Carmine Eternal had taken Xuanxi and Zhaoqing to the eastern end of the tomb realm in search of the moat snake, so it’d crossed no one’s mind that its bloodline could be inside this volcano! However, though the moat snake was a divine beast of earth, its bloodline had curiously developed as a divine beast of fire.

“What?! If you’re the bloodline of the moat snake, then what’s in that egg at the eastern end of the tomb realm?!” Her understanding of the world and purpose of her life crumbling around her, the priest of fire shrieked with disbelief.

The girl in the white silk dress swept a cool look over the high priest and thinned her lips in disdain. She ignored the priest of fire and looked solemnly at Lu Yun instead. “I am not the bloodline of the moat snake, I am the moat snake. My name is Carmine Arbiter.”

Thoroughly shattered by the encounter, the priest of fire was numb to this revelation.

So the moat snake hadn’t died and had even overseen a perfect exchange to substitute herself for the divine spirit being kept here, reforming her body in the process. The only difference was that the moat snake had once been a divine spirit of the earth. After absorbing the connate fire spirit living here, her affiliation had changed to that of fire.

All of this had occurred right beneath the priest’s nose, but she hadn’t caught a single hint of it at all! Most frightening of all was that the little girl wasn’t the divine beast’s bloodline, but the divine beast itself! The moat snake hadn’t died after all this time!

All was well that ended well if the moat snake was dead. That she hadn’t… and could keep growing meant that she could take back her body at any time and become the master of the tomb.

“Carmine Arbiter?” Lu Yun turned over the name with surprise. “Are you the same clan as Carmine Eternal?”

“No.” The little girl shook her head. “Carmine is just a title, Arbiter and Eternal are our names. I am a moat snake while Eternal is a blood snake. We are the only ones of our kind in the world, but compared to me, Carmine Eternal enjoys more freedom and goes through her days quite carefree.”

Her expression turned a bit downcast at this. “I can feel a fatal attraction exuding from you, something more appealing than connate flame essence…” She jerked her head up and fixed her stare on Lu Yun, allowing the deep yearning of her heart to shine out of her eyes.

“Carmine Eternal is also here. She’s gone looking for your bloodline in the eastern reaches of the tomb.”

Carmine Arbiter blinked and fell silent. “Have her return to wherever she came from. A thing of great danger lies to the east and the extremity of life is death. There is no moat snake bloodline to be found there, but the great venom from the thing that died with me.”

Knowing that there would be plenty of people having designs on her, Carmine Arbiter had set up a variety of vicious countermeasures to the east to take revenge on those who would scheme against her.

“I understand.” Lu Yun lifted his hand and sent a ball of connate fire essence to the moat snake.

Carmine Arbiter started. “Little fellow, I may have a certain relationship with Carmine Eternal, but I won’t let you go just on her behalf. Apart from connate fire essence, I’m much more interested in the other thing on you.” She was smiling, but there was a hint of merciless disquiet in her mirth. Killing intent tinged the disquiet, and both of them surfaced in her youthful face, casting it in an eerie light.

“I know.” Lu Yun nodded calmly. “You’re actually dead and a yin spirit. In fact, you’re a very strong vicious ghost.”

Carmine Arbiter trembled and her eyes suddenly turned pure white, a change marked by dense energy of the dead rising from her body. But for some strange reason, the ocean of pure yang li fire and a world constructed of boundless yang energy did nothing to her.

It was a very unusual and surreal sight.

“You’re dead and hardly willing to accept that you are. Endless resentment and obsession suffuse your body, giving you the misconception that you’re still alive.

“Your resentment is so great that it’d be able to turn this yang tomb into a dead world by itself, and you aren’t here of your own volition. Instead, a great expert put you in this spot and borrowed the utmost yang energy within this connate treasure to keep your malice in check.”

Spectral Eye fully open, Lu Yun could see a gruesomely dreadful ghost in the place of the charming little girl. Waves of terrifying malice constantly clashed with the sea of flames around it, the two forces canceling each other out.

The connate peerless treasure didn’t fully release all of its power at every second to protect the door to the yin tomb, but to suppress the appalling resentment of Carmine Arbiter. Connate li fire battled neverending resentment from the moat snake, causing the flames within the volcano to rampage out of control. At the same time, an enormous illusion shrouded everything taking place here and presented a wholly different view.

The true form of the little girl had been concealed all this time. In the priest’s and even her own eyes, Carmine Arbiter was the divine spirit of the flames and not a vicious ghost.

“This illusion realm is plainly a great formation that’s created reality out of illusion, it’s a Return to Origin formation! If my guess is right, this is the handiwork of that fox!”

The little fox—ancestor of the primordial monster spirits and the monster celestial master of the primordial immortal court!

Everything here was remarkably similar to the once-existing Myriad Returns City, and Lu Yun had even detected a hint of the little fox’s presence the moment he entered. The four primordial celestial masters were a highly mysterious quartet—not even the immortal emperor knew where they came from.

“What’s going on here??” the priest of fire asked in a trembling voice. She vaguely sensed signs of her altar collapsing, and the altar power infusing her was fragmenting as well due to some unknown interference.

Lu Yun waved a hand and sent a beam of connate fire essence into the altar beneath her feet, consolidating the structure teetering on the edge of destruction.

“You’re a vicious ghost, but also a divine spirit of the flames. You both reinforce and counteract the world here. Swallow this strand of connate fire essence and break free of this place. I’ll take you to that place,” Lu Yun said to the moat snake.

The connate li fires here not only suppressed the terrifying grudges about her, but were also slowly melding with her and attempting to purify her resentment, transforming her into a true divine spirit of the flames.

However, her malice was so strong that it’d tainted the connate flames that’d stolen into her body instead. Carmine Arbiter wasn’t becoming the divine spirit of the flames, but rather a vicious ghost of the flames.

She would break free of the volcano upon obtaining connate fire essence, but as a vicious ghost instead of a divine spirit. A vicious ghost that controlled a connate flame.

No emotions passed through her pure white eyes, just a tyrannical presence that grew in stature from her body. The sea of flames grew even wilder in response.

“AHHHHH—” she suddenly shrieked and took her true form as a meter-long moat snake. Black flames circled around her, and there was another projected body of fire next to her own.

“In that case, I’ll tame you first and then take you to hell,” murmured Lu Yun as he looked at the moat snake in the air.

Wham.

The connate fire in the area suddenly condensed into a divine beast of flames slowly standing up from the endless sea.

Scarlet ape!

Lu Yun had mediated upon the form of the golden scarlet ape to manifest one of its kind.