When the Tiger Doesn't Show Its Fangs, You Think I'm a Sick Crow?!

The moment he hit the ground, the stench was so vile it could've driven his soul right out of his body. Lu Changsheng nearly threw up the Red Sun Fruit he'd eaten five thousand years ago.

It was pitch-black all around him. The only sound was a spine-chilling hiss that echoed through the darkness.

It was the sound of stomach acid eating through rock.

The hard rock weighing tens of thousands of pounds that Lu Changsheng had been clutching just moments ago had landed in this swamp of stomach acid and hadn't lasted even half a breath. It had dissolved into bubbling sludge.

"What terrifying corrosive power!"

Lu Changsheng fought down his nausea and desperately urged the faint trace of magic power that had just returned to circulate within him.

A dark golden True Immortal protective aura spread over his body, temporarily keeping the splashing stomach acid at bay.

"Drip."

A drop of thick, yellow liquid fell from above and struck his protective aura.

The aura flickered violently. The drop burned a crater the size of a fingernail into its surface before slowly running out of strength.

Lu Changsheng's face turned deathly pale.

"This isn't ordinary stomach acid. It's a corrosive divine ability fused with the Origin of Earth and the foul energy of a Fierce Beast!"

He looked within at his dantian.

In just these few short breaths, he'd already spent nearly a tenth of his True Immortal magic power maintaining his protective aura against the stomach acid.

At this rate, his magic power would be completely drained in half an incense stick at most.

When that happened, the True Immortal body he'd only just tempered would meet the same fate as that rock, dissolving until not even bone fragments remained.

"Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!"

Lu Changsheng frantically searched the dark stomach for a way out, but the walls all around him were made of incredibly tough, writhing membranes.

He slashed at them with sword energy, but not only could he not cut through them, the bizarre membranes even bounced his attacks back at him.

"I can't get out! There's no way out!"

Trapped in this sunless hell, surrounded by stomach acid, he listened to the constant hiss of his magic-power aura being eaten away. A shadow of death unlike anything he'd ever felt clutched at Lu Changsheng's heart.

"After lying low for eight thousand five hundred years, I finally struck it rich, and now I'm going to die in this beast's belly like a chump, only to come out the other end as a turd?"

Lu Changsheng's eyes were bloodshot, his heart filled with fury and unwillingness.

"No! I still have one last card to play!"

He abruptly lowered his head and looked deep within himself.

There, the source of Great Dao Merit that he'd never once used lightly radiated a soft, sacred golden light.

All he had to do was withdraw his protective magic power and let the stomach acid touch his body.

All he had to do was suffer even the slightest real injury.

The passive defensive mechanism of this Great Dao Merit would trigger instantly.

The Great Dao would unleash its punishment. Never mind a mere Mystic Immortal Earth Dragon—even a Primordial Unity Golden Immortal would be reduced to ashes beneath Purple Heaven Divine Lightning!

This was the most irresistible weapon of causality in all the Primordial Land!

But.

Lu Changsheng hesitated.

His miserly, miserly-to-the-bone nature erupted in that moment with an astonishingly stubborn resolve.

"I can't use it... I absolutely can't use my merit!"

Lu Changsheng clenched his teeth until his gums bled.

"This is Great Dao Merit! Every bit I use is gone forever! It took me over five thousand years to save up this nest egg, and I'd only just replenished a little of it by drawing out several thousand years' worth of baleful energy!"

"And I'm supposed to trade it for my life against this filthy mud-covered dead eel?"

"That's a terrible deal! The worst deal in the world!"

In Lu Changsheng's subconscious, merit was his lifeblood. It was the only capital he had to establish himself in the Primordial Land and, one day, attain the Dao and live forever.

Actively spending merit to reflect an attack back at his enemy was ten thousand times more painful than carving the flesh from his own body.

"I can still hold on! I'm a True Immortal, after all. I refuse to believe I can't outlast a few mouthfuls of your stomach acid!"

Like a madman, Lu Changsheng squeezed every last thread of magic power from his dantian, pouring it ceaselessly into the protective aura around his body.

He even pulled the Red Sun Fruit Tree he'd just planted out of the Storage Jade Box. He couldn't care less about sustainable development now.

He shoved the whole tree, trunk, leaves and all, into his mouth, chewed it to pieces, and swallowed it, hoping to forcibly convert it into a little magic power to replenish his dwindling reserves.

But.

Reality was cruel.

Before a Mystic Immortal's corrosive divine ability, the magic-power reserves of an early-stage True Immortal were no more than a cup of water against a burning cartload of firewood.

As time went by.

The half incense stick was nearly up.

Bubbles roiled more and more thickly through the swamp of stomach acid, and the temperature inside the stomach was rising rapidly.

Old Earth Dragon seemed to sense that the little morsel in its belly was proving hard to digest. It began actively channeling its innate divine ability, intensifying the stomach acid's corrosive power.

"Hiss, hiss, hiss—"

The piercing corrosion hissed so thickly it sounded like a rainstorm.

The dark golden aura around Lu Changsheng was now riddled with holes, as thin as a sheet of paper on the verge of tearing.

"My magic power... It's gone..."

Lu Changsheng panted in despair, his hands hanging limply at his sides.

His dantian was empty. Every last trace of magic power had been squeezed dry.

"Pop!"

A soft snap rang out.

The protective aura that had held on for half an incense stick finally shattered beneath the endless onslaught of corrosive stomach acid.

The instant its protection vanished.

A splash of pungent yellow stomach acid poured straight onto Lu Changsheng.

"Hiss—"

The instant the acid touched his dark golden feathers, it sparked a violent chemical reaction.

Even though his body had been tempered and cleansed by a vast amount of Heavenly Dao Merit, making it incredibly tough,

the corrosive force of a Mystic Immortal's innate divine ability still brought a piercing pain. The outermost feathers even began to give off wisps of white smoke.

Lu Changsheng looked down at the yellow stomach acid, which was about to burn through his flesh.

Fear surged to its peak within him. But close on its heels came a fury and humiliation unlike anything he'd ever felt.

He'd lain low for eight thousand five hundred years!

He'd walked around every pothole and had hardly dared breathe too loudly. He'd finally struck it rich, only to die like a chump in the belly of a brainless dead eel?

"You brought this on yourself!"

Lu Changsheng's eyes instantly became bloodshot, turning bright red. He gritted his teeth as a furious roar rose in his throat.

"When the tiger doesn't show its fangs, you think I'm a sick crow?!"

To hell with being a miser!

To hell with worrying about what it cost!

If he was dead, what good was a pile of merit in his belly? Was he saving it to pay his way in his next life?

He stopped struggling to hold it back and stopped worrying about the cost.

At the final moment between life and death, Lu Changsheng completely released the restraints on the mass of Great Dao Merit within him. He even actively drew it outward, unleashing it with all his might!

"Get the hell away from me!"

"Boom!"