“Don’t look back.” Lu Yun reached out and physically turned Lin Yu’s head around. There really was an eye behind them, and yes, they did seem to have flown out of it just now. The eye and Ichor Bog had both vanished at this point, and it was taboo for tomb raiders to turn around in a tomb, whether they were entering or leaving the structure.

Endless pitch-black filled their vision, but their consciousnesses weren’t hindered. That was much more important than vision to immortals and cultivators, thus they weren’t too bothered by the lack of light. In fact, Yueshen felt a lot more at ease here.

“This really is a mausoleum… and the burial chambers do correspond to the footprints and altars in the Last Repose.” Lin Xuan rattled out his findings as he flipped through his book and scanned the pages with his consciousness. “What a terribly powerful mausoleum! It rivals the bronze palace that Sir Lu set up in Azure Province.”

He couldn’t see anything, but his consciousness was able to cover a few kilometers around him, feeding him insights about the layout.

The bronze palace was a grand influence over the world that used the power of heaven and earth to create an invincible seal for the crack beneath it.

The mausoleum in front of them was a grand influence as well.

“Mm.” Lu Yun nodded and activated the Spectral Eye to see everything like it was still daytime for him. Nothing could escape his notice. “Be careful… There’s something terrible in the mausoleum that eludes my consciousness. Stay close to me and don’t fall behind.” He headed into the deepest part of the darkness.

The Exalted celestial emperor had handed each of them a map of the mausoleum and marked a specific meeting point. After all, it was impossible for just a few people alone to kill the demon god fetus.

Besides, Lu Yun had realized that the fetus wasn’t at the ground level of the tombs, but deeper underground.

“...it’s sealed by the palace coffin!” His brows twitched.

Swoosh!

With a shake of his wrist, he shot out violet sword light from his palm. A piercing scream sounded out when he connected, slaying a figure that’d become one with darkness.

“What was that?!” Both Lin Yu and Lin Xuan shuddered. Their consciousnesses hadn’t found anything, but the scream of anguish they’d heard after Lu Yun’s attack couldn't have been more real.

“Some kind of yin spirit,” Qing Yu said. “Go, I’ll protect the two of them.”

She knew Lu Yun needed to head off by himself after entering the mausoleum. The bigger the group, the more noticeable they would be. He was also grooming the Lin brothers to be the future pillars of his sect, so they had to undergo some tempering before they could spread their wings.

Qing Yu had come along on this expedition to protect them. More importantly, someone even more powerful was with her—Empress Myrtlestar.

“Alright.” Lu Yun nodded at Qing Yu and vanished into the vast darkness.

“Let’s go.” Qing Yu turned to the Lin brothers. “We’ll meet up with the Exalted celestial emperor.”

As for Li Youcai, Yueshen had already taken his body to who knew where. She was looking for something in the mausoleum.

……

The luopan in Lu Yun’s hand radiated soft golden light in the dark, the only source of illumination in the vicinity. He scanned the living and dead within five thousand kilometers, spotting burial chamber after burial chamber containing powerful spirits.

“Ingress, primordial, principal… There’s still a realm beyond the three major realms!” He could see yet another superior realm, according to information from the dead. “The supreme pure, jade pure, and grand pure realms!”

After the principal realm came the realm of three purities. The primordial immortal emperor was a jade pure immortal!

“Emerald Mistfire, Lucent Voidfire, Daevic Skyfire… Are the three founders of immortal dao the three of the Daoist trinity? Given how closely these cultivation realms mimic Daoist philosophy...” Lu Yun was reminded of myths on Earth about the Three Pure Ones. [1]

“It has to be them… but there aren’t any tales about hell in the world of immortals, nor is there knowledge about the Three Pure Ones or feng shui. Clearly, someone has somehow erased all of it with tremendous power.”

As for Earth… Qi Hai had once called Earth the ancestral planet of the human race, and the dao of feng shui its unique heritage. Many secrets remained to be uncovered in this area.

“It doesn’t make sense, though. According to legends passed down to modern times, the primordial divine court destroyed immortal dao and replaced it with Sacred Origin Runes etched in the petals of the Dao Flower. Then why does the cultivation of the divines buried in these tombs still follow the progression of immortal dao?” Lu Yun frowned. He was certain that the dead buried within the tombs were the elites of the ancient divine court.

In his eyes, the construction here was crude. Apart from the mausoleum encompassing everything, the individual tombs had all formed naturally according to the identities of their owners—much like how the coiled mountains had formed around the tomb that interred Huang Qing.

The mausoleum structure limited the feng shui of the individual tombs, so the layouts posed no threat to Lu Yun. What he had to worry about were dead men walking, the zombies.

The burial here had been done too crudely to properly bury these elites. Many of the divines would’ve become zombies, and after their countless years of existence, they were surely on the level of zombie kings, or something even more powerful.

Lu Yun had to find the yin dragon vein and Zhao Qing, the emperor’s daughter that was buried above the dragon vein’s head.

"To seek a dragon of mountains coiled,

Those deathly cliffs with mysteries roiled.

Danger shies if mountains hide,

Reverse yin yang and earth top sky!"

Hum.

With the Dragonsearch Invocation active, a faint golden light flickered in Lu Yun’s eyes. Instead of disassembling, as the yin luopan was prone to do, a world emerged in his eyes. Everything within the mausoleum was projected into that world.

“Reversing yin and yang, earth topping sky… That’s it!” Lu Yun’s eyes lit up. “The demon fetus lies in the tomb of the Exalted Divine Emperor, while his daughter was buried in the sky. Sky and earth, yin and yang. Those opposing forces should’ve supported and balanced each other… But after the divine emperor’s true spirit transformed into a divine demon fetus, Zhao Qing’s been keeping it under control!”

He’d spotted the key to the tomb. It wasn’t that Zhao Qing couldn’t move off of her throne and out of the palace coffin, it was that she mustn’t do that. If she moved, her counterpart—the divine demon fetus—would then be born.

“I’m running out of time, I must find her now. She should know where the treasure Ge Long mentioned is.” Lu Yun disappeared with a twitch.

Wandering Step.

1. The Three Pure Ones, also translated as the Three Divine Teachers, the Three Clarities, or the Three Purities, are the Daoist Trinity, the three highest gods in the Daoist pantheon. They are regarded as pure manifestations of the Dao and the origin of all sentient beings.