“No, wait!” About to depart from the emperor’s tomb, Lu Yun suddenly screeched to a halt. “The divine spirit of the kidneys looked scary and all that jazz just now, but that was just a front! It shook all of the Central World when it was born five thousand years ago, but now it can’t even break out of an immortal emperor’s tomb? It’s all bluster and hot air, it’s trying to scare me off!”

He whirled back and opened the Spectral Eye to scan everything within five thousand kilometers. Though it couldn’t penetrate the water vapor formed by the connate yin water, it could still read if there was anything alive or dead there.

“The divine spirit formed by the kidneys is hovering between life and death, in a condition that is both dead and alive. Someone delivered a heavy blow to it when it was born five thousand years ago!

“After five thousand years of suppression from the Sol Truefire and losing the Water Altar, its injury’s grown worse and its strength has declined to less than a hundred millionth of when it first formed!”

Dwelling on this, Lu Yun headed back to the main burial chamber. In the absence of the Sol Truefire, the divine spirit was stirring to wakefulness. Its strength would increase as time went on until it finally returned to peak condition.

“The immortal emperor’s coffin is certainly a rare treasure since it could keep the Sol Truefire going. If the divine spirit eats it, that’ll greatly shorten its recovery period!” Lu Yun deployed the Wandering Step when he thought of this and dashed back to the entrance of the chamber.

“What, you haven’t left yet?” a surprised voice sounded the second he came back.

Lu Yun lifted his head to see a completely dead nascent spirit hovering in the air, observing the situation in the burial chamber.

“A yin god?” Lu Yun blinked, recognizing the entity. “You!”

“I didn’t think you’d have the nerve to come back.” The being nodded, then teased, “Five thousand years ago, a senior of my Green Firmament injured the divine spirit within, borrowing the immortal emperor’s flame to do so. Even so, it still possesses the strength of an ingress realm immortal from the Primordial Era. What do you have? Are you hurrying back to meet your death?”

“So, what about you?” Lu Yun shrugged. “You’ve lost both your physical body and the Skyturning Seal. Right now, you’re as strong as an arcane dao immortal from the Primordial Era. You’re also looking to meet your death by being here."

The yin god laughed uproariously. “You’re right, I am here to seek my death. I am a yin god. Dying again doesn’t matter for someone already dead.”

“Dying again? Your true spirit will disperse if you die again.” Lu Yun frowned faintly.

“Whyever not, if my death can secure life for everyone in the world of immortals? But you, you have a bright future full of potential. Why did you come back to throw your life away?” sighed the yin god.

Lu Yun paused for a moment of silence and then answered, “You can’t kill it by yourself. At most you’ll just injure it deeply and send it back to sleep. Let me help you.”

The yin god wiped the cheeky grin off his face and nodded. “I need a physical body.”

Lu Yun flicked out a golden bean with a snap of his fingers and the two watched it transform into a golden-armored warrior. The yin god shook and his nascent spirit was drawn into the warrior despite himself.

“It’s you!!” shrieked the warrior in the next second. “You’re—!!” He clamped down hard with his teeth and didn’t say the last couple of words.

“Aha, as I thought. My bean soldiers are inhabited by the yin gods of the Green Firmament.” Lu Yun was hardly surprised by the reaction.

“Ahem… no. You can only summon the most ordinary of yin gods. You can’t summon those of the Green Firmament yet, not with your current strength.” Excitement danced in the warrior’s eyes. “But once you’re a dao immortal or reach the ingress realm, you’ll be able to summon yin gods like me!”

“Honestly, what precisely is a yin god?” Lu Yun frowned.

“I’ll tell you once we handle the divine spirit in there!” The golden-armored warrior heaved a long sigh. He was different from the ones previously summoned by Lu Yun as he wasn’t affected by the caster’s own strength. In fact, he wasn’t affected by the immortal restriction either.

Bean soldiers were a death art from the Tome of Life and Death. Though the restriction was menacing, it didn’t exert any control over the book. It could restrict Lu Yun because of the youth’s own weakness and the fact that he was someone who lived beneath the immortal dao. Death arts, however, fell under another jurisdiction.

As they spoke, the golden-armored warrior punched apart the walls of the main chamber and charged straight in.

“Erm… even though that fellow has a body and can utilize all of his strength now, he’s still not going to be a match for that divine spirit if he acts like this…” Lu Yun held his forehead. “Dragonshift Method!”

Whirrrr.

Brilliant golden radiance erupted from his body. A black and a white dragon shadow surged out from the ground, giving the tomb a vigorous shake in the process. They were the dragon veins of the immortal emperor tomb—one yin and one yang.

Complementing each other perfectly, they were incomparably aggressive and infinitely close to becoming ancestral veins. Now that Lu Yun was an immortal, he could directly call upon dragon veins when he deployed the Dragonshift Method.

Additionally, this was the Central World, a dead world abandoned by the heavens, so he wouldn’t suffer the backlash of the world if he moved the veins.

Hummm.

The two dragons transformed into yin yang currents and followed the golden-armored warrior into the main chamber.

Upon his return, Lu Yun had discovered he could touch the dragon veins. When he'd first discovered them, restrictions surrounding them had warded off all intruders. But now, those too had been dismantled.

……

The main burial chamber was now an ocean of inky-black depths, countless beasts patrolling its waters. Thanks to the power of the kidneys of heaven and earth, the local environment had become a complete ecosystem.

Innumerable creatures pounced on the warrior the second he rushed in. These organisms were all transformed from entities that’d died in the tomb. Thanks to the kidneys’ influence, they’d become yin creatures that were neither dead nor alive.

“Away with you!” As the warrior raised a hand, the vivid golden gleam about him instantly shifted to green.

Dreadful water pulses rippled through the ocean of yin water, blasting away the creatures in its depths. However, the yin water seemed to make them invincible; they reformed the second they were destroyed. Not only that, the yin water herded together the scattered fragments of souls and yin spirits and began to craft them into even stronger creatures.

Before the golden-armored warrior could react, a black shark that ran half a kilometer wove out of the depths and threw itself forward with an open maw.

Bam!

The void trembled and the yin water around it abruptly receded. Having time for only one ghastly shriek, the shark exploded on the spot.

A three-hundred-meter-tall giant wearing two dragons for shoes appeared in front of the golden-armored warrior. There was a black ball in the giant’s left hand—connate water energy.

It was Lu Yun.

“Feet astride divine dragons… this is the primordial water god Gonggong! How?!” Surprise seized the golden-armored warrior.

“Just something I’m projecting after having observed it. It’s not the real water god,” came Lu Yun’s voice. “Its divine spirit is recuperating inside the immortal emperor’s coffin.”

Gonggong lumbered into action, the black and white dragons beneath its feet streaking forward into the remotest part of the ocean.