Lu Yun smiled wryly. If the girl had been a regular child, the pill truly would’ve made her only a golden immortal. However, she was in fact the incarnation of a corporal soul part of the monster spirit ancestor. Born with the tremendous might of such a personage, she would naturally be different from others.

As for her gender... she had indeed been a boy, but it was a piece of cake for someone as powerful as Miao to change that.

Qing Ruyan was still pale from the exertion of childbirth. To her, it didn’t matter if her child was a boy or a girl, or what level her cultivation was. This was her daughter, and that was the only thing that mattered.

Liu Chengfeng, the pavilion head’s eldest son and Qing Ruyan’s dao partner, steadied her with a hand and a foolish grin. He’d been staying with his wife all this time to take care of her. Unlike her, he was a peak aether dao immortal who hadn’t yet plucked an arcane dao fruit. If not for Miao’s protections, he would’ve turned into a monster as soon as the demonic energy emerged.

“Let’s give the child a name, first!” Qing Han merrily approached Qing Ruyan. Lu Yun had already told him everything about the child.

Liu Chengfeng turned to Lu Yun and smiled. “You are her master, junior brother Lu. You should name her.”

He was grinning so hard it threatened to split his face in half. His daughter was a natural-born peerless immortal, a starting point far more impressive than even that of Zhu Yan and Yue Longsha. She was destined to become someone on par with a celestial emperor in the future.

It was all thanks to Lu Yun.

Although Lu Yun was a mere cultivator, and Liu Chengfeng a peak aether dao immortal, he still called Lu Yun ‘junior brother’ like he was no more superior than the boy.

Lu Yun shook his head slightly. “It is not my place to name her. Her parents should name her.”

“Then so I shall.” Dressed in a long, mint-green robe, Liu Chengfeng was a handsome man with an uncommon bearing. He glanced at his wife and lowered his head to ponder, then cracked a smile. “Liu Qingmiao. Her name will be Liu Qingmiao.”

Taken aback, Lu Yun looked blankly at the man. It made sense for the child to inherit his family name, and ‘Qing’ was naturally derived from Qing Ruyan’s surname. As for ‘Miao’...

Has he noticed something?

“Liu Qingmiao. Wonderful, it’s a name that befits the child!” The pavilion head applauded with joyous laughter, waking his new granddaughter up from her slumber. She curiously scanned her environment with dark, big eyes.

……

Liu Qingmiao’s birth took the world of immortals by storm. Not only because the one forged by the Heaven Descent Pill had finally arrived in the world, but also because an origin dao immortal had died outside Dusk Province, killed by a single shot from Lu Yun’s cannon!

The implications of this could not be dismissed.

Origin dao immortals were the stuff of myths and legends in the world of immortals. Most held them in the same regard as celestial emperors, yet Lu Yun had killed one of them so easily.

How had he done it? Weren’t celestial emperors invincible?

A collective questioning of commonly held beliefs rippled through all of the immortals in the world.

Although Lu Yun had similarly driven away the large monkey from the North Sea with a single shot, the rest of the world hadn’t thought that Scarlet Ape could rival the lofty celestial emperors, much less invincible origin dao immortals.

That mindset had changed when the old crone, much more powerful than an arcane dao immortal, was destroyed by the beam of light. Countless immortals had sensed the terrifying power for themselves, and it was all they could talk about now.

There was some chatter regarding Lu Yun taking a natural-born peerless immortal as his first disciple, but that hardly seemed important in comparison.

……

There were ten days until the Sovereign Meet.

Dusk Province was still a ghost town. The inheritance tower and the Sword Pagoda, which was usually frequented by cultivators and immortals alike, saw little traffic. Almost everyone had forgotten about this sacred land of immortal dao, and no one recalled the soon-to-commence Sovereign Meet.

Three years after the tournament that set Dusk Province on the path to becoming a sacred land, it seemed as if the province would dwindle and sink into buffoonery.

Seven days before the Sovereign Meet, House Donglin of Aureate Major, the Exalted Immortal Sect of Exalted Major, the Feng and Qing Clans of Nephrite Major, alongside various powerhouses from the Nephrite and Truespirit court, made a joint announcement: the real Sovereign Meet would be held in Life Province of Nephrite Major in a month’s time!

The news dropped like a bomb, obviously a plot against Dusk Province and Lu Yun.

Lu Yun had killed an origin dao immortal as a mere cultivator, which made him a threat in many eyes!

……

Atop the city walls of Dusk City, Lu Yun faced the brisk wind and looked over the province. A sea of violet flowers now carpeted the land, painting a picturesque scene. They were the flowers of Violet Orchid Fruit that’d been personally cultivated by Su Xiaoxiao.

There was only one mother flower, but the Violet Orchid had split into tens of thousands of flowers across the province, much like the Hell Flowers. It’d bloomed, but hadn’t borne fruit yet.

“The formation masters have left.” Qing Han came up to Lu Yun.

“All of them?” Dazed, the words escaped Lu Yun’s mouth.

“Eighty percent of them, anyway. Only a little more than twenty masters remain.” Qing Han’s expression turned derisive. “They took the copies of the Great Formation of Heavenly Spirits and Earthly Demons they’d been working on.”

“Let them. They’re a bunch of useless trash, desperately clutching at some formation diagrams. They’ll never succeed in incorporating the formation into their body.” Lu Yun cracked a smile.

Mo Yi had returned the day Scarlet Ape attacked Dusk Province. She’d stopped Donglin Taihuang outside the province, then returned when the danger was over. Of course Lu Yun had asked her about how one went about combining formations and combat arts.

Mo Yi’s answer was simple: the nascent spirit was the key to turning a formation into a combat art and making it your own. Setting up a formation with one’s nascent spirit would make it a combat art!

Her answer gave Lu Yun the epiphany he needed. Combat arts drew power from one’s spirit, rather than their corporal body. Incorporating an actual formation into one’s physical body would never work; they had to be turned into combat arts first.

Lu Yun changed course after that. The Great Formation of Heavenly Spirits and Earthly Demons was already complete. The last step was to incorporate it into the body, which he was working with Mo Yi, Feinie, and Aoxue to achieve.

Upon transforming it into a combat art, it didn’t matter whether those formation masters stayed or left the province. The formation wouldn’t do them any good, even if they owned a complete copy of it.

At its core, it was a feng shui layout. The major factions of the current world of immortals would come up emptyhanded no matter how much they studied it.

Awooo!

A continuous dragon howl rang through Dusk Province as a golden dragonling of about three meters long soared into the air, a baby less than a month old on its back. The eyes of the Dusk restriction opened in the sky, giving the baby a long, hard look. Then, it slowly faded away with resignation.