Chapter 385: Theyre All Dead (1/2)

Mournful songs of melancholy and loss reverberated across the world. The Gates of the Abyss opened, welcoming a path lined with Hell Flowers into the netherworld and accepting those who’d died in the disaster.

Most people couldn’t see any of that, though. Only spirits, ghosts, and a few select humans were the exceptions. Everything remained normal to those not in the know.

“That’s....” Qing Han gaped at the flowers and the ancient looking gates. Reflexively, he severed his connection to the Scroll of Shepherding Immortals.

“Don’t worry. If I didn’t want anyone to see that, not even a reborn Empress Myrtlestar would be able to see anything, even if she’d ascended beyond immortal emperor realm.” Lu Yun exhaled deeply. Everyone who’d died here, be they monster spirits, Dusk cultivators, or immortals who’d come to help, then died for their efforts, would be reborn in hell and become the first batch of indigenous natives.

The living and the dead belonged to different worlds. The living possessed their own world and would be born again in the netherworld upon their deaths.

Lu Yun’s Infernum lived in hell, but they were his subordinates. Their lives were completely under his control, and they had no freedom. The spirits that had entered hell this time, though, would live in hell under nobody's rule.

“Is this… your biggest secret?” Qing Han turned to Lu Yun in shock.

“It is.” Lu Yun nodded, a mountainous pressure lifting from his chest. A great sense of relief washed away the suffocating gloom that’d always plagued him.

With his thoughts and will as one, all of the inner energy in his body converged into a stream of black luminescence and soared into the sky, guiding the dense power of heaven and earth into his figure.

It seemed to gradually disperse a thick layer of fog that’d always been unknowingly wrapped around him. The world had never felt so clear to him before; he could plainly see the mechanisms of its movement and the way the heavenly energy circulated.

So this is the perceived void realm. Perceive the void with the nascent spirit to gain insight into the secrets of heaven and earth...

At that thought, the shadow of the Dao Flower bloomed slowly beside him. His perception of the world became even clearer, and every minute movement of his brought about great heavenly might.

“Heaven and earth, heaven and earth....” Lu Yun fell into deep spontaneous thought. He was reminded of how he’d felt as he wielded the power of a peak origin dao immortal when he’d become one with the emperor puppet.

That’d been the pinnacle of utmost freedom, of limitless liberty, as if he’d escaped from an enormous mud pond and achieved true autonomy.

Upon sharing his secrets with Qing Han, the shadow of a long-held burden lifted and he ascended to the void realm. The blessings of the Dao Flower brought him once again to that transcendental realm.

“The world is incredibly vast, but we’ve been struggling in a large, muddy pond. Cultivation… ah, cultivation. The purpose of cultivation is to lift us out of this mud pond.” An inkling of enlightenment dawned on him.

The void realm was the last realm for cultivators. It allowed them to see the world for what it truly was and understand its limitations, setting a clear goal for the future of their cultivation—to escape the pond.

The best way to do so was to draw upon the power of heaven and earth!

Continuous absorption of the power of the land and incorporating oneself into heaven and earth would enable one to transcend their limitations. They would thus be able to break out of the mundane world.

……

“The Dao Flower has dispersed.” Faint fragrance emitted from Qing Han’s body as a slight shadow became a part of him. The Dao Flower in the sky had disappeared, but the real one had taken root in him.