Chapter 028: My Coffin Buried Heaven's Corpse
The black-robed True Immortal's expression shifted in an instant, cold light flickering in his eyes as he seemed to ponder something.
The next moment, two hazy beams of white light shot from his eyes, sweeping across the entire City Lord's Mansion. The True Immortal's expression darkened further. In a secret chamber in the rear courtyard, Chen Fengyang was making no effort to conceal his spiritual power fluctuations as he refined Moon-Gazing City's Town-Suppressing Seal with all his might. He had already refined more than half of it.
What was more, the black-robed True Immortal's immortal light had failed to detect any trace of an Immortal Spirit Root in the City Lord's Mansion.
The black-robed True Immortal looked at Chen Tiannan, a trace of killing intent flashing in his eyes. However, a High Immortal had visited earlier and bestowed rewards upon the Chen Clan, so he had no choice but to suppress his murderous intent.
"Since that is the case, I will let this matter go."
The black-robed True Immortal resumed his earlier indifferent expression and announced, "Chen Tiannan, hear this decree. By edict of the Glazed Heaven Palace: Chen Tiannan, Lord of Moon-Gazing City, is hereby appointed a Ninth-Order Lower Immortal General. Two months from now, report to the Red Capital to receive your immortal seal."
"Chen Tiannan thanks you for the honor."
At the black-robed True Immortal's words, Chen Tiannan breathed a slight sigh of relief and bowed in thanks.
The black-robed True Immortal nodded indifferently, then turned and vanished into thin air. However, of the several Void Immortals at the Mahayana Realm who had come with him, one stayed behind with five Tribulation Transcendence Realm cultivators, disappearing into the city.
This left Chen Tiannan feeling extremely uncomfortable.
Moon-Gazing City's strongest cultivator had once been Chen Fengyang, who was at the late stage of Tribulation Transcendence. But now, a cultivator at the Mahayana Realm had come to take charge, and Chen Tiannan found the situation deeply unsettling.
"A second appointment..."
After Chen Xiao received the news, he fell into thought.
"Father, they only appointed you verbally and told you to go to the Red Capital in two months to collect your official seal?"
"Mm." Chen Tiannan's expression was grim. This sort of thing made no sense at all. Normally, the Glazed Heaven Palace's rewards would include more than an empty title as a seventh-rank Immortal General; there would at least be some material rewards.
But these people had arrived with an incredibly strange display of force, only to appoint him verbally as a Ninth-Order Lower Immortal General. It simply made no sense. And since when did the one receiving an appointment have to go collect his own official seal? Even a fool could tell there was something fishy about it.
What was more, a High Immortal had already personally visited Moon-Gazing City and bestowed rewards upon the Chen Clan. They already possessed a City-Suppressing Seal, so a mere Ninth-Order Immortal appointment was completely insignificant.
But both groups belonged to the Glazed Heaven Palace. No one in the Glazed Heaven would dare impersonate the Palace so brazenly; that would be no different from asking for death.
What worried Chen Xiao most was that the second group had ordered Chen Tiannan to personally travel to the Red Capital to collect the Ninth-Order official seal.
No one dared defy the Glazed Heaven Palace's decree. Even if Chen Fengyang held Moon-Gazing City's Town-Suppressing Seal, he could not protect the Chen Clan from the consequences of disobeying the Palace.
The Immortal World had the Nine Heavens and Ten Earths and the Three Immortal Seas. The Glazed Heaven was one of the Nine Heavens. It was divided into seventy-two immortal realms, and the Red Capital was the largest city in the southern Xuhe Immortal Realm, as well as its capital. Moon-Gazing City was one of the many cities under the Red Capital's jurisdiction.
Chen Xiao knew that the Glazed Heaven Palace had always upheld the law impartially and would not frame the Chen Clan. If there was something fishy going on, then it had to be connected to the unknown treasure beneath Mingyu Mountain.
The Nangong Family was very likely behind all of this.
Chen Xiao knew that the Nangong Family was far more complicated than it appeared, and the Chen Clan's crisis was nowhere near over.
"How is the search at Mingyu Mountain going?"
The cultivator at the Mahayana Realm who had stayed behind was sitting in the seat of honor in the Nangong Family's main hall, looking down at Nangong Shenhe.
"Reporting to Elder..." Nangong Shenhe's expression turned somewhat bitter.
"Speak." The Mahayana Realm cultivator was an elder of the Nangong Family named Nangong Xiangyan. Five hundred years ago, he had already survived the tribulation and become a Mahayana Realm expert.
The Nangong Family headquarters had sent him here because the Chen Clan had produced someone with an Immortal Spirit Root. His mission was to find that person and secretly eliminate him.
An Immortal Spirit Root was only a matter of potential. If its bearer died before coming into their own, the Glazed Heaven Palace would not pursue the matter too closely.
"There are five Innate Divine Spirits in the Spirit Vein at Mingyu Mountain. We managed to capture one before, but before we could refine it, the other four rescued it. They then vanished without a trace."
Nangong Shenhe delivered the whole report in one breath, then lowered his head, not daring to look at the elder.
"There are five of them?"
Nangong Xiangyan's eyes lit up. "Send more men and search with all your might. Find those five Innate Divine Spirits at all costs!"
"Elder, the Chen Clan has taken over Mingyu Mountain. If we send more men, they may notice us."
Nangong Shenhe looked troubled. He was not afraid of what the Chen Clan might do; it was just that Chen Fengyang held Moon-Gazing City's Town-Suppressing Seal, which made him difficult to deal with.
"It's just the Chen Clan. So what if they got the Town-Suppressing Seal? They're nothing but a backwater little family. In two months, the Chen Clan will become our puppets. There's no need to worry."
Nangong Xiangyan looked to be in his thirties, his face full of arrogance. In his eyes, Moon-Gazing City was nothing but a poor backwater. If not for the thing hidden deep beneath Mingyu Mountain, he would not have given the place a second glance.
The several Tribulation Transcendence Realm cultivators standing beside Nangong Xiangyan wore the same disdainful expressions. It was only a Chen Clan. If the Nangong Family did not wish to draw too much attention, they could have made the entire clan vanish with a mere flick of their fingers.
During this time, the Chen Clan had little to do. Only Poison Immortal Cai Di, disguised and masked, occasionally went to Mingyu Mountain with a Heaven-Concealing Talisman and an Escape Talisman. He reinforced the poison formation hidden in the mountainside, then used the Heaven-Concealing Talisman to hide its spiritual power fluctuations.
By now, Cai Di's cultivation had recovered to the late stage of the Integrated Body Realm, just one step away from the Tribulation Transcendence Realm. But he was in no hurry to make the breakthrough. Instead, he continued to consolidate his foundation. For cultivators, the Tribulation Transcendence Realm was an enormous hurdle. Though this was the Immortal World, tribulation remained a nightmare to cultivators. No one would dare make the breakthrough without being fully prepared.
Chen Xiao was growing somewhat anxious as well. If his cultivation reached the Orange Cloud Realm, heavenly tribulation would no longer be a problem. But though Chen Xiao had already reached the peak of the middle stage of the Golden Core Realm, the Nine Heavens Thunder Virtue Universal Transformation Art showed no signs of a breakthrough. It remained stuck at the fifth rotation of the Red Cloud Realm.
Cultivating the Nine Heavens Thunder Virtue Universal Transformation Art required devouring immense amounts of spiritual energy. The seventy thousand high-grade Heavenly Mystery Stones he had obtained from Nangong Shenyao had already been depleted by more than ten thousand, yet his realm still showed no sign of advancing.
The date of Chen Tiannan's trip south was drawing closer and closer. If nothing unexpected happened along the way, Chen Xiao would have thought whoever had set this trap had lost their mind.
Bang!
Just then, the entire City Lord's Mansion suddenly shook, and even its protective formation nearly collapsed.
"Bold fool! Who are you to cause trouble at the City Lord's Mansion?"
Every guard at the City Lord's Mansion had a cultivation base of at least the Golden Core Realm. Outside its gates, dozens of guards now stood at sword's point with a man dressed in rough hemp clothes.
The man looked to be twenty-seven or twenty-eight. His hair was disheveled, his face weathered and dejected, and beside him stood a black coffin as tall as a person. The bluestone slabs beneath it had been crushed to powder.
The tremor that had just shaken the City Lord's Mansion had clearly been caused when the man set the coffin upright on the ground.
"My coffin holds Heaven's corpse."
"Chen Fengyang, Heaven demands you join the dead!"
Suddenly, the man in hemp clothes let out a long, sonorous cry.
Chen Xiao was just about to step outside and take a look. Hearing the cry, he stumbled, nearly falling to the ground.
"Damn it, why is that freaky Coffin Man here?"