Chapter 90: Imperial Tombs

The elder puffed up his chest to make himself look bigger and pointed to his face as he said:

"My name is Sun Takijo, remember it well kid, I'm the strongest elder in the Zhu Family."

Chatter could be heard around after Takijo made his statement:

"Strongest? Most likely not, shameless old fool."

Takijo's eyes narrowed as he looked around and said:

"Oh, I'm not the strongest? Then let's all fight right here and now to see who is!"

The one who spoke averted his eyes, he spoke like that but he was weaker than Takijo, he only thought that there were others stronger than him who would speak up after he spoke first.

However, no one spoke up and it became very awkward for him.

Yun Jhin could feel that his cultivation base was quite refined but he looked to be quite unintelligent, however, this was the better thing for Yun Jhin, he didn't need someone smart to accompany him as he would have to look out for betrayals, someone simple would be easier to manipulate, his cultivation base wasn't bad standing around the 6th stage of the Sage Realm, he was an eminent elder quite above the normal elders at the emperor realm, his rank was high even amongst eminent elders, he would be in top 5, but his statement of being the strongest was also a lie.

The others started muttering:

"You will see what the other 4 will say when they will get out of closed-door cultivation, they should be out any minute now!"

3 male elders and one female elder appeared the moment the other elder finished his words, they were all above Takijo in strength, however, from their eyes, you could see that they were the normal old curs who schemed, lied, and backstabbed, he couldn't see the same thing in Takijo's eyes, he could see some greed but no scheming.

The female elder was the strongest and she quickly walked towards Zhu Cheng and said:

"I will be the one to accompany young master Zhu Cheng for this time, please leave."

The other three looked around and saw how Takijo took Yun Jhin so they waited for the other youngsters to appear, they didn't care much as everyone would have an equal chance of getting treasures as long as they got a spot, there were three spots left and who would fight them to get their hands on the spots?

Zhu Cheng appointed the twins as the other youths to join them in the Imperial tombs while Yun Jhin appointed the lazy man that could control shadows, Zhu Sumen!

The other three elders got the slots that they wanted and the other's dispersed from the place, the elders started to talk amongst themselves with Sun Takijo talking the loudest, however, it was obvious the other elders were looking down on him, after all, his family name was Sun and not Zhu!

He was an external elder that joined the head of the house so the elders that had the Zhu family name looked down on him thinking that he was an opportunist, only the head of the house knew why Sun Takijo joined the family.

Even though the others looked down on him they were still polite on the surface due to his high cultivation base.

Zhu Sumen sighed as he watched the elders talk with each other and said:

"Why did you choose me? Do you want to bury me in the imperial tomb?"

Yun Jhin shook his head, this man had quite a good imagination, he only chose him because his battle power was very high and his shadow techniques would be useful in the tomb which was mostly full of death yang energy, the younger generation would explore with the younger generation while the older generation would explore with the older generation, heads of the house wouldn't join as there was a chance their houses would be attacked if they weren't present, the deterrent of the head of the house was almost bigger than the whole elder assembly.

Yun Jhin left for his room while Zhu Sumen was quite annoyed that he was ignored, but he sighed and accepted it, after all, he was one of the strongest in the family and Yun Jhin fought him before, so it was only logical he would be chosen, he didn't like it but he begrudgingly accepted it and left.

Zhu Cheng was the last one to leave the room along with the twins, the twins looked at him with a puzzled expression, they still vividly remembered how he forced them on the ground with his aura and tried to force them into being his subordinates, they wondered why would he allow them getting stronger when they were his enemies?

Zhu Cheng gave out his famous smile as they were quite far away from the elder assembly and his aura unleashed itself on them, they fell to their knees as they started gasping for air and Zhu Cheng's voice was heard:

"You wonder why I gave you this opportunity right? Let me tell you, I heard the Imperial Tomb had quite a few formations traps installed here and there, I would need some help to unarm them and the two of you are perfect for that kind of job."

They weren't proficient in formations, Zhu Cheng just wanted to push them ahead and use the excuse of the formation killing them to get rid of them, he knew that due to their twin sibling bond the moment the both of them would break through to the Emperor realm if they fought him together there was a chance for them to win!

Their battle power would double when they fought together.

Since he made them into enemies he wanted to silence them before they became strong enough to threaten him, unfortunately for the duo as they still didn't break through the Emperor realm they couldn't do much against Zhu Cheng, even if they reported to the head of the house, the head might just ignore them in favor of Zhu Cheng!

Yun Jhin watched from under his stealth technique, his eyes scanned everything that happened in front of him and he chuckled inside and shook his head then left, there was no reason to intervene here.

Zhu Sumen watched from behind the corner of a house what happened, he found it extremely troublesome and ignored what happened while leaving, he needed to prepare himself for the Imperial tomb.

5 days passed by extremely fast and the elders took the younger generations to the entrance of the Imperial Tomb, the Imperial Tomb was built underground and the entrance looked like one of a normal cellar, the gates were just made of cyan dragon jade and inscribed with grandiose words along with some history of the Empire.

Yun Jhin watched as the Emperor opened the gates easily by swinging his hand, there was a dark formation engulfing the entrance and it slowly dissipated, it was the formation meant to keep outsiders out while the soul murking formation worked on the souls of the deceased Emperors, it disappearing meant that it was ready to accept new souls.

The Emperor disappeared in the depths of the tomb while not saying anything, the elders and youths that won the tournament entered, Sun Takijo left while waving to Yun Jhin and telling him:

"If we meet inside we will team up."

Yun Jhin entered along with Zhu Cheng and the others and they could feel the darkness of the formation engulfing them, Yun Jhin shuddered as he felt a cold chill spreading through his body and analyzing his whole being.

Zhu Cheng and the others did the same, they felt something was wrong when they entered the tomb but they couldn't place their fingers on what specifically.

Since they entered in groups the elders ended up in the same random place while the youths did the same, the entrance to the tombs wasn't big enough to handle all of them squeezing together, so the elders went with the elders and the youths with the youths, this way the elders could protect themselves, the youths knew this would leave them exposed to the dangers of the tomb but since their cultivation base was relatively low, the murked souls wouldn't sense and attack them first, as for the formation traps, this was something the others already talked about and taught their young charges.

Yun Jhin looked around, the darkness in the tomb wasn't impeding his vision but it did send a chill down his spine once in a while, the walls of the tomb were inscribed with ancient dragon language that told the history of up to 500,000 years ago.

Yun Jhin's eyes widened as he looked at an inscription of the first ancestors of the dragon race.

The other youths were as captivated as he was, the inscription told the story of two brothers, the Azure dragons were known as Luo Shang and Bumi Ming, they were the respective ancestors of the two empires.

The story talked about how the azure dragons were free of emotions and thoughts at first, but humans hatred of their strong bodies and bloodlines made them poison the two azure dragons forcing them to fight each other in the end. Luo Shang became the darkness yang dragon and Bum Ming resisted the poison and achieved enlightenment becoming the light Yin dragon.

Some of the stories were destroyed by time so Yun Jhin couldn't know surely what happened but one thing he was sure of was that both of them died by old age by his current time, even pure Azure dragons would live at most 300,000 years or so, azure dragons, black tortoises, vermilion birds, and white tigers were the darlings of the universe, they were born from the first chaos of the universe and had the purest bloodlines, however, their descendants couldn't handle their bloodlines fully and with time their blood diluted, even though the Emperor's of today's age still had the blood of the sacred beast flowing through their veins, they were at most 10% of their ancestor's purity.

Yun Jhin knew that the black dragon became insane after he was corrupted by the human's thought severing poison, he tried to eat his brother in an attempt to break through the ultimate realm above the God Realm, he was defeated and sealed in the end, however, from what it seemed the sealing only made him create this soul murking formation and he controlled his descendants to enter the tomb to slaughter them!

The formation was still at work as it used the former Emperor's souls as fuel and it seemed it also worked on the current Emperor, even though some of the souls were taken back by the Empire, there was also a high chance it was done on purpose by the last soul fragment of the dark dragon.

Yun Jhin knew that the situation in the tomb was deadly, but if he could get to the core of the formation and absorb that remaining soul fragment...

Yun Jhin walked while he disarmed some of the weaker trap formations around, the others stood behind him and saw how he easily took care of the trap formations with wide eyes, Zhu Cheng was also quite interested in Yun Jhin's trap disarming skills but also disappointed that he couldn't send the twins into the traps to kill them.

The youths from the other families were wary of those from the Zhu Family so they banded together, however, they knew that if Zhu Cheng made a move all of them would die.

Zhu Cheng ignored the others as he followed behind Yun Jhin while keeping an eye on the twins.

Zhu Sumen didn't look as sleepy as before as he concentrated on his surroundings, he knew that any sudden movement would kill them!

Yun Jhin was surveying the structure of the formation in his head as he was guiding all of them towards the core of the formation, he wanted to sacrifice them to get inside the core and absorb the last soul fragment of the dark dragon!

While Yun Jhin was guiding them to their doom Zhu Cheng felt that something wasn't right, he could feel that the surroundings started to get colder and colder and his keen sense of danger told him that it wouldn't end well if he continued to follow Yun Jhin.

So he appeared in front of Yun Jhin and kneed him in the stomach making him fall to the ground.

Yun Jhin cursed, it seemed he underestimated Zhu Cheng's instincts, he thought that he would follow him if he showed good skills in formations but it seemed Zhu Cheng saw through his intentions.

Zhu Cheng grabbed Yun Jhin by the arm and made him get up as he said while pointing to the opposite direction:

"We will go that way, disarm the formations in those parts."

Zhu Cheng started to order Yun Jhin as if he was his slave and there wasn't anything that Yun Jhin could do, the formations took a little bit of time to disarm and if he tried to run away from Zhu Cheng he would trigger them and it won't end well, he couldn't fight Zhu Cheng due to the realm gap, so all he could do was comply with his words with gritted teeth.

Yun Jhin started to listen to Zhu Cheng's instruction but inside he sneered, even if Zhu Cheng wanted to avoid the core of the formation, in the end, he would still end up there with his help, he just had to do it in a more roundabout manner instead of the direct manner from before.

From time to time, they would find some God Herbs left from the essence of the corpses of the dead God Realm experts of the Imperial family, Zhu Cheng would immediately snatch them and not leave anything for anyone, not even those from the Zhu Family.

The one time that the Sikong Family youth tried to say something Zhu Cheng stopped Yun Jhin and threw him into the formation traps transforming him into a meat patty that was absorbed by the ground, his soul could be seen being shredded and absorbed by the dark surroundings.

Zhu Cheng then casually told Yun Jhin to continue, Yun Jhin was visibly upset on the outside but inside he was sneering as he could feel the will of the formation waking up, it seemed this would be the last Emperor that could restore the soul fragment of the dark dragon to what it was before.

Yun Jhin knew that he had to get to the core before the Emperor was fully absorbed by the formation or else all of them would die inside the tombs, used to reconstruct the dark's dragon body, it would be something similar to his ability to eat others to evolve, but instead, he would forcefully rip the bloodlines out of the bodies of those present to create himself a body with talent comparable to his first one, However, with the purity of the current descendant's bloodlines, he would need to massacre the whole capital of the Luo Empire to create a body with cultivation around the God Realm, this included all of the other God Realm experts and he might not even reach the 7th stage of the God Realm.

Yun Jhin sensed that Zhu Cheng was checking his surroundings every second for danger, he didn't want Yun Jhin to trick him and put him in the same danger zone as before.

After a while of disarming formations, they finally reached the death place of a former emperor, a shining golden sword sat on the ground untouched, it was an artifact of the godly quality!

Zhu Cheng didn't understand the power of the artifact but seeing how it was shiny and the powerful aura it was emanating he pulled the twins from where they stood and kicked them towards the sword while saying:

"The two of you shall make yourself useful and take that sword for me!"

The twins complied while cursing Zhu Cheng inside, they slowly got closer towards the sword and both of them grabbed the sword at the same time, suddenly glaring golden radiance fell from the sword and engulfed the twin's bodies!