“Senior brother Lu!” The Deaf Prince stared at him. “You’re really here!”

“Are you guys alright?” Lu Yun heaved a sigh of relief when he saw the three of them and quickly dispelled his Dragonshift Method. His cultivation was currently too low to sustain a method of this magnitude for long. Controlling an earthen vein was doable, but a dragon vein was another story altogether.

“Senior brother Lu, why are you here?” Eyes and mouth wide open, something occurred to the Deaf Prince and he jumped up with alarm. “Senior brother Lu, you need to hurry and leave! This place is too dangerous!”

“I know it’s dangerous.” Lu Yun swallowed a pill to restore his energy. “Where are Bai Qi, Feng Ruyu, and Lin Yan?”

“They… were eaten by a monster!” Fear flashed in Beicang Qiong’s eyes. “We need to find the seventh World Chest so we can save them.”

“The seventh World Chest?” Lu Yun blinked.

“Right!” Relatively calmer in comparison, Jing Dichen breathed in deeply. “There’s a total of seven World Chests in this underground palace, all of which can withstand the crystal mountains here. The last time we came here, we took six of them.

“At first, we came back to get the seventh World Chest and bring back a crystal mountain for you, senior brother Lu...” Her voice dwindled in volume with embarrassment. She’d already guessed that Lu Yun had come to save them.

“We didn’t expect the mountain to suddenly come to life and swallow them. If not for your Tribulation Surrogate Pill, the three of them would be dead by now!” She couldn’t hide the dread in her eyes.

“The crystal mountain came to life and turned into a monster? How long ago was that?” Lu Yun frowned.

“Not long ago!” Beicang Qiong hurriedly answered. “We saw it with our own eyes—the three of them were swallowed whole!”

“We need to find the seventh World Chest as soon as possible to store the crystal mountain inside. That’s the only way to free them!” In their distress, Beicang Qiong and Jing Dichen forgot to transmit a copy of their words, so the Deaf Prince could only stare blankly at their moving lips, wholly unknowing of what they’d said.

“World Chests won’t do us any good. Take me there.” Lu Yun let out a long sigh while transmitting his voice.

“We got lost…” The Deaf Prince pulled a long face. “It’s all Beicang Qiong’s fault! He was the one leading the way!”

The culprit turned broodingly glum, while Jing Dichen didn’t say a word.

“Never mind, let me do it.” Lu Yun flipped over his hand and took out the feng shui compass again. “A dragon sleeps in mountains coiled, those deathly cliffs with mystery roiled!”

Hum!

Golden light danced on the compass as the small world emerged once more, depicting the layout of the entire palace.

“This is actually an underground palace? Wha…” Lu Yun stared blankly at the so-called underground palace he was currently in. “We’re... outside the celestial master tomb already? But the tomb’s energy still permeates this place...”

The Deaf Prince and the other two also gawked at the sight. What appeared in front of them was an enormous skeleton, impossible to make out in height or size. From what Lu Yun could see, the skull alone was bigger than all of Nephite Major. If this skeleton were to set foot in the world of immortals, the world would probably cave in and break under its weight!

The skeleton sat cross-legged in the emptiness, its hands cradling a small mountain made of immortal crystal. To be more precise, the mountain was small in comparison to the skeleton as a whole, but it was still about as big as the skull.

Currently, Lu Yun’s group was located in the interior of the mountain’s peak.

“What the heck is that?!” His eyes round as saucers, the Deaf Prince looked on blankly. “A skeleton bigger than the world of immortals itself… Is it really the remains of a living creature?”

“Its bones are made of immortal crystal.” Jing Dichen inhaled sharply. “Inside this palace… or mountain, there’s a strange kind of whirlwind that can turn people into immortal crystals!”

Clearly, they too had run into the same kind of tornados Lu Yun had encountered earlier. But protected by their World Chests, the six profligates had little to fear.

“Could this skeleton have been turned into immortal crystal by the same wind?” Jing Dichen was a little afraid of her own conjecture.

“I don’t know.” Lu Yun shook his head. “It doesn’t matter anyway. Let’s go find Lin Yan and the others!”

Halting the Dragonsearch Invocation, he led the way without a word, hellfire flaring to life on his figure. Like children caught misbehaving, Jing Dichen and the other two kept their mouths shut and hastened to follow him.

“That reminds me, junior sister Jing, Huaci is also here.”

“Huaci… She’s come back to life?!” Jing Dichen, Beicang Qing, and the Deaf Prince beamed with delight. They’d left for the tomb shortly after Jing Huaci’s damaged soul had merged with the Soul Restoring Pill; she hadn’t revived yet back then.

“She’s received quite the fortuitous opportunity as well,” Lu Yun murmured and turned around with an unexpected question. “An opportunity as lucky as the one here. Do the six of you want to claim the opportunity here?”

“No!” Beicang Qiong shook his head. “We’re just good-for-nothings idling our days away. While we do have exceptional potential, we don’t have the kind of temperament to make the most out of it. If the opportunity here really lands in our hands, it’ll end really badly!”

Lu Yun had already noticed that the three of them were on the cusp of becoming void-realm immortals. But just like himself, they were suppressing their cultivations to refrain from breaking through and waiting for their heavenly tribulations first, instead.

“The skeleton outside is the remains of a supreme powerhouse.” Lu Yun turned back, explaining while leading the way. “In life, she was known as Empress Timelight, an all-powerful existence surpassing the ancient immortal emperor.”

As soon as he’d seen the giant skeleton, he’d recognized it as Empress Timelight’s corpse!

But for some reason, the corpse had withered into a skeleton, and it cradled an object that had absolutely nothing to do with her dao.

Despite how things looked now, she’d certainly held something other than a chunk of immortal crystal in the past. Unexpected events had more than likely occurred later on.

“Empress Timelight, a great empress from before Emperors’ Fall!” Jing Dichen shouted subconsciously.

“You know about Emperors’ Fall?” Lu Yun looked at her in stupefaction.

“I do.” Jing Dichen nodded. “I am a born skydragon and I belong to my tribe’s royal line. Therefore, I’ve inherited my tribe’s memories.

“But to unlock those memories, I have to constantly increase my cultivation. Right now, all I know about the war of Emperors’ Fall and Empress Timelight are vague impressions.” She smiled wryly. Her skydragon bloodline was one thing, but her inherited memories were even more precious! Without those invaluable memories, she’d likely have become nothing more but a breeding tool by now.

Once she grew up and fully recovered these inherited memories, it’d enable the dragon tribe to regain the lost arts and methods of their ancestors and return to their most glorious era.

“Mhmm.” Lu Yun nodded and didn’t pursue the subject. “Unless I’m mistaken, the thing in the skeleton’s hand should be another emperor’s treasure.”

Unbidden, the thought of the soul fragment residing inside the Timelight Tower came to him. Perhaps… that soul was truly an emperor from the Primeval Era?

Assuming that the mountain of immortal crystals held by Empress Timelight’s corpse was the soul’s ultimate treasure, it’d explain everything tha had happened thus far.

Once the soul returned to this place, she would not only be able to take over Jing Huaci's body, extinguish Empress Timelight’s internal demon, and obtain the Timelight Tower, but also recover her own personal treasure.