Necropolis Immortal

A… woman… probably a woman... entered the venue, escorted by strange-looking creatures.

A tight-fitting black dress clung closely to her swollen, distended figure, and her face was incredibly large at thirty centimeters across. Covered in pockmarks and repulsive pimples, deep-set ox-like eyes darted rapidly around. Combined with a garlic bulb of a nose, it made for an unusually hideous appearance.

She scanned the surroundings as she walked in, self-satisfaction and pride on her face suggesting a firm belief in her superiority.

“Um… What are those things?” From a floating summit, Jiangchen Xie stared dumbly at the creatures swarming in after the woman.

“Fur seals, it seems, as recorded in our historical texts.” An elder of the Corpse Refiners stood by Jiangchen Xie’s side, his expression tight. The fur seals were so hideous to the eye that it hurt to even look at them.

“Fur seals...” Jiangchen Xie frowned slightly. “I saw that woman in the celestial master tomb. I think she calls herself Ge Yanxia.”

He couldn’t conceal his disgust of the fur seals, not because of their appearance, but for the repulsive presence radiating from their very beings. In fact, a faint pungent stench had wafted into the venue after the creatures arrived.

It wasn’t the smell of decaying corpses, but the sour taste of someone who hadn’t taken a bath for hundreds of years. Even the Corpse Refiners, used to the smell of decay, had difficulties dealing with the stench.

Immortals closer to the entrance couldn’t resist the urge to throw up, and sounds of retching filled the venue.

“What the hell are they?” screamed an immortal. “They brought poison with them!”

As immortals, they were free of dirt and resisted all filth, yet these things seemed to have an innate grime about them despite the proper garments they’d donned. The stink rolling off them was so strong it was like poison.

Regular immortals, and even cultivators, had never experienced vomiting. When their bodies heaved from the nauseating funk burrowing into their noses, they thought they’d been hit with a potent poison.

“It’s said that the fur seals lucked out and were trapped in a ruin with a complete immortal dao when the primordial world of immortals shattered. That ruin is isolated and untouched by sunlight. Does the polluted air ingrained in the fur seals come from that ruin?”

Those who believed that they’d been poisoned were the minority. The majority of immortals present had realized what these things were.

“That’s not right,” said Fangyang Xing. “Fur seals were the lowliest and foulest species in the primordial world of immortals. They were born this way. It’s said that even the seawater in their territory is foul and pungent.”

Fangyang Xing’s frown made it clear that he couldn’t stand the fur seals’ stench, either. He turned to look at Lu Yun with a questioning gaze. “Sir Lu, you haven’t invited the filthy fur seals, have you?“

“Uh… no...” Lu Yun stammered slowly. He was as caught off guard by the fur seals’ arrival as anyone else.

“What did you just say?!” Ge Yanxia’s expression turned thunderous when she heard what Fangyang Xing and the other immortals were muttering about, her oppressive presence growing even stronger.

With a simple lift of the hand, she pushed forward a giant black hand projection and smashed it into one of the floating summits with great ferocity.

Bam!

The floating summit exploded; all of the immortals representing their clan were decimated.

“Who else?” Ge Yanxia soared into the air. Her tight black dress exploded to pieces when she gathered her power, revealing her pitch-black, gelatinous body for all to see. Layers of lard undulated like waves of dark sewage.

“Why didn’t the Dusk restriction do anything even after she used the power of a primordial dao immortal?!” someone screamed.

They belatedly realized that the restriction against immortals remained inactive, even though Ge Yanxia had entered the province with all her strength as a primordial dao immortal fully on display.

An immortal like her bearing a complete immortal dao and inner world put her in an entirely different league from contemporary dao immortals. She’d more than proven herself with her previous attack, yet the Dusk restriction hadn’t stirred at all.

Bam!

A beam of white light slammed into Ge Yanxia at this moment, sending her bulbous form flying backwards with a scream. The fur seals that hadn’t fully transformed were disintegrated.

An enormous fortress ship had suddenly appeared over the auction’s venue; the ninth prince of Primus Major stood atop the bow of the ship with a murderous look on his face.

“The last time I traveled to the West Sea, I ran into a group of fur seals and almost didn’t survive the occasion.” The prince smiled darkly; it was plainly an encounter he didn’t care to recall.

“You aren’t going to object if I slaughter this group of fur seals, are you, great monkey?” He gave Scarlet Ape a questioning look.

“Fur seals? They’re nothing but simple beasts rather than monster spirits.” Full of schadenfreude, Scarlet Ape wanted nothing more than to see the auction disrupted. Although the auction proper had ended, what came after was what truly mattered.

“Ah!” a piercing scream rang from the outside of the venue. “My children, my children—who ambushed me?! I’ll kill you!” Ge Yanxia sounded overcome with grief.

“Those… were all her children?” Immortals had looked on with surprise and envy when they witnessed the demonstration of the lord-grade fortress ship, but Ge Yanxia’s exclamation stunned them further.

“Ge Yanxia is a female fur seal, isn’t she?” Fangyang Xing asked woodenly. “Do fur seals lay eggs? Or do they carry their young to term?”

He cast his eyes toward Scarlet Ape, who was equally surprised.

“Should be the latter… are all those fur seals her children? Hasn’t she done anything other than give birth over the past hundreds of years?”

“I think I saw… descendants of her and her children in that group,” suddenly offered a small monster spirit with large eyes.

“What do you mean?” Not everyone understood the strange-looking monster spirit.

“It means that Ge Yanxia copulated with her children, or even grandchildren to give birth to more offspring,” the monster spirit explained with a deadpan look.

“Um...” Scarlet Ape turned around stiltedly to look at the monster spirit.

“That’s how fur seals are,” it said seriously. “This is perfectly normal for them. Lord Ancestor is right, fur seals aren’t monster spirits. Monster spirits are civilized, while fur seals aren’t. Back in the Primordial Era, the fur seals wanted to join the monster spirits, but the forefather at the time turned them down.”

By now, the ninth prince had navigated his fortress ship out of the venue in pursuit of the fur seal.