Having the voice come out of nowhere and suddenly whisper into his ear raised all the hairs on the back of Lu Yun’s neck. It’d overheard his transmission to Qing Han!

Qing Han’s worried gaze stayed on Lu Yun; he hadn’t heard anything from his friend.

I’m already here.

It’d always been here.

A quick scan of the surroundings revealed only an endless supply of zombies and immortal ghosts. There was no sign of the Water Ghost Grasp; even the Spectral Eye couldn’t detect it.

Has its power exceeded that of the Tome of Life and Death?

Lu Yun lowered his head with a dark expression. His consciousness spread like mercury out from his Purple Manor, amplified to tremendous heights by the power of hellfire.

“Ah… you aren’t really here.” He tilted his head up and looked back at the ghost tree.

Its blazing eyes remained fixed to the snoring dragonling on Lu Yun’s shoulder. Patently, the ghost tree cared very much about this dragon. In fact, it’d tacitly allowed the immortal ghosts of other dragonlings to consume the souls of immortals as nutrition for this baby dragon.

“You’re in a different space,” Lu Yun said in a voice only he could hear. “This dragon nest is a location in which the layout of water and fire meet, a grand influence of the world where the two elements synergize and strengthen each other.”

“Oh?” the voice said.

“The layout of fire comes from the ancestral fire of the dragons. As for the layout of water, it must come from a water treasure that can create its own world, which is where your true body is!”

That was how the Water Ghost Grasp killed its victims—by dragging them into the treasure to drown them.

Only silence answered him. Then, a white figure slowly padded out from thin air.

“Jin Heyi?!” Lu Yun froze when he saw the newcomer’s face. It was Jin Heyi, who had been killed by Water Ghost Grasp earlier.

“...no, you’re not him. You’re Ao Lin, the crown prince of the North Sea dragons from ten thousand years ago.” Lu Yun’s eyes flashed black as he called upon his death art.

Ao Lin had died and become an immortal ghost. Thus, Lu Yun could easily see his identity with the Spectral Eye. He was the first prince of the dragon clan, Aoxue’s elder brother.

Ghost Dragon’s eyes turned black as they settled in blank shock on Lu Yun. After a beat, he responded quietly, “Ao Lin is no more. I am Ghost Dragon.” He turned to the ghost tree with a mutter. “I finally meet the one who destroyed the North Sea dragons.”

Public knowledge put the blackwater snakes as the ones who’d destroyed the North Sea dragons, but in truth, the blackwater snakes by themselves were no match for the dragons. The true culprit was this ghost tree, which had been in this tomb for an unknown period of time.

Ghost Dragon had merged with the water treasure and become the layout of water in the dragon nest. Although the water and fire layouts strengthened each other, they could never meet.

He was finally able to see the tree in person because Lu Yun had suppressed the layout of fire with his luopan and diminished the conflicting power of the two layouts.

At last, the two great horrors met.

The ghost tree didn’t spare a glance for Ghost Dragon; its gaze remained fixed on the dragonling on Lu Yun’s shoulder.

“No, we can’t have any more death here, or it’ll become stronger!” Lu Yun exclaimed when he noticed that the number of immortal ghosts and corpses in the area had grown much higher, and the tree’s presence had solidified even more as well.

“Death fuels me too.” Ghost Dragon quirked his lips in a malicious smile. “Whoever covets the territory of the dragons must die.”

The flesh and souls of immortals who’d died in the tomb would not only come here and become immortal ghosts, but a portion would also enter Ghost Dragon’s treasure and turn into water ghosts.

He, too, was drawing upon the strength of the dead immortals.

That was why the ghost tree had projected the image of the Fire Parasol Tree; it wanted to lure in more immortals. Only those who died in the point of fire would be fully absorbed by the tree.

“You’re not like the tree,” Lu Yun snorted. “You’ll only become marginally stronger after consuming the energy of death, but that energy will allow the tree to escape the layout in the dragon nest. Then it could kill a hundred fools like you with a single leaf!

“If you want to keep killing,” his voice grew frosty, “then I’ll take matters into my own hands.”

“You?” Ghost Dragon sneered, but continued approaching the ghost tree instead of turning back to Lu Yun. Meanwhile, water ghosts elsewhere in the tomb continued to grasp and kill immortals who had entered.

“I can sense Ao Xue’s presence on you, so I won’t kill you. Hold the formations of water and fire in place. I’ll deal with the tree.” Waves of great power rose from Ghost Dragon’s body and swept toward the ghost tree.

Rumble.

The power of water and fire vied for dominance in the air and disintegrated countless immortal ghosts and zombies.

A goodwill fruit hanging from the Sal Tree of Life and Death spontaneously combusted in Lu Yun’s dantian to unleash a tremendous supply of inner energy, which rushed into the luopan. Blinding light burst forth from the compass like a miniature sun.

……

“Dammit!” Alarmed, the Witherdew celestial emperor pushed the Blithe Entrapment Formation to its limit to seal off the clearing.

“Give me a hand, Donglin E!” Tuoba Jie growled. “If the scroll breaks, we’ll all die!!”

Realizing how dire the situation was, Donglin E tapped into his arcane dao cultivation and injected the formation with his wealth of energy.

“Come on!!” Other immortals who’d hung around until now followed suit as well.

All thirty-six hundred and fifty formations shifted, turning the Blithe Entrapment Formation from a formation to trap and kill into a pure trapping formation, keeping everything within the area of effect from getting out.

……

One after another, dragon corpses came to life and protected the ghost tree with a strange power. Among the five elements, water countered fire, which meant Ghost Dragon was the tree’s natural bane.

“Zombie dragons?” Ghost Dragon flickered in and out of existence, treading between the realms of reality and illusion. A faint smile tugged at his lips. “Perfect, I happened to acquire a treasure not too long ago.”

Whoosh!

A greyish-yellow bag flew out of his hand and opened up. Every single one of the zombie dragons was involuntarily pulled from the tree and sucked into the bag.

The Bag of Corpse Refinement.

Swoosh!

As soon as the dragon corpses disappeared, the fire enveloping the ghost tree surged dramatically and deepened from a bright yellow to a dusky red as the image of a nine-headed phoenix rushed out of the flames.