With the heavy burden lifted from his heart, Lu Changsheng felt a wave of exhaustion and drowsiness wash over him.
Five thousand years of high-intensity array formation had drained not only his magical power but also his mind.
"I can't go on. I need to sleep. Whatever the big deal is, it can wait until I wake up."
Lu Changsheng muttered, pulled a broad spiritual grass leaf over his belly, and closed his eyes. Within just a few breaths, faint snores echoed through the cave abode.
This time, he could finally sleep easy.
And while Lu Changsheng snored away, dreaming of earning enough merit to become invincible beneath the heavens,
he had no idea that the huge commotion he had caused earlier had already drawn the attention of a true great power.
Hundreds of millions of miles away.
Though the Primordial Land stretched boundlessly, distance had never been an impassable gulf to the Innate Divine Beings who stood at the very summit of the world.
A streak of azure light, like a meteor tearing through the night sky, shot from the direction of Mount Buzhou.
Within the streak of light,
Nuwa wore an azure Flowing Cloud Skirt, her sleeves fluttering as though a goddess had descended to the mortal world.
A faint trace of curiosity and puzzlement showed on her exquisitely beautiful face.
"This is the place."
Nuwa stopped her Escape Light and floated down lightly to the edge of the enormous abyss carved out by the Purple Heaven Divine Lightning.
She furrowed her delicate brows, her eyes—seemingly filled with endless Laws of Creation—carefully surveying the ruins before her.
An intense aura of destruction still lingered in the air.
It was the lingering heavenly might unique to the Purple Heaven Divine Lightning, sent down by the Heavenly Dao. Even after several thousand years, ordinary beings would not dare come within a hundred paces of this aura.
Besides that, Nuwa keenly sensed another presence.
"What rich Origin of Earth, mixed with a trace of the Fierce Beast's savage, turbid energy."
Nuwa closed her eyes, her divine sense brushing over the land like a gentle breeze.
Soon, she pieced together the general outline of what had happened.
"An Old Earth Dragon at the Mystic Immortal realm died here."
Nuwa opened her eyes, the puzzlement in them deepening.
"Strange."
"The Ferocious Beast Tribulation has passed, and the Heavenly Dao's laws are gradually reaching completion."
"Though an Earth Dragon at the Mystic Immortal realm carries a trace of Fierce Beast blood, as long as it doesn't wreak havoc upon the world, the Heavenly Dao would never send down the highest-grade Purple Heaven Divine Lightning to erase it."
"Purple Heaven Divine Lightning strikes only those who defy Heaven and destroys only the most wicked."
"What did this Earth Dragon do to bring down the wrath of the Great Dao and have its body and spirit obliterated?"
Nuwa couldn't make head nor tail of it.
She cultivated the Dao of Creation, which placed the greatest emphasis on the cycle of cause and effect. Faced with a heavenly punishment that defied all reason, she instinctively wanted to uncover the truth.
She extended a slender finger, as delicately sculpted as white jade, and gently tapped the air.
"Creation Tracing."
A soft azure halo rippled from her fingertip, enveloping the pit where the Old Earth Dragon had been reduced to ashes.
Nuwa tried to use the Laws of Creation to piece together the faint traces left in the area and reconstruct what had happened.
Time passed, little by little.
Faint, indistinct images gradually appeared within the azure halo.
Nuwa saw the Old Earth Dragon burst from the earth in a frenzy, and saw the greed with which it opened its enormous, abyssal maw.
But when the scene reached the point where the Old Earth Dragon seemed to have swallowed something and its stomach began to churn violently,
the image suddenly shattered!
"Hmm?"
Nuwa grunted and took half a step back, shock flashing across her beautiful face.
"I can't see through it?"
"Not only can I not see through it, but even the workings of Heaven have been forcibly erased by some supreme power!"
Nuwa drew a deep breath, steadying the magical power surging within her.
She was at the peak of the Primordial Unity Golden Immortal realm, with one foot already over the threshold of the Daluo Golden Immortal realm. She was an Innate Divine Being!
In the Primordial Land, aside from those ancient monsters who kept themselves hidden from the world, there were only a handful of things that could keep her from discerning the workings of Heaven.
"What did that Earth Dragon swallow?"
Nuwa's heart began to beat a little faster.
Her instincts told her that whatever presence the workings of Heaven concealed was tied to an earth-shattering secret.
It might even be an opportunity that defied Heaven!
She didn't give up. Instead, she closed her eyes again, abandoned her attempt to forcibly divine the workings of Heaven, and used her most primal senses to seek out even the faintest anomaly lingering in the air.
The destructive aura of the Purple Heaven Divine Lightning was too overbearing, masking everything.
But Nuwa had more than enough patience.
She stood at the edge of the abyss for a full hundred years.
A hundred years later.
A breeze swept past.
Nuwa abruptly opened her eyes. Her gaze, sharp as twin bolts of cold lightning, shot toward a spot less than ten thousand miles from the abyss.
"There!"
She had sensed it!
At the edge of the ruins, steeped in a destructive aura, a trace of energy remained—faint to the utmost degree, yet pure to the utmost degree.
It was a presence that left even her, an Innate Divine Being who cultivated the Dao of Creation, feeling refreshed and faintly comforted.
"Is this...the scent of merit?"
Nuwa's face was full of disbelief.
How could the scent of merit remain in a place where heavenly punishment had struck?
It was as absurd as smelling the fragrance of an innate spiritual fruit in a latrine!
Without a moment's hesitation, Nuwa flashed into a streak of azure light and followed the faint trace of merit.
Ten thousand miles was no more than a moment's journey for Nuwa.
When she stopped her Escape Light and hovered among the clouds, looking down,
her eyes, usually as calm as an ancient well and seemingly able to see through every illusion in the world, slowly widened.
For the first time, an expression of "astonishment" appeared on her exquisite face.
Below her,
there was no hidden great power, nor any world-shaking innate treasure making its appearance.
What met her gaze
was a mountain.
More precisely, it was something that looked like an enormous "Iron Tortoise Shell," glowing in every color of the rainbow.
With the keen eye of a Primordial Unity Golden Immortal, Nuwa saw at a glance what those layers of light truly were.
"An array..."
Nuwa's lips parted slightly. Her voice held a strange note of shock she could hardly conceal.
"Three thousand layers of arrays..."
These weren't three thousand array patterns, but three thousand actual grand arrays, each wrapped around the next like layers of a dumpling, sealing off a small, low mountain less than a hundred miles across!
"What kind of person would be bored enough to set up so many arrays in this desolate wilderness, in such...such a crude yet downright deranged fashion?"
Nuwa felt as though everything she knew had been turned upside down.
In the Primordial Land, great powers arranged defensive arrays around their cave abodes by aligning them with Heaven and Earth, drawing on the power of the land to achieve a hundredfold effect with a single effort. One high-grade innate grand array was enough to hold back an army.
But this one before her...
"The outer few hundred layers are made up of the lowest-grade illusions and Soul-Bewildering Arrays?"
"The more than a thousand layers in the middle incorporate a rich Origin of Earth, but the way the arrays connect is an absolute mess. They're holding together by brute force alone."
"And the killing array at the very center contains such pure Pure Yang Fire, yet the way it's arranged... It's like using an Innate Spiritual Root to cook a meal—an utter waste!"
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