Chapter 531: Skinning Spike (1/2)

The seventeenth level of hell: Hell of Skinning! Although this hell was also a copy, similar terrors existed here.

Back in the copy of the Avici Hell, Lu Yun only barely escaped after deploying the Yi Wood Cleansing Thunder that the Azure Dragon King passed onto him. Stepping into the seventeenth level of hell made his hackles raise.

He was the owner of the Tome of Life and Death and the overlord of hell, but hell had been destroyed, leaving behind only a carcass of what it’d once been. This place had been modeled on the original Hell of Skinning by some powerful immortal, which meant it didn’t fall under Lu Yun’s jurisdiction, and he too could fall into a trap if he wasn’t careful.

Is this really the tomb of the Monster Celestial Master? He began turning over that question again.

The celestial master had been but a primordial realm immortal. Would someone really go to the lengths of building a Hell of Skinning just to bury him?

Can it be... that the celestial master tomb was drawn by the Hell of Skinning just like the tortoise nest and qilin tomb? This Hell of Skinning is incomplete, a pale imitation of the one recorded in the Tome of Life and Death… Perhaps the ancient tombs were drawn here in order to improve this hell.

It must not have taken shape yet when the East Sea court visited, and the boundary of life and death in the celestial master tomb was broken. Then came the qilin tomb, turtle nest, kunpeng nest, and the Ingress Path. Thus, the Hell of Skinning came to be, and the boundary of life and death was restored.

If that’s the case, that’d explain everything. Lu Yun’s brows relaxed. This incomplete hell had some great flaws, which he could exploit to break the layouts here.

“Look, sir!” Zou Longxiu and the Scaled-Dragon King shrieked. “It’s Fangyang Xing and Jiangchen Xie!”

Lu Yun saw the two men’s skins as well when he walked over.

“So if their skins are here, where did they go? How about the demon sovereign? Where did he head off to?” Lu Yun looked around. His Spectral Eye told him that the owners of the skins hadn’t died, but instead gone somewhere else, leaving their skins behind.

The layout of this room was simple: a sarcophagus in the center and piles of skins on the floor, nothing else.

“What’s the thing that dragged the arcane dao immortal back?” Lu Yun’s gaze was drawn to the sarcophagus. “Let’s open the coffin and see what’s buried inside!”

The thief’s tunnel Lu Yun had dug was a feng shui layout in and of itself. Every shift in its nine twists and eighteen turns acted as a node, piercing space and extending the tunnel to the depths of the celestial master tomb.

Thus, they’d arrived not on the fringes of the tomb, but at its core. Though this wasn’t the main chamber, it was still an important burial room.

Rumble.

Lu Yun and the Scaled-Dragon King bent their backs to push open the lid of the six-meter-long sarcophagus. A pungent metallic smell permeated the chamber as scarlet blood overflowed from the coffin.

Startled, Lu Yun summoned the Ingress Path and grabbed both of his followers.

“What’s all this blood?!” Zou Longxiu cried out.

In no time at all, the agitating blood filled the entire room. Skins that it soaked slowly ballooned back to their former size and rose to their feet.

“Where’s my flesh? Where’s my flesh...”

“Have you seen my flesh, Sir Lu Yun?” The arcane dao immortal’s skin stood up as well, tilting his head to stare at the governor on the Ingress Path, an eerie smile tugging at his empty lips.

Lu Yun’s attention, though, wasn’t on the skins, but the open sarcophagus. Fresh blood oozed out of the coffin into the chamber, and there was something that was a shocking shade of red wriggling within the stone container.