“A holy king from the underworld?” A disquieting voice rang out from a corner of the void as a vivid streak of blue flashed across the sky.

“What was that?!” Alarmed, the holy king leaned slightly backward and snatched at the vivid shadow. His hand closed around a writhing snakeling that hissed furiously and suddenly twisted with a freakish motion, breaking its back to bite the hand that held it.

“Be careful, that’s nascent spirit poison!” Lu Yun quickly called out.

“Nascent spirit poison?” An unnatural blue flashed through Holy King Atrophy’s eyes and slowly crept into his hair and teeth. “Though the poison of a spirit snake is strong, I am immune to it. …you are a creature of the Blood Sea, no wonder…”

The light in the holy king’s eyes dimmed. “There will only be two holy kings in the underworld upon my death… the underworld needs guardians… I sincerely beseech you to become a holy king and keep watch over the tombs of that world.”

Hiss hiss hiss.

Lu Yun didn’t have a chance to respond before the Spiriteater Demon Snake emerged out of the shadows. Its enormous head swung toward the holy king and sought to swallow him whole.

“Oh fuck OFF!!” Lu Yun roared and let loose with everything he had, punching straight at the snake’s head.

A brilliant ball of bloody light exploded from the snake king and unfolded in the air like it was a mini-Blood Sea, sending him flying backward with great force.

“So the Spiriteater Demon Snake is the creature from the Blood Sea!” Abrupt realization dawned on him. The two trails of footprints by the Blood Sea shores must have been misdirection. Holy King Atrophy wouldn’t have been unaware that a creature from those waters had made landfall, and indeed, he’d been on guard against them all along. If there was anything that could harm him in the world of immortals, it’d be something from those bloody depths.

Lu Yun and the holy king had both noticed the snake king’s existence early on, but ignored it since its nascent spirit poison couldn’t affect them. Instead, they’d focused their attentions on the smear of blood hidden in the void. Neither of them had expected that to be a diversion, and for the real threat to be the Spiriteater Demon Snake!

……

“It’s said that one can obtain the underworld if one devours a holy king. With the fortification of the world that’s existed since the dawn of time, I’ll be able to break through my current limitations and reach the realm of the primeval human kings…”

Poisonous radiance of vivid blue shimmered around the snake king, marked by an undertone of bloody qi. Its maw yawned open once again as it slithered toward Holy King Atrophy.

In the air, countless rotting kun pulsed in anger and barreled down on the snake as if they’d gone mad. However, all of them shrieked in anguish as soon as they came in contact with the venomous light around the snake. They tumbled to the ground, never to move again.

So even the rotting kun couldn’t approach the Spiriteater Demon Snake.

“What an incredible nascent spirit poison!” Lu Yun rushed over again and waved his hand, popping a middle-aged man in long jade-green robes into existence. His hair and eyebrows were green, and even his pupils were green. Toxic green smoke discharged from all over his being.

The Poison Fiend!

One of Lu Yun’s Infernum, this was an ultimate entity of poison that Lü Guhong of Mist Land had refined. However, it’d gone to Su Xiaoxiao and Xingzi once they’d arrived on the scene. After being reworked by the two Yama Kings, the entity that was closer to a weapon spirit had evolved into a real life form.

After truly coming to life, the Poison Fiend began cultivating an exceedingly vicious poison method and was now a void-ascended immortal. Being a new immortal, he wasn’t all that strong yet, but the poison he possessed was absolutely terrifying and on a similar level to the snake king’s nascent spirit poison.

One poison affected only the nascent spirit, while the other targeted only the physical body. Blue light and green smoke intertwined in the air when the two great poisons clashed against each other. They tore and ripped into each other, giving rise to violent poisonous fluctuations.

Greatly alarmed, the snake king hastily reared backward and didn’t dare touch the green smoke. At the same time, the Poison Fiend didn’t dare let the blue light graze its skin.

“These disciples humbly request the presence of the Ninth Heavens Demon-Destroying Patriarch to root out evil!” Two coolly composed voices delivered loud proclamations, summoning a sky full of stars and coalescing starlight into a tall and lean figure.

The Ninth Heavens Demon-Destroying Patriarch!

Outside Life Province, the Lin brothers struck a steady pose and brandished longswords while chanting continuously. After setting foot into immortality, they could summon a much stronger Ninth Heavens Demon-Destroying Patriarch than before. What had previously been a blurry figure with indistinct features was now a real, solid man in his mid-thirties. Penetrating clear eyes, chiseled face, and a small crown of pure gold in his hair, he wore a daoist robe embroidered with the Big Dipper. Long hair flowing around his face emphasized his otherworldly tendencies.

“The Cosmic Skycarver,” he uttered in a magnetic voice the moment he landed.

Lu Yun quickly lobbed the sword in his hands to the patriarch. The second it entered the patriarch’s grasp, the stars over his head brightened and rays of cosmic radiance crisscrossed to concentrate into various starstones.

“It really is the Ninth Heavens Demon-Destroying Patriarch!” Lu Yun’s eyes lit up. The power of starstones and power of the cosmos originated from the patriarch. When Chen Xiao found one for Qing Yu to suppress her cosmic constitution and poison curse, he’d unwittingly stumbled upon the patriarch’s legacy!

Dang, those two monkeys of mine did good this time and summoned the real patriarch! But the patriarch’s only meant to subdue ghosts and evil… Oh, wait, since the Spiriteater Demon Snake died and then came back to life in the Blood Sea, it counts as a dead spirit.

When the Ninth Heavens Demon-Destroying Patriarch struck out with a lunge, the starlight in the firmament gathered into a terrifying longsword of cosmic power.

Hummmmm.

Any location the longsword passed through thoroughly expelled all traces of blue light or green smoke. The Poison Fiend squalled with anguish and took off running. He’d been grazed by the light from the Cosmic Skycarver and was billowing black smoke from his wound. As he’d just become an immortal, he had no resistance whatsoever to the strength carving through the sky.

“Gyak gyak gyak—” vocalized the snake king. He took human form with a brisk shake, becoming a menacing man in a long crystalline blue robe. An enormous long spear of bone scintillated with blue light in his hand, and it took only a heartbeat for the snake king to launch into a run at the sword.

Boom!

Flung back from recoil, the patriarch grunted and fell a few steps back as well.

“I might have shown you some respect if you were alive, Ninth Heavens Demon-Destroying Patriarch! But you’re just an image summoned by two true immortals, so what can you do to me!” The snake king threw his head back with a howl, transforming his spear into a snake and lunging at the patriarch.

At this moment, a bolt of blue and purple flashed through the sky and intersected, both making a beeline for the snake king.

Boom!

The combined bolts smashed the white bone spear to pieces.