Five hundred thousand cultivators felt their worlds spin. When they returned to their senses, they found themselves among different scenery upon the dark continent.

A kind of random transportation had taken them here. The groups and cliques that’d formed earlier were now scattered, their members sent to different corners of the land. The foreign environment was enough to put everyone on edge.

As elites from the various races of the world, none of the contestants were rash enough to make any sudden moves. For now, they were more interested in acclimating themselves and finding their allies, rather than eliminating potential rivals. An aura of death lingered in this place, and with it, the shadow of great danger.

Risk and opportunity often went hand-in-hand.

……

Lu Yun had arrived inside a shadowed vale. Black mist roiled upon the earthy floor and there was no trace of life to be found anywhere.

“Most immortals would imagine the central world to be a lofty, mysterious place, full of experts beyond celestial emperor realm. But this place…” He surveyed his surroundings carefully.

There was only death to be found on this blackened land. There was no life, no nature, and certainly no energy of the land. The only description that fit the bill was a dead world.

Crack!

Something snapped crisply underfoot; the young man had crushed an old bone.    

“This bone… this bone belonged to an origin dao immortal!” Lu Yun was astounded by the find.

“Bones from eighty thousand years ago…” His face changed through a spectrum of colors.

The bone belonged to a human immortal who’d died eighty thousand years ago, around the same time as the destruction of the divine court.

“This origin dao immortal was part of the divine court, and he died protecting it?” Closer observation with the Spectral Eye yielded some truly incredible information. Hadn’t the divines enslaved the other races during their rule eighty thousand years ago? Hadn’t non-divine geniuses been slaughtered and persecuted?

Why would a human origin dao immortal die protecting the divine court? Moreover, he had done so willingly, rather than through coercion.    

“Eighty thousand years ago, after the flames of that great war, even the divines shouldn’t have had many dao immortals left. Yet a stray bone off the ground just so happens to be from an origin dao immortal. What the heck is going on here?”

Lu Yun suppressed the impulse to revive the bone’s owner. He wanted to know the truth, but there were only two spots left for his Envoys of Samsara. He was already at eight out of ten.

He didn’t care much about his envoys’ strength in life. As long as the Tome of Life and Death existed, they could always grow stronger. No, what he wanted was potential and talent.

Once revived, this origin dao immortal would become a peerless one at best. Moreover, he’d be killed instantly. In the distance, a dark character blazed against the black horizon, legible despite the lack of contrast.

Restriction!

A restriction against immortals!

This black land—the central world of the world of immortals—carried a great restriction against the presence of immortals as well. This one was far more potent than Dusk Province’s. Anyone who reached immortality would be erased.

In fact, Lu Yun found the restriction oddly familiar. It very closely resembled the one from the Dao Flower’s tomb.

Did the restriction from that tomb arrive here after the tomb collapsed into the Blood Sea? Maybe the tomb itself was part of the central world…

Possible theories flooded his mind; there was too much that needed to be explained here. In its own way, the central world was full of mysteries.

Finally, Lu Yun raised his head and scanned his surroundings more carefully. There were old bones everywhere here; even the black ‘earth’ was made up of bone dust. Death information filled his Spectral Eye as far as the eye could see. Thankfully, the now enhanced version rendered him immune to the sensory overload.

“Hmm?” Suddenly, he noticed something nearby and zipped toward it immediately. There was a small fight happening just across the field. “...skeletons?” 

The combatants in question baffled him. Having crawled up from the ground, a dozen or so skeletons had encircled a girl in ivory-white daoist robes. It was the little daoist nun he’d met before.

“If the little girl is here, Qing Han shouldn’t be too far, then!” Moments later, his eagerness was disappointed; Spectral Eye or no, there was no Qing Han anywhere to be found within five hundred kilometers.

Most of what he saw were teeming undead and scattered bones. Among them were a few hundred living creatures, but none were Qing Han.

Lu Yun’s heart sank a little.

“Hey, you! Yes, Sidekick over there! Come and help me, would you!” the girl shouted anxiously, clearly thankful to have spotted him. Lu Yun had made no effort to hide himself. She didn’t really know how to refer to him, so went with the nickname Qing Han used.

The black skeletons were extremely strong, as they were all roughly the equivalent of peak origin core realm. Because the girl’s cultivation was limited to golden core, she had a hard time dealing with a dozen at once. She would’ve handled herself fine if it’d only been one or two enemies.

“I guess I should save one of my admirers,” Lu Yun muttered under his breath. He cast a sword ray from his fingertips that splintered into a dozen more. Each embedded itself into a skeleton, annihilating the group completely.

“Huh?” He blinked in surprise at the feedback. A warm current rushed into him from every direction, increasing his cultivation by the slightest bit. “I get it!” 

This was the key to the second round: a great hunt!

The participants of the Sovereign Ranking were uniformly limited to the initial golden core realm.

However, hunting the denizens of this dark land could increase their cultivation. As long as they kept killing, they’d return to their original cultivation. Furthermore, it was likely that the same effect would be forthcoming when hunting their fellow competitors.

Only a killing spree would allow him to gain sufficient strength to excavate the opportunities here and outlast the round.

“Are you alright?” The little girl poked him, unsure of why he’d frozen still.

Recovering from his reverie, Lu Yun spilled the beans to her about what he’d figured out.

“I…” The girl pouted dejectedly. “I can’t beat them!”    

The skeletons roamed in groups, and it was rare for them to be found alone. At her current level, it was very hard for her to deal with more than one or two.

“Maybe we can team up!” Her eyes lit up. “We’ll be stronger if we’re together... Oi!” The way Lu Yun looked at her made her redden again. “Why’re you looking at me like that!

“You know, I’m actually very strong! It’s just, most of my arts just need to be powered by a nascent spirit. If you protect me now, I’ll do the same for you when I get there, okay?” The little girl puffed out her chest. “Still, I’m gonna say this ahead of time: I’m Lu Yun’s dao partner! Don’t you dare get any ideas about me!”

The ‘dao partner’ in question could only shrug. There were no words available to communicate his feelings about this development. In fact, not even he was sure what he was feeling.

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