Lu Changsheng warily scanned his surroundings.
"Although it took me a little while to break through, that huge expanse of golden merit light earlier must have caught the attention of quite a few living creatures."
"No one's come to bother me in these three thousand years. I guess the natural pressure formed after the Earth Vein was reconnected scared off some petty troublemakers."
"But now the Earth Vein's aura has stabilized. Those big demons with more curiosity than sense could come snooping around to inspect things at any moment."
Lu Changsheng made a decisive choice.
Go home!
He'd gotten his opportunity, broken through in cultivation, and fattened his wallet.
Quit while he was ahead. Never get greedy for one more hit!
He strode over to the Red Sun Fruit Tree and, with practiced ease, dug it up root and all, dirt included, then stuffed it back into the Jade Casket around his neck.
He didn't even glance at the array plate fragments on the ground. That junk had been drained of every last shred of value. It no longer deserved a place in the storage space of a mighty True Immortal like him.
"Time to skedaddle. I'd better hurry back to my Nameless Low Mountain and reinforce those three thousand-plus layers of arrays."
Having made up his mind, Lu Changsheng immediately activated the concealment technique he knew by heart.
He firmly suppressed his True Immortal-level magical power within his body, even disguising the dark golden feathers on his surface as ordinary fiery red ones.
Once again, he became an ordinary Fire Crow that would be impossible to pick out from a flock of demon beasts.
However.
The instant Lu Changsheng turned around, ready to skim along the ground and use an escape technique to get away—
Rumble...
A deep, muffled vibration, as if it came from the depths of the netherworld below, suddenly sounded beneath his feet.
The vibration was extremely faint. If he hadn't just broken through to the True Immortal realm and greatly sharpened his senses, he wouldn't have noticed it at all.
"An earthquake?"
Lu Changsheng stopped, his brows knitting slightly.
The land of the Primordial Land was incomparably sturdy. Natural earthquakes were rare unless mighty beings were fighting.
He released the divine sense he had only recently awakened and cautiously sent it through the soil beneath his feet, probing deep underground.
A thousand zhang.
Two thousand zhang.
Three thousand zhang...
"Hiss—"
When his divine sense had burrowed nearly five thousand zhang underground—
Lu Changsheng sucked in a sharp breath and yanked his divine sense back as if he'd been shocked.
His birdlike face instantly filled with terror, and even his voice went shrill.
"Holy crap..."
Through his divine sense—
Five thousand zhang beneath the earth, beside the miniature Earth Vein he had just reconnected—
A terrifying creature, so enormous it defied description, its entire body covered in gray-brown scales like slabs of rock, was slowly opening a pair of huge eyes like bloody lanterns.
It was an Earth Dragon!
Not a True Dragon of the Dragon Clan that soared through the nine heavens, but an ancient Earth Dragon born deep underground, which had spent ages feeding on Earth Veins and rock!
Worst of all—
From that fleeting brush of divine sense, Lu Changsheng had clearly sensed the fluctuations of its cultivation.
Mystic Immortal!
And it was an old Mystic Immortal, its aura so deep and steady that it had clearly spent who knew how many epochs honing its cultivation at that level!
"Damn Heavenly Dao! I knew the wages you paid weren't that easy to earn!"
Lu Changsheng cursed furiously in his mind.
He finally understood why, despite the enormous golden merit light he'd produced here earlier, not a single demon beast had dared to approach.
It had nothing to do with pressure from the Earth Vein!
A terrifying Mystic Immortal-level overlord was entrenched underground across the entire area!
The moment those ordinary little demons sensed even a trace of aura from this Earth Dragon sleeping beneath them, they'd run off with their tails between their legs!
And just now—
The shockwave Lu Changsheng had released when he broke through to the True Immortal realm hadn't looked like much above ground.
But it had traveled along the Earth Vein straight into the depths, hitting the sleeping Old Earth Dragon squarely on the forehead.
Morning grouchiness was terrifying, whether you were a person or a demon.
What was more—
When Lu Changsheng broke through, his body had still been steeped in the aura of Heavenly Dao Merit and innate pure yang energy.
To this Earth Dragon, which wasn't too bright and acted on instinct alone, that aura was a thousand times more tempting than the most delicious, all-in-one tonic pill in the world!
Rumble, rumble, rumble!
The underground shaking suddenly intensified.
The earth began to heave and crack violently.
One enormous fissure after another, each several zhang wide, spread rapidly in every direction from where Lu Changsheng stood, like the strands of a spiderweb.
A violent gust carrying a strong stench of soil and decay surged out of the cracks.
"It's coming up! That beast wants to eat me!"
Lu Changsheng's scalp went numb, and every feather on his body stood on end.
He could even feel the Mystic Immortal-level Earth Dragon drilling straight up through the soil toward the soles of his feet.
A thousand zhang.
Eight hundred zhang.
Five hundred zhang!
The soil beneath Lu Changsheng felt like a storm-tossed sea. The violent shaking nearly knocked the newly promoted True Immortal off his feet.
"Run!"
That was the only thought that sprang into Lu Changsheng's mind.
All thoughts of the peerless bearing he'd just gained by breaking through to the True Immortal realm, all the swagger of a nouveau riche with top-grade refining materials in hand—all of it was tossed to the ends of the earth.
Are you kidding me?!
That was a Mystic Immortal!
In this early era of the Primordial Land, when the Ferocious Beast Tribulation had just ended and the Dragon-Han First Tribulation was still brewing, the Daluo Golden Immortals had shut themselves away, leaving the Primordial Unity Golden Immortals as the overlords everyone knew about.
And Mystic Immortals were absolutely powerful enough to rule an entire region and do whatever they pleased!
What could a mere early-stage True Immortal—who'd scraped by for eight thousand five hundred years by scavenging junk, sucking up the fumes of baleful energy, and slowly building up his cultivation—
possibly use to fight an old monster that had slept for who knew how many epochs in the depths of the Primordial Land?
His head?
Lu Changsheng pushed off with both legs. The True Immortal magical power in his dantian surged like a mighty river, flooding into his legs and wings.
He didn't dare even look back. He transformed into a golden streak skimming across the ground and sprinted toward Nameless Low Mountain.
Rumble—!!
The instant he had dashed less than two hundred zhang away—
The ruins where he'd been standing exploded.
Countless enormous rocks weighing tens of thousands of jin, mixed with dirt, were flung into the air by a terrifying force like hidden weapons, blotting out the daylight for a hundred li around.
A massive gray-brown figure, its violent aura radiating arrogance, shot skyward from the abyss underground.
Roar—!
A terrifying roar, neither quite dragon nor beast, exploded across the Primordial Land.
The sound waves became tangible gusts, instantly leveling the remnants of the surrounding hills.
The wave struck Lu Changsheng in the back as he ran. His chest tightened, and the True Immortal magical power he'd just stabilized nearly scattered.
His foot slipped, and he nearly pitched headfirst into the muddy hollow ahead.
Using the momentum of his fall, he rolled across the ground and steadied himself. He couldn't help glancing back from the corner of his eye.
He only needed one look.
Lu Changsheng's scalp went completely numb, and every dark golden feather on his body stood straight up.
It was enormous.
The Old Earth Dragon that had burst out of the ground had exposed only the upper half of its body, and even that stood ten thousand zhang tall!
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