Chapter 47: Dragonseal Stone

“The Dragon Prince’s chambers?” Lu Yun was perplexed . “Wasn’t this the Tiger Prince’s territory? Where did this ‘Dragon Prince’ come from?”

Before he could fully understand what was going on, a ma.s.s of shadows pounced on him . An enormous, draconic shadow was poised a short distance behind the group .  

“Back off!” An imperious command from the dragon shadow immediately dispersed the charging ma.s.s . “Where did the Tiger Prince go?” it demanded . The pressure it exerted upon Lu Yun was identical to the Tiger Prince’s—so heavy as to be suffocating .

However, Yuying was an immortal now as well . She could suppress these living layouts with her Panorama of Clarity, Dragon Prince included .

“The Tiger Prince? He’s dead . ” Lu Yun calmed down . He lifted Qing Han off his shoulders and returned the envoy onto his back, to which the other youth also let out a sigh of relief .

“No, the Tiger Prince isn’t dead!” There was a hint of expectation in the Dragon Prince’s voice . “Where did you send him? Send me there too . ”

“What?!” Lu Yun traded a stunned look with Yuying .

“The Tiger Prince and I share the same life . If he dies, I would disappear as well . ” The Dragon Prince was only a shadow, but his yearning was nearly tangible . “He’s not dead . Instead, he’s undergoing metamorphosis . I can feel that he’s evolving to a higher level . ”

The dragon shadow’s voice was low, indistinct, and altogether strange . “I know what’s going on . He met you earlier, didn’t he? The place he’s gone to, that must be the reason for his transformation . ”

“Yuying . ” Lu Yun glanced at the brilliant envoy .

Yuying? A thought popped into Qing Han’s head .  The Panorama of Clarity! No wonder . So Yuying didn’t die a thousand years ago .

He didn’t dwell on it, however . Within this burial mound, Lu Yun had displayed a wide range of incredible talents . He wasn’t strong himself, but his collection of tricks had resolved every problem so far with ease .

He must have many secrets about him .

The eighth governor of Dusk Province was rumored to have died during her heavenly tribulation, but whether she had or not… who knew? That was twelve hundred years ago, regardless .

Yuying understood her master’s intentions . She extended her fingers, slowly unfurling the Panorama of Clarity . The painting depicted mountains and rivers in washed ink . However, there was a new addition: a small tiger, napping in the midst of the landscape .  

“There!” The Dragon Prince’s voice was filled with longing . “Send me in!”

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“I can do that,” Lu Yun allowed . “But first, you need to tell me how we got here so suddenly . I’m sure we were in the Tiger Prince’s territory . ”

“I brought all of you here . ” The Dragon Prince calmed down once more . “If I hadn’t, you would’ve died at that undead hag’s hands . ”

Lu Yun frowned, but said nothing .

“The Tiger Prince and I are spirits born of this s.p.a.ce . He and I are bound to each other by our existences . He represents the body, and I the spirit . The rules here force us to fight with tooth and nail, but also prevent us from ever coming face to face . We can only fight our war through sending other creatures at each other . Our proxies were also born of this place . ”

Lu Yun finally understood the situation . The Duality of Dragon and Tiger couldn’t allow the two kingly creatures to actually come face to face . If they did, they would fight to the death . If one of them was gone, the layout would be broken too .

No wonder they were separated by the duality of body and spirit .

He recalled the tiger head outside the corpse coffin and the venom in its eyes . That head was the tiger part of the layout, sp.a.w.ning the Tiger Prince from its essence . Now that the Tiger Prince was gone, the tigrine portion would disappear shortly thereafter, leaving only the draconic .

If the Dragon Prince went into the Panorama of Clarity as well, the entire layout would dissipate .

“This is the minds.p.a.ce of the coffin, where I’ve taken up residence . The undead hag can’t come in here, so you’ll be safe for the time being,” continued the Dragon Prince .

“Aha, so that’s it . ” Lu Yun nodded . If the Dragon Prince embodied spirit and thought, then his residence was a purely mental s.p.a.ce .

“Wait a second . What minds.p.a.ce? That coffin can think for itself!?” Qing Han shrank back instinctively .

“No, it’s not the coffin’s mind, it’s the undead hag’s,” corrected the Dragon Prince . “She was the one originally buried in the tomb . Because of what it’s turned into, her soul hasn’t been able to enter the wheel of reincarnation . In fact, it’s eroded to nothingness . On top of that, her mind was extracted and fused into the corpse coffin so that it would suffer for eternity . Her corpse gradually transformed into the undead hag, sealed away in the abyss by the floating summit . ”

“If it were me, I would do the same,” nodded Lu Yun . “This is the only fitting retribution . ”

Qing Han flattened his mouth in disgust .

“Don’t curl your lips like that,” the Dusk governor chuckled . “What would you do if your family members were refined into corpse coffins?” He meant it as a rhetorical question . “I’d wipe out the perverted race responsible, then refine the one buried in my family into a corpse coffin themselves . Give them a taste of their own medicine, so to speak . ”

The suffering visited upon the coffin itself would be transferred to the mind of the buried individual .

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Qing Han fell silent for a time . “My family isn’t all that kind to me,” he remarked quietly .

A strange feeling entered Lu Yun’s heart . “That’s enough of that,” he coughed softly . “What’s down in the abyss?”

He’d tried to examine it using his Spectral Eye, but the energies of life and death there were too chaotic . He could see nothing but the teeming dead .

“I don’t know,” responded the Dragon Prince . “But maybe the fox does . ” He directed at the nearby Miao, who shook his head slightly .

“I don’t know either . The abyss is outside the boundaries of the burial mound . I tried to go down there a few times in my dreams, but ended up back here every time I jumped in . ”

“The burial mound might have landed here because of that abyss,” speculated Lu Yun .

“Can you let me into that painting now?” Antic.i.p.atory joy colored the Dragon Prince’s voice .

Lu Yun inclined his head . “Will we be forced to leave if you go into the painting?” he asked suddenly .

“The undead hag has already left,” the Dragon Prince answered in perfect understanding of what he meant . “Still, you need to be careful . Since you let it out by removing that floating summit, there’s not much else here that can restrain it . ”

Lu Yun’s mouth quirked slightly upwards, but said nothing .  Not much else here? Not necessarily .

The Panorama slowly unfurled, absorbing the Dragon Prince within . The image of a juvenile dragon was added to the painting . In the next moment, Lu Yun felt his body grow heavy, as if he was falling and landing somewhere . However, nothing in his field of view changed in the slightest .

“Come! We need to go find Yueshen!”

“Mommy! A ghost!! Save me!” Li Youcai’s earthshaking wails traveled in from the far off distance . His voice climbing several octaves, he’d tightly plastered his body onto a large boulder . The flab upon his cheeks trembled and oscillated like ocean waves .

Yueshen and the vengeful ghost were still fighting relentlessly in front of him .

“The Portrait of Emptiness!” A shrill shriek burst out of the ghost’s mouth . Having noticed Lu Yun’s arrival, she pounced recklessly toward Qing Han on his back . She’d glimpsed the corner of the scroll that was so intimately familiar to her .

The Portrait of Emptiness was an ultimate treasure that Truewater’s city lord had used to seal away the altar . Now that the portrait was in Qing Han’s hands, the ghost’s thoughts were consumed with obsession, violence, and hatred .

Protecting her people by keeping the altar sealed had been her fixation in life, and she was furious to see her tool for doing so in different hands . As such, she rebuffed Yueshen with a single blow and flashed in front of Lu Yun .

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“Grab her!” The young man shouted with wide eyes .

Yueshen pounced onto the ghost’s back without hesitation, clutching the other’s form as tightly as she could . Though ghosts were incorporeal, they could interact with each other .

“Yuying!” urged Lu Yun .

The envoy knew what to do . She unfurled the Panorama of Clarity, sucking both Yueshen and the vengeful ghost inside . But her face paled in the next instant .

“The Panorama can’t hold her!” The scroll in her hands began to shake violently, the vengeful ghost about to break free at any second . The potent treasure wasn’t able to suppress ghosts and the like .

“Give me the scroll,” Lu Yun exhaled, then took the painting from his servant . Opening the Gates of the Abyss, he sent it right in, ghost and all .

If I could form a golden core and enter the core realm, I would’ve been able to simply use the gates on it .  The ghost was too strong for his death arts to be effective . He couldn’t just let it inside the gates without a filter of some sort; he'd probably die from the overflow of energy .

These gates were manifested through the realms of yin and yang, which meant they were ephemeral rather than physical structures . Still, his success with the ghost raised his spirits considerably . Ignoring the trembling Li Youcai curled up on the ground, he looked at the annex room .

“That’s where the Formation Orb is!” Lu Yun’s pulse quickened .  Once I get my hands on that, I’ll be able to better integrate my feng shui skills with the formations of this world .

He peered at the door expectantly before his expression suddenly stilled . “Wait, is that . . . dragonseal stone?”

Tomb raiders absolutely hated encountering the stuff . Doing so generally meant going home empty-handed . In fact, it was jokingly nicknamed ‘Death’s threshold’, since it’d take becoming a ghost to get past .

He hadn’t noticed it earlier because all of his attention had been on the vengeful ghost, but the new discovery of what the door was made of really put a dampener on his mood .   

“What’s dragonseal stone?” Qing Han asked, noticing the ugly expression on Lu Yun’s face .

“An uncommonly heavy, durable kind of stone . If that’s what’s keeping the annex room shut, I’m probably not getting the Formation Orb . ” Lu Yun was noticeably disappointed . It was the third time he’d encountered dragonseal stone, and his previous two run-ins had proved frustratingly fruitless .

“Violetgrave is a ninth-rank sword that’s incredibly sharp . It should be keen enough to cut through dragonseal stone,” Qing Han said softly .

“Violetgrave? A ninth-rank sword? Really?!” Lu Yun’s eyes lit up . He moved to go for the stone .  

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“Put me down first,” Qing Han added hurriedly .

“Oh yeah, you’re still on my back . ” The young man laughed with some embarra.s.sment . He let his friend down and propped the young man up against a wall . “Take care of him, Yuying . ”

“Yes, sir . ” The envoy nodded, standing at attentive guard .

Qing Han bit his lip, watching Lu Yun’s figure with unblinking gaze .

Violetgrave in hand, the young man stepped up to the slab of dragonseal stone . The monolithic door, deep bluish-green in hue, emanated a chilling cold . It seemed almost a heaven-sent obstacle .

Lu Yun raised up Violetgrave and brought it down on the stone .

“Heavens! What in the blazes is that?!” Li Youcai began to cry from terror again . A corpse hag had crawled out from the corpsewater pond behind them and was lurched toward him .

“Yueshen, shut him up . ” Lu Yun’s cut left a faint mark upon the stone .

“Okay!” Now that the vengeful ghost was safely inside the Gates of the Abyss, Yueshen could come back out with the Panorama . She took possession of Li Youcai immediately, deluding his senses once more . Her presence calmed the fat official’s fearful heart down .

“Oho, ohohoho . You’re a monster who dares steal my treasures!” Li Youcai rolled up his sleeves and walked toward the corpse hag with a ferocious expression .

“This can work!” Lu Yun returned to the stone with renewed excitement . He took a deep breath, then put everything into the next cut .

Thrum!

Violet light burst forth, leaving a much deeper impression upon the stone .

Hiss .

There seemed to be a blue gas escaping from the rock as well .

“You can stop now!” Qing Han interjected . “Now that the dragonseal stone is damaged, its essence has dispersed . You can use Emerald Mistfire to do the rest . ”

He raised his volume a little too much in giving the pointer, which sent another wave of weakness through his frame .  How come I’m so exhausted after using Violetgrave just once, while he’s perfectly fine after all this time? The unfairness of it all rather upset Qing Han .

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