Akasha ghosts!

Lu Yun hadn’t expected the footprints to be left behind by an akasha ghost! He’d encountered them before, and more than once. In fact, he’d arrived in the world of immortals because of an akasha ghost, or more precisely, a layout of absolute death!

……

“What did you just say?” Lu Yun’s eyes whipped to Yueshen, meeting her baffled gaze. “Who did you say left the footprints?”

His eyes bore into immortal ghost’s.

“Gods!” Yueshen shuddered. “They were left by the gods… These are the footprints of the gods! Gods… it can’t be!!” Yueshen’s eyes were wide with disbelief. These were indeed the footprints of the gods, but they turned out… to be left by akasha ghosts instead?! Did that mean that gods became akasha ghosts after they died?

Did gods die? Could they die?

Yueshen shook her head, her heart a tangled mess despite being an immortal ghost.

“This akasha ghost isn’t like the ones we’ve encountered before.” Qing Yu hadn’t lost her rationality. With a flip of a hand, she gathered the illusion shattered by the akasha ghost through space and time.

“You’re right.” Lu Yun nodded. “But it’s still an akasha ghost.”

Thud!

Yueshen suddenly returned to hell, leaving Li Youcai snoring thunderously on the ground. She was having a mental breakdown. Being a ghost instead of a living person, her condition could be exceedingly unstable. Something challenging her understanding of the world was enough to cause significant mental anguish.

Of course, this was temporary. She would be back to her perky self after some rest.

“Come on, let’s go find an altar.” Lu Yun gave the giant footprint a final once-over before departing.

Akasha ghosts seemed to only be able to tap into their full strength in layouts of absolute death. Otherwise, Lu Yun would’ve been dead during one of his many encounters with the strange ghosts.

And now, the one that’d visited here had left behind a series of footprints. Lu Yun couldn’t understand it, so he didn’t waste effort trying.

There were only four days until the demon fetus arrived in the world, but the Exalted celestial emperor didn’t seem too worried. That meant there was no shortage of altars in the cracked land of the Last Repose, so Lu Yun should have no trouble locating one.

With a flip of his hand, he manifested a luopan of faint gold. It was a complete feng shui luopan, created by merging his two previous ones.

The new product had only one layer and one indicator, but the treasure was connected to his mind and could point him to what he was looking for. Lin Yu picked Li Youcai up and the group continued to advance.

“Here it is!” He came to a sudden stop.

Not far ahead was a small altar of roughly six meters across. Pentacolor light sparkled on it and a small doll was propped up on the heart of the altar. It was little more than a foot tall, with neither facial features nor limbs, resembling a tilting doll with its bottom cut off.

Lu Yun sensed very faint ripples of energy from the doll. It… felt alive.

“The altar seems to be a collection of the connate essence of the five elements!” Qing Yu’s eyes lit up as she approached the altar to get a closer look. “It really is that!”

Connate essences of the five elements!

Lu Yun could summon such ingredients of incredible value with his Mastery of the Five Elements, so he and Qing Yu were no stranger to such essences. However, they weren’t of much use to him at the moment, as he wasn’t powerful enough to refine connate grade ingredients. 

He might be able to, if he could deploy the three immortal fires at their maximum, but that was something beyond his current abilities. It’d taken everything in Lu Yun and the sacrifice of a living soul for him to refine Scarlet Ape’s chunk of iron rod.

……

“An altar refined out of essences of the five elements… Why would the immortals of Exalted Major leave a treasure like this untouched?” Lin Yu dropped Li Youcai and came up to the altar, surprised. He reached out to touch it, but Lu Yun surprisingly slapped him away.

Smack!

“Don’t touch it if you don’t want to die.” A great aura unfurled from Lu Yun to push the people around him away.

“What’s wrong?” asked a confused Lin Xuan. He’d inspected the altar closely, but hadn’t noticed anything amiss.

“To enter a divine tomb through an altar requires the sacrifice of a life.” Lu Yun frowned deeply at the altar glittering with light. “The Exalted celestial emperor knew about this beforehand, but didn’t breathe a word.”

He cast a glance at the fading bloodstains on the altar. Someone had already come before them and entered the tomb.

Rumble!

A crimson cloud emerged in the sky as a big, stark-white foot descended and stomped down on the altar.

“Dammit!!” Qing Yu was the first to react. As soon as the enormous foot dropped, she opened her arms wide and unleashed great cosmic power over everyone around her, retreating backward in a streak of light.

Boom!

A cloud of smoke wafted up in their wake as a white akasha ghost dropped down from the sky and stepped on the altar to shatter it, leaving a footprint roughly three hundred meters long on the ground.

Slowly, the akasha ghost began to grow indistinct, like it was about to fade away.

“Akasha ghost!!” Lu Yun shouted. “We can’t let it get away! Guard me, Little Yu. Lin Yu and Lin Xuan, set up a formation!”

With that, he leapt into the air and charged at the dissipating akasha ghost.

Qing Yu understood Lu Yun’s intentions. He’d had more than one encounter with akasha ghosts and survived their attempts to kill him. Now that he’d encountered another in the real world, he wasn’t going to let it off that easily.

Qing Yu remained where she was and isolated the area with two starstones circling around her, her body turning almost entirely into light.

The Lin brothers sprang into action as well, one setting up a formation and the other setting up a layout. Combining the strengths of formations and feng shui, they were able to create a formation and layout of unprecedented strength.

Lu Yun wasn’t worried about letting the akasha ghost escape; he was more worried about attracting others’ attention and wasting all the effort they’d put in.

Clatter!

An iron chain attached to a pair of shackles shot out from his palm when he shook his hand, targeting the ghost. This was something he’d taken from another akasha ghost. They were treasures native to hell, possessing the power of yin spirits.

Lu Yun hadn’t ever used the two treasures up until now, not even when he faced a ghost king in the lineal tomb. He’d been waiting for this moment to capture an akasha ghost!

The ghost was caught off guard. Never had it fathomed that someone would make a move against it!

Swoosh!

The iron chain and shackles looped around the akasha ghost and bound it tight.