It felt like a man who'd been dying of thirst in the desert for half a month suddenly leaping into a pool of cool, sweet spring water.
The source of Great Dao Merit inside him, which had been languishing for lack of replenishment, now devoured and assimilated the Heavenly Dao Merit flooding into him at a frenzied pace.
"Glorious! Now this is what getting paid feels like!"
Lu Changsheng trembled with excitement.
Back when he'd used merit fire to purify baleful qi, the Heavenly Dao Merit had trickled down one grain at a time.
But now?
Now it was coming down by the ton!
"Time to cultivate! Strike while the iron's hot!"
Lu Changsheng forcefully tamped down his wild elation, not daring to waste a single second.
He immediately sat cross-legged, palms facing the sky, and pushed his bargain-bin cultivation technique to its limits.
His body absorbed spiritual energy like a leaky funnel, but when it came to merit, he was undoubtedly top-tier in the Primordial Land.
"Old Tree, Little Grass! Keep watch over the entrance! If anything stirs, smack me with your roots!"
Lu Changsheng shouted at the Red Sun Fruit Tree beside him, which was greedily absorbing the wisps of golden merit light spilling out.
Then he shut off all six senses and plunged into deep seclusion.
In the Primordial Land, years came and went unmarked.
For cultivators, seclusion often meant closing their eyes and opening them again to find that seas had become mulberry fields.
At that moment, Lu Changsheng was completely immersed in the intoxicating rush of his cultivation soaring.
After the vast quantities of Heavenly Dao Merit entered his dantian, his Great Dao source quickly refined them into the purest mana and sent it surging through his parched meridians.
One hundred years.
Two hundred years.
Five hundred years.
In the ruins of the Sha Qi Pit, where no one ever came, the golden pillar of light shooting into the sky lasted a full five hundred years before gradually fading away.
Lu Changsheng sat motionless on the spot, the golden flames around his body burning ever brighter.
They even seemed to condense into the phantom of a golden lotus on the verge of blooming, shielding him at its center.
His bottleneck at early-stage Heavenly Immortal, which had held him back for over five thousand years, was like a thin sheet of paper beneath the torrent of merit.
Crack.
In the thousandth year.
A crisp sound rang inside Lu Changsheng, audible only to him.
Mid-stage Heavenly Immortal—breakthrough!
There was no resistance, and no inner demon arose.
The advantages of attaining the Dao through merit were on full display: as long as you had enough merit, there was no risk of going berserk from insufficient insight into your realm.
The Heavenly Dao itself gave you the green light.
Crack.
In the eighteen-hundredth year.
Late-stage Heavenly Immortal—breakthrough!
After that came a long, painstaking stretch of cultivation.
Beyond the ruins, the war between the three clans had erupted in full.
The Dragon Clan's aquatic armies flooded countless mountain ranges, the Phoenix Clan's Southern Bright Separation Fire turned half the sky red, and the Qilin Clan's iron hooves trampled the legacies of countless weaker races.
The Primordial Land was devastated, calamity qi blanketing the skies.
But none of it had anything to do with this little Fire Crow, tucked away in a remote corner and making his fortune by mending the heavens.
Time flew like a white colt flashing past a crack in the wall.
Twenty-five hundred years passed.
A rumble like mighty rivers rushing surged through Lu Changsheng's body.
The last trace of impurity had vanished from his golden feathers, leaving them a flawless, dusky gold.
Profound merit markings flowed across every feather.
Peak Heavenly Immortal—breakthrough!
"I'll push through in one go!"
Deep in his meditation, Lu Changsheng let out a frenzied cry in his heart.
He gathered the last great mass of Heavenly Dao Merit in his dantian, twisted it into a single torrent, and launched his final assault on the enormous barrier between Heavenly Immortal and True Immortal.
Boom!
A thunderclap of creation seemed to explode in Lu Changsheng's mind.
The realm barrier that countless low-level cultivators could never cross in their entire lives collapsed beneath the impact of the merit torrent. It turned into a rain of light that flowed into every part of his body.
He'd done it!
True Immortal realm!
An aura more than a hundred times stronger than before burst out of Lu Changsheng.
It swept outward in a golden ring, scattering the remnants of the already crumbling formations into dust.
Even the Red Sun Fruit Tree, now more than ten feet tall, was blown into a frenzy of whipping branches and leaves, nearly torn out by the roots.
"Haaa—"
Lu Changsheng didn't wake right away.
Breaking through was only the first step. He still needed time to stabilize his newly surged mana and get used to his True Immortal body.
Stabilizing his realm took another full five hundred years.
A breeze drifted by.
Withered grass swayed in the wind.
On this land he had purified with his own hands, Lu Changsheng slowly opened his eyes.
Two golden flames flashed in his pupils, then vanished, replaced by a depth that was utterly restrained.
"Three thousand years."
Lu Changsheng murmured, breathing out a foul-smelling breath that carried a faint fragrance.
From the moment he sat down to absorb the merit until he had fully stabilized his early-stage True Immortal realm, precisely three thousand years had passed.
Add in the time he'd spent setting up the formation and grinding down the Beast Horn.
He'd been away from his lair for nearly ten thousand years.
"Ten thousand years. Back in my previous life, human history would've turned the page several times over. Here, it's just been a slightly longer trip."
Lu Changsheng stood and stretched his stiff body.
His bones gave off a string of crisp cracks.
He clenched his fist, feeling the True Immortal mana coursing through him like mighty rivers.
With a casual wave of his wing—
Whoosh!
A golden sword qi shot from its tip, crossed a thousand zhang in an instant, and sliced off half the top of a distant hill.
The cut was smooth as a mirror, and a trace of Pure Yang Fire still burned along its edge.
"So strong!"
Lu Changsheng's eyes lit up, his face full of delight.
"So this is the power of the True Immortal realm? No wonder Heavenly Immortals used to seem like cannon fodder. The depth of this mana is worlds apart."
"My mana reserves are at least a hundred times greater than they were ten thousand years ago!"
He strutted around twice, even getting the delusion that I can rule the Primordial Land now!
But the Dao of Cowardice was etched into his very bones.
That puffed-up delusion survived in his mind for less than three breaths before he ruthlessly stamped it out himself.
"Get a grip, Lu Changsheng! Get a grip!"
He raised a wing and slapped himself in the cheeks twice.
"True Immortal means nothing!"
"Any old patrolman or gate guard from the Dragon Clan or Qilin Clan starts at Mystic Immortal."
"With this little cultivation, I'm still just a slightly bigger grasshopper in the eyes of Primordial Unity Golden Immortals and Daluo Golden Immortals. They'd blow me to ashes with a single breath!"
"What does shaving the top off a little hill prove? If I ran into one of those great powers, they could flatten a hundred thousand mountains with one slap!"
After some profound self-deprecation and soul-searching,
Lu Changsheng thoroughly doused that swelling pride that had just begun to surface, returning to his usual cautious, trembling, tread-on-thin-ice state of mind.
"No, I can't stay here any longer."
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