As the demon fetus arrived in the world, demonic energy swept through the Exalted Divine Tombs, transforming every inch of the ground into a demonic land. Every corpse buried in the tombs was spontaneously demonized and crawled out as the living dead, replete with ringing shrieks and wails.

Shadowy figures emerged from the dark and converged upon the immortals, ghastly howls and screams echoing through the air. Every formation and layout in the mausoleum was destroyed within seconds, including the space-restriction formation.

“Run, run!” yelled an immortal as he soared into the air and shot back to where he’d entered the tombs.

Snap!

A snake-like creature whipped through the air in a red blur, swallowing the fleeing immortal in a single gulp. Their compatriot’s swift demise chilled everyone to the bones. Lu Yun had seen such a snake before—within the Ichor Bog outside the tomb. So the creatures had entered the tomb after the birth of the demon fetus!

“How, how did everything turn out like this?” Appalled, the Exalted celestial emperor looked on with an ashen face. Didn’t they have another three to four days until the demon fetus was born?

Why had the timeline shifted up? By now, the Exalted Divine Tombs were fully corrupted and reeked with the miasma of a demonic land.

“S-senior brother Yin mentioned that Ge Yanxia was trying to accelerate the birth of the fetus through different methods,” Qing Yu sighed faintly.

“You, you can do s-something about this, can’t you?” babbled the celestial emperor. “You can kill that demon fetus even now… What about the Ninth Heaven’s Demon-Destroying Patriarch? He’ll be able to deal with it if he’s willing to!”

The corpse demons had surrounded the group of the living and were poised to attack.

“He can’t just do that.” Lin Xuan opened his thick archive again. “The patriarch can only be summoned every forty-nine days. That’s right—he isn’t a living soul, but a heroic spirit summoned by a particular method.”

Despair wrapped tightly around everyone while the celestial emperor overflowed with regret. If he’d been a little more decisive earlier and taken everyone to where the demon fetus really was, they would’ve accomplished their mission already.

So this was how it felt to reap what he’d sown. Only now did he resonate with the mindset of the previous nine celestial emperors, but all was too late now.

Screeching, the dreadful corpse demons picked up momentum in a forward charge. As they were demonized zombies, they were more powerful than regular zombies. Even now, a couple of them might’ve been manageable, but absolutely not when they were gathered in the tens of thousands. Even the Exalted celestial emperor felt helpless against them.

Demonic howls could still be heard echoing from the heart of the tomb; something seemed to be fighting the newly born spirit. Yin Qingran had said that Qi Hai was there, and the group of Destiny City disciples must have arrived as well.

“Go! We kill our way to the land that seals the demon fetus and rendezvous with Senior Qi Hai. We may still stand a chance then, but all of us will die if the situation remains as it is now!”

The Exalted celestial emperor’s command shone as a guiding beacon into the gloom of desperation. Roaring in unison, the less than ten thousand survivors rushed toward the demon. The Exalted Chart sparkled radiantly above the celestial emperor’s head, and the heavenly mandate of Exalted Major shimmered to life as it sent the despairing immortals through the darkness like a glowing lance. Any others still struggling in the murk reconvened with them as soon as they saw the light.

The real Yin Qingran was also among them.

Neither Qing Yu nor Lu Yun followed the group, and the latter transformed back into himself.

“What should we do?” Qing Yu turned to Lu Yun worriedly.

She knew nothing could stop him from leaving, if he wanted to. The Path of Ingress could transcend space and take them away immediately, now that the strange restriction was gone. However, she also knew Lu Yun would never leave like this.

He might resent immortals for their greed and lack of integrity, but he would also never allow the demon to run free through the world.

“Let’s go find the treasure Ge Long mentioned,” Lu Yun said after a pensive pause. “If it’s as powerful as he said, it should be able to kill the demon! Where’s Yueshen? Where’s she gone off to?”

The immortal-ghost-possessed-Li Youcai had disappeared quite a while ago.

“She said she was going to find the god.” Qing Yu had seen Yueshen once prior to meeting up with the Exalted celestial emperor. The immortal ghost had said god was in this mausoleum, and that she was going to find him.

“She’s going to find the god? Then we’ll go find her!” Lu Yun opened his hand and projected nine coffins from his palm.

The Ninefilia Specter Fostering Formation!

This was Yueshen’s core, one that she was unable to stray too far away from lest her soul scatter. However, Lu Yun had freed her from those constraints by sending the formation to hell, then further empowered her by storing the formation in the Tome of Life and Death.

Yueshen had recovered her memories and abilities not only because she’d absorbed the power of hell, but also because her core was now protected by the book. Lu Yun could also use the formation to find her!

If she was trapped, he would be able to summon her back through the formation as well. Since Yueshen had hared off to find a real god, Lu Yun wanted to see for himself just what these entities were.

He’d scanned every part of the tomb with the Spectral Eye along the way, but found no trace of the treasure Ge Long had mentioned. Perhaps the treasure was in the hand of this god.

Crackle.

Lu Yun casually killed the corpse demons approaching him with a wave of dark cyan lightning.

Yi Wood Cleansing Thunder!

The demon-countering lightning was more than enough to kill these lesser corpse demons. The group set foot on the Path of Ingress and made their way to Yueshen with the formation as their guide.

……

The Exalted Immortal Sect at the foot of Mount Exalted.

The land suddenly cracked open as demonic energy surged, propelling corpse demons out from beneath the ground.

“Demons… Corpse demons!”

“Here they come! Activate the grand defensive formation!”

Chaos engulfed the Exalted Immortal Sect. Formations lit up one after another to stop the emerging corpse demons, but the defenses were meant to halt outside invasions, not threats from below. The corpse demons had destroyed all of the formation disks and stones as they burrowed upwards.

Corpse demons swarmed and rampaged, slaughtering immortals and devouring the young disciples. Elites of the sect almost wept blood to see their juniors being eaten. These younglings were the future of the Exalted Immortal Sect!

“Kill, kill, kill!” snarled the head of the sect. The longsword in his hand twirled and churned through corpse demons like a meat grinder. “Block the cracks!” he screamed. “Now!”

Demons briefly overwhelmed the sect when the ineffectiveness of their efforts became apparent, only to be pushed back when various elders and venerated elders leapt into coordinated action to methodically cleanse their territory and block the cracks.

Wham!

A black hand suddenly shot out of the earth and grabbed the sect head, popping him with a single squeeze! A three-hundred-meter-tall corpse demon followed its hand out from the ground. Clad in a set of tattered armor, it had four heads and eight arms.