“In that case, I’m very much at ease,” Lu Qing grinned wryly. “With the chaos tribulation happening ahead of schedule, the seal beneath the chaos sea has also cracked open. I need to go back and handle that.”

“Are you not going to meet your mother?” Lu Yun asked with a pause.

Lu Qing looked toward Inception Palace, where the little fox was hiding behind Ying Luo and shyly poking her head out for a look. When she saw that her son was looking at her, she quickly shrank back.

“Not today. I’ll meet her whenever she’s ready to see me.” Lu Qing firmly shook his head.

“Alright then.” Lu Yun nodded. “Be careful out there. Come find me if you run into anything you can’t handle. I’ll take care of it for you.”

“I will!” Lu Qing finally broke into a broad grin and left with a neat turn. Always alone and isolated from everyone in the chaos and Hongmeng, the Purple King finally had his own backer now—his own father.

Thump!

Thump!

The lizard-dragon and Zhuo Bufan plopped to the ground, unable to lift a single finger. The Purple King’s aura was too great.

Meanwhile, most of the chaos creatures were a bit lost as to what had just happened. They only knew that there was a powerhouse beyond the chaos who guarded the chaos sea. Legends of the Purple King were wholly unfamiliar to them.

But for those of the Hongmeng, the Purple King was an inviolable being who was an utter legend. Everyone in the third realm knew of him. This kind of intangible, psychological pressure was the most lethal.

Leize, Huaxu, and the others looked blankly at each other. They’d always thought that Lu Yun was one of the Purple King’s, that his accomplishments up till now were a result of the Purple King’s support. How very wrong they were! The scene they’d just witnessed was the exact opposite of everything they’d surmised before.

The one in the chaos sea had knelt and called Lu Yun father!

What the hell was all this??

The Purple King hadn’t planned on obscuring his relationship with Lu Yun, and neither had Lu Yun wanted to do so either. If even father and son didn’t dare proclaim their relationship to the world, then there was no courage to speak of in their hearts.

……

The Karmic Tree remained in front of the six palaces, irradiating the chaos with scintillating waves of merit and virtue. The golden light swiftly cleansed the realm of resentment from the deaths of innocents.

This chaos tribulation was finally over and the mortal souls that the palace sovereigns had saved were released back into the realm. They would be the new seeds of life in the chaos and repopulate its vast reaches.

However, palace sovereigns had jointly saved less than a thousandth of their usual numbers this time. It would take untold ages for these seeds of life to return the chaos to its previous vibrancy and prosperity.

Though most of the vengeful spirits that’d suddenly appeared had focused on the six palaces due to attaching to the nine sacred lands, other factions had also been caught up in the fallout.

Nearly half of the regular factions in the chaos were no more after this unforeseen disaster. The remaining ones limped on, mostly intact, if lacking all of their mortal members. Only those above chaos realm still survived in these factions.

The early tribulation had been a true cataclysm for the realm. It hadn’t been an impartial, regular rhythm of life, but an artificially contrived calamity.

……

“The heavyweights of the Hongmeng can’t be bothered with using schemes on us anymore. They’ve gone so far as to ignite a chaos tribulation and nearly caused us all to go extinct! We no longer need to show insincere courtesy when dealing with them.”

The six palaces were now truly one entity and the relationship between the six monarchs an open secret.

All six leaders and most of their senior council sat together, discussing what to do next.

Leize stood up, his expression darkly foreboding. When the six monarchs chased the Hongmeng creatures into the chaos, they’d only managed to kill three. The remaining four had been rescued by a Hongmeng powerhouse. If Lu Qing hadn’t appeared in the nick of time, the six of them would likely be dead as well.

This had well and truly enraged the six monarchs.

“That’s correct.” Huaxu stood up and declared coldly, “I’m going to announce the next steps of the palaces. All of you need only to listen and obey. There is no need for questions.”

“Understood!” The sovereigns of the six palaces took a collective deep breath. They knew how serious matters were.

“The seeds of the immortal dao have taken root in the chaos. What we need to do now is to cultivate the immortal dao! Turn the chaos orders that you cultivate into the immortal dao of the worlds.”

Her first order sent general confusion, shock, and unrest through the assembly. Many wanted to argue and refute the command, but when they recalled what she’d said in the beginning, they closed their mouths without another word.

“From now on, the six palaces will be one entity and discard the sacred palace name. We will become the order sacred land!”

The sacred palaces voluntarily giving up their title and modifying it to become the order sacred land meant that the nine sacred lands were truly no more. Even if the four escaped Hongmeng creatures wanted to resurrect the sacred lands, they would be reinstating completely illegitimate factions.

Rumble!

An enormous disturbance sounded in the void after Huaxu spoke, shaking all six palaces. The order of space keeping them together swiftly vanished and their location truly became one singular patch of void.

The lizard-dragon had razed the Dubiety Realm and placed all of its chaos beasts into the abyss. Since the Dubiety Realm had reached the end of the road, there was no need for the six palaces to guard its gates anymore.

As their locale meshed into one entity, the six palaces become a world themselves.

“Understood.” No one dared object to Huaxu’s most sacrosanct command. She’d called upon the highest orders of the chaos already and set everything in stone.

“The third item on the agenda.” Huaxu and Leize sat down while the Nirvana monarch stood up. “The worlds are now a forbidden zone. No sovereign is to go near them and if anyone dares speak of destroying them, they will be the public enemy of the order sacred land!

“If the worlds find themselves in trouble, we must step forward in their defense.” This was a roundabout way of saying that their future purpose would be to protect the worlds.

“…understood.” Sovereigns looked at each other with wry grins.

The nine sacred lands had once attacked them with the excuse that the six palaces were protecting the worlds and seeking to destroy the chaos. Well then, that was being used as their new purpose now. How about that?

“Apart from this, it goes without saying that minor tasks such as chasing down the remnants of the nine must be undertaken,” the Burgeon monarch remarked faintly.

……

The little fox was once more in human form. She cupped both hands around the crystal ball and hugged it close.

“Don’t you want to see what your soul force replica experienced in the mythological realm?” Lu Yun asked with a smile.

She shook her head. “I don’t know… Will I turn into someone else after I refine the crystal ball?”

“Then let’s just go with the flow.” Lu Yun nodded.

“Mm.” She put the ball away and asked, “Shall we go back to the world of immortals? With our current level of strength, we should be able to handle what’s in the Nihil Hell.”