“Or Great Emperor Kunpeng transformed into a realm monster spirit?” Lu Yun kept his eyes fixed on the lady in front of him and carefully phrased each question. He was deploying the three great secret arts of his sect—Dragonsearch Invocation, Dragonshift Method, and Dragonspike Litany—at the moment rather than the Spectral Eye.

If he could practice them to their greatest forms, he’d be able to combine them into the even more terrifying Dragonquake Scripture.

He wasn’t there yet, but had reached a point of operating all of them at the same time. Combined with the luopan, he was able to see through the core essence of what was in front of him, despite being unable to restrain the realm monster before his eyes. The true form of the realm monster was vastly different from the both the corpse and the Xuanyuan Xiaoyue it’d manifested earlier.

She looked calmly at him and didn’t say a single word, but the frigid air within their surroundings became even more biting. The orb that’d lain between Xuanyuan Xiaoyue’s hands earlier was hanging from the realm monster’s body.

Suddenly, she undid it from around her neck and hefted it in her hands, pushing it in front of Lu Yun.

He looked slack jawed at the coldly glinting orb—he understood the realm monster’s intentions. This was a gift for him!

But… the frosty air emanating from it was enough to freeze connate kui water into icy chunks. He didn’t dare touch it, not with his current cultivation. At present, his hellfire could repel the cold air in their surroundings, but it couldn’t do anything about the chill exuding from the orb.

Understanding seemed to flash through the realm monster’s white eyes and she softly caressed the orb, dismissing the chilliness from its surface and returning it to a pitch-black, glistening sphere. Lu Yun’s eyes fixated on it.

“The Embittered Ocean…” Lu Yun sucked in a breath and exhaled the name.

The realm monster nodded gently and reached forward again, presenting the orb to him.

“For me?” Eyes wide open, he recalled his initial disbelief when Ashu said that the Embittered Ocean had been refined into a connate treasure. Here the treasure was, right within arm’s reach! Who would’ve thought that the Embittered Ocean was the culprit in freezing Xuanyuan Xiaoyue to death and annihilating the last hopes of the Xuanyuan Clan?

The realm monster nodded and released her grasp, sending the orb drifting slowly in front of Lu Yun. However, he still didn’t reach out for it.

“Why are you giving this to me?” Lu Yun frowned.

The realm monster tilted her head in thought, taking a long moment before pointing at herself and then at Lu Yun.

“She’s saying that you can resurrect her.” Meng Wang rose from the luopan with formula dao actively circulating on him and postulated her meaning, which the realm monster immediately confirmed.

Formula dao was a marvelous creation that the former immortal emperor had immediately engrossed himself in upon learning it. His mastery of the supplemental path reached an unthinkable level within an incredibly short amount of time.

“I’ve heard of realm monsters, but this one seems different from the ones that plagued the Primeval Era and evoked terror at their name.” As Meng Wang was now the treasure spirit of the luopan, him deploying formula dao meant that the compass was also operating it. “This realm monster was born here without any resentment or malice. She’s never encountered the outside world, so she doesn’t even have the most basic of language abilities.”

Meng Wang connected his thoughts to the realm monster’s and discovered that she was as blank as a sheet of paper. Other than some instinctive reactions, no other thoughts colored the page.

“The world formed by the kun body of the great emperor is dead, frozen instantly when the Embittered Ocean became a connate treasure. Thus marked the birth of the realm monster as well—it was a sheer accident.” Meng Wang ran through his theories and frowned when he settled on the proper conclusion. “The Yin Yang Ghost Fostering Method you mentioned earlier… someone who we suspect to be the monster celestial master dismantled the yang ghost, and the realm monster destroyed the yin side of things. Whoever set this up likely never fathomed that a realm monster would be born here.”

With this, the realm monster’s earlier actions could be easily explained away. The orb within the ice coffin was her core essence. Anything that happened to it could easily threaten her.

Meanwhile, the vicious ghost that Xuanyuan Xiaoyue transformed into was the ghost nurtured by the Yin Yang Ghost Fostering Method. Whether logically or emotionally speaking, the realm monster didn’t want Xiaoyue to obtain her freedom. Since the latter’s existence was integrally linked to the Embittered Ocean, that also made her a threat to the realm monster.

Born of a dead world, the realm monster was a special feng shui layout and another dead entity in Lu Yun’s eyes. She saw in him hope for coming back to life, so the obvious course of action was to hand over her core essence.

“Take it, this realm monster is different from the ones you’ve heard of before,” Meng Wang said to Lu Yun.

“I’ve… never heard of realm monsters before.” Lu Yun finally reached out and took the orb. Connate kui water covered the Embittered Ocean Orb’s surface, but its heart was made of bitterly cold connate glacial essence.

“If I’m holding the Embittered Ocean in my hand now, then where are we?” Lu Yun looked closely at the ocean around them.

Countless kun swam through its waters like they were ordinary fish, and an island formed from the kun body of the great emperor drifted in the ocean’s center. The island looked to be only a thousand kilometers across, but an entire world could be found within.

“This really is the Embittered Ocean in my hand, so seriously, where are we?” He was at a complete loss.

“The island formed by the kun is only the entrance to this world,” clarified Meng Wang.

Lu Yun nodded and watched as the realm monster turned into a hazy current and flowed into the orb in his hands. The world immediately changed around him, depositing the vanished Ashu and others in front of him.

A joyous feeling circled around his heart—not from him, but from the orb in his hands.

“What happened just now?” The Venerated Sacrosanct Demon Sovereign looked at Lu Yun in stupefaction. It felt like only a moment had passed, but it also seemed like countless aeons had gone by. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, other than an exceedingly disagreeable feeling at the bottom of his heart, like someone had stolen his time for no rhyme or reason.

“The realm monster isolated us from this part of the world just now!” Ashu’s face was pale and fear shone blatantly out of his eyes. This wasn’t his first time coming across this particular combat art.

“Everything’s fine now.” Lu Yun carefully put away the Embittered Ocean Orb and sent it to a Hell Flower in the netherworld. Though the realm monster had gifted it to him, he didn’t plan on actually accepting it. The karmic repercussions of such an act were too great, so it was safest in the realm monster’s hands.

Besides, she was one of his after entering hell.