“That was too blatant,” Mo Yi suddenly said.

Lu Yun paused. “Hm?”

“He showed his face to you on purpose,” Mo Yi said after a bemused pause. Though she hadn’t been able to see him after Lu Shenhou revealed himself, she could still put two and two together. “You allowed yourself to be influenced by his identity, thus you missed many things.”

Emotions prevented one from seeing the truth. Lu Yun knew and admired Lu Shenhou, which was why the revelation had made him lose his calm. As an outsider, Mo Yi had a much more objective view of the situation.

“Your trap wasn’t that clever. If I were him, I would’ve waited for a better chance to kill you, rather than attacking your fake replica on a single, unverified fact.”

Lu Yun frowned.

“Why would he do that, though? Is he not Sword Divine? But he was indeed the one I faced in the Sovereign Arena and Sovereign World.”

……

An island of about eighty meters across, deep within the vast East Sea. 

Lu Shenhou knelt on one knee before a cyan figure, holding the Sword of Chaos up with both hands.

“I have completed my mission, master,” he said with great deference.

“Go to Dusk Province and kill the Lu patriarch,” the figure said in lieu of taking the sword. “Make the Lu Clan and Lu Yun irredeemable enemies.”

“Understood.” Calmly, Lu Shenhou rose to his feet and turned away.

“Since you insist on going against me, senior brother Lu, don’t blame me for not showing you mercy.” The man in cyan shook his head and turned to face another direction. “It’s your turn now. Let us see what the thing on Lu Yun is.”

……

Within the ancient tomb, Lu Yun brooded pensively.

Lu Shenhou had come back to life. That spelled trouble whether he was Sword Divine or not. However, he didn’t have much time to spare at the moment to consider the ramifications. It was imperative for him to destroy the extinction layout here.

The feeling of being surveilled had dissipated, so Lu Yun put his full effort into setting up formations. He’d already established the twin layout, and what he did on one side would indeed affect the other, though he’d exaggerated its potency. 

Through the layout, Lu Yun observed the environment on the other side. Ge Long had gone back to set up formations with the Yin Formation Orb, driving away the darkness.

Crack crack crack!

The hanging coffin etched with ancient ritualistic patterns suddenly rumbled and the lid seemed to shift. Lu Yun stopped what he was doing and stared at it. Mo Yi and the human demon stepped up in a flanking maneuver to guard him.

“Don’t worry. It’s all fake. These are just projections of what’s on the other side.” Lu Yun waved a dismissive hand. The crimson coffin began shaking and the ancient runes glowed, constricting it like a giant nest.

The trembling grew ever fiercer.

“Wait!” Lu Yun frowned deeply. “The runes weren’t etched to signify that the one buried here was an Exalted Divine… They were actually sealing the coffin!”

In hell, Qi Hai stood up and stared fixedly at the runes.

“The patterns belong to the divine emperors of the Exalted Divines, but...” Qi Hai had caught on as well.

“But this is a coffin for immortals,” Lu Yun continued. “Someone sealed the coffin with the runes of the Exalted Divines. They sealed the coffin to stop the dead from awakening and destroying the layout here.”

Realization finally dawned on him. If the tomb owner had wanted to destroy the human demon and the restriction against immortals, they wouldn’t have set up a roundabout extinction layout. The only explanation was that a third party had come and changed the tomb.

“It’s the Exalted Immortal Sect!” The answer came to Lu Yun, unbidden. 

They were the first immortal dao sect he’d learned of after arriving at the world of immortals. If anyone was able to place such ancient runes in this tomb, it would be them, and Lu Yun had long suspected that the sect consisted of descendants of the Exalted Divines.

Suddenly, he whirled around and pulled Mo Yi to his side, taking a few steps backward.

“Who are you?!” Lu Yun snarled at the human demon. “Where’s Senior Human Demon?”

The human demon levelled a calm gaze at him, the corners of his mouth quirking upwards. “You actually caught on. Didn’t I tell you the first time we met? A very long time ago, people called me the Exalted Celestial Emperor.”

The man transformed back into the celestial emperor before Lu Yun’s eyes.

“The runes are your doing!” Lu Yun sneered. “Did you set up the extinction layout as well?”

“This is but a damaged ancient formation, the heritage of the human tribe from the ancestor planet. No other tribes are allowed knowledge of it. Even I, a descendant of the Exalted Divine Emperor, cannot touch that heritage.” The celestial emperor admitted to his identity easily enough.

“Didn’t Qing Buyi and Chen Xiao send you here?” Mo Yi asked with some puzzlement.

“Qing Buyi and Chen Xiao?” The Exalted Celestial Emperor smiled. “You, me, Qing Buyi, and Chen Xiao are kin from the same place. I just arrived earlier than you did, so your tricks won’t work on me.”

Lu Yun turned to Mo Yi and noted her inscrutable look. It was plain that the Exalted Celestial Emperor had allowed himself to be caught by Qing Buyi and Chen Xiao to become tribute for the restriction against immortals. That was the only way he could enter the ancient tomb and complete his setup.

Suddenly, she cracked a smile.

“If you’re from the same place we are, then you should know the kind of bastards Chen Xiao and Qing Buyi are. Do you really think an idiot like you can hide anything from them?”

The celestial emperor’s expression darkened. “Come what may, the two of you will meet your doom today! Let me see what your secret is, Lu Yun, why that dead human demon would awaken for you.”

He made his move, attacking Lu Yun and Mo Yi with complete origin-dao-level strength.

“Kill us? You? I’ve already told you how thin the line between reality and illusion is.” Lu Yun huffed out a laugh. “I don’t need to reach the height of Return to Origin to reverse heaven and earth when a simple transportation formation will do.”

Right before the divine’s attack landed, the Formation Orb flared with light and blocked the tremendous force for a split second. Waving his hand, Lu Yun activated the Mirage layout, which swept over him and Mo Yi and took them away in a beam of white light.

Rumble!!

The divine’s attack landed immediately after, shaking the entire tomb. Expression dark, the Exalted Celestial Emperor strode into the dark and made his way to the burial ground of the tomb’s owner.

……

“I could’ve killed him,” Mo Yi said calmly.

Lu Yun grinned. “You said so yourself, there must be a reason for Qing Buyi and Chen Xiao to have sent him here. If you kill him, wouldn’t that disrupt the plan of my dear brothers-in-law?”

The twin layouts had come together and transported Lu Yun and Mo Yi to the hanging coffin interring the tomb owner. He’d set up the layout not to have Ge Long change the feng shui in the area, but to transport them here.

He hadn’t activated the formation earlier, because there’d been a vague notion niggling at him that something was amiss. It wasn’t until the hanging coffin struggled against the ancient runes that he suspected the Exalted Immortal Sect to be responsible, which reminded him of the form the human demon had assumed: the Exalted Celestial Emperor.

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