Primordial Continent
East of Mount Buzhou, countless billions of miles away.
There stood a low, nameless mountain whose name was hardly worth mentioning.
The mountain wasn't high, the water wasn't deep, and the spiritual energy was pitifully thin.
In the early days of the Primordial Land, when Innate Divine Beings were everywhere and Daluo Golden Immortals were as common as dogs, this mountain was nothing but a barren backwater where not even birds would shit.
Any creature with even a little cultivation who happened to pass by couldn't be bothered to give it a second glance.
And yet, deep within this Nameless Low Mountain, someone had hollowed out the rock and carved a hidden cave dwelling into it.
"Hmm—"
Deep inside the cave dwelling, a faint light flickered.
A crow wreathed in a pale golden flame was sticking its rump up, laboriously pinching a dull, lusterless spirit stone between its two wings and carefully slotting it into a groove in the floor.
As the spirit stone settled into place, the intricate array patterns on the ground lit up, then swiftly faded from sight.
"Phew..."
The golden Fire Crow flopped onto the ground and let out a long breath, wiping away nonexistent sweat with a wing.
"That's the one thousand eight hundred and sixty-second concealment array. Finally got it in place. Now, even if a Primordial Unity Golden Immortal passes by, they won't find this place unless they get down on the ground and rub their face against it."
His name was Lu Changsheng.
He'd once been an ordinary wage slave in the modern world, living the blessed life of a 996 work schedule every day.
Who could've guessed that one night, while staying up late reading a novel about the Primordial Land, his vision would go black—and when he opened his eyes again, he'd be in this deadly world?
So he'd transmigrated. Lu Changsheng had more or less accepted that.
But other people transmigrated as disciples of the Pangu Three Pure Ones, or as the thirteenth Ancestral Witch. At worst, they were top-tier divine beings wielding innate treasures.
He was even more unusual than the rest. Something had gone wrong with his transmigration passage, and he'd crashed headfirst into a golden orb of light drifting at the edge of chaos.
Once he'd fully come to and digested the information that had appeared in his mind, he'd been completely dumbfounded.
That golden light had actually been a lump of Great Dao Merit, somehow left behind for reasons unknown!
His soul had completely merged with the Great Dao Merit, allowing him to take form. He'd become neither dragon nor phoenix, nor was he a Three-Legged Golden Crow.
Instead, he was a Fire Crow formed entirely from golden merit light and the origin of fire.
Or, to put it more aptly, a Merit Golden Crow.
His origins sounded terrifying: the incarnation of Great Dao Merit!
What did that mean in the Primordial Land?
It meant he was an invincible, untouchable, walking porcupine.
Whoever dared lay a hand on him, whoever dared pluck even a single feather, would be slapping the Great Dao in the face!
He wouldn't even need to lift a finger. The laws of the Great Dao would bring down Purple Heaven Divine Lightning, following the threads of karma until his attacker was blasted into oblivion—and their entire extended family would suffer for it, too.
For the first few days after learning this, Lu Changsheng had been in high spirits. He'd nearly rushed out of the mountain to run to the heart of the Primordial Land and shout:
"Who's next?!"
But he'd quickly calmed down.
Because he'd discovered a fatal flaw.
He did have invincible retaliatory armor, but that armor ran on electricity.
Every trace of Great Dao Merit within him was his origin, the very foundation of his existence.
If someone attacked him, the Great Dao would punish them, but the merit within him would also be consumed to offset the karmic consequences of their attack.
In other words, he could get beaten up and his attacker would die, but he'd lose merit.
And worst of all, because he was an incarnation of merit, the abundant Xiantian Spiritual Qi in the Primordial Land was as useful to him as plain water.
Other people absorbed spiritual energy and watched their cultivation soar.
When he absorbed it, it only quenched his thirst and replenished a tiny bit of pitifully weak magic power. It did absolutely nothing to improve his cultivation!
"If I want to improve my cultivation, if I want to live forever, I have to accumulate merit."
Lu Changsheng looked down at the thin layer of golden flames covering his body, nearly weeping.
"Is merit really that easy to earn these days?"
"The little bit of Great Dao Merit I have gets used up one thread at a time. There's no way I'm trading my precious merit for my life against those muscle-brained savages of the Primordial Land. That's a losing deal, and I'm not making it!"
Once he'd made up his mind, Lu Changsheng abandoned the idea of going out to raise hell.
To hell with fighting for supremacy in the Primordial Land. To hell with treasures and lucky opportunities.
In this era, with the Dragon, Phoenix, and Qilin Clans on the verge of rising and fighting everywhere, keeping his head down was the only truth.
If I hide deep enough, karma can't catch up to me!
After resting for a while, Lu Changsheng flapped his wings and took off from the ground.
He didn't hurry to set up another array. Instead, he flew to a simple Cloud Bed made of white jade in the middle of the cave dwelling.
"Arrays are important, but I can't let my own magic power fall behind completely. Spiritual energy may be useless, but at least it can wet my throat."
Lu Changsheng sat down with his claws crossed, closed his eyes, and began circulating the meager magic power within him.
Wisps of thin Xiantian Spiritual Qi were drawn in through cracks in the cave dwelling and entered his body.
Then they seeped back out through his feathers, leaving behind only the tiniest sliver of energy to flow into his dantian.
The efficiency was downright appalling.
But Lu Changsheng wasn't in a hurry.
The one thing the Primordial Land had no shortage of was time.
On this ancient land, you could take a quick nap and wake to find that the world outside had changed beyond recognition.
The cave dwelling fell quiet, with only the golden flames swaying gently in time with his breathing.
Time went unrecorded in the Primordial Land, and cultivation knew no years.
One hundred years.
Five hundred years.
One thousand years.
The years flowed by, and in the blink of an eye, three thousand years had passed.
During those three thousand years, the shadow of the Dragon-Han First Tribulation had quietly spread across the Primordial Land.
The Dragon Clan dominated the four seas, the Phoenix Clan ruled the birds, and the Qilin Clan held sway over the beasts.
The three clans clashed ever more frequently as they fought for the Primordial Land's fortune and territory. Small-scale battles broke out almost every day.
The bloodshed outside stained the rivers red, but none of it had anything to do with Lu Changsheng, holed up in the Nameless Low Mountain.
"Phew—"
On the Cloud Bed, Lu Changsheng slowly opened his eyes. A faint glimmer of fire flashed in his pupils.
He looked within himself and sensed the magic power in his dantian, which had grown by no more than the tiniest fraction. He shook his head helplessly.
"Three thousand years! Three whole thousand years of nonstop bitter cultivation!"
Lu Changsheng couldn't help grumbling aloud.
"If a pig absorbed Xiantian Spiritual Qi for three thousand years, it'd at least become a Mystic Immortal, right? And I'm still only an early-stage Heavenly Immortal. I haven't even touched the threshold of the middle stage!"
As expected, this path wouldn't work.
Spiritual energy was far too repellent to him, an incarnation of merit.
"Ah, looks like I really can only level up by scavenging merit."
Lu Changsheng hopped off the Cloud Bed and paced back and forth in the cave dwelling.
It wasn't as if he hadn't considered going out to scavenge for scraps during those three thousand years.
After the Ferocious Beast Tribulation, countless damaged Earth Veins and Sha Qi Pits had been left behind across the Primordial Land.
If he could purify the baleful energy and restore the Earth Veins, the Heavenly Dao would bestow merit. Even Heavenly Dao Merit could slowly be converted into his origin.
But every time he reached the entrance of the cave dwelling and felt the destructive fluctuations of battles raging outside, he immediately pulled his foot back.
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