature widely known, borrowing the hand of countless supremes to kill her.”

Yun Yi didn’t take action himself because he didn’t want to form karmic ties with the dragons and the Moran Clan. He only made a move at the very end to retrieve the heritage of the primeval heavenly court. Supremes couldn’t be the realm monster’s sacrificial good, so he had to find someone else to play the part.

He found Chu Xingran.

Chu Xingran was no fool. Although he didn’t know why the Huangpang Supreme had died, he knew that his unexpected gains would result in fatal attention and affect all of Darklake.

Determined to see things through, he ran off to the Land of Reincarnation using the Dafeng betrothal as an excuse. Chu Xingran’s reaction was wholly unexpected; when Yun Yi came to, his would-be sacrifice was already the Curse King in the Land of Reincarnation.

Before he did so, Chu Xingran visited the ruins and obtained a fragment of the Firmament Prison. Since he’d yet to fully digest the primeval legacy then, he couldn’t serve as the sacrifice. Yun Yi had no choice but to allow him to roam freely in the chief worlds, much like the Huangpang Supreme.

When all was said and done, it turned out that Yun Yi underestimated Chu Xingran. Yun Yi was a tremendous heavyweight far beyond supreme. He stood at the apex of strength, but there was one area in which he fell far short of Chu Xingran.

Stratagem.

Born into a royal family and growing up as the nation’s crown prince, Chu Xingran had lived through circumstances much more complex than what a cultivator like Yun Yi would ever experience in his life. Seeing as the latter held even a supreme in the palm of his hand, he naturally thought lightly of Chu Xingran on a subconscious level.

That was precisely the blind spot that Chu Xingran took advantage of and made good his escape.

Yun Yi’s three concubines were also existences beyond supreme. He’d directed them to keep watch over the passages outside the three Hell Tombs to prevent Chu Xingran from escaping in that direction.

However, Chu Xingran smartly broke through the blockade and utilized his connection to the dragons to leave the Land of Reincarnation. He also employed a small trick to have the Azure Dragon King take him as a foster son, thus further deterring Yun Yi’s plots.

Chu Xingran encountered the azure dragon ancestral god early on during his time in the Land of Reincarnation. He obtained some of the ancestral god’s heritage then and also let the god know that the heritage of the primeval heavenly court was on himself.

It was such a prodigious matter that the ancestral god didn’t dare speak of it, not even when Lu Yun asked.

When Chu Xingran raised the proposal of taking Ao Qin’s Sea Dao Flower in the Abyssal Tomb, he hadn’t wanted the flower. He wanted to revive Ao Qin and communicate with the dragons through the genius. That would be the final stroke of completion in his plans involving the azure dragon ancestral god

He was successful, but the series of maneuvers created so many karmic repercussions between him and Lu Yun that he had to pay off the debt. Hence, he was here in the ruins of the Firmament Prison with Xie Tianxun.

At the same time, Yun Yi had known that Chu Xingran would return at some point, even if not for Lu Yun’s sake. It wasn’t that easy for an ant to thoroughly dismantle Yun Yi’s scheme. The titan had created so many karmic ties in the ruins that Chu Xingran would have to make a repeat trip, no matter the reason!

Thus, Yun Yi was hot on Chu Xingran’s heels after the latter reentered the ruins and kept the genius trapped inside. But this time, he discovered that Chu Xingran no longer possessed the Imperial Seal. Hence, he was forced to send a replica to the Land of Reincarnation—ostensibly to work with the god of Mount Tai, but really to search for the seal.

Someone as strong as Yun Yi could see through all of the cycles of reincarnation at a glance, but it still cost him a great deal to actually find the seal. This was primarily due to the Tome of Life and Death being present in this loop, preventing him from seeing through Lu Yun’s true nature.

However, since the Imperial Seal had been on Lu Yun in previous cycles, Yun Yi’s strong conjecture was that it remained on Lu Yun this time around. Thus, even if Lu Yun hadn’t deployed his final trump card in the form of Diexi and her crystal coffin, Yun Yi still would’ve found an excuse to retreat.

After that search attempt, he didn’t try, or need to try, to affect Lu Yun with any other ploy. He just needed to keep Chu Xingran in the Firmament Prison to eventually draw Lu Yun’s presence as well.

……

Lu Yun peered into some secrets only after he entered the prison proper. In order to confirm his suspicions, he kept probing whether or not Yun Yi was still physically present. Yun Yi had likely discovered him in the Wind and Cloud Pagoda and then arranged for the spacetime tide to happen ahead of time.

The king soldier was also specially arranged for him.

If it was only a realm monster that the original king soldier was up against, he would be able to withstand the enemy. But combined with a Yun Yi? Not even the collective might of all of the yin soldiers and king soldier could last one second in defiance. They were almost instantaneously assimilated by the realm monster’s will and became its puppets.

Yun Yi left the king soldier’s mind intact in order to lay a trap for Lu Yun. He didn’t know that Lu Yun could summon the yin soldiers through his soybean art, but he knew that the Army Pagoda was on the young man. Once Lu Yun refined the king soldier with the pagoda, Yun Yi would be able to control the young man through the soldier. He would keep Lu Yun here and sacrifice all three to the realm monster!

The only thing that Yun Yi was mistaken about was that this time around, Lu Yun depended on the Tome of Life and Death instead. Chu Xingran had used formula dao to discover certain secrets about this place, but it was the young man in white that most surprised Yun Yi.

“If my guess is right, Yun Yi is here for a woman,” Lu Yun suddenly said.

“A woman?” Chu Xingran and Xie Tianxun paused.

“He should be… I tried provoking him earlier and found that one sentence in particular really angered him.” Lu Yun carefully mouthed the key word.

“…cuckold?” Xie Tianxun repeated. The color drained out of his face in the next second. It felt like there was a pair of furious eyes glaring at him.

“Yes, that keyword infuriates him, so I promise that he’s here for a woman,” Lu Yun murmured. “I used the Ancestry Bridge to make a few calculations when Jian Bu’er killed Yun Lang. Yun Lang is not of Yun Yi’s bloodline, but he is the Cloud Atlas Supreme’s son. Therefore, my hypothesis is that Yun Yi has no children. Even his concubines are just a front.”

Xie Tianxun curled his lip, he wasn’t interested in Yun Yi. What mattered was that Yun Yi was using them as sacrifices to the realm monster. Up ’till now, Lu Yun and Chu Xingran were unable to determine why Yun Yi was going to the trouble of having someone bearing the heritage be the sacrifice. The realm monster was about to take form regardless.

Did he want the realm monster to inherit the primeval court’s legacy? But try as Lu Yun might, he couldn’t think of a way that would enable a realm monster to obtain this heritage. In his eyes, this inheritance was nothing desirable. It represented decay and isolation—trash that had been eliminated by the times. The truly desirable were recorded in the order of heaven and earth. Even if someone kept it to themselves and took it to the grave with them, there would be another who somehow obtained the marvelous knowledge.

Lu Yun and Chu Xingran looked at each other, both of them completely baffled.

“I say, can you figure a way out of here first? We can discuss this when we’re all safe,” Xie Tianxun complained with trepidation. He was highly put out at how animated the two were in their conversation.

“I might know why,” the king soldier suddenly said. “A realm monster is a savage, there is nothing else in its thoughts apart from violence and destruction. If one wishes a realm monster to be intelligent, it must be baptized by civilization.”

“He wants the realm monster to have the intelligence of a living being?” That made even less sense to Lu Yun.

Civilization… he didn’t know what heritage Xie Tianxun possessed, but the Imperial Seal and primeval heavenly court were certainly ancient civilizations! Even though they were decrepit and run-down, they were still complete civilizations.

“What does he want to do?” Lu Yun couldn’t help a shudder.

“I have no idea.” Chu Xingran shook his head blankly.

“Enough, all of you!” Xie Tianxun stomped his foot with anger. “Can we get out of here first?!”

They were out of the darkness now. If they died here, they would resurrect back in the darkness.