The thought ripple was very out of place, sending Tianqi into a panic before he had time to closely inspect the fourth realm.

“Don’t be afraid.” Lu Yun patted his disciple’s shoulder, but Tianqi still felt uncomfortable.

The fourth realm was a plane of existence held in high veneration by everyone in the third realm. Legend spoke of an enormous wall between the third and fourth realm; whoever could break through the wall would become an unparalleled existence of the fourth. Lu Yun had just casually dropped into the plane with Tianqi, making everything seem incredibly surreal.

“So you’ve come back, and with two tiny creatures! Are they your new toys?” It wasn’t a thought ripple this time, but a tangible voice.

Last time Lu Yun and Qing Yu visited, they’d only seen the bridge and nothing else. Their return visit brought them a close encounter with a local denizen at first light.

“Who goes there?!” Tianqi roared. He didn’t see anything and his consciousness was sweeping at its maximum range of a hundred thousand kilometers, but to no avail.

The fourth realm was so empty, so expansive that it made one despair.

"You can stop looking, he’s right in front of us,” sighed Lu Yun and pointed at the darkness ahead of them. “That’s his eye.”

Tianqi shuddered.

Instead of responding, the Bridge of Forgetfulness began to expand to the size it’d been when Lu Yun first bumped into it. The bigger it was, the stronger it was. Of course, its spirit was still too weak to control its body when it grew that big.

But becoming larger was the only recourse to standing toe-to-toe with this ponderous existence.

The darkness in the void shifted, as if something was moving in another direction.

“Say, Bridgie, will you give me one of the little creatures on you?”

Tianqi still couldn’t see where the being was, but Lu Yun’s eyes were staring straight ahead of them. He could see his reflection with the Spectral Eye, one coming out of a pupil larger than the entire chaos!

The Bridge of Forgetfulness didn’t respond. If it’d been any other time, it would’ve already turned itself into a zombie and unleashed a flood of ghostface maggots and corpseflies. It could disgust its opponent to death, even if it couldn’t beat him!

As things were, it was very much at ease, despite the encounter, since there was an even more dreadful being on its back.

“Tianqi, do you remember the death art I taught you before?” Lu Yun suddenly grinned. “Deploy Size Manipulation to its greatest.”

Boom.

With a tremble, Lu Yun began to grow explosively in size himself. Tianqi was half a second behind his master, but his body swiftly increased in volume as well. He grew so quickly that the immortal force within his body was diffused to its maximum and was beginning to become too thin.

Whoosh!

The Karmic Tree inside of him blazed with black flame and replaced his original immortal force. New strength flooded his limbs and his cultivation realm bounded forward. He was the mountain god of Mount Tai, and the mountain was a divine mountain formed out of the Hadal Hell. He was also the second person after Lu Yun to practice the Method of Life and Death and wield hellfire.

Though he wasn’t bolstered by the Tome of Life and Death, anything Lu Yun could do, he could do too.

A large eyeball appeared in his line of sight and quickly grew smaller. His field of vision zoomed out to see a face, a head, and then a full being standing in the void.

Tianqi stopped growing at this point, his body the size of the giant’s head. However, that was enough for him to take in every detail about the other.

This was a man rippling with muscles and clad in black armor. The skin exposed to the outside air was deeply tanned and corded with sinewy muscle threatening to burst through his armor.

“Who are you calling tiny creatures?” Lu Yun’s voice traveled down from above.

Tianqi shuddered again and subconsciously looked upward, finding his master the size of a large mountain. Tianqi was a pebble at the foot of a towering mountain!

The man in black armor also stared dumbly at Lu Yun. He wasn’t surprised that Tianqi had suddenly grown to the size of his head. In that condition, Tianqi just barely reached the threshold to set foot into the fourth realm.

But what was with the giant in front of him?

Compared to Lu Yun, the man in black armor was a dwarf, a woodcutter beneath a mountain!

Indeed, Lu Yun was more than ten thousand times stronger now compared to his first visit to the fourth realm. His death arts had undergone countless evolutions, and only an incomparably spacious plane like the fourth realm could withstand their power.

Not even the third realm could contain such strength.

The moment the Tome of Life and Death replaced Lu Yun’s immortal force and nascent spirit was the moment his strength reached the fourth realm. Any strength in this plane was something that the worlds, the chaos, and Hongmeng was unable to endure.

When Lu Yun first entered the fourth realm, he was still in the empyrean realm. Hellfire and Tome of Life and Death were the sources of his transformation. He strode down from the bridge and peered down at the man in black armor.

“M-m-m-mmm—” stammered the man.

“Mm what? Are you eating something?” Lu Yun asked.

“Milord!”

Plop!

The shaking man fell to his knees in midair. The fourth realm was a place so empty that the bigger one’s body was, the more power it could contain. Lu Yun’s current size absolutely made him worthy of being hailed with an honorific.

The larger one was, the stronger, and thus the greater one’s status. This former tiny creature was absolutely a lord.

“Sir, please don’t make things difficult for She Nong. When I first formed my true spirit in the fourth realm, it was all due to his help that I survived and became a local inhabitant,” said the bridge.

“She Nong? Interesting name. Why don’t you call yourself Nong She, as in snake charmer?” Lu Yun grinned.

“If milord wishes this humble one to change my name, I will immediately rename myself as Snakecharmer!” She Nong hurriedly offered.

“Er, stick with She Nong.” Lu Yun calmed the corners of his lips. “I’m short on people at the moment. Since you’re here, come help.”

He didn’t plan on gathering information about the fourth realm. He wasn’t a resident and he didn’t have much ambition about this plane. It’d be a waste of time to ask, other than to once again marvel at how big this world was.

“This humble one is willing to serve the lord!” She Nong quickly assented.