All the Great Powers of the Primordial World Were Waiting for Him to Act, but He Fell Asleep

The outskirts of the Northern Land.

Lu Yuan slept soundly.

For an innate divine beast as enormous as a Grand Void Sky Whale, a true slumber could last an exceedingly long time.

Moreover,

a vast amount of Da Luo fiendish power had accumulated within him, still not fully digested.

Once he fell asleep,

his body's instincts began to take over everything.

Every drop of blood was slowly transforming.

Every scale was absorbing energy.

The power he had gained through devouring steadily merged into every part of his body, finally becoming a true part of Lu Yuan.

His body also grew longer in silence.

At first,

the changes were relatively slight.

After several decades,

the low-level vicious beasts that had long lived nearby gradually noticed that the dark-gold mountain range stretching across heaven and earth in the distance seemed to have grown somewhat longer.

None dared approach to make sure.

Word that the Heaven-Splitting Hou and Qiongqi had both suffered setbacks here had long since spread among the vicious beasts in the vicinity.

Though most of these vicious beasts had limited intelligence,

they understood very clearly that the strong were not to be provoked.

Now that Lu Yuan was asleep,

the area for hundreds of thousands of li around had grown much quieter than before.

Some powerful vicious beasts had even taken the initiative to move away.

They were terrified that one day Lu Yuan would wake up, roll over, and casually crush them to death.

As time passed, however,

some other, much weaker creatures began quietly drawing near.

Even in his sleep, Lu Yuan instinctively absorbed the residual fiendish Qi around him.

The rate of absorption was nowhere near as fast as when he actively devoured it,

but it continued for long enough.

Several hundred years passed.

The Sha Qi in the surrounding world grew increasingly thin.

The Northern Land's once-gloomy sky gradually cleared.

Sunlight began to shine down for long stretches of time.

The land eroded by Sha Qi also began to change.

Hardy spirit herbs grew from cracks in the rocks.

A dried-up riverbed in the distance filled with rainwater once more.

The most obvious changes, however,

were on Lu Yuan's back.

When he had first awakened, immensely thick layers of rock and dust had already accumulated on the surface of his body.

Over the long years,

these things had long since settled tightly into some of the gaps between his scales.

From a distance, there was really little difference between him and a mountain range.

In the past, this place had been shrouded in dense fiendish Qi all year round.

Ordinary vegetation had naturally found it difficult to grow.

Now the Sha Qi was steadily diminishing,

and Spiritual Qi was gathering again.

The first tender shoot emerged from a crack in the rocks on Lu Yuan's back.

At first there was only one.

Then more and more appeared.

Several decades passed.

Some low shrubs had already grown together into a continuous patch.

Later,

trees appeared.

Rainwater steadily gathered in the gullies between his scales, eventually forming a long, narrow stream.

The stream flowed slowly along the contours of Lu Yuan's back.

Where it came across deeper hollows in the rock, it even collected into small lakes.

These changes happened slowly.

But Lu Yuan slept even longer.

There was enough time.

Gradually,

a small, genuine ecosystem began to take shape.

The first to arrive were several small white beasts, each only a few feet long.

They had originally lived in a valley far away.

A battle between vicious beasts had destroyed their habitat.

The little beasts had fled all the way here,

finally stumbling onto Lu Yuan's back by chance.

At first,

they were extremely wary.

The ground beneath their feet was somewhat different from ordinary mountains.

The dark-gold rock walls were unusually tough.

Some areas were even so smooth that they could barely stand on them.

But there were no powerful vicious beasts here,

and the Sha Qi was quite thin.

After cautiously testing the place for a while, the little beasts stayed.

Later, more weak creatures drew near.

They too took it for an ordinary mountain range.

None of them realized

that the place where they lived was breathing slowly.

Whenever Lu Yuan's chest and belly rose and fell,

the little creatures on his back felt only an extremely faint tremor in the earth's veins.

After a long time,

they even grew accustomed to it.

Deeper in the Northern Land,

Qiongqi occasionally came to observe as well.

The first time it came, it saw that Lu Yuan was still sleeping.

The second time,

he was still sleeping.

The third time...

Qiongqi hovered high in the air, looking at the great expanse of green that had appeared on Lu Yuan's back, its expression growing somewhat strange.

"How much longer is this guy going to sleep?"

it muttered under its breath.

Then its Divine Sense swept over Lu Yuan's body.

With that sweep,

Qiongqi's gaze abruptly sharpened.

He had grown bigger.

Bigger again!

It remembered Lu Yuan's size very clearly from when they had first fought.

By now, he had grown at least several hundred li longer.

What was more, Lu Yuan's life force was even more vigorous.

Simply lying there,

the sound of blood surging through his body was as heavy as ancient thunder.

Qiongqi could not help drawing a deep breath.

"He can grow even while sleeping?"

Its voice was filled with unmistakable shock.

This bloodline talent

really was becoming more and more outrageous.

Qiongqi did not approach.

After watching for a while, it left again.

Word soon reached the Beast Emperor Palace.

After hearing it, Shen Ni once again sent out a strand of thought to sense Lu Yuan from afar.

Once he confirmed that Lu Yuan was indeed continuing to grow in his sleep, even he fell silent for a while.

The other vicious beast giants were more direct.

"He slept for a few hundred years, and his body grew another few hundred li?"

There was no trace of the black-armored giant's initial disdain left on its face.

"If he keeps growing at this rate, how big will he be when he reaches adulthood?"

Another vicious beast giant beside it frowned and said, "The growth cycle of an innate divine beast is exceedingly long. With a bloodline like this, it will probably take countless yuanhui for him to reach adulthood. There's simply no way to judge how large he'll ultimately become."

After hearing this, the black-armored giant's expression grew even graver.

Lu Yuan was already nearly ninety thousand li long.

Once he reached adulthood...

Several hundred thousand li?

A million li?

At the thought of that sight, it felt an indescribable sense of pressure.

Shen Ni, however, did not join the discussion.

His gaze remained fixed on Lu Yuan.

Sleep.

Keep sleeping.

The Myriad Sha Abyss is there anyway.

I can spare this much time.

Meanwhile,

on Lu Yuan's back,

the first small creatures to live there had begun to regard their surroundings as their true home.

The white beasts had even reproduced and formed a new population.

They lived in a rocky valley between two enormous scales.

The ground there was flat.

There was ample water in the stream.

The spirit herbs were growing well, too.

For these weak creatures, this was already a safe place rarely found in the Northern Land.

On this day,

a young white beast was lying by the stream, drinking.

Suddenly,

the "ground" beneath its feet trembled slightly.

The little beast raised its head.

Its ears stood upright.

The rest of the group gradually fell quiet as well.

Several adult white beasts looked warily into the distance.

A second tremor soon followed.

This time it was clearer.

Ripples spread across the surface of the stream.

Birds roosting in the trees took flight in alarm.

The sound of countless wings flapping filled the air.

The group of little beasts began to panic.

They did not know what had happened.

They only felt that the entire expanse of mountains and rivers where they had lived for hundreds of years was trembling at an extremely slow rhythm.

The next moment.

A long breath resounded between heaven and earth.

Whoosh—

The wind rose.

The clouds stirred.

Lu Yuan, who had slumbered for hundreds of years, slowly opened his eyes.