Necropolis Immortal

“That’s strange. Logically speaking, the Black Tortoise leader should be coming after me himself since I’ve killed his dao partner…” Lu Yun looked curiously at the Black Tortoise disciples.

“What, do you wish for their leader to hunt you down himself?” came a flippant voice behind him.

Lu Yun’s heart skipped a beat with surprise and he hastily whirled around. A young man dressed in white and roughly the same age as him had appeared at some point in time. He guzzled from a wine gourd in his hand.

Lu Yun had no idea when he’d arrived and turned the Eye of Nullification on him. However, the two rays of golden light failed to see through the young man. All he saw was a white haze of uncommonly keen light.

“Are you an immortal?” Lu Yun immediately realized. Not only was this young man an immortal, but he was likely a very strong immortal.

“Immortal?” The young man thought for a bit. “I guess.”

“Dao immortal? Immortal overlord? Or… chaos…?” Lu Yun asked offhandedly with a curl of his lip.

It was the young man’s turn to stare incredulously at him.

“You…”

Dao immortal came after immortal, then immortal overlord, and finally chaos immortal. As the High Lord of the Northern Sky in his first reincarnation, Lu Yun had been a chaos immortal!

“What about me?” Lu Yun hated being caught on the back foot. While he could tell that the young man meant no harm, it irritated him to see the other regard him with an amused expression.

What, are you supposed to be really strong? I’m a good-for-nothing on par with the heavens and the heavenly dao’s personal disciple. I can be considered a second generation heavenly dao! I’m not standing on lower ground in front of you!

Huiying looked dumbly at Lu Yun; meeting a strange young man here was the last thing he’d expected. The latter had easily spelled out the ranks of immortals when the strongest of Great Xia—the Human Emperor—was but a peerless immortal. Likely even the emperor didn’t know what came after his realm.

Black Tortoise members rushed to them before he had a chance to respond and surrounded them. They were about to erupt with fury when they took a clear look at Huiying. Shuddering, they stood down.

“Head of the White Tigers, to think that you would be here as well! These two are wanted by us Black Tortoises, so I would respectfully ask you to stand aside.” A young man of latter nascent soul spoke with a hint of fear in his eyes.

Huiying was well known in Fallen Leaf City for being the most bloodthirsty leader of the three sects. The Black Tortoise young man was deathly afraid of arousing his ire and bringing his own death down on him. Although he was no pushover himself, too many nascent soul cultivators had already lost their lives to Huiying.

Huiying took a deep look at Lu Yun and left with a shake of his head. The nascent soul cultivator relaxed to see him go.

“So there are indeed true powerhouses in this world, and many of them. Although the world of immortals has vanished, there are certain clues to be found.” A sharp light danced in Lu Yun’s eyes while he watched Huiying leave. Currently, what he wished to know the most was the whereabouts of the world of immortals. The woman he’d loved the most in his three thousand lifetimes resided there, so he wished to obtain information about her no matter what.

He’d purposefully listed the ranks of immortals to gauge Huiying’s reaction. Since Lu Yun had once reincarnated into Great Xia, he knew that the dynasty’s strongest heavyweight was peerless immortal.

As strong as that level was, it was only run-of-the-mill in the world of immortals. His lowest soldiers had been peerless immortals and had no right to learn of certain secrets.

His gamble had paid off.

“It looks like crouching tigers and hidden dragons abound in Fallen Leaf City. The leaders of the three sects are no ordinary people.” As curious as Lu Yun was, he wouldn’t seek them out now. Being just a golden core cultivator, he was no different from an ant to them. He would have the right to speak to them only when he grew strong enough.

“Kill!” The latter nascent soul young man didn’t hesitate after Huiying left. Several thousand cultivators assembled into a battle formation that resembled a black tortoise howling at the sky.

“An upper rank battle formation!” Lu Yun smacked his lips when he saw the shadow hovering over the formation. An upper rank formation enhanced battle strength at least ten times over. The shadow over it indicated that it was paramount level among upper ranks. He had absolutely no desire to set himself against an upper rank formation made of several thousand people.

“We’re leaving!” Lu Yun grabbed Long Aotian and waved a talisman in the air, vanishing on the spot. Being golden core, he could use the connate five elements to craft simple talismans. The Earthbending Talisman was made with connate yang earth energy and ordinary cultivators would find it impossible to trace.

Although he was out to temper himself with this trip, he wasn’t interested in dying. Neither did he imagine that he’d run into these kinds of issues as soon as he set out. Not only did he encounter an immortal stronger than normal, but he also met with an upper rank battle formation.

All that could be said was that… he was unlucky.

BOOM!

Fallen Leaf Mountain trembled the moment they vanished. Where they’d just been was now a pit five kilometers across.

……

“That was close!” Five hundred kilometers out, Lu Yun’s eye twitched and he licked his lips when he felt the mountain shake. “I’ll have to break them apart before they assemble their formation the next time I see them, or I won’t stand a chance at all.”

Lu Yun spat out bloody froth from his mouth. Although he’d utilized the Earthbending Talisman, the terrifying shockwave still caused some damage.

“I wonder how Bloodbath faced one million by himself, that madman.” Lu Yun wiped at his mouth.

Bloodbath had slaughtered one million cultivators from a fifth rank nation by himself, and there were parts of the army among the one million. While the nation had possessed only a lower rank battle formation, it was still incredibly frightening when assembled by one million cultivators.

Yet, Bloodbath killed all of them under those conditions.

Lu Yun knew that it was himself who was too weak. If he was nascent soul right this very second, he wouldn’t have to turn tail and run, even if he couldn’t immediately dismantle the formation.

The main peak of Fallen Leaf Mountain was eight hundred kilometers across. Lu Yun traveling five hundred kilometers with one talisman brought him out of the main peak. But since it was still part of the Barrens—a rather large mountain range—Lu Yun remained within the overall range of the Fallen Leaf Mountains.

Interestingly enough, local flora grew more lush when he left the range of the main peak. Trees towered at dozens of meters tall, some even hundreds.

“That’s strange, the ambient qi here isn’t that dense. It’s actually far less than that of the main peak. Why are the trees taller?” Lu Yun took a careful look around. There weren’t many spirit beasts present, just the occasional first or second rank beast. None of higher rank could be found.

“Long Aotian, do you know what’s going on here?” Lu Yun called upon the Eye of Nullification and found a similar case for fifty kilometers in all directions. The greenery was lush and vibrant, but there was no sign of life to be found.

“Is this… a forbidden zone?” Long Aotian was a long-time resident of Fallen Leaf City, so he knew of the certain happenings around the city.

“A forbidden zone?” Lu Yun blinked.

“Legend has it that the mountain range five hundred kilometers away from Fallen Leaf Mountain is deemed off limits by the Dark Orchid Empire. Spirit beasts are given leeway, but human cultivators die without a doubt if they trespass!” Long Aotian answered in a shaking voice.

“Off limits?” Lu Yun looked at the dense canopy overhead and leapt into the sky. He gazed out over an unending expanse of vibrant forest with no end to it.

“So this a formation.” He immediately understood. The so-called forbidden zone was an enormous formation of illusion. It was so big that his Eye of Nullification couldn’t see through it—not because it wasn’t strong enough to, but because its range didn’t extend to the full limits of the formation. The fifty kilometers he was in happened to be the formation’s blind spot.

Lu Yun landed and said to Long Aotian, “This isn’t off limits. Someone’s just playing with smoke and mirrors. Come with me.”

He set off in a certain direction, trailed by a terrified Long Aotian. As uncomfortable as he was, there was nothing else he could do.

“Purple Ginseng? This is nice and it’s eight thousand years old!” Lu Yun suddenly halted and looked raptly at where purple radiance flashed. Purple Ginseng was a seventh rank spirit herb and one eight thousand years was incredibly old. He placed a boundary around it without further ado and dug it up.

Spirit herbs like these were usually safeguarded by powerful spirit beasts. But thanks to this forbidden zone, there were only a few second rank beasts wandering nearby. It saved him a lot of trouble.

Apart from the ginseng, there were too many precious ingredients to be counted. His storage rings were quickly stuffed to the brim. Many of them were high rank ingredients, but more were low ranked ones.

Any other cultivator or pill master would collect only the high rank ones and discard the low rank. But to Lu Yun, these lower ranked ones were even more precious. In the three thousand worlds, he’d used countless lower ranked spirit herbs to replicate the effects of one of the ten legendary herbs—the Shennong Grass!

Thus, to him, even a first rank herb had its value.

The two wandered in the forbidden zone for three days, Long Aotian smiling wryly the whole time. His fingers were crammed with storage rings and another string hung around his neck.