“Stop!” A fiery figure bounded onto the Inception Spiritrial Arena.

“Huo Zongxing?? What’s he doing back here?” Surprise rippled through the crowd. Lu Yun had thrown him off the stage with one kick earlier, but here he was again. Was that first round of humiliation not enough?

“So you’ve come back.” Lu Yun retracted the finger pointing at Chi Wuxia and cracked a half smile at Huo Zongxing. “To think that I would misjudge people sometimes too. You’re the strongest out of the nine divine sects.”

“What??” More incredulity rose and fell among the crowd. The strongest out of the nine divine sects?

Huo Zongxing?

He was Huo Shentong’s nephew and usually used his uncle’s name for all manner of wrongdoing. He was the walking definition of a good-for-nothing and only sixth level mortal realm. Since when did he become the strongest out of the nine divine sects?

It might be understandable if he was the greatest genius, but strongest of them all?

The six sacred monarchs looked at each other, their worry evident. Huo Zongxing’s existence was a concern to them all.

……

Huo Zongxing ignored the general reaction and looked steadily at Lu Yun. “Will fellow daoist show me some face and let him go?”

“I can show you face, but she doesn’t show me any.” Lu Yun pointed in the direction of the Nirvana delegation.

“The six monarchs have stepped forward to be your backers, making it so that the experts of the nine divine sects don’t dare suppress you. Just this alone means that it’ll be an easy task to rescue your friend.” Huo Zongxing crinkled his red brows.

The fire origin divine sect suddenly felt that he was very unfamiliar to them. Though he still looked the same and held himself in the same way, he was somehow completely different and no longer who he was before. Standing in the middle of the fire origin delegation, a livid Huo Shentong looked on with a deep streak of worry.

“Oh?” Lu Yun snorted with laughter and tapped the air with his crooked finger, sending a ray of black light into Chi Wuxia’s body.

The disciple wailed and coughed out a mouthful of black smoke.

“Out with whatever crap you’ve got, I don’t have time to waste with you. I just stripped him of his sense of taste. If you keep up with this shit, I’ll just strip him of all five senses and six organs.” Lu Yun turned frostily aloof.

The Nirvana princess had been clear just now that there was nothing her monarch could do to her, which was why both of them remained at peace with each other.

In Lu Yun and Qing Yu’s calculations, the only way to save Wei Yuan was to threaten her with her son Chi Wuxia. This unexpected interference from a random Huo Zongxing set Lu Yun on edge.

Eyes slightly closed, the Nirvana princess didn’t care what was happening in the arena. She was fully confident in the art of the nirvana phoenixes. Losing one’s five senses and six sensory organs? Nirvana phoenixes could recover from even death, so these injuries were nothing at all.

……

“Prince of Inception Palace, you can do whatever you’d like if you want to create trouble for your palace and the other person behind you,” Huo Zongxing continued. “I’m not saying this for Chi Wuxia’s, but for your own good. You can’t afford to provoke the heritage that Chi Wuxia received.

“If you continue down this misbegotten path, the one behind you won’t be able to protect you. Inception Palace will be reduced to dust, and even the five other sacred palaces will be cursed unto eternity.

“My warning ends here, take care.” Huo Zongxing leapt off the Inception Spiritrial Arena.

Chi Wuxia brightened when he heard these words, recalling something as well.

“Pressuring me with groundless fabrications?” Lu Yun shook his head and tapped the air again, taking Chi Wuxia’s sense of smell. “Princess of Nirvana Palace, it looks like you think I’m blowing hot air. Well then, you can’t blame me for doing this.”

Lu Yun sighed softly when he saw that his Nirvana counterpart remained completely unmoved. Wei Yuan… was in no danger of losing his life for now, but undergoing torment and torture was a given. Whatever Lu Yun did to Chi Wuxia now would be repaid in full, and then some, onto Wei Yuan. I hope he can stay strong through it all and treat it as some kind of tempering of body and mind.

The consciousness and memories of the sacred clan were protected by the highest orders. No one could scan their mind, or Wei Yuan would’ve already died ten times over.

Lu Yun deployed the punishments within the Judgment of Life and Death to their utmost, taking Chi Wuxia’s vision, hearing, touch, and the organs associated with them.

Chi Wuxia suddenly discovered that he could no longer sense the outside world, including his own body. His mind had been exiled to a void of nothingness.

He couldn’t walk or move. He had a mouth, but couldn’t form any words. Ears, but couldn’t hear. A nose that couldn’t smell, and eyes that couldn’t see. His body no longer registered sensation and even his consciousness had vanished. In this world of the mind, everything about him and the world around him was gone. He was just a ball of thoughts, adrift in a wash of eternity.

Never ending, never dying, sealed away in a dream. Interminable in body, form, and time. This was the most terrifying portion of the human dao hell—the Avici Hell. [1]

Lu Yun had always thought that the final, eighteenth level of hell was the Avici Hell. But when his Judgment of Life and Death reached these heights, he realized that his previous understanding was incorrect.

The Avici Hell wasn’t a tangible hell. If one possessed retribution in their bodies, this hell was everywhere to be found.

……

An expressionless Lu Yun stood next to Chi Wuxia’s prone form. If the nine divine sects were to march on the underworld, Chi Wuxia would certainly be a lethal killing machine. Thus, Lu Yun would’ve had to find a way to remove him from the picture even if it wasn’t for Wei Yuan.

Chi Wuxia currently lay still in the arena, his presence completely vanished. If it wasn’t for the rise and fall of his chest, he would be no different from dead.

Finally, Lu Yun kicked him off the Inception Spiritrial Arena, greatly surprising the fire origin divine sect. The Inception prince really had left their genius alive after only stripping him of his senses!

Lu Yun didn’t say another word as he sat down cross-legged, mentally putting everything back in order.

His past self practiced the great dao of the mythological realm, a path that may not be suitable for current methods. He would one day be beset by disaster if he continued relying on his past self in all things. The greatest meaning in the existence of his past self was the dao fruit, and not its experiences.

Thus, Lu Yun wanted to make use of this challenge to the nine divine sects to add to his current self’s experiences and combine it with his past. He would keep only the purest essence and expel the dross.

Silence reigned among the nine divine sects. The Inception Spiritrial Arena had cut through space to block their doors, but there was no one among them who dared step forward to answer the challenge anymore.

If Lu Yun’s battle with Jin Gushen had allowed them a wisp of hope, his face slaps of Chi Wuxia spoke despairingly of overwhelming domination.

The sacred prince of Inception Palace had become an inescapable nightmare for all cultivators of the nine divine sects.

1. In Buddhism, Avici is the lowest level of the Naraka or “hell” realm. Avīci is often translated into English as “interminable” or “incessant”, referring to suffering without periods of respite, although it is believed to be ultimately impermanent.