Chapter 803: Xuan Yuan (2/2)
“You’re not the divine spirit of the world’s spleen!” Lu Yun realized with a start. His head snapped up and his eyes searched out the crimson coffin in the mouth of the snake outer-coffin. He blurted out, “You’re Xuan Yuan!”
After a brief pause, the daoist nodded. “I am. I am the dead man named Xuan Yuan. It’s been a very long while, Ling Weiyang.”
“So it is you, Xuan Yuan.” Ashu’s expression tensed when the man called him Ling Weiyang, but he didn’t comment on the term of address.
“The world has indeed changed,” Xuan Yuan remarked. “We old men have become cowardly and shrink into ourselves, so much so that we don’t even dare admit who we are.” He looked up at his coffin and settled into a prolonged silence.
“Senior Xuan Yuan.” Lu Yun’s heart spasmed.
Xuan Yuan! The name was something of a religion to him. Emperor Xuan Yuan, also known as the Yellow Emperor, was the forefather of ancient Chinese culture—he who forged the five thousand years of glory and honor. It was a name most sacred to every child of China.
However, Lu Yun didn’t know what relationship existed between the Xuan Yuan before him and the Xuan Yuan in the legends of Earth, if any. Earth’s history placed the Yellow Emperor at roughly forty-seven hundred to five thousand years ago.
Five thousand years marked an unbearably long period of time for Earthling. Titles such as “primeval” or “primordial” could be applied to those eras. In the world of immortals, however, five thousand years was but the blink of an eye. Such a span of time was nothing to write home about, and the Xuan Yuan before him was from hundreds of millions of years ago.
Master and sovereign of the world before Emperors Fall, an utmost peak existence from the Primeval Era! Anything so far in the past that it couldn’t be quantified was grouped under this period.
“You are indeed from the ancestral planet.” Seeming to sense the agitation deep within Lu Yun’s heart, Xuan Yuan nodded at him. “Promise me that when the cataclysm descends upon the ancestral planet, you will protect it even at the cost of your own life.”
Ashu listened in silence. Earlier on, he’d ended the conversation prematurely when Lu Yun mentioned he was from the ancestral planet. He didn’t expect Xuan Yuan to talk about it here in such an open manner!
“The ancestral planet is protected by the Great Formation of the Nineheavens Gates,” the holy lord finally broke his silence. “Even the five of us together wouldn’t be able to break through the formation and land upon it!”
“Everything decays and changes in the long river of time...” Xuan Yuan turned to the high priests battling in midair. The five of them had once been kind caretakers who cared for their subjects like their own children. They would’ve given their own lives without hesitation in order to protect their people.
Now, though, they’d sacrificed all of the Xuan Yuan Slaves guarding the tomb for their own gain. They’d failed the test of corruption administered by the corrosion of time. To Xuan Yuan, the great formation protecting the ancestral planet was no different. It would decay and eventually be destroyed.
“Ear—the ancestral planet is my homeland.” Lu Yun nodded. “If a calamity befalls her, of course I will protect it with my life. It’s not a promise to you, but to myself.”
A smile tugged at Xuan Yuan’s lips. Immediately after, however, black smoke puffed out from him and a sinister voice traveled forth, “You won’t be giving my body to anyone, ghost of a dead man! Your true spirit is here, old tree! Eat it now!”
The divine spirit of the world’s spleen leapt out, seizing a momentary lapse in Xuan Yuan’s control.
Boom!
A thunderous rumble exploded as a giant black tree burrowed out from underground. It was the zombie tree! It came with a gray fire that was the corpsefire that Lu Yun had encountered before.