Lord Wanshouyuan stood atop Buzhou Mountain, his figure like an eternal rock, his aura subtly harmonizing with that of the pillar supporting the heavens.
He carefully savored the unparalleled sense of power born from the perfect fusion of his surging new magical power, which had just entered the Great Luo Realm, and his formidable flesh, which had long since reached Middle Great Luo.
An unprecedented sense of strength, wholeness, and freedom welled up within him. It was as though he were part of this world, able to draw its laws along with every gesture.
Yet what made his heart tremble slightly before realization dawned was a mysterious sensation—a vast, boundless yet infinitely gentle current of fortune, imbued with supreme majesty and benevolence.
Like the celestial river cascading from the nine heavens, or great earth mother qi rising from below, it quietly settled upon him, binding tightly with his Dao foundation and allotted fortune.
This fortune was neither the commonly seen merit golden light nor a concentration of rich, liquefied heaven and earth spiritual energy.
Rather, it was the favor of heaven and earth, something older and more primordial, bearing the significance of world-creating merit and selfless nurturing.
Formless and intangible, yet undeniably real, it seeped strand by strand into his fortune auspicious cloud, which had already condensed but had yet to manifest outwardly.
It not only greatly stabilized and expanded his Dao foundation, but also markedly enhanced his blessings and destiny.
Even on his future path of cultivation, it could invisibly avert certain calamities and grant him countless opportunities and possibilities. Its far-reaching significance was impossible to measure.
Lord Wanshouyuan's thoughts raced. Combining his earlier understanding of the Pangu Will with his inherited memories, he immediately understood:
This was the hazy consciousness Great God Pangu had left within Buzhou Mountain, together with the nascent great Dao laws suffusing the newly opened Primordial World.
They were acknowledging and rewarding the first "native being of the Primordial Wilderness" to truly reach Buzhou Mountain's summit through his own pure strength, unyielding will, and destined affinity in harmony with the natural order of heaven and earth!
This was a blessing of the highest order, bestowed by the Father God and the world itself!
He recalled his inherited memories and the knowledge of his original form. After the world had been opened, not all the Chaos Demon Gods had perished.
Indeed, the remnant bodies or souls of certain powerful Demon Gods had narrowly escaped the final killing blow of Great God Pangu's Heaven-Opening Divine Axe, slipped into the newborn Primordial World, and gone into hiding.
After countless primordial cycles of slow recuperation and recovery, some of the exceptionally powerful or fortunate ones might already have regained part of their cultivation and strength, reaching Peak Great Luo Golden Immortal or even higher, unfathomable realms.
They concealed themselves in secret corners throughout the Primordial Wilderness, either forming grotto-heavens of their own or merging into mountains and rivers, secretly watching this newborn world.
Yet Buzhou Mountain had formed from Pangu's spine. It was his most direct and enduring symbol within the Primordial World.
For these Chaos Demon Gods, whom Pangu had struck down in the battle to open the world, nearly annihilating them in body and soul and leaving them barely alive,
this place held their deepest fear and fiercest hatred, yet also the boundless dread of Pangu's world-opening might that could never be erased from the depths of their souls.
That trembling rooted in their soul origins, that sense of being utterly crushed carved into the depths of their true spirits, kept them from daring to approach even the vicinity of Buzhou Mountain, much less summon the courage to climb it.
Even if all the waters of the Four Seas could not wash away their hatred for Pangu, at the Summit of Buzhou, where the lingering Pangu Will was so dense that it was almost as though Pangu himself were present,
the moment they dared appear, they would likely trigger an instinctive, devastating counterattack from his remaining will. The consequences were unthinkable; annihilation of body and soul would be their only end.
Thus, the supreme honor of being the first to reach Buzhou Mountain's summit after the world's opening, and the immense opportunity that came with it,
had ultimately fallen, through a twist of circumstance—or perhaps a fate ordained by the will of the Primordial World—to Lord Wanshouyuan, a native being of the Primordial Wilderness who had taken form from an innate spiritual root, whose origins were pure and untainted, and who had been born and raised here.
Sensing the vast, weighty blessing of fortune enveloping him and the endless benefits it brought, Lord Wanshouyuan's heart filled with a peaceful, profound joy.
The gains from this ascent had already far exceeded his original expectations.
Yet he did not grow complacent, nor did he leave immediately.
He knew that this summit was extraordinarily mysterious, the place where the Pangu Will and traces of the world's first opening were most densely concentrated. Perhaps other undiscovered, even more astonishing opportunities lay hidden here.
He calmed his mind, casting off the restlessness brought by his recent breakthrough. Azure light flowed through his eyes, as though each held a stretch of blue heaven.
With the aid of his divine sense, which had become more than ten times sharper after his breakthrough into the Great Luo Realm, he began carefully examining the summit platform inch by inch. It appeared flat and empty, yet was naturally imbued with Dao resonance.
His divine sense passed like the finest comb over every seemingly ordinary rock, feeling for any unusual fluctuations of energy or folds in space concealed within.
At the same time, he silently circulated the Wood Scripture, aligning his own aura as closely as possible with the lingering Pangu Will around him and the great earth pulse beneath his feet, hoping to perceive his deeper connection with this place and its mysteries more keenly.
Time flowed slowly within this strange space, as though it had lost all meaning.
Just as his divine sense swept like a ripple over a dark azure boulder at the center of the summit—seemingly utterly ordinary, even lower and smoother than the surrounding stones, and wholly inconspicuous—his heart suddenly jolted!
Deep within the point where that boulder joined the mountain below, he faintly sensed an indescribable, intensely restrained resonance, yet one so powerful that both his bloodline origin and primordial spirit trembled and leaped with joy!
It was an aura of life's origin that shared his own source, descending from the same great Progenitor, yet was supremely exalted and utterly pure!
Lord Wanshouyuan's expression grew solemn. He immediately banished all stray thoughts and focused his entire mind, carefully condensing his divine sense into a thread finer than a hair yet incomparably resilient, then slowly probing toward the depths of the core from which that strange sensation arose.
The process demanded immense patience and precise control, lest he cause any unnecessary disturbance.
The thread of divine sense penetrated layer after layer of indestructible Buzhou Mountain rock, which greatly obstructed divine-sense probing, and crossed the invisible barriers formed by the lingering Pangu Will. At last, his divine-sense "vision" suddenly opened up!
It was no vast blessed land, but a cavity no larger than a fist at the very heart of the boulder, its inner walls smooth as a mirror, naturally formed through endless ages of compression by the earth veins and nourishment from the Pangu Will.
Within the cavity, there was no dazzling divine radiance, no suffocating aura of supreme power. Only three drops of liquid, each the size of a pigeon's egg and resembling flawless azure jade pearls, floated quietly inside, slowly moving of their own accord along some mysterious trajectory.
Each slow turn seemed to enact the ultimate truths of heaven and earth, evolving on a microscopic scale the settling of earth, fire, wind, and water, and the separation of clarity and turbidity.
Upon closer examination, how could these be ordinary liquid? They were clearly the essence of the Great Dao, condensed to the utmost and already given tangible form!
Within them, tiny lights like chaotic nebulae flickered into existence and vanished, as though they contained the seeds of countless miniature universes yet to be opened. Deeper still lay a vast, majestic, indomitable, supreme will capable of opening heaven and earth, silently standing guard!
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