“Hehehe...” Lu Yun cracked a delighted smile when he saw the face that the Dark Moon Shaman King had manifested. “In order to refine a replica that can fool anyone, the only way is to shroud it with the soul of another!” He stared at the shaman king, his gaze calculative.

The man had been trapped here for so long that his mind was twisted, and he’d inherited the cruelty and bloodthirst of the human dao as a shaman king. If he managed to escape the tomb, who knew what would happen?

Lu Yun had discovered his existence a long time ago. Like the young man had just said, he was going to take everything in this place, the shaman king included.

The Dark Moon Shaman King shrieked as the strand of consciousness entering Lu Yun’s body scuttled away in terror, his ghostly face twisting in recognition.

“Hellfire! You’re not the successor of the azure dragon ancestor, but of hell!!”

Lu Yun had hidden the properties of hellfire when he’d refined the Nine Yin Soul-Parting Wood earlier, so the shaman king had taken it to be regular fire. Plus, the young man’s earlier demonstration with the Yi Wood Cleansing Thunder had led him to believe that Lu Yun was an heir of the azure dragon tribe.

He didn’t know anything of events earlier than that, as he was trapped in the wood and unable to extend his senses further. It wasn’t until his consciousness had reached the depths of his new body’s mind that Lu Yun released his hellfire all at once.

The shaman king had long met his death in the twists and turns of the Nine Yin Soul-Parting Wood, the fragments of his dead soul trapped within his murderer. Hellfire just so happened to be his bane.

However, his mind remained keen even after death. If Lu Yun had used hellfire as soon as the intruder entered his mind, the shaman king would have retreated immediately and buried his soul further in the depths of the Nine Yin Soul-Parting Wood, becoming a potential threat that could rear its head at any time.

Now, however, Lu Yun had trapped the shaman king’s sentience in his own consciousness, allowing it no wiggle room.

“You can’t do this to me!” snarled the Dark Moon Shaman King. “You’re the successor of hell, the legitimate heir of human dao. I am, too. If you refine my soul into a tool for disguise, you will be betraying human dao!!”

“Betraying human dao?” Lu Yun paused and gave the face a strange look. “This man here represents the legitimacy of human dao, yet your successors refined him into a treasure.”

“He’s useless trash!” screamed the Dark Moon Shaman King. “How can he compare to me, a shaman king!”

Lu Yun turned to Qi Hai, who sighed and posed softly, “You are in the presence of the Skydusk City Lord, the greatest capital of the human race. I’d say I was more important than a little shaman king.”

The revelation dumbfounded the Dark Moon Shaman King.

Swoosh!

Seizing the momentary opening, Lu Yun’s fingers flashed through a hand seal. Hellfire surged and enveloped the shaman king’s damaged soul. With a final wail, his soul shrunk into a small ball. Lu Yun wasted no time embarking on the shamanic method to refine it into a soul shroud.

When all was said and done, the man had been a shaman king from the Primeval Era. It should’ve been impossible for a cultivator like Lu Yun to refine his soul. Only by compromising the shaman king’s mentality and seizing a split second of weakness did Lu Yun’s plan succeed. Even so, he still spent eighty-one karmic fruits in the process.

Born out of virtuous merit watering the Sal Tree of Life and Death, karmic fruit was much more powerful than goodwill fruit. However, it still took eighty-one of them for Lu Yun to boost his hellfire to sufficient heights and fully refine the shaman king’s soul.

……

“Happy now?” Qi Hai asked coldly, staring at Lu Yun.

The young man shrugged noncommittally.

“It doesn’t matter to me who you were,” he said slowly. “I just don’t want a stranger following me around, seeing all of my secrets. Although you’ve severed some of your memories, it wouldn’t be difficult for someone like you to recover them.”

Qi Hai’s spirit flickered, making his agitation clear.

“I’ll be honest with you.” Lu Yun pulled his hand back and turned to face Qi Hai. “If I didn’t encounter the shaman king, I would’ve refined your soul into a shroud and sent your true spirit into the wheel of reincarnation.”

He opened his hand to reveal a faint golden dot hovering over his palm—the shaman king’s spirit. He blew softly on it, sending the dot into the netherworld and sinking into a Hell Flower.

Qi Hai shuddered at the prospect. His spirit had been endlessly reincarnating through the ages since the era of human dao, facilitated by the power of hell. It’d taken him countless years to repair his spirit enough to recover his true sense of self.

If Lu Yun made him go through the cycle of reincarnation again, he would most likely be forever lost in the endless cycle of death and rebirth.

“You’d better forget about your schemes and refrain from sticking your nose into my business. Don’t try forcing your human dao era beliefs on me, either.” Lu Yun had always been wary of Qi Hai. Back in Destiny City, he’d set up the Blood Formation of Ten Thousand Spirits to test the man. Even now, he didn’t fully trust the ancient.

City lord of the greatest human capital? Lu Yun didn’t give a rat’s ass about that. Qi Hai had been using Lu Yun as a tool to restore human dominance, despite Lu Yun being the successor of hell.

In fact, he’d proposed the use of the Blood Formation of Ten Thousand Spirits in order to attract the rotten flesh of many lives to control Lu Yun. He just hadn’t counted on Ge Long and the Scripture of Salvation releasing the rotten flesh from its torment.

Naturally, Lu Yun also knew that Qi Hai had been refined into a shamanic treasure by the shaman king’s successors.

The position of the Dark Moon Shaman King was widely renowned, and though whoever held it fully embodied the cruelty and bloodthirst of the shamans, they were still royalty at the end of the day. They wouldn’t just refine a random person they grabbed off the street. 

That was something Lu Yun had scrounged up from Xingzi’s memories.

In his time, Qi Hai had hardly been a good man; he’d been far crueler than the shamans. The Dark Moon Shaman King’s successor had done the world a service by killing Qi Hai. Although Qi Hai’s real sense of self had been slumbering deep in his soul at the time, his true nature remained unchanged. It was who he was.

The Qi Hai of contemporary times was no different; he wanted to control Lu Yun!