The more Lu Changsheng thought about it, the angrier he got. And the angrier he got, the more aggrieved he felt.
He'd spent so many years painstakingly laying low in his lair. Then, after heading out to finish a project, he'd been on the verge of returning home in triumph—only to have someone forcefully charge him a "toll" at the last possible moment.
"I'm furious! I'm going to scatter even your ashes to the winds!"
Lu Changsheng got to his feet, cursing as he furiously beat his wings at the gray-brown powder on the ground.
Just then—
A crisp "ting" rang out.
The tip of Lu Changsheng's wing seemed to have struck something hard.
He froze for a moment, then stopped flapping.
At the very center of the ashes drifting away in the wind lay a fist-sized, ocher-colored pearl. It gave off an incredibly heavy aura of spiritual energy.
The Purple Heaven Divine Lightning had destroyed Old Earth Dragon's body and soul, but it hadn't destroyed this pearl.
That was because it bore no karmic ties. It was the purest essence of the Origin of Earth, nurtured within this Old Earth Dragon's body after it had slept beneath the Primordial Land for countless epochs
and devoured countless Earth Veins!
"This... this is..."
Lu Changsheng's eyes widened. He hurried over and snatched up the ocher-colored pearl.
It felt incredibly heavy in his hand.
Though only fist-sized, it felt as if he were holding a towering mountain.
Inside the pearl, the faint shadow of a tiny ocher dragon slowly swam, radiating an incredibly pure Mystic Immortal aura.
"Earth Dragon Pearl!"
The words sprang into Lu Changsheng's mind.
Feeling the surging Origin of Earth within the pearl, his face—which had been stricken with grief over his lost merit—brightened in an instant.
"What a treasure! This is an Origin Pearl condensed from the life's essence of a Mystic Immortal-level Earth Dragon!"
Lu Changsheng was so excited that his voice trembled.
If the Half Beast Horn had been a top-tier fire-attributed crafting material, then this Earth Dragon Pearl was the perfect core for an earth-attributed array!
Earth nurtured all things and bore the weight of the world. Earth-attributed origin was a perfect match for setting up defensive arrays!
"That tiny bit of merit just now... maybe it wasn't such a bad deal after all."
Whenever he encountered a genuine treasure, Lu Changsheng's stingy nature automatically started calculating the returns.
He'd spent an exceedingly tiny bit of merit to kill a Mystic Immortal and even gotten an Earth Dragon Pearl for free. Anywhere in the Primordial Land, that would have been a deal that earned him a fortune without a chance of loss.
Grinning from ear to ear, he opened the Storage Jade Box and carefully placed the Earth Dragon Pearl beside the Half Beast Horn.
Fire and earth, two top-tier materials shining together. Just seeing them put Lu Changsheng's heart at ease.
"I'm rich! This time, I'm really rich!"
Lu Changsheng patted the bulging jade box and took a deep breath.
But soon, the smile faded from his face, replaced by a gravity and lingering fear unlike anything he'd felt before.
He turned to look at the huge abyss Old Earth Dragon had left when it burst from the earth, then at the surrounding ruins, which had been utterly devastated.
"It's far too chaotic out there. It's no place for a bird to be."
Lu Changsheng muttered to himself.
He seriously reflected on his latest trip outside.
He'd only traveled a little over ten thousand li from his lair on Nameless Low Mountain.
Ten thousand li!
On the boundless continent of the Primordial Land, ten thousand li wasn't even the entrance to a beginner's village. The area affected by a single fart from some powerful expert could easily stretch farther than that.
Yet along that short stretch of ten thousand li, he'd first come across a Sha Qi Pit and fierce beast remains that would take thousands of years to purify,
then, after breaking through to True Immortal, awakened a Mystic Immortal Earth Dragon sleeping beneath the ground!
He'd nearly—just that close—ended up as the Earth Dragon's excrement!
"If I go another hundred thousand li, will I run straight into a Primordial Unity Golden Immortal taking a bath? And if I go another million li, will a Daluo Golden Immortal use me as a drinking snack?"
The more Lu Changsheng thought about it, the more his heart pounded with fear.
The waters of the Primordial Land ran too deep, and there were too many traps.
What opportunities? What treasure hunts? Those were all prepared for the chosen ones.
He was an incarnation of merit who survived by making others hit him and piling on defenses. Wandering around in an age when a great calamity was about to begin was simply asking to die.
"I'm done sightseeing! I wouldn't go out again even if you killed me!"
Lu Changsheng made up his mind at once.
"I've already got my opportunity, and I have all the materials I need. The top priority now is to get home!"
He looked within his dantian. His True Immortal early-stage energy had recovered somewhat.
"Once I get back to Nameless Low Mountain, with this Earth Dragon Pearl and that Half Beast Horn, I can upgrade my eighteen hundred layers of arrays straight to three thousand!"
"Once I'm protected by three thousand layers of defense, even if a whole group of Mystic Immortals comes to tear down my house, I can sit inside and crack melon seeds while they wear themselves out!"
Having made up his mind, Lu Changsheng didn't want to spend another moment in this dangerous place.
He immediately circulated his technique, clamping down on the aura around him, which still wavered from his brush with death.
With the Breath-Concealing Array disk gone, he used his energy to plaster one insulating barrier after another over his body.
"Whoosh—"
Lu Changsheng became a shadow skimming close to the ground. He didn't even dare fly, instead using the most basic Earth Escape Technique to flee toward Nameless Low Mountain as fast as he could.
"I'm here... My shell, my home!"
Lu Changsheng emerged from the ground, covered in dirt from head to toe.
He didn't even bother brushing the soil off himself. He practically rolled and crawled over to Nameless Low Mountain, which looked bald and utterly unremarkable.
With practiced ease, he tapped three times on a stone disguised as a rotten log, then stepped twice on a patch of moss beside it.
"Rumble—"
With a deep grinding sound, the heavy stone door slowly swung open, revealing a dark, deep passageway.
In that moment, the air wafting out of the cave abode, with its faint smell of mold and dried-up spiritual energy, seemed to Lu Changsheng a million times sweeter than the finest nectar of the Heavenly Court.
"Whoosh!"
Lu Changsheng turned into a streak of shadow and dashed straight into the cave abode.
"Bang!"
Before he could even catch his footing, he slammed the stone door shut behind him as fast as he could.
Then his hands flew like butterflies among flowers, pounding furiously at the array hub behind the stone door.
"Spirit Gathering Array, activate!"
"Lesser Five Elements Inverted Illusion Array, activate!"
"Golden Light Killing Array, activate!"
"Gravity Mire Array, crank it up to the max!"
At his series of low growls, all eighteen hundred and sixty-three layers of arrays around the cave abode instantly began operating at full capacity.
Layers of multicolored array barriers lit up across the mountain, then quickly faded from view.
Nameless Low Mountain vanished from the Primordial Land's sight once more, as if there had never been anything here but a barren stretch of flat ground.
After finishing all this, Lu Changsheng slid down the cold stone door like a man whose bones had been pulled out, then slumped onto the ground.
"Hah... I'm alive again. Now I'm really alive."
He panted heavily, listening to his heartbeat thunder in his chest. The corners of his mouth rose uncontrollably until he burst into wild, unrestrained laughter.
"Ha ha ha ha! You dead loach! So what if you were a Mystic Immortal? The Great Dao Divine Lightning still blasted you to smithereens!"
"I'm the one who came out on top!"
Before you continue