Chapter 297: The Early Bird Gets the Worm
As legend had it, Levitating Island had been the holy land of the monster spirits in primordial times. Several thousand years ago, it had fallen into the North Sea and given rise to a giant island. There was a great tomb on this island that held the secrets of the monster spirit ancestor. Only, no one had ever found it. Many formation experts of the immortal world had come to investigate over the years, but none of them had discovered the inkling of a clue.
Lu Yun had barely managed to locate it this time, thanks to the Dragonsearch Invocation and the cosmic feng shui method. It was located beneath the Kunpeng Palace!
Even Beigong Yu was a little taken aback. He’d chosen Levitating Island as his temporary residence back when the island first formed, but in the several thousand years since, the kunpeng had never noticed anything amiss.
The pearl-in-jade structure was indeed extraordinarily wondrous. Fusing with the power of the stars in the sky, it’d unexpectedly created rings of coiled starry mountains. With the mountains now broken, the tomb below the palace was slowly revealed to the world.
....
Kunpeng Palace rested partly on the island, but the greater part floated on the sea. Along with Qing Han, the little fox, and the Deaf Prince, Lu Yun silently stole beneath the water’s surface without alerting a soul.
At night, the crystal clear waters of the sea emitted a faint chilliness. When the power of the stars slowly dissipated from its waters, the obscure layout slowly revealed itself.
“The tomb’s entrance is over there!” Lu Yun transmitted as he pointed at a pitch-black opening below the palace. It was around three hundred meters wide; as dark and mysterious as the open maws of a giant beast, it quietly hid at the bottom of the sea.
“This is...” The Deaf Prince looked on in confusion. “Why is this here? I explored this area carefully back when I moved in, but I never saw anything of the sort here!”
As the prince was an ancient divine beast, he could roam the seas and move underwater unimpeded. Lu Yun, Qing Han, and the small fox, on the other hand, had to rely on talismans.
“It’s because Levitating Island crashed into the sea and broke the layers of protection around the tomb. That’s why we can see the entrance now,” Lu Yun patiently explained. However, his expression was somewhat grim.
Someone had beaten him to the punch! The ancient tomb had begun releasing its energy the moment it was opened. He could tell that half of it had leaked outside by now.
There was obviously an extraordinary figure on Levitating Island. The moment the island’s layout had been broken, he or she had used a special method to locate the tomb and rush inside ahead of Lu Yun.
They may have found the tomb, but they don’t know the first thing about feng shui. They used simple brute force to break the layouts around the tomb, but the real core’s still intact.
Tombs, especially in the immortal world, were strange and abnormal existences that could either be man-made or born from the world.
Man-made tombs were built by feng shui masters proficient in the way of burials. They arranged many a formation, mechanism, and feng shui layout, adjusting them to the identity of the one buried inside so that the dead may rest in peace and bless their descendants.
As for the connate tombs born from the world, they originated from feng shui patterns that arose from the death of figures that affected the fabric of the world itself. Huang Qing’s tomb, for example, had once simply been a sword barrow, and not, strictly speaking, a tomb. But because Huang Qing had been buried there, the outside world had formed many layers of protection, giving birth to the layout of a noble’s tomb.
The burial mound in Myriad Formation Summit was another case in point, where the divine Wushen Ruyi had been buried. Once one of the twenty-four divine kings, she had nevertheless been ignobly entombed there despite her exalted status. As a result, the overflowing resentment from her dead body had transformed what had been a small mound into a towering mountain, while she herself had become an undead hag.
The tomb in front of them was surrounded by a pearl-in-jade layout. The one resting inside such a place was either an unspeakably wicked, evil existence, or a saint who’d once brought deliverance to the world. In Lu Yun’s opinion, this kind of layout suggested a type of connate tomb.
Saint or devil, the dead buried within had caused the pearl-in-jade layout to appear on Levitating Island. On Earth, it would’ve been a fantasy tale straight out of the Arabian Nights, but nothing seemed impossible in the world of immortals.
historical
In fact, such occurrences weren’t difficult to understand. Just as the wind eroded the land into different geological structures depending on the terrain, so too did the energy of the world change as a result of dead bodies special enough to influence the fabric of the world, thereupon resulting in different tomb structures.
....
“There’s not even a speck of light in here. I can’t see my hand in front of my face!” the Deaf Prince cried out. The group couldn’t help the shudders that ran through their bodies once they’d entered inside the giant opening.
Qing Han furrowed his brows slightly and took out a luminous pearl from his storage ring. It was bright enough to illuminate an area hundreds of meters wide, but even here its glow was particularly dim and bleak.
“It’s because of the layou—hm, formations here,” he transmitted to his three companions. “Careful, the water reeks of blood. Many of those who came here ahead of us must’ve died here...”
The little fox immediately tensed. “Ahead of us... Did someone come here before us?”
Lu Yun nodded gently, but the fox couldn’t see him.
Swish.
All of a sudden, an urgently swift current surged underwater as something made straight for the Deaf Prince.
“Damn it all to hell, what’s that?!” the prince shouted in anger. The space around him instantly whipped up a whirlpool and scattered the current when it came close.
“Undead hag!” Qing Han shouted in shock and subconsciously drew closer to Lu Yun. It was too dark to see, but his consciousness could clearly discern a female undead clad in white, her hair like kelp and flesh that resembled some sort of gelatinous substance plastered over black bones.
A pair of deathly pale eyes stared fixedly at the four underwater.
The little fox’s hairs stood on end. She climbed on Qing Han’s shoulders, pulling up his hair to hide herself, exposing only a pair of big blue eyes that nervously looked in the undead hag’s direction. Of course, the fox couldn’t see anything either, and was instead sweeping the area with her consciousness.
“Little fox!” Qing Han grabbed the furball and dragged her in front of him. “You’re a golden immortal!”
“I’m a golden immortal!” the fox agreed, her childish voice bold and confident. “But I’m scared!”
Qing Han was struck dumb by the little fox.
“Don’t worry, this undead hag isn’t particularly strong. It’s only about the level of a true immortal,” Lu Yun reassured them. After seeing its attack countered by the Deaf Prince, the creature kept its distance, content to just float behind them and follow the group.
“Let’s hope we don’t run into another titanic undead hag,” Qing Han mumbled. The hags couldn't be killed and they stuck to their prey like glue, just like a toad. Moreover, they were water creatures and fully at home beneath the sea.
“What’s an undead hag?” The Deaf Prince couldn’t help but shiver as he listened to his companions.
“A type of water monster... Damn it!” Lu Yun stopped all of a sudden, his expression once again grim. “There’s actually a titanic hag blocking the way in front of us.”