Chapter 562: Ascending to Immortality Through the Void Realm (1/2)

Though Lu Yun could hear the sound of dripping water, he didn’t suffer from its effects. Thanks to the hellfire suffusing the air around him, he was impervious to these kinds of strange attacks.

What made his blood run cold was that Jing Huaci was seeing a woman coming their way, but Lu Yun’s Spectral Eye didn’t see her anywhere.

“She’s… she’s crying.” Jing Huaci tugged at his clothes in shuddering apprehension. “She saw me. She’s looking at me. Senior brother Lu, I’m… I’m afraid.”

Plip! Plop! Plip!

The sound of dripping water grew ever louder, but also more indistinct. To Lu Yun, the sound didn’t seem to register in the ears, but reverberated in the depths of the soul.

“Sh- she’s coming… Senior brother Lu, she’s standing right in front of you!” Jing Huaci suddenly blubbered. “Senior brother Lu, save me… She’s going to take me away…”

Crackle!

Hellfire flared to life, enveloping her figure within.

“Show yourself.” Lu Yun’s voice was serene, but also contained a hint of frost.

His eyes saw nothing and his consciousness couldn’t detect anything nearby. But the moment hellfire started burning, he clearly sensed a fleeting, terrified stroke of emotions.

Yu Hengluo’s skin and facial organs suddenly rose into the air, as though something was draping her skin on itself and attaching her features to its face. And then, a naked Yu Hengluo stood in front of him.

“Sect Head, it’s me.” Her tones were ethereal, and her lovely eyes limpid as the autumn waters as she looked throbbingly at him. Tears flowed out of her eyes and landed on the ground. She was crying.

However, Lu Yun noticed that when her tears fell to the ground, they elicited very subtle ripples that further transformed into strange undulations.

“Sect Head, your servant hurts so very much.” Her skin stood in front of the cross and looked forlornly at him. “Give me the small dragon behind you. I’ll stop hurting after I eat it.”

A shiver coursed through Jing Huaci’s spine as she dashed behind Lu Yun and covered her face with the lower hem of his clothes.

Lu Yun looked down at the mangled hunk of flesh in his arms. Through the Spectral Eye, he could clearly sense Yu Hengluo’s spirit, as well as the soul-parts deep within. Her soul remained complete and unbroken, and while her nascent spirit had been wounded, it maintained its integrity nonetheless.

He then looked at the existence in front of him that was wearing Yu Hengluo’s skin; she was still looking pitifully at him. Her tearful gaze struck a chord with the deepest reaches of his heart, the softest part of him.

“Who are you?” he asked very gently, his emotions affected by her. “If you want to live, I can help you.”

“Help me? Live?” The voice was still Yu Hengluo’s, but there was now a hint of derision in those eyes swimming with tears. “Who will revive the countless immortals buried here? Who will revive all those lives refined into bone bricks? Who will revive that fallen era…?”

“Is that why you’re killing the people here? Is that why you’re turning the living into faceless ghosts?” Lu Yun scoffed.

The woman fell silent, shoulders shaking as she wept inaudibly. Each of her tears hit the ground with an audible plop, rippling outward in every direction and giving rise to faceless ghosts wherever they spread. Still, she said nothing.

“Take off Yu Hengluo’s skin. Use your real form to talk to me!” Lu Yun burned three karmic fruits and infused a gentle current of hellfire into Yu Hengluo’s body, smothering the strange crimson power inside her. After that, he jolted her soul with another wisp of hellfire and forced her to faint.

Making her lose consciousness was the only way to alleviate her pain. Otherwise, he couldn’t begin to imagine how excruciating her torment must be.

Crash!

The next moment, Yu Hengluo’s skin and facial features tumbled to the ground as well, nary a peep out of them afterwards.

“Senior brother Lu, she’s gone now,” Jing Huaci whispered softly.

“Good,” Lu Yun sighed softly in relief. As it turned out, the terrible art that could transform living creatures into faceless ghosts was nothing more than this woman’s tears. “Is she the same woman I defeated when we first arrived here?”

“Yes.”  Jing Huaci nodded. “But her power wanes when she leaves the mountain’s peak.”

“The mountain’s peak…?” Lu Yun cast his gaze up at the tall, majestic mountain. The boundless swarm of faceless ghosts had returned to their perch. They huddled on the peak, fixated on him with their blank, featureless faces.

Lu Yun paid them no heed, since they posed no threat to him. Instead, he squatted down and collected the skin and facial organs, then sent them together with Yu Hengluo’s flesh into hell.

……

After being incinerated by Emerald Mistfire, the only things left of Wayfarer’s body were a pair of crimson eyeballs and two blood-red ears, both lying motionless on the ground.

Wayfarer’s bamboo staff had been snapped and the bronze lantern refined by Lu Yun shattered, the tiny Emerald Mistfire flame inside about to be snuffed out.