Chapter 696: Garden of Immortal Crystals (1/2)

While Lu Yun did dote Liu Qingmiao very much so, she was somewhat of a headache most of the time. The little bean sprout often came up with one outlandish idea after another that’d throw him for a loop, to the point where he frequently wondered if she wasn’t another transmigrator from Earth and not the ancient monster ancestor reborn.

In the meantime, Xing Chen tugged the small golden dragon out of Liu Qingmiao and took the little bean sprout inside the kingdom of hell.

Even when the replica returned to the netherworld, time outside still flowed in parallel with time outside. As long as his primary body, the one that’d refined the Tome of Life and Death, didn’t return to hell, time wasn’t altered.

Inside hell, the resurrection layout’s floating peak was nowhere in sight. It’d merged with a special biome and become the only location in this world infused with vitality. The five-hundred-kilometers-wide zone of life it created was a taboo region, at the center of which sat the lightning lake.

Sword energy boiled inside Dongfang Hao’s lightning lake, a place where lightning and sword energy had combined to form a variation of liquid lightning. At less than a hundred meters wide, Lu Yun’s own pond wasn’t as big, but it was filled with the purest of tribulation essence   and contained a prodigious amount of vitality and natural energy.

Lu Yun severed Liu Qingmiao’s cultivation and the foundations of her immortal dao, then threw her into the smaller lightning lake.

“Alright, now use the liquid lightning to recast your immortal foundations and spirit root. I’ll stand watch while you do so.” His replica Xing Chen sat down cross-legged and maintained his silence.

“Senior sister…” At the center of another lightning pond, one close to six hundred meters wide, a now-mortal Zou Longxiu lay sprawled on his stomach and watched Liu Qingmiao anxiously.

“Be a good boy, junior brother. Don’t talk, focus on your cultivation!” Liu Qingmiao advised like a wise elder, but not before choking on a few mouthfuls of liquid tribulation essence first.

Children nowadays are quite precocious, aren’t they?

Looking up and glancing through the kingdom, Xing Chen noticed a subtle change in the ten Yama Halls positioned in the ten directions.

If I hadn’t ascended to immortality, the Yama Halls would have remained as before. In other words, identical to the Yama Halls of the human dao era.

But now that I’ve become an immortal and forfeited my authority over reincarnation and judgement of life itself, these Yama Halls have unexpectedly evolved into the Yama World of the Ten Directions, an offshoot world born from hell.

A sudden realization struck Lu Yun. With the mindset of a modern man from Earth, he had relinquished his ascendency over all things living. Not only had that not weakened his strength, but he’d obtained unexpected boons in the process. Likewise, Yuying and the other Yama Kings had also benefited tremendously from his decision.

Now that the Yama Halls had evolved into a world of their own, the Yama Kings could incorporate their nascent spirits into that world and enjoy enduring life as their nascent spirits lived on, just like Lu Yun with the kingdom of hell!

Of course, that still didn’t represent absolute safety.

A horde of akasha ghosts had invaded the netherworld not too long ago. If not for Ge Long, the kingdom would lay in shambles now. Even so, the old servant had sustained heavy wounds and was now resting under the Karmic Tree. With this experience behind him, Lu Yun no longer dared be that impulsive.

His kingdom was weak still, weaker than any of the facets in the outer world, which was all the more reason for him to exercise caution.

Hell was a broken realm, and there were many other fragments of it floating in the multiverse at large. He had to locate them one by one and incorporate them with the one in his possession.

The other primary method to do so was to continue increasing his strength and reinforcing his nascent spirit, until it evolved into the true six paths of reincarnation. By then, all the fragments scattered across the multiverse would return to him on their own.

……