The woman called Ge Yun abruptly shifted back into her true form as a fur seal and pounced on Lu Yun, trailing a pungent cloud of fishy stench in her wake.

Fur seals in the world of immortals were different from those found on Earth. Their skin was a mottled dark-green and looked thick and gooey with dark green hairs growing from it in patches, much like a mangy dog.

Ge Yun’s obese figure was more than forty meters long, and two dark yellow tusks jutted out of her enormous mouth. Ecstatic, excited squeals emitted from her mouth as her two upper limbs slapped the ground repeatedly.

It obviously hadn’t been long since this... thing... had acquired human form. It wasn’t yet used to it, and it was happiest and most comfortable in its natural fur seal shape.

Clamoring with reckless abandon, Ge Yun arrived in front of Lu Yun in the blink of an eye.

“Get lost!” Stifling a sudden bout of revulsion, he extended his hand and turned Violetgrave into a torrential sword river that surged at the fur seal.

The creature was a void-ascended immortal, but Lu Yun wasn’t far from that level either at a mere tribulation away. As such, he was many times stronger than when he’d come across Fangyang Xing.

Sword dao revolved endlessly in his hand, releasing heaven-shattering force as the sword river fired a pillar of light that pierced the sky and seemed to cleave the very void in half.

Puff!

Kelp-green blood spurted into the air; the fur seal shrieked miserably as a black chunk of fat weighing fifty kilograms was shaved off by the sword strike. Even so, the creature’s body was almost entirely covered in sticky, lumpy fat. While the damage seemed terrible at first glance, it hadn’t truly harmed its essence.

“Ahhhhh! I’m going to eat you!!” Ge Yun shrieked. Mouth wide open, it spat a giant black water jar out of its mouth. Following which, the water jar upended itself and unleashed a deluge of seawater that filled the newly dried-up Lake of Yin to the brim.

“Oh no, fall back!” Turning pale with fright, the other immortals took to the air and fled in the opposite direction. The seawater was extremely heavy, so much so that it could annihilate even a peerless immortal upon contact. Without a doubt, the black water jar was an immortal weapon of prodigious power.

Thankfully, the lake had previously been emptied, so despite the great limitations, the immortals nevertheless managed to flee through the air. Otherwise, all of them would have perished in the blink of an eye.

This fur seal’s combat arts aren’t especially strong, but its body and immortal dao are both exceptional!

Lu Yun had figured out the fur seal in the short moment he’d made contact with it. It didn’t even measure up to current immortals, when it came to arts and skills, but its extraordinary physique and fearsome treasure more than made up for it.

In a sense, it personified Lu Yun’s concept of supplemental paths as king.

In any case, the seawater’s impact was too formidable for him to weather with his own strength alone.

“But against seawater…” Turning his palm up, he summoned the Sugato Sword into his hand.

Boom!

The next moment, the sword loudly disintegrated into boundless sword energy that wove in the air to form a vast net. As soon as the heavy seawater crashed into the net, it was sliced into many smaller flows that trickled away.

“It’s better to diffuse a flood than to block or flee from it,” Lu Yun stated loud and clear as he continued breaking the deluge down into smaller flows. His voice surged outward and built upon itself, becoming a deafening wave of sound.

The black jar seemed to contain an endless supply of seawater and created wave upon staggering wave that pulverized some of the weaker immortals. Even the stronger peerless immortals and some dao immortals were small boats adrift in the storm, about to be snuffed out by the fearsome water at any second.

Meanwhile, a greater part of the immortals resorted to passive defense against the giant waves or tried to endure them head-on, but all they achieved for their efforts was to be crushed to a paste.

At this juncture, the crowd finally heard Lu Yun’s words and took note of his actions. Understanding struck them out of the blue, and some of them emulated him by weaving great nets in the sky to impede the water’s flow.

As for Lu Yun, he felt an astonishing amount of goodwill pouring into him from every direction, ultimately converging on the Sal Tree of Life and Death that was rooted in his dantian. Several karmic fruits slowly began taking shape.

He’d used almost his entire supply of karmic fruit in recent period, but imparting the way out of this crisis was a lifesaving grace that earned him extraordinary goodwill from the surviving immortals.

Sure enough, I’m able to make more efficient use of goodwill as the Sal Tree grows!

Previously, the goodwill flowing into the Sal Tree was automatically converted, then forwarded to him in the form of increased cultivation. To condense it into karmic fruit, the goodwill first had to become virtuous merit.

But now that the sapling had grown into a small, robust tree, it could directly convert goodwill into karmic fruit. Moreover, the seed of hellfire had also appeared at the foot of the Sal Tree, gently kindling it.

The tree is evolving! Lu Yun shook.

According to the records within the Tome of Life and Death, the Sal Tree of Life and Death was as it appeared—a formidable spirit root that shouldered the human hell, one that could be described as the ancestor of all living plants in the world.

It’s evolving again? He was a little baffled. Ah, yes, primeval humans used the tree as a foundation for hell and storage for hellfire… Ah! But back then, there was no Tome of Life and Death in hell!

Even as one of the highest authorities among the primeval humans and privy to all of their secrets, Qi Hai still hadn’t been aware of the existence of the Tome of Life and Death.

But since Lu Yun controlled the tome, the tree also absorbed the book’s power and began evolving in a brand new direction. Gleaming, bright-yellow luminescence shimmered over the tree’s formerly jet-black trunk, as if the color of… virtuous merit!

Goodwill… virtuous merit! I need a lot more merit to fuel its evolution… That’s fine. After I go out, I can immediately set that thing in motion. Many thoughts whirled in his head in that split second.

Meanwhile, the fur seal had hopped onto the waves and once again pounced in his direction. The deluge earlier hadn’t been meant to crush Lu Yun to death… Instead, it was meant to create an environment that’d multiply the creature’s strength.

But Lu Yun quickly froze when he noticed that Ge Yun wasn’t the only fur seal inside the inky waters. Many more of them snarled viciously as they rode the waves in his direction.

“These fur seals were ordinary monster beasts in the Primordial Era. There was nothing unusual about them, but even the most ordinary of beasts from the ancient times isn’t so ordinary when transposed to the current era…”

A fine layer of sweat seeped out of his palms; these fur seals were void-ascended immortals! While they weren’t proficient in immortal methods or combat arts, they could overwhelm him with their vast immortal force alone.