With hellfire and Sol Truefire concealing their projections, not even purple bale spirits could discover Lu Yun and Qing Yu.

The cosmos was too vast and there were too many dead spirits—tens of thousands of times more than what existed in the lower worlds. The two flames from Lu Yun and Qing Yu had forced away the dead spirits to give them room, to vanish into the void like a drop of water in the ocean.

Being the flame of immortal dao, Sol Truefire could return to the immortal dao and perfectly obscure Qing Yu’s presence. As a Size Manipulation formation talisman, Lu Yun’s projection emanated a faint ripple of power outside the dao palace.

“Waugh augh augh!!” A hundred purple bale spirits sensed the disturbance and screeched furiously, charging over with fury.

“Enemies are here!” The chaos creatures occupying the dao palace were dismayed by the alarm on their perimeter. They hadn’t thought that someone would be able to quietly breach their defenses and deploy a strange combat art to swiftly shrink their surroundings.

“We need to go!” They didn’t dare hesitate.

The power of a realm would corrode their bodies the moment they were exposed to the cosmos. If it didn’t kill them immediately, it would feel like ten thousand blades scraping away at their flesh. It would be a sensation worse than death.

As the Gates of the Abyss opened, they flung themselves through a one-time use transportation formation.

Boom!

The tiny formation exploded.

“You would’ve resisted the change if you hadn’t left, which would’ve made it impossible for me to take the dao palace. But now that you’ve left with your kind…” Lu Yun grinned.

If the beings within the dao palace had shown any resistance, that would’ve prevented the Gates of the Abyss from taking it in. But since the only beings left were some completely placid empyrean humans that’d suddenly appeared, Lu Yun’s heist went off smoothly. The humans wanted to go along with the intruder’s plan and see if there was an opportunity for gathering intelligence or sabotage.

The magnificent dao palace vanished from space and entered hell. This time, Lu Yun was prepared. The moment it touched ground, the blood demon flashed into the dao palace with Bloodmoon and restrained the five empyrean humans left behind.

“Heh heh heh. If you get to self-detonate this time, I, a chaos realm master, will give you my head!” The blood demon cackled smugly at the five masters on the ground at his feet.

Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

Five muffled bangs rang out from the heads of the five masters on the ground. Their eyes dimmed and the blood demon looked dumbly at five new corpses at his feet. There were no longer any ripples of life or even traces of great dao in their bodies anymore. They’d become the corpses of ordinary humans.

“You can give me your head now,” Lu Yun curled his lip at the blood demon.

Acting with resolute decisiveness, the blood demon had Bloodmoon slice his head off and presented it with a pitiful look at Lu Yun. The master of hell snorted and left the netherworld, returning to Qing Yu’s coordinates.

The blood demon had only suppressed the five masters’ power and bodies, but not their minds. It hadn’t occurred to him that it’d be possible for the humans to destroy themselves through thought alone.

“But these corpses belong to mundane humans, they’ve never cultivated before.” The blood demon placed his head back on his neck and bent down for a close look. “The chaos creatures have used some special methods to turn ordinary humans into great masters of the combat arts!”

Shock filtered through the blood demon’s eyes. “If… if after they conquer a world, they round up the humans there and brainwash them, then use special methods to mass produce empyrean realm masters… This would be an utter disaster!”

He immediately brought this to Lu Yun’s attention, who paused after having returned to the cosmos. He thought back to everything he’d seen in the Quiet Realm. The chaos had forbidden the abandoned races to harm humans and there was an embryo made of human flesh in the dao palace…

“Come on, let’s go harass the other dao palace.” Lu Yun and Qing Yu smiled at each other, already heading for the other palace in space.

Meanwhile, their true forms arrived in Harshcloud Realm, the most dangerous of all the lower worlds. Its main world had fallen long ago and numerous boundaries of the world cracked into useless pieces. However, the world of immortals had set up numerous strongholds in the area to protect the remaining survivors. Harshcloud immortals who could ascend had also long been forced to ascend. They would only be in the way if they remained here and would likely be worse than useless.

The biggest stronghold in the region was one built by the Dao Academy. Patriarch Lu Daoling of the Lu Clan and Qing Yu’s father, Patriarch Qing Taxian of the Qing Clan, were in attendance here. They were both Supreme Immortals of Original Order due to Lu Yun and Qing Yu’s help and they had Kui for reinforcement. The safety of this stronghold was no issue at all.

Though many factions in the world of immortals were boycotting the Dao Academy, the institution still flourished greatly in the lower realms as its bulwark and great benefactor.

After the bloody cleansing that shook the world, the academy’s disciples began to moderate themselves and no longer dared contemplate killing others for their treasure. The establishment of the merit system also enabled them to grow stronger by absorbing goodwill. This induced them to do good deeds in a tireless fashion, further raising the Dao Academy’s reputation in the lower worlds.

The lower realms were different from the world of immortals since the latter was still relatively safe. That was why the factions dared present allied defiance of the academy. But in the lower worlds, danger and death lurked around every corner. No one dared raise hostilities out in the open, lest they set in motion cataclysmic destruction. Veiled exchanges in the shadows were the most that anyone could attempt.

When Qing Yu and Lu Yun arrived in Harshcloud Realm, a terrifying battle was in progress. The formation of heaven and earth around the Dao Academy stronghold had broken and all personnel had boarded fortress ships. However, unending torrents of scarlet bale spirits latched onto the ships like locusts, madly gnawing away at their structural energy.

Crystal cannons on the ships lit up with barrage after barrage, but they didn’t have much of an effect. Lu Yun counted ten lord-grade fortress ships hovering in space, with another five already wrecked on the ground.

It would appear that lord-grade fortress ships couldn’t withstand the tides of dead spirits here at all.

Kui was in the field and lightning flashed all around him, smiting a crowd of thousand purple bale spirits. If those bale spirits charged over, then the remaining ten ships would be instantly breached.