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Lu Yun turned around to look at Qingfeng and yanked his hand out from hers.
She didn’t mind his reaction as she was focused on the yin wind blowing over them. Cold and eerie, she trembled from the contact.
“What is this?” Qingfeng asked in a trembling voice.
“A tomb,” Lu Yun answered. “A yin tomb floating in the sky. All of you normally reside in the yang tomb, which is why you are alive. But a tomb is a place that lays kings to rest, so inhabiting a tomb for long means that you will eventually be dragged into the yin tomb.”
The young man took a step forward and entered the floating tomb in the sky. Qingfeng was close behind him.
Familiar sights and layouts entered her vision, but they were entirely different from what she was familiar with. What was ordinarily a scene of vibrant growth was a ghostly world of uncanniness.
She didn’t see anyone alive or sense the presence of the living. Only dense yin qi and the air of death wrapped around her body and heart. She was very familiar with them—they manifested every time someone died.
“This…” Qingfeng shook her head, unable to understand what Lu Yun spoke of. She’d seen tombs before—they forested the world in versions both big and small. Some were built before armageddon arrived, others were established later on.
She’d never imagined that the heavenly palace she grew up in would also be a tomb. However, reality in front of her forced her to believe what she saw.
“The tombs of yin and yang are just a layout of burial.” Lu Yun inspected the premises with the Spectral Eye. “How else would the palace exist for so long in the extremity of life and death if this wasn’t a tomb?”
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“What is the extremity of life and death?” Qingfeng forcefully swung her head back and forth. “Is this an illusion you’ve created to confuse me?”
She shook her head just as quickly as the possibility occurred to her. It was laughable even to her. Her cultivation had reached its peak, and while she wasn’t as strong as Lu Yun, her mentality had reached the point of returning to origin and seeing through all falsehoods.
It was impossible to fool her eyes.
Qingfeng could clearly sense that everything she saw was real.
Lu Yun swept a glance over her and remained silent. He followed the path in, heading deeper into the magnificent hall that was filled with a lifeless air.
Qingfeng kept to herself when she saw Lu Yun ignore her and silently trailed behind him.
“You don’t come from this world, do you?” she suddenly asked.
“What makes you say that?” Lu Yun asked instead with a frown.
“Most of the guilty refute me or try to explain when I say they’re guilty. Or they just erupt in open hostility. Your calmness is not their usual.
“Additionally,” Qingfeng looked around them. “The dao of burial ceased with the destruction of heaven and earth. There is no one versed in it anymore. You are the only one. Therefore, I dare say that you are not of this world.”
“Mmhmm,” Lu Yun nodded and didn’t refute her words. It didn’t matter whether or not he was an inhabitant of this bleak, desolate world. Anything alive was on the same side.
“Are there a lot of other worlds around us?” He suddenly honed in on a key point. “In my understanding, your world is the peak of boundless nothing, the point of existence within the nihil from which originates all space and time.
“Are there other worlds apart from you?”
Lu Yun’s home, that patch of nothing, was contained within this existence. It was a vassal state of this patch of reality.
“Yes,” Qingfeng responded. “Your words are proof that you stand at the peak of a world and know many things. But your peak is simply a small step to many others.
“What you see is the truth of the world, but you are obstructed by a bigger and more expansive ceiling.
“The world is unending and infinitely big, no one can fully elaborate on the truth of the world’s existence. The unbounded nothing we see, that nihil in which nothing lives, could be a small puddle to the eyes of even bigger personages.”
Lu Yun nodded in full agreement with Qingfeng’s words. No one could say how big the world was and what the meaning of the world and life was. It was like what he’d postulated before with the table and cup. Perhaps one thought it was an incontrovertible rule or law, but it was also very possible that a bigger existence had casually set a cup on a table.
Subjectivity affecting the objective? Lu Yun could do it with his current strength, but who was to say that there wouldn’t be a bigger and more encompassing world beyond this level?
“There’s no point in discussing any of this,” he said seriously. “What we need to do now is to survive.”
Qingfeng started, then nodded with a rueful smile. Primitive humans ate raw flesh and drank blood in order to live. What kind of life was an existence like that? Yet, only when one survived did one have the right to consider other things. They were the primitive humans of these vast ruins, struggling to eke out a living from the devastation.
It was not for them to contemplate what life and the world was like.
“Wait!” Her expression shifted drastically and she fixated on something. She stumbled forward to stop in front of an enormous human sculpture.
“Ma… master…” Her voice shook as she identified the sculpture.
It was black throughout and shaped into a stunning woman. It was so lifelike that it was as if a real person stood there. She was just a stone sculpture at present, one without any hint of vitality.
“Don’t touch it!” Lu Yun snapped and slapped away Qingfeng’s reaching hand. “Stone sculptures in tombs accumulate yin energy and harbor vengeful spirits. Great horror develops when it develops into a stone spirit after meeting a living being.”
An unbidden thought rose in his mind. He’d met a stone sculpture in the first tomb he explored after entering the world of immortals. If it wasn’t for Ge Long at the time, he and Wanfeng would’ve both died to it.
One should not easily touch stone sculptures in tombs, particularly in this terrifying floating tomb.
“Is this your master?” Lu Yun pulled Qingfeng away.
“Yes,” she nodded. “My master entered the depths of the palace three hundred years ago and never came back… This isn’t a sculpture, it’s my master.”