A hint of curiosity flashed in Leng Yaozhu's long, narrow phoenix eyes as she slightly raised her eyebrows.
Judging from the serious expression on Huo Yuhao's face, whatever he was about to say clearly wasn't a trivial matter.
Huo Yuhao stood up from the sofa, but instead of speaking, he casually waved his hand in front of him a few times.
Following the trajectory of his fingers, dense and mysterious golden light patterns emerged out of thin air, intertwining and combining on their own as if possessing life, and in the blink of an eye, they outlined a complex formation on the office floor.
Huo Yuhao stood in the center of the formation, turned his head to look at Leng Yaozhu, and said in a serious tone: "Aunt Leng, I need you to come with me to the Undead Plane."
Leng Yaozhu was slightly taken aback upon hearing this, and said half-jokingly: "Don't tell me I'm going to Transmigrate with you again this time?"
Although she said this, she had already stood up, stepped into the flowing golden light patterns without hesitation, and stood steadily beside Huo Yuhao.
Huo Yuhao replied with a smile: "There's no such coincidence. Last time it was just an Opportunity, it shouldn't happen this time."
As his voice fell, the formation suddenly erupted with a dazzling golden light, completely swallowing their figures.
After a brief moment of dizziness, the two had vanished from the Spirit Pagoda office and arrived in this lifeless, silent World—the Undead Plane.
Leng Yaozhu turned to look at Huo Yuhao beside her and asked directly: "Being all mysterious, what exactly do you want me to do here?"
Huo Yuhao played coy: "Don't be in such a rush, Aunt Leng, it'll be here soon."
Before long, Leng Yaozhu's sharp phoenix eyes suddenly narrowed slightly, and she whipped her head around to look at the gray, hazy skyline in the distance.
She clearly sensed an extremely powerful aura slowly approaching from that direction.
Under the dark, gray sky in the distance, a massive figure was gradually drawing near.
As the distance closed, the silhouette of the figure became clearer and clearer, finally appearing in its entirety within Leng Yaozhu's line of sight.
It was a massive Bone Dragon, over a hundred meters long, with not a shred of flesh on its entire body, leaving only terrifying white bones, each bone gleaming with a cold, dark gray metallic light.
Every flap of its pair of giant bone wings stirred up a gust of wind, and burning ghost-blue Soul fire flickered in its hollow eye sockets.
Leng Yaozhu was no stranger to this Bone Dragon.
She had stayed in the Undead Plane for a while before and had dealt with this Bone Dragon several times, so it could be considered a familiar face.
She knew that this Bone Dragon was the overlord born in this Undead Plane, possessing a powerful strength comparable to a human level 95 Titled Douluo.
Leng Yaozhu withdrew her gaze, but she was certain in her heart that Huo Yuhao hadn't brought her to the Undead Plane just to show her this Bone Dragon.
The Bone Dragon's flight speed was extremely fast, and its massive body flew above the two in an instant.
It folded its wings and landed on the ground with a boom, like a small mountain, kicking up gray dust that swept outward in all directions like a sandstorm.
Leng Yaozhu raised her hand and waved it gently in front of her to brush away the dust floating before her eyes, but her gaze never left the Bone Dragon.
She looked up and down at the behemoth before her, her gaze sweeping from its huge skull all the way to its long tailbone, finally stopping abruptly on its back.
Leng Yaozhu's eyes narrowed slightly; she had distinctly captured an unusual aura on the Bone Dragon's spine.
Under Leng Yaozhu's gaze, the Bone Dragon's broad spine was clearly shrouded in a layer of thick gray mist.
It did not scatter with the wind, but instead quietly adhered to the surface of the Bone Dragon's bones like a living veil.
Just as doubts arose in Leng Yaozhu's heart, the gray mist suddenly surged violently without warning.
It was as if stirred by an invisible hand, suddenly changing from its originally calm state to churning and boiling.
Countless fine gray mist threads detached from the Bone Dragon's broad spine and rapidly condensed toward the same spot in mid-air.
The gray mist gathered thicker and thicker, shrinking smaller and smaller, and its outline became clearer and clearer, finally taking the shape of a human figure right in the center of the Bone Dragon's spine.
And when Leng Yaozhu saw the face of that figure clearly, she was instantly stunned on the spot.
The expression on her usually cold, beautiful, and composed face changed drastically in an instant.
First came unbelievable shock, followed by cautious confirmation, and finally, all emotions transformed into a complex gaze that even she herself could not fully define.
In that gaze, there was surprise, grief, and a faint trace of anticipation that even she dared not believe.
The next second, Leng Yaozhu's figure vanished from beside Huo Yuhao, and when she reappeared, she had already landed steadily on the Bone Dragon's broad spine.
She stood in front of that figure, the distance between them just a few inches, close enough for her to see every detail on the other's face.
She looked at the face before her, a face too familiar to be any more familiar, her phoenix eyes slightly reddening, her voice involuntarily trembling: "Yun Ming? Is it really you?"
That's right, standing before Leng Yaozhu at this moment was none other than Yun Ming.
It was just that his figure was slightly illusory, presenting a semi-transparent texture.
He was wearing a plain white robe, his face still the same gentle and refined appearance in Leng Yaozhu's memory, only those eyes, originally as deep as an abyss, had now become two clusters of quietly burning golden Soul fire.
Yun Ming also looked quietly at Leng Yaozhu, those two clusters of golden Soul fire flickering slightly, as if silently recounting some kind of equally complex and deep emotion.
After a moment of silence, he finally spoke slowly, his tone carrying a hint of bitterness: "It is I. I also didn't expect that I would meet you again in this form."
During the catastrophe half a year ago, Leng Yaozhu stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling window of the Spirit Pagoda Headquarters and witnessed with her own eyes Yun Ming piercing out that earth-shattering final strike at the cost of shattering his own God Position.
At that moment, she thought Yun Ming had been completely destroyed, body and Soul.
She had thought she would never see him again in this lifetime, but she hadn't expected that today, the two would meet in Huo Yuhao's Undead Plane.
Without a doubt, this was the surprise Huo Yuhao had for her today.
Leng Yaozhu whipped her head around, her still-red phoenix eyes looking straight at Huo Yuhao: "Yuhao, what is going on here?"
Huo Yuhao tapped his foot, and his entire body floated over lightly, also landing steadily on the Bone Dragon's spine.
He met Leng Yaozhu's eyes, which were filled with urgency and confusion, and explained slowly: "Although Elder Yun fell half a year ago, his Soul did not completely dissipate. It was Teacher who took action and gathered Elder Yun's remaining Soul."
At this point, a wisp of gray mist quietly emerged from his glabella and quickly condensed beside him into an old and majestic gray-robed figure; it was none other than Electrolux.
Yun Ming and Leng Yaozhu both adopted solemn expressions simultaneously and called out to the gray-robed figure almost in unison: "Elder Yi."
Yun Ming was no stranger to Electrolux; after all, this person could be considered his savior.
And Leng Yaozhu had long known Electrolux, knowing that he was once a demigod-level Undead Saint Mage and another of Huo Yuhao's teachers.
Electrolux floated beside Huo Yuhao, a faint smile appearing on his face: "The injuries on the Yun kid were truly too severe at that time, and his Soul Origin was severely damaged. It took me a full half a year to repair his remaining Soul bit by bit, re-condense it into a Soul body, and finally transform him into a Lich."
"A Lich?"
Leng Yaozhu frowned slightly; it was the first time she had heard this term.
Yun Ming appeared much calmer; during the time since he had awakened, he had also come to understand his current state.
Huo Yuhao looked at the confusion in Leng Yaozhu's eyes and explained: "A Lich is a type of Undead creature, and there are many forms. Elder Yun's situation is the same as Teacher's; both have discarded their physical body and exist in the form of a pure Soul body."
Upon hearing this, Leng Yaozhu's gaze fell once again on Yun Ming's slightly illusory figure, and an indescribable, complex feeling welled up in her heart.
In fact, the moment she first saw Yun Ming, she had already realized that the current Yun Ming was not truly alive.
Huo Yuhao continued: "Although he has lost his physical body, as long as a Lich's Soul Origin is not destroyed, it is an undying existence. In a certain sense, this can also be considered another form of immortality."
Yun Ming smiled bitterly upon hearing this: "Immortality has no meaning for me. When I chose to stay at Shrek Academy and chose to stand in front of those two 12th-class Fixed-Mount Soul-Guided Shells, I had no thoughts of surviving."
Electrolux looked at Yun Ming's World-weary appearance and let out a soft snort through his nose.
"Before the Yun kid fell, his Soul had already stepped into the threshold of the Divine Rank. Even though his Soul was severely damaged, it has now steadily reached the level of a Level 9 Lich, enough to be called a Lich King."
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A/N:
I hope all of you are enjoying this story so far. I would appreciate some Power Stones if you can spare any. Leave a review if you like the story. Thank you.