Lu Yun ignited a karmic fruit and used the virtuous merit it contained to heal the damage to his soul. This was a very strange combat art, one not even the Tome of Life and Death had sensed. If not for the blue-clad girl's timely surprise just now, he would’ve well and truly become a faceless ghost.

……

A large group of pale, faceless ghosts came floating in from the far reaches of the dark sky. They emitted no aura whatsoever and couldn’t be sensed by the consciousness. The only way to spot them was with one’s physical eyes.

As they approached, the immortals in the abandoned city hid themselves inside the ruined buildings, but Lu Yun could feel their line of sight locked on to the ghosts. Immortal energy infused the various weapons and treasures in their hands, ready to attack at a moment’s notice.

“A-are you really senior brother Lu Yun?” The girl clad in blue cautiously approached him.

“Do you know me?” Lu Yun blinked.

“Is there anyone in the world of immortals who doesn’t know you?” For some reason, the girl felt the last of her fears evaporate once she started chatting with him.

“Jing Dichen is my elder sister, my name is Jing Huaci,” she offered, a little shy. “I haven’t thanked senior brother yet for your pill. I wouldn’t be alive if not for you.”

Jing Huaci was the young princess of the Untroubled Sea who’d once been eaten by Beigong Chonglou, crown prince of the North Sea. Only a fragment of her soul had survived and in the end, she’d been resurrected by a Soul Restoring Pill that Yuying had refined.

“Oh, so it’s you. What’re you doing all the way out here?” Lu Yun frowned. Currently, most of his attention was focused on the faceless ghosts coming ever closer to them.

“I—” Jing Huaci also discovered that the ghosts had now surrounded the plaza. Squealing in fear, she hid behind Lu Yun.

“Senior brother Lu, please be careful. Those faceless ghosts like to... eat people!” She paled even further at the word ‘eat’, plainly struck by awful memories.

“Remember not to go barging into random places in the future.” While lecturing her, Lu Yun went on the offensive and struck out with his sword.

A beam of violet sword light streaked across the emptiness and slashed at the faceless ghosts. Containing several of his sword arts, as well as Violetgrave’s sword dao, the attack fell onto its target with world-ending momentum.

“Don’t!!” Seeing him act, nearby immortals turned pale with fright, but his sword struck true before they could react.

Pfft!

The faceless ghost puffed into white smoke and vanished into thin air.

“So it’s a corpse, not a genuine ghost.” Lu Yun inhaled sharply. Faceless corpses untraceable by the consciousness were even more of a threat than ghosts. He could restrain ghostly beings, but the same didn’t apply to corpses.

“Is it dead? Did Lu Yun just... kill a faceless ghost with a single strike?!” an immortal hidden nearby exclaimed with visible astonishment.

“Senior brother Lu, you’re so strong!” Jing Huaci applauded with sheer delight.

“Waaaaa—” One of the faceless ghosts in midair shrieked before turning into a blur and throwing itself at Lu Yun. Previously inscrutable by the consciousness, it sharpened into mental focus as a terrifying presence of death erupted from it.

“What a formidable death will! These faceless ghosts must be people killed by the illusions from earlier. Only…” Opening his eyes wide, Lu Yun read the lives and deaths of the ghosts with the Spectral Eye. Then, with a backhanded stroke, he turned the incoming ghost to ash with a flash of violet sword light.

“A hundred years! They died here a hundred years ago… But… has it been a hundred years already?” Trembling, he noticed that each of these thirty-something corpses was someone he recognized. They were all people who’d followed him inside the tomb through the tunnel dug by the Scaled-Dragon King!

However, the Spectral Eye clearly showed that… they’d died a full hundred years ago. These creatures were corpses, not zombies, hence why he could read the information about their deaths.

“You, how long have you been in here?” Looking away from the ghosts scuttling off in fear, he turned to Jing Huaci.

“Seven days! I came here seven days ago…” Scared by his expression, the girl hastily explained, “I heard that you were here, senior brother Lu, so I followed you inside.”

A rosy tint emerged on her cheeks, like a girl whose inner feelings had just been exposed.

“Seven days… But it’s been five days at most since I entered the tomb!” Lu Yun frowned. “What about you people? How long have you been here?” His gaze swept through the surroundings, but the immortals were too afraid to make a peep.

He might have killed two faceless ghosts, but there were still more than thirty left. These creatures were dreadful existences. Other than dismembering them into a thousand parts, it was very difficult to kill them for good.

More importantly, if the first attack didn’t kill them, their bodies would split apart and create even more ghosts. Given that there were more than thirty of them here, Lu Yun himself might be fine if they all swooped in together, but the rest of the immortals wouldn’t be so lucky. The ghosts’ strange attacks were very difficult to resist for immortals who hadn’t experienced the void realm.

“Damn annoying.” Lu Yun’s consciousness had naturally caught the immortals’ mood.

Swish!

His figure turned into a beam of violet light that shot into the air, a violet river of sword energy in his wake. With a sword slash, Lu Yun felled another faceless ghost.

“How formidable!” babbled immortals below him, overwhelmed by what was happening around them.

Lu Yun’s sword strike was sword dao itself, containing his self-created sword arts. The more he used his sword, the deeper he comprehended the way of the sword.

My fundamentals aren’t robust enough to create a sword dao of my own. I need to keep coming up with new sword arts and merge them together into a single entity. I’m not there, not yet, so I can only emulate Violetgrave’s sword dao.

Besieged by more than thirty faceless ghosts, Lu Yun once again fell into a trance of sword dao.

Vast Dragon Seaturner!

Peng of Kun!

Starstream Stroke!

Endless Cosmic Ocean!

The four sword forms continuously formed, consolidated with each other, and gradually combined into a single whole.

Suddenly, Lu Yun’s figure jerked gently and he disengaged from his trance, sword stabbing into empty air.

“Are they all dead?” He shook his head and murmured, “I almost created the fifth sword form. Too bad there weren’t enough faceless ghosts. Just a few more and the fifth sword form would’ve been complete.

“Now, tell me, all of you, how long has it been since you came here?” He frowned down at the immortals below while remaining hovering in the air.