Lu Yuan stared at the ground beneath him for a long time.
The presence drawing him was underground, and not especially deep.
At least, by the scale of his current body, it really wasn't that deep.
Lu Yuan first sent his Divine Sense down to investigate.
His invisible perception passed through layer after layer of mountain rock, quickly reaching deep into the earth.
Ten thousand zhang, a hundred thousand zhang, a million zhang...
The farther down it went, the stronger that fiendish Sha presence became.
When his Divine Sense finally reached its source, Lu Yuan saw it clearly.
A vast earth vein lay coiled deep underground.
The entire vein was dark red, filled with fiendish Sha Qi so dense it had nearly liquefied.
Large quantities of black-and-red crystals grew along both sides of the vein, each one containing an immense amount of energy.
Even through the thick layers of rock, Lu Yuan could clearly sense their immensely enticing presence.
"There really is something down there."
Lu Yuan's spirits immediately lifted.
He had already been quite satisfied with the efficiency of devouring the scattered Sha Qi in the sky.
The energy in this earth vein was at least dozens of times more concentrated.
He didn't hesitate.
A giant fin that blotted out the sky slowly rose, then pressed down on the ground ahead.
Rumble!
The ground for tens of thousands of li around sank at once.
Enormous cracks spread along the mountains and rivers, and peak after peak tilted under the terrifying force.
Lu Yuan didn't press down any farther.
That fragrance was already very close. If he pushed harder, he was afraid he would crush the crystals underneath along with the broken rock.
He turned his giant fin sideways and swept outward along the fissure. Several tilted peaks crowded together, snapping one after another halfway up their slopes, and the tumbling rocks blocked half the ravine. He had no choice but to change direction and push the piled-up rock farther away.
He had never mined before, and now he didn't even have a shovel that fit his grip.
Fortunately, this fin worked fairly well.
When he pushed aside the final layer of rock, a wisp of black Qi first rose from the fissure. It was followed by Sha mist so dense it had turned red, surging straight up along both sides of his giant fin.
Lu Yuan lowered his head toward that presence.
He had found it.
The daylight that had only just appeared was obscured by the Sha mist, but the depths beneath the earth had already lit up.
Light slanted down through the widening fissure, falling on stretches of black-and-red crystals. The vicious beasts crouching beneath the rock walls drew back their heads. A few, unaccustomed to the light, closed their eyes and retreated deeper into the caves.
The Sha Qi here was far denser than on the surface, and even vicious beasts at the Golden Immortal level occupied several spots. The closer one got to the heart of the earth vein, the fewer places there were to settle. It was common for beasts to fight for days over a cluster of Sha Crystals.
Directly beneath the fissure, two vicious beasts were still locked in combat.
The two-headed beast had its opponent's foreleg in its jaws, and its other head was about to bite the side of its opponent's neck when a shower of loose soil suddenly fell from above.
It looked up.
Something dark gold stretched across the space above, with daylight filtering in only around its edges. It followed the thing with its gaze for a long while, but still couldn't find its end.
Its clenched jaws slowly loosened.
Both heads tilted upward, and it even forgot to dodge the bits of rock falling by its mouths.
Its opponent beside it also forgot to strike back.
The two vicious beasts, who had wanted nothing more than to tear each other apart moments ago, now backed away at the same time, as though they had agreed to it.
Lu Yuan saw them too.
The two sides remained silent for a moment.
Lu Yuan had no intention of attacking.
These creatures were too small in his eyes.
Even a slight movement from him could crush a whole group of them to death.
"Carry on."
A deep voice came from the sky.
The rumbling sound waves shook the earth vein incessantly.
The vicious beasts clearly couldn't understand him.
But they could sense that Lu Yuan wasn't releasing any killing intent.
The two heads of the two-headed beast at the front glanced at each other.
The next moment, it abruptly turned around.
Run!
As soon as it moved, the other vicious beasts seemed to react all at once.
The earth vein, which had been somewhat crowded, erupted into chaos in an instant.
Vicious beasts raced off in every direction. One beast thousands of zhang long even slammed several of its kind ahead of it flying to fight for an exit.
No one spared a second glance for the Fiendish Sha Crystals they ordinarily treated as treasures.
Seeing this spared Lu Yuan quite a bit of trouble.
He really didn't want to casually trample tens of thousands of vicious beasts to death just to eat a meal.
After most of the vicious beasts had fled far away, Lu Yuan lowered his head and opened his mouth.
Whoosh—!
A terrifying suction instantly enveloped the entire earth vein.
The Fiendish Sha Crystals exposed on the surface were the first to fly up.
One crystal, ten, a thousand, ten thousand...
Countless black-and-red crystals broke free from both sides of the earth vein, forming a torrent of crystal that spanned tens of thousands of li across the sky.
Lu Yuan swallowed them in one gulp.
Boom!
Energy dozens of times more concentrated than before instantly exploded inside him.
Lu Yuan narrowed his eyes in comfort.
It felt like finally eating a meal that could truly fill his stomach after going hungry for a long time.
Vast amounts of energy were rapidly converted.
His body also began to change.
The star patterns on the surface of his dark-gold scales lit up one by one.
Those silver-white lines looked like stars truly embedded in his flesh and blood. Each time one lit up, the nearby scales grew thicker and heavier.
Blood surged through his body.
A rumbling sound issued continually from his enormous form.
Some of the vicious beasts that had not yet escaped far away abruptly stopped in their tracks when they heard it.
They looked back in alarm and uncertainty.
The next moment.
All the vicious beasts stared wide-eyed.
Lu Yuan's body was growing!
For a living being already eighty-six thousand li long, an increase of a few dozen or a hundred li was actually hard to notice immediately with the naked eye.
But the vicious beasts here had lived in the earth vein for a long time and were intimately familiar with the positions of the surrounding mountains and rivers.
They could see it clearly.
A section of Lu Yuan's tail fin, which had been resting beside a distant mountain range, was inching past a peak.
The two-headed beast at the front slowly opened its mouths.
Its left head let out a low growl.
Its right head, however, had gone completely silent.
It had lived for ages and seen far too many vicious beasts cultivate by devouring flesh and blood.
It was normal for their strength to increase after eating a powerful living being.
Some changes in size were also common.
But the colossal creature before it had merely swallowed a batch of Fiendish Sha Crystals, and its body had actually begun to grow.
And its growth was visible to the eye!
Several nearby Golden Immortal vicious beasts exchanged glances, each seeing alarm and uncertainty in the others' eyes.
The beast with nine bone tails was still backing away. One of its tails swept some loose stones off the edge of the slope, and it immediately stopped and turned to look at Lu Yuan.
Lu Yuan didn't look at it.
It waited a while, then drew in its trailing bone tails one by one and lay down against the rock wall.
Lu Yuan's belly was warm, and the place that had remained empty until now finally had something in it. As he savored the feeling, a line of text surfaced in his consciousness.
[Body length: 86,007 li.]
"Seven li in one mouthful?"
He looked at it again, then turned his gaze back to the earth vein.
The Sha Crystals he had sucked up just now had all been exposed. A layer of the rock wall was now bare, but dark red still showed through several broken fissures. When he probed farther in, he found that they were connected to an even larger deposit below.
Lu Yuan's spirits lifted. He moved closer and began sucking them in again.
The Sha mist in the fissures was drawn out first, followed by the crystals hidden inside, which began to come loose. A few were firmly stuck, and after being tugged at for a long time, they collapsed along with the surrounding rock, striking the opposite cliff wall and sending fragments flying everywhere.
He eased the suction slightly and waited for the broken rock to fall before drawing the remaining Sha Crystals into his mouth.
He ate like this for several days.
At first, Lu Yuan only had to lie where he was and open his mouth. Later, when the nearby rock walls had been stripped bare, he had to move his head and search along the earth vein section by section. Occasionally, when he found crystals buried deep, he had to use his fin to push away the rock above them first.
Most of the black mist in the earth vein had dispersed, and the stone walls on both sides were riddled with pits left by the dislodged Sha Crystals.
When Lu Yuan checked his body length again, it had reached over eighty-six thousand and ninety li.
He couldn't help glancing at those hollows again.
When he had first dug the vein open, he had thought there were enough crystals to keep him fed for some time. Once he actually started eating, though, more than half were gone in just a few days.
Fortunately, the meal hadn't been for nothing.
Lu Yuan stretched his tail fin and began thinking about earth veins elsewhere. The Northern Land was so vast that, once he finished this one, he could follow the underground Sha Qi and look for more. That would be better than wandering aimlessly.
But there was no hurry for now.
A dense mass of dark red still lay deep within the earth vein. With the Sha mist outside dispersed, that fragrance had instead become even clearer.
Lu Yuan lowered his head and aimed his mouth at it.
Far away.
In a vast canyon completely shrouded in black mist.
A colossal figure slumbering among the bones abruptly opened its eyes.
Boom!
Terrifying Sha Qi swept through the valley in an instant.
The bodies of the many vicious beasts nearby trembled, and they all fell prostrate.
Not a single vicious beast dared raise its head.
Within the black mist, a vicious beast resembling a giant hou slowly rose.
It was ten thousand zhang long, with dark-red fur covering its body, four limbs as thick as mountain pillars, and a curved black horn growing from its head.
Most striking of all was its enormous mouth.
Dense rows of ghastly white fangs interlocked between its upper and lower jaws, every one of them gleaming with a cold light.
Heaven-Splitting Hou.
The true king of the vicious beasts in this region.
For ages, the vicious beasts across the surrounding territory of tens of millions of li had revered him as their superior.
The earth vein Lu Yuan was devouring happened to be one the Heaven-Splitting Hou had claimed.
For this cultivation site, he had killed more than one opponent who came to fight for it. Other vicious beasts could occupy the outskirts of the earth vein, but the deposit of Sha Crystals at its very depths had always been his alone to take.
Now, the presence coming from that direction had grown much fainter.
The Heaven-Splitting Hou stretched out his head and flared his nostrils a few times.
It had grown fainter still.
His upper lip curled, exposing saliva-coated fangs. His foreclaws slowly tightened against the rock, and the cracks beneath them extended all the way into the pile of bones behind him.
"Roar—!"
The cliff walls on both sides shook, sending down great showers of rubble. The vicious beasts lying in the valley pressed their heads even lower. When a rock struck one on the back, it didn't dare move.
The Heaven-Splitting Hou had already leaped out of the canyon.
The rocky ledge where he landed collapsed with a crash, sending broken bones and dust flying. In midair, a streak of dark-red light trailed Sha mist as it sped straight toward the earth vein.