Su Xiaoxiao remained silent, plainly unwilling to recall past events. Lu Yun saw some other things in her memories, things having to do with the foremost ancient pill master, Qi Hai, and quietly formed some thoughts of his own as a result.

……

Rumble, rumble, rumble.

Lu Yun and Su Xiaoxiao emerged from the gates to a series of rumbling noises in the air. Spatial tears had formed in the void and were rampaging through the place of extreme yin, frightening Yuchi Tianhuang and the other two out of their wits. They scrambled from one spot to another, trying to avoid the rips in space.

As a brainless zombie, their two-headed opponent was ripped to pieces the moment the openings had formed. Though it was at peak peerless immortal realm and many times stronger than the White Tiger’s physical body, the zombie had been as fragile as a piece of paper in the face of the rips in space.

“What the hell, we have to get out of here!” Aghast, Lu Yun reflexively recalled his Infernum.

Tugging the young man in one hand and Diexi in the other, Su Xiaoxiao pelted out of the cavern.

“Get over here!” The piercing cosmic radiance around Qing Han wrapped around them as soon as the group rushed out of the place of extreme yin.

Crackle crackle crackle!

When the pitch-black spatial rips hit the starlight, each collision produced teeth-numbing scraping noises. Violently trembling a few times, a long streak of cosmic radiance protected the group’s retreat from the corpse coffin. When it dispersed, Qing Han looked a little wan.

“What was that just now!” A trail of scarlet blood dribbled out of his mouth as he turned around and looked askance at the corpse coffins.

The two bodies had been dead and refined into corpse coffins for an unknown eternity, but were now slowly stirring to motion! Their decayed eyeballs were slowly shifting, and the spatial rips continued destroying the space within them.

The two corpse coffins were… coming back to life!

Seeing that Qing Han had been hurt by the backlash from the rips in space, Lu Yun quickly took out a few pills to feed them to his friend.

“Don’t!” Su Xiaoxiao quickly stopped her master’s motions. “He’s heavily poisoned, and the venom has set in deep. He can’t take any pills right now!”

Lu Yun jerked to a stop.

An inky-green sparkle flickered through Su Xiaoxiao’s eyes while she looked over Qing Han. Her voice trembled when she spoke again. “Vicious, how… incredibly vicious! Who set up such a callous scheme in him, planning to use him as a catalyst of poison to kill all living things?!”

“What?! What do you mean by that? Speak clearly!” Horrified shock seized Lu Yun and Qing Han, and even Empress Myrtlestar wore an ugly expression in the Scroll of Shepherding Immortals.

Though Lu Yun now possessed Su Xiaoxiao’s memories and experiences, which included her terrifying skill in both medicine and poison, he wasn’t well versed enough in them to give such a quick diagnosis.

“This is a poisonous mutation of an accursed spirit root!” Su Xiaoxiao took in a deep breath. “Once the poison activates, it will be a curse of poison and kill everyone that has to do with him!”

Color drained from Qing Han’s face; he was as pale as a sheet. Everyone to do with me?

The Qings? No, he’d cut all ties with that heartless clan a long time ago. So that meant Lu Yun would die from his curse?

A despairing stroke of gray appeared in the disguised girl’s eyes.

“Sir Qing Han repaired the void realm and is the Youth Dao Sovereign. There’s too many people connected to him!” Diexi exclaimed.

Every living thing in the world of immortals, and all worlds beyond, in fact, had sensed the Dao Flower’s bloom. Though Diexi was a zombie king, she too had seen Qing Han beneath the flower.

“…is it possible… that everything… and I mean everything... that’s happened so far… is all because of someone’s scheme?” Lu Yun’s lips were white from the implications.

If someone had set up a plot with the Dao Flower as the bait, that was too… too… absurdly horrifying to take in. That meant this plot had begun the moment the path of cultivation had been severed, been aimed at all of the ancient era, culminated in the birth of Qing Han with an accursed spirit root, and set in motion by the Qing Clan poisoning him!

“Can you undo this poison?” Lu Yun swiveled hopefully to Su Xiaoxiao.

“I can!” She quickly responded, sensing her master’s nervousness. “There’s two ways! The first is to collect all ten connate spirit roots in the world and plant them in him. That will naturally defuse the poisonous mutation of the accursed spirit root!

“The second is to make use of the fruit of the Ancient Tree of Life, a Skydragon Pearl, and Fusang Purewood, ranked third in the spirit roots!”

Her two methods were the same as the ones postulated by Lu Yun and Yuying.

“However…” The sparkle in Su Xiaoxiao’s eyes gleamed ever more brightly. “I can sense that there are already two major spirit roots in his body keeping the situation under control. But one of them has been conquered by the poison, so the fruit alone won’t be enough and we’ll need the entire tree, instead. However, he can’t die during this time, nor can he be seriously injured. The second that happens, the curse within him will take immediate effect!”

“I….” Qing Han’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he struggled for words. He’d never thought that the poison within him would be so terrifying that it would kill all living beings! He’d always planned on, if worst came to worst, just killing himself and dispersing the poison within him that way.

“We’ll head to the North Sea for the skydragon pearl, then go to the Endless Desert in the western reaches of Nephrite Major for the Ancient Tree of Life!” Lu Yun declared decisively, then manifested a talisman rippling with light and stuck it onto Qing Han.

Cerulean luster flashed by, healing the injuries caused backlash from spatial tears. The current Qing Han could no longer take any pills, given that the medicinal effects contained within would only worsen his internal poison.

“Chen Xiao and Qing Buyi have already gone off in search of the tree and should be fine…. The skydragon tomb is about to unearth itself, so once we get the pearl, we’ll be able to resolve the curse within you. Don’t worry…” Lu Yun hastened to comfort Qing Han when he noticed his friend’s expression.

Qing Han remained silent, and Lu Yun wasn’t feeling so optimistic, either. If the curse of poison within him was truly a scheme set up by some unknown, terrifying existence, it wouldn’t be so easy to get rid of it.

The Deaf Prince couldn’t hear their conversation, nor did he care to. “Those, those two things called corpse coffins are alive!”

Pop!

Immense yin energy squeezed the purifying light from the Celestial Exorcism Armor to pieces.

“Return… my…”

“Soul… to… me…”

Two dreamlike murmurs sounded in everyone’s ears, including even the Deaf Prince!