A sacred golden light, impossible to describe in words, burst uncontrollably from Lu Changsheng's body.
The light wasn't dazzling, nor did it possess any of that violent destructive power.
It carried an absolute will, transcending this Primordial Land, and instantly filled the entire stomach of the Old Earth Dragon.
The stomach acid, which had been so vicious just moments ago that it could even melt magical treasures, touched the golden light—
and, like a venomous snake encountering its natural enemy, instantly lost all vitality and evaporated into nothingness.
Not only that, the golden light spread along the stomach walls, forcibly opening up an absolute vacuum field dozens of zhang across.
Within this domain, no magic could penetrate, and all evil was driven away!
At the same time.
Outside, above the ruins of the nameless Sha Qi Pit.
The Old Earth Dragon had just let out a contented belch. It twisted its enormous, ten-thousand-zhang-long body with satisfaction,
preparing to follow the abyssal passage it had dug and burrow back into the depths of the earth to digest its feast.
To it, eating a bird filled with pure yang energy was no different from swallowing a spirit-rich ore as it usually did.
It was even starting to imagine that after waking from this nap, it might finally reach the threshold of the Primordial Unity Golden Immortal realm.
But just as most of its body had disappeared beneath the soil, leaving only its enormous tail swaying aboveground,
the Old Earth Dragon suddenly froze without warning.
"Gurgle?"
Its mountain-sized head shot up from underground. A glimmer of humanlike confusion flickered in its two blood-red eyes, round as full moons.
Its belly... was so hot.
This wasn't the burning sensation of eating too many fire-attributed spirit objects. It was a terrifying heat, as if a sun were about to ignite inside it!
Then confusion turned to shock, and shock instantly became boundless terror.
The Old Earth Dragon felt it clearly: at some point, a supreme aura had appeared in its stomach, one that made its very soul tremble.
Before this aura, its Mystic Immortal cultivation, which it had always been so proud of, and its stone-scaled armor, which even Primordial Unity Golden Immortals would struggle to break, seemed as laughable as paper.
"Roar—!"
The Old Earth Dragon let out a pained, terrified howl, its massive body rolling wildly across the land.
It regretted it!
Though it had little intelligence, a beast's instincts told it that what it had swallowed was no great tonic pill. It was a living ancestor—one it must never touch or provoke!
It opened its abyssal maw and frantically worked the muscles of its abdomen, trying to spit out that scorching hot potato.
"Urgh—urgh—"
The Old Earth Dragon gagged violently, spewing out huge clumps of earth and rock. They crashed into the surrounding land, gouging out one deep pit after another.
But it was no use.
The dazzling mass of golden light seemed to have taken root, fixed firmly in its stomach.
Worse still, because Lu Changsheng had released his merit to resist the stomach acid,
the Old Earth Dragon's attempt to corrode him with its gastric juices had now become a direct attack on Great Dao Merit!
At that moment, cause and effect locked into place.
"Vmmm—"
The Primordial Land's sky, which had been clear for tens of thousands of li since the Earth Vein was reconnected, turned completely black in an instant.
It was a deathly blackness that swallowed every trace of light.
Then, amid the boundless darkness, an immeasurable, merciless, and icy pressure of destruction descended with a roar.
The pressure was so immense that every living creature within a hundred thousand li, whether fighting or foraging, was crushed flat against the ground, not daring to so much as breathe.
The Old Earth Dragon's massive body, thrashing wildly across the land, froze in place the instant the pressure descended, as if bound by an immobilizing spell.
It raised its hideous head and stared up at the pitch-black sky.
The clouds churned violently, parting to either side.
High in the heavens, a single eye, formed entirely of purple-black lightning, slowly opened.
There was no mercy or anger in that eye, only an absolute indifference that upheld the laws governing heaven and earth.
"Pur... Purple Heaven..."
A desperate, breathy rasp escaped the Old Earth Dragon's throat.
Though it had always lurked underground, it had lived through the Ferocious Beast Tribulation and recognized the highest-grade lightning that signified heavenly punishment.
It wanted to beg for mercy.
It wanted to tell that merciless eye in the sky that it hadn't done it on purpose, that it had just been hungry and eaten a little snack, and that it was willing to poop out that ancestor intact.
But the Great Dao did not listen to explanations.
Touch Great Dao Merit, and you die.
"BOOM!!!"
A bolt of purple-black lightning as thick as a water vat shot straight down from the Eye of Heavenly Punishment, a sword of annihilation ripping through the darkness.
Its speed surpassed the boundaries of time and space.
The Old Earth Dragon didn't even have time to close its eyes before the Purple Heaven Divine Lightning struck the top of its head.
There was no violent explosion, no deafening boom.
The instant the lightning entered its body, the Old Earth Dragon's unbreakable gray-brown scales began silently peeling away and vanishing, like sand sculptures weathered for millions of years.
Flesh, bone, meridians...
Before the overbearing power of the Purple Heaven Divine Lightning, which destroyed all cause and effect, a Mystic Immortal's body couldn't withstand even a single breath.
"Ugh..."
The Old Earth Dragon managed only a brief, desperate whimper before its ten-thousand-zhang body began collapsing piece by piece in the dazzling purple light, turning into gray powder that scattered through the sky.
Its body and spirit were utterly destroyed!
Not even a trace of its true spirit remained. It had been completely erased from the workings of the Primordial Land.
As the Old Earth Dragon crumbled to dust, the dark stomach that had trapped Lu Changsheng naturally fell apart with it.
"Thud!"
A figure wreathed in golden light fell heavily from the air, crashing into a thick pile of bone ash.
The thunderclouds quickly dispersed, and the sky returned to calm, as though the apocalyptic scene from a moment ago had never happened.
"Cough, cough, cough..."
Lu Changsheng lay on the ground, coughing violently as he hurriedly drew back the Great Dao Merit he had released from his body.
He couldn't spare a thought for checking his injuries. His first reaction was to calm his mind and stare intently at the golden mass in his dantian.
One second later,
a piercing shriek rang out across the wilderness.
"My origin! A sliver is missing! Dammit, a sliver is really missing!"
Lu Changsheng dropped to his knees and clutched his head in anguish, tears welling in his eyes.
That sliver of merit was less than a hair on an ox compared to his vast reserves,
but to a miser who valued merit more than his own life, it was like having a piece of his heart carved away.
"You dead mudfish! You stinking crawler! Of all things, why the hell did you have to eat me?!"
"To stop that pathetic stomach acid of yours, I had to release my merit! Great, the counterattack triggered, but my origin took damage too!"
Cursing, Lu Changsheng beat at the bone ash on the ground with his claws.
"You owe me! What could you possibly pay me with? You could die ten thousand times over and still not make up for the value of that sliver of Great Dao Merit!"
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