The ghost king took point, its colossal supply of energy permeating the air. Even Zhao Chong and his subordinates, who’d been gingerly picking their way along the path to the netherworld, were captured.

But for some reason, the ghost king kept them trapped in a subspace and prevented them from reaching Lu Yun.

……

“Do you mean it’s flawed?” Lu Yun asked in surprise.

“Right, it is!” Qing Yu focused her voice to transmit directly to Lu Yun, who frowned in anticipation of what she was going to say. “The luopan should’ve projected a real world, not the prototype of one. The problem lies with the Ten Orientations Stone.”

Having mastered the formula dao of her own invention, she’d studied the compass when activating it with the Dragonsearch Invocation earlier and identified a critical flaw.

“I believe the real Ten Orientations Stone should be a combination of both yin and yang,” Qing Yu said softly. “What you’ve acquired is a yin stone, which results in the compass having only one property. Only by combining the two can the compass project real worlds.”

Lu Yun was silent for a moment, then asked with a frown, “Are there really Ten Orientations Stones of pure yang in the world?”

Such stones were native to hell, where most things were of the greatest yin. Of course, there were no longer any treasures in hell after it’d been shattered. They had all been destroyed, scattered to the different majors and different worlds, or looted by those who had invaded hell.

“I should be able to theorize a pure yang stone once I ascend to immortality,” Qing Yu said with a slight frown. “I believe I’ll be able to synthesize one with various other materials.”

Lu Yun stared at her, speechless. He wouldn’t even dream about synthesizing a pure yang Ten Orientations Stone. She… reminded him of mad scientists back on Earth.

“Here we are!” Lu Yun came to a sudden stop, snapping back to attention.

A vast darkness loomed before them, so deeply impenetrable that it made one despair. Without the golden light radiating from the luopan, Lin Yu and Lin Xuan would’ve lost their minds.

“Where are we?” Lin Xuan took a deep breath. He was trembling, but in excitement rather than madness. He’d become obsessed with the dao of feng shui and different layouts, even more so than Lu Yun. He saw their current location as a giant feng shui layout—it was a dream come true to explore such a specimen!

Though he was a beginner in feng shui, and still relied on constant reference to the secret texts of the tomb raiders, he showed great potential in the art and had already easily grasped many feng shui layouts.

Lu Yun cast his Spectral Eye at the darkness before them. Gone was the death energy that had suffused the area, replaced by thick yin energy instead. He could see a palace made of white bones on the other end.

“Bone bricks!” Lu Yun’s face darkened when he got a good look at the structure. The palace was built with bone bricks!

Bone bricks were the product of refining living souls while alive through a forge of earth and sky. The resulting bricks were incredibly sturdy, thanks to the great resentment condensed in them. Very few things other than hellfire could damage such bricks.

He inhaled sharply, quite surprised to see the bricks again.

“This is the palace coffin!” A palace coffin of bone bricks… Though Spectral Eye was active, he still had trouble gleaning any information of death with the coffin of bone bricks obscuring his view.

Rumble.

A grating noise came from the darkness, sounding like a door creaking open, followed shortly by an outpouring of heavy decay that almost knocked Qing Yu and the Lin brothers off their feet. Their minds were confounded by the force, while Lu Yun hurriedly directed three talismans into their bodies to drive out the energy.

This wasn’t poison, nor was it yin or vicious energy. The door had simply remained shut for too long and countless aeons of decay and desolation had accumulated behind it.

The resulting energy wasn’t something regular living souls could withstand. The little fox’s eyes had rolled toward the back of her skull, but she was in a better state than Qing Yu and the two brothers.

Swoosh!

Lu Yun waved a hand and summoned Emerald Mistfire to his palm, purifying the area of the presence of decay.

Face pale, Qing Yu panted heavily.

“Is that the tomb qi recorded in the archives?” A trembling Lin Xuan flipped through the heavy book, looking for descriptions that matched the energy Lu Yun had dispersed.

“It isn’t.” Lu Yun shook his head. “That was just some decaying energy.”

The ghost king hovered above the palace coffin, its dark eyes staring coldly at them.

Rays of light shone through the darkness when the door to the palace coffin swung open. Lu Yun’s gaze settled on the origin of the light at the center of the palace. Therein rested a dark gold throne, where a tall and slim skeleton sat primly in its seat and reached the ground.

It was the remains of a woman.

However, the lower half of the corpse wasn’t weren’t separate legs, but a long spinal column that looked like a snake’s tail.

An Exalted Divine!

Lu Yun still couldn’t see her information, but he was certain she was an Exalted Divine in life. He also noticed the short sword that’d claimed her life buried in the center of her skull.

“Why… why do I feel like the body on the throne is alive?” Lin Yu asked hesitantly, fearfully.

“The palace is a coffin,” Lin Xuan explained seriously. “In the coffin, the dead are the living. We are the ones who don’t belong here.”

Before Lu Yun could step into the palace coffin, the ghost king descended suddenly from the sky and snapped coldly, “You, wait outside!”

He finally got a good look at it. It appeared to be a burly man with matte black skin, a black cape flaring over its shoulders.

Li Youcai walked out from behind Lu Yun, now possessed by Yueshen. Nine faint crimson figures trailed after her; she’d summoned her bloodcorpses.

Also standing by Yueshen’s side was a young woman dressed in a pale yellow chiffon dress. Looking roughly eighteen, her features were as delicately traced as those of a painting, and her skin was as fair as snow. The barest hint of crimson light sparkled from her eyes.

It was Diexi.

She’d ascended to the dao immortal realm and plucked an aether dao fruit, and her evolution had also reached its peak. The zombie king had come back to life as a living woman, but she was still the ruler of all zombies, in essence, placing her on the same level as the ghost king.

As soon as she appeared, the ghost king came to a sudden stop and turned around to stare at her.