“The underworld isn’t a version of hell, it’s the world’s mausoleum,” Holy King Antiquity suddenly spoke up. “A very, very long time ago, there was no underworld. But something happened, and so this world was born.

“Buried here are the ancient eras and civilization found through time, making the underworld the mausoleum of the world.”

After a pensive pause, Xing Chen nodded.

“There is something you must do.” The holy king’s tone turned serious. “It has to do with the divine race!”

Xing Chen met his eyes.

“The divine race—gods and the divine spirits they created—are the guardians of heaven and earth. They guided every newborn civilization, and they protected us for the first eighty thousand years after the great war.

“However, history has been distorted to paint them as sinners who were exiled from the world of immortals.

“You must clear their names!” Holy King Desolation implored gravely. “The four Abysses of Divine Burial in the world of immortals must be levelled as well. The divines imprisoned there are all heroes who have done a great service for life itself.”

XIng Chen nodded with a solemn expression. He’d long picked up on the signs and had wanted to head to the Skandha Range for an answer from the desolate willow. The holy king's words confirmed his and Qing Yu’s speculations.

“I will look into this. If this is the truth, I will level the four abysses.” Xing Chen didn’t immediately give the holy king a promise, not this time. He wouldn’t make the final decision until he verified the truth with his own eyes. He’d already experienced too many twists and turns in this world to take this at face value.

He didn’t ask about the abyss in the celestial master tomb. As no divine spirits were buried there, it was established only to seal the world’s lungs.

The world’s heart had been in Holy Lord Ashu’s possession, the divine spirit within eradicated. Lu Yun believed it was only a matter of time before the spleen came into the hands of the underworld’s tomb keepers as well.

His replica would have to receive the heritage of holy kings in order to become one himself. He would then be granted power that rivalled a primeval human king. However, the power belonged only to the underworld and Xing Chen.

Once Xing Chen received the heritage of the underworld, a new nascent spirit would be born inside of him, severing his connection to the six paths of Lu Yun’s nascent spirit, thereby ensuring that he would lose usage of the death arts as well.

Lu Yun would no longer be able to share Xing Chen’s power through his nascent spirit, and his cultivation would fall from arcane immortal back to the august immortal realm. That wasn’t a problem for him, though. He’d already come up with a plan when he sent Xing Chen to become a holy king of the underworld.

……

Empress Myrtlestar also changed her name. Her official name Myrtlestar was derived from the Imperial Star she’d refined. Now that she’d given the star to Violetshade, she naturally wasn’t going to keep the old name.

She was now Fuying—her name before she became a great empress. About to set foot on the path of cultivation anew, Ge Long suddenly appeared to offer to be her master.

Fuying knew about Ge Long and had guessed who he was when she saw the sword formation in Dusk Province. Therefore, she didn’t hesitate to accept his proposal.

“Did you kill my people?” Arriving at the edge of the kingdom in hell, Fuying stared dumbly at the Enneawyrm Coffinbearers, bleak melancholy flashing through her eyes.

Her people, a tribe entirely of emperors, had been slaughtered overnight. She herself was no exception; they were then buried in the Skandha Range and formed the basis of its curse. She didn’t know how she’d died… but recalled seeing the Enneawyrm Coffinbearers that terrible night. She didn’t know how to react upon seeing the coffin again.

Although her people were still bound to be erased from the world in the great war a hundred thousand years ago, that tragedy was a blade stabbing into her heart. She had to understand how her people were killed. She had to assuage the hatred in her heart.

Ge Long looked up at the four coffins. They had once been among the most powerful individuals in the world, but now, they were harbingers of endless catastrophe. He shook his head. “Not I, the four coffins were tamed by Sir Lu Yun. I merely used them to nurture my four sword spirits.”

Fuying wasn’t the only one stunned by the revelation; Lu Yun was just as surprised. He’d come to hell to listen in on Ge Long’s conversation with Fuying, and this went beyond his expectations.

He’d thought that the Enneawyrm Coffinbearers belonged to Ge Long… but it turned out that it, along with the Nine-Phoenix Casket, Enneaqilin Coffinbiers, and Ninefooted Turtle Cist, had been all tamed by himself!

What the Star Demon Sect and Skandha Range worshipped wasn’t Lu Yun or Ge Long, but the four coffins!

“The coffins used to be four powerful beings who could rival great emperors! They were the ancestors of the dragon, phoenix, qilin, and turtle clans, to be exact.

“Once upon a time, a madman cultivated the demonic method as a human and established the demonic dao. Eventually, he was enthralled by the demonic dao and committed great atrocities. I was the one tasked to kill him.

“However, the fiend cultivated a strange method that rendered him almost unkillable. I couldn’t destroy him completely even after hacking him to pieces.

“In the end, I set up the sword formation and severed his body with the strength of my four swords. The ancestors of the four clans volunteered their bodies to bury the fiend piecemeal in coffins to seal him.

“After that, the dragon, phoenix, qilin, and turtle clans were revered as the four auspicious divine spirits, and the four coffins sealed,” Ge Long told the tale at a measured pace. “Unfortunately, the fiend’s demonic power was so great that he turned the coffins to evil, which then gave birth to the blood dragon, phoenix, qilin, and turtle. The four blood demons wreaked havoc all over the world.

“The demon god who’s taken over the true spirit of the Exalted celestial emperor is the heir to the fiend once sealed in the coffins.”

Lu Yun listened quietly to Ge Long’s recounting. The man spoke of a myth that had been long lost to history. He was reminded of the Enneawyrm Coffinbearers layout in Dusk City that’d damaged the earthen vein under the province and destroyed its fortunes.

In fact, the layout had become tangible and attempted to devour Lu Yun, but the Tome of Life and Death within him emerged and subdued the layout.

The first time that Lu Yun had seen the true body of the Enneawrym Coffinbearers was in hell. There, it’d transcended space to take the blood dragon that was Aoxue, but Lu Yun had stopped it. That was when the Tome of Life and Death had truly tamed the coffin.

The four coffins were a collective. Once the Enneawyrm Coffinbearers was tamed, the Nine-Phoenix Casket, Enneaqilin Coffinbiers, and Ninefooted Turtle Cist followed it into hell without protest.

“I’d already found myself again when Sir Lu Yun subdued the four coffins, so I refined them again and buried my four swords in them. As for the corpse of the fiend once resting inside, I destroyed it with the power Empress Vastspace left in Vastspace Mountain.” Recalling something, Ge Long grinned brilliantly into the darkness at the edge of the kingdom of hell and added, “Oh, right, with your power as well.”

There, a faint white figure scowled ferociously.

Lu Yun nodded, remembering what had happened in Vastspace Mountain. The four coffins had gathered and simultaneously opened their lids, allowing an enormous human skeleton to walk out. That must have been the remains of the demonic fiend.

“Everything related to the four blood demons and the four coffins in the world of immortals is the fiend’s doing, including the curse of the Skandha Extinction Tomb within the Skandha Range.

“You must be careful, sir. The fiend is very powerful. Although his soul has scattered and his body decimated, his true spirit isn’t so easily destroyed.” Ge Long’s expression turned grave. “When his body parts gathered in Vastspace Mountain, a chaos tribulation struck and destroyed Witherdew Major… The target of the tribulation was the fiend’s true spirit!”

“What?” Lu Yun started.

“The fiend’s true spirit wasn’t in the coffins, but in the altar at the Star Demon Sect. Now that it’s been destroyed, the true spirit must have reincarnated.” Ge Long shook his head. “If the fiend is allowed to grow, he’ll become a demon sovereign and break free of those from a hundred thousand years ago.”

The implications of his words were clear: The fiend hadn’t willingly committed his actions in the world of immortals or the business with the blood demons. He’d been controlled.

Lu Yun could guess by whom he had been controlled—beings like the akasha ghosts and Lu Shenhou. Those the immortal emperor referred to as the enemies.

“What about you?” Lu Yun asked, enunciating every word as he stared at “Ge Long”. “You… aren’t the Ge Long I met at first, are you? You must be someone of great importance. Why are you here? How did you become my follower? The name written in the book is Ge Long’s and not yours.”

“I...” Ge Long sighed. “I am dead and I have always been here. Once you arrived and became hell’s master, sir, I became your servant. Ge Long was the first being you killed after your arrival in the world of immortals. That is why I became Ge Long, similar to how you became the young governor of Dusk Province.

“Ge Long was no regular man, either. He was a descendent of the primordial demon celestial master. That gave me a demonic streak, which is, of course, how I am able to refine the coffins burying the fiend’s body and make them mine.”

Ge Long chuckled. He’d become a living dead as soon as his name was written into the Tome of Life and Death. He needed to constantly absorb yin energy and malice to regain his sense of self. That was why he’d been wreathed in thick demonic energy during that time and formed the habit of throwing his head at anything that contained what he needed.