Necropolis Immortal

Lu Yun grinned when he saw Jin Naluo's tongue-tied expression and clapped his shoulder. "Follow me well and put your back into it—becoming a ninth step king isn't an impossible dream."

Jin Naluo suddenly felt like he'd been lured into a den of thieves by a key to the Hongmeng Tower. He took another involuntary look at the Human King across the way—though the latter's Colosseum was no more and his subordinates dead or fled, at least he was a free man!

His word was law in Haotian Tower, apart from the Runaway King Shenyu. He wasn't like Jin Naluo at the Immortal Pagoda, beaten up by the Ruin King today and pummeled by the Daredevil King yesterday!

Jin Naluo was infinitely close to seventh step kinghood and clung tightly to the notion that he'd be able to stand up for himself after he broke through. But today, he found out that his bullies were all ninth step kings!

How could he keep living like this?!

Become a ninth step king himself? He might stand a chance if he summoned the entire Blood Sea to him and absorbed it, but now?

Don't even think about it.

The Human King swept an envious glance at Jin Naluo. It was his fondest wish to stay by master's side and oversee the Immortal Pagoda for him. Jin Naluo had even just been made the grand steward!

Lu Yun's replica had killed the Human King when he attempted to probe if Lu Yun was still present at the Immortal Pagoda. After he became an Infernum, he was sent back as a spy. While Lu Yun might not be aware of every single happening over at Haotian Tower, he knew of most things.

……

Lu Yun immediately headed up to the ninth floor when he returned to the Immortal Pagoda.

"I've figured it out." A smiling Qing Yu emerged from a meditation chamber, holding the ball of Ghost Dragon's presence that Lu Yun had already sent to her.

"Um… that quickly?" He paused. He'd tried deducing Ghost Dragon's whereabouts from the ball of presence, but had come up empty-handed. He'd thought that it'd take their combined efforts to determine where Ghost Dragon was, but Qing Yu had managed it herself!

Her grasp of formula dao was far more advanced than his, and this was a good thing!

"Naturally," she giggled. "You focus on supplemental dao in the Hongmeng and reached kinghood through it. I spent my days in Hopeless Major focusing on formula dao and calculating your whereabouts.

"Ghost Dragon and Ghost Phoenix are at Mount Cloudcover." She turned serious. "It wasn't that easy for me to deduce where they are, but the Hongmeng Treasurehunter Rat you tamed pays frequent visits to the mountain. I detected a hint of a familiar presence from it, which is how I determined where our two friends are."

Lu Yun had given the rat free rein and commanded it to search out all of the treasures in the Hongmeng, but it had eyes only for Mount Cloudcover. It often went hunting in the mountain and occasionally came back with items bearing unique ripples. Lu Yun hadn't had a chance to scrutinize them, so he'd thrown them all into the nest that the rat had set up for itself.

"Mount Cloudcover?" Lu Yun furrowed his brows. "That's a huge grave with a frightening character buried underneath. Their endless resentment is what turned the grave into a huge mountain…"

"That's right." Qing Yu nodded. "I'm coming with you if you're going."

Her gaze was steady and brooked no disagreement.

"Alright!" Lu Yun agreed readily. She was a ninth step king now; according to the king soldier in the first level of the Army Pagoda, many of the realm's kings tread the wrong path. If they set foot into titled kinghood as a ninth step king, their errors would be beyond redemption.

Since Qing Yu had destroyed one of her dao rules and regained the heights of ninth step kinghood, there must be a solution to the issue. Lu Yun also wanted to resolve this for her.

"The two of you go, I'll look after the Immortal Pagoda." chuckled the little fox. "That Runaway King is nothing good and I'll be able to keep a close eye on him from here."

She didn't want to disturb Qing Yu and Lu Yun. The couple hadn't spent much time together since arriving in the third realm; it'd been her that'd enjoyed all this time by Lu Yun's side instead.

"Let's go together." Qing Yu shook her head. "Just Lu Yun and I might not be enough to shift the mountain. We'll certainly run into unknown dangers in Mount Cloudcover and might need to deploy the Dragonquake Scripture."

She spoke the forbidden method's name with ease and without any hint of reservation.

"Alright!" Miao agreed happily, her eyes curving into two crescents from her smile. Her joy swiftly turned to worry. "Can the people here hold onto the Immortal Pagoda though? The path to the world of immortals that Hopeless Major guarded is under the pagoda now."

"Don't worry, the current Immortal Pagoda is even more indestructible than the once Hopeless Major." Qing Yu smiled faintly.

Though Hopeless Major had withdrawn from the Endless Reaches, the passage they'd guarded had been transferred to the Immortal Pagoda. They hadn't lost their territory in the Endless Reaches either, so all was under control on that front.

Lu Yun, Qing Yu, and the little fox departed from Multitude Region without fanfare. Though Shenyu noted their movement, he was unmoved.

"Have those old farts from the Supplemental Dao Alliance spent so much time in seclusion that their brains rotted?!" he grumbled unhappily. "Haotian Tower has sixty-three branches throughout the Hongmeng, but they've operated at a total net loss of thirty thousand premium crystal veins in just three months!

"What in the heavens are they doing?! Why can't they think of ways to earn purple crystals?? All they know is to throw it out the door!"

As furious as he was, he couldn't really take up his grievances with anyone. The supplemental kings and grandmasters of the alliance were his seniors and cornerstones of the Immortal Region.

Though he was the Dao King's disciple, his foundations were shallow and he couldn't control the supplemental kings. All he could do was look on as Haotian Tower continued to hemorrhage money. It wasn't a loss of the unwanted king grade treasures in the alliance's vaults, but a tangible loss in other areas.

"If this is how things are going to be, we might as well imitate the Immortal Pagoda and buy popularity with ghost crystals. …it's Hopeless Major behind the pagoda and they shouldn't know how to do business either. So why have they gradually stemmed their losses and begun to operate at a profit?" Shenyu couldn't make sense of it no matter how he tried.

The Immortal Pagoda's profits factored in expenses of the purple crystals and king grade treasures traded for the ghost crystals.

"The old fossils of the Supplemental Dao Alliance and Immortal Region have no idea how to run a business. We might as well ally with a renowned trading company in the realm and have them take over the tower's operations." Shenyu stroked his chin. "But those old farts will probably never agree to it."

……

Lu Yun, Qing Yu, and the little fox followed the Treasurehunter Rat once more to Mount Cloudcover.

It seemed the same as before from a distance—so tall that its peak couldn't be seen with dense clouds of Hongmeng qi wrapped around it. This was an enormous grave of an unparalleled heavyweight.

A tiny tunnel marked the foot of the mountain. After countless tries, the rat had created a thieves' tunnel that led straight to the depths of the landmass.

Lu Yun still couldn't understand or communicate with it, but that wasn't a problem for Miao.

"Not bad, the little guy's a fast learner. I haven't taught it the art of tomb raiding for nothing." The little fox smiled to see the tunnel.

"Little guy? That rat's older than you." Lu Yun curled his lip and slapped two Size Manipulation Talismans onto Qing Yu and the little fox. The trio swiftly shrank down. "Let's go in."