“Canghai Chengfeng, are you still going to fight for the Cosmic Sea and the Cosmic Skycarver?” Qing Yunhe turned to the sharp young man with a smile.

Canghai Chengfeng paused. “Well, yes, why wouldn’t I? Lu Yun just said it'll be another seven days before he can use that weapon again.”

His eyes burned with an eagerness to fight when he looked at Qing Yunhe, the only one here who could stop him.

“And you believed him?” Qing Han muttered before Qing Yunhe could answer.

Rumble!

From atop the Divine Glory came the sound of gears turning. Eighteen black cannons rose from the sides of the ship, locked on Canghai Chengfeng.

He froze and grumbled sheepishly, “Fine, fine, I give up....”

The cannons shifted back to their original state.

“The young lord is the young lord, alright, creating eighteen weapons of such power!” Worshipful awe shone in Situ Zong’s and Situ Yun’s eyes.

“Lu Yun!” Qing Yunhe spoke up with a frown. “Your current cultivation is lacking. It’ll hinder your progress if you rely too much on other items. Two years ago, you were the top sovereign of the world of immortals, but now, many have ascended to the void realm before you.”

“And what’s that gonna do?” Lu Yun turned to him with a surprised look.

Qing Yunhe held himself with an uncommon bearing and there was an air of scholarly grace to him. His words were intended as sage advice for Lu Yun.

However, the recipient quite disagreed.

“Do you think they’re better than me just because they’ve ascended to the void realm?” Lu Yun shook his head. “The void realm is just that—a realm. Their combat arts and techniques have yet to catch up with their cultivation.”

Qing Yunhe and Canghai Chengfeng paused bemusedly. They’d already witnessed what was powerful about the void realm. It allowed a cultivator to become one with the world and draw upon the power of heaven and earth. Even dao immortals had trouble achieving that.

Once void realm cultivators ascended to immortality, they were sure to overtake immortals who’d ascended over the past hundred thousand years since the great war.

However, Lu Yun had come back with such an unexpected response.

“The immortal dao has wilted since the ancient times, and combat arts and dao techniques have declined to an unprecedented low. Truly powerful combat arts have all but disappeared, their legacies lost to history. Those we’ve excavated from the ancient tombs are merely the tip of an iceberg.

“Compared to the ancient times, the combat arts we deploy now are those of a dying era. An arcane dao immortal from the ancient times would be able to diffuse the Black Emperor’s blast in more than a hundred ways and kill me with the backlash in the process, but Donglin Taihuang had to make use of defensive treasures to flee with his life.

“Immortals of the present and ancient times possess the same cultivation realms and similar methods, but there exists a large gap between the two eras’ combat arts and understanding of the dao.”

Qing Yunhe and Canghai Chengfeng stared dumbly at Lu Yun, at a loss for words.

“Since immortals and cultivators have lost so much in terms of combat arts and understanding of the dao, but we still have to defend against enemies, shouldn’t then the supplemental paths reign as king?” Lu Yun put his hands behind his back. “I have at my disposal powerful weapons, treasures, talismans, and pills. What’s so different between them and my combat arts? They all come from my hands!”

Supplemental paths as king!

The declaration stunned Qing Yunhe, Canghai Chengfeng, and the two members of the Star Demon Sect.

“If everyone relies on supplemental paths, who’s going to cultivate combat arts and probe their understanding of the heavenly law? How will those two aspects of cultivation recover to their peaks then? It won’t take long before all combat arts and methods disappear from the immortal dao.” The deep frown on Canghai Chengfeng’s face made his disapproval clear.

“Ha.” Lu Yun sniffed. “If you can’t even survive in the world of immortals, how are you going to restore combat arts and techniques to their former glory?”

Canghai Chengfeng was rendered speechless.

“Do you know what most geniuses in the world are doing?” Lu Yun said seriously. “Excavating burial mounds and raiding tombs, then ending up dead!!

“It’s a mainstream belief that only by raiding tombs can one make any progress! However, you immortals know nothing about tomb raiding. You’re all marching to your deaths by barging into tombs and charging around like a bull in a china shop.

“I always thought the present would naturally trump the past. What was lost in history was that that had been eliminated by the times. Surely, one day, the world of immortals would recover to its peak condition from the ancient times.

“Now I understand how wrong I was,” Lu Yun mused faintly. “Our civilization is deteriorating. The ancient tombs have stunted the development of the world of immortals.”

More than eighty percent of the current crop of immortals were dead set on excavating ancient tombs and empowering themselves with ancient heritages, then rinsing and repeating elsewhere. Sooner or later, they’d meet an untimely demise in their adventuring, and the same fate would befall all immortals until everyone died.

There was no time to think about anything else.

The Dusk Tournament organized by the nine celestial emperors was an attempt at changing conventional thought, and that change would start with cultivators.

……

Within the Scroll of Shepherding Immortals, Empress Myrtlestar and the Azure Dragon King fell into a pensive silence.

That was what had happened in the ancient times as well. Their civilization might seem to have been a golden age compared to contemporary society, but to the immortals of the time, their grasp of dao was much weaker than what it’d been in the previous era.

There seemed to be an invisible force weakening immortal dao further and further in ever more mysterious ways, until one day, it would cease to exist.

“If modern immortals won’t change their minds, we’ll need a different solution—supplemental paths as king! Give people enough resources to protect themselves with. Make it possible for them to safely excavate treasures from ancient tombs, and enable them to raid all the tombs in the world!”

“You....” Canghai Chengfeng gaped at Lu Yun; he couldn’t find any further counterarguments to refute the youth sovereign.

“Sure, I’m dependent on forces other than my own, but I still managed to send the top genius of House Donglin fleeing with his tail between his legs. From now on, my name will invoke fear in his heart. Who’s to say that isn’t part of my strength?” Lu Yun turned to Qing Yunhe, who also had no comeback for him other than a wry smile.

“You don’t have to worry about combat arts and techniques, either. There will be another Sovereign Meet in a year from now, which will provide us a spark. And sparks are what start fires.” Lu Yun wasn’t an ambitious man, but he needed the full capabilities of his old tomb raiding sect if he wanted to raid all the tombs in the world. That would also mean that his sect would gain supremacy.

Supplemental paths as king....

He was one of the greatest masters of the supplemental paths in the world of immortals!