A sudden, shrill, deafening noise exploded through the quiet cave abode!
It was absurdly loud, not only piercing to the ears but also carrying a magical tremor that struck directly at the soul.
Lu Changsheng had specially installed the highest-grade enemy alert system at the heart of the Three Thousand Layer Array, upgrading it with several Amplification Array Disks and Oscillation Array Patterns.
The alarm would only trigger if more than a hundred layers of the outer formations were destroyed in a row.
"Holy crap!"
The terrifying alarm jolted Lu Changsheng like an electrocuted frog. He sprang straight off the White Jade Cloud Bed and shot into the air.
"Enemy attack! Enemy attack! That damn mud loach has come knocking!"
Before his eyes were even fully open, Lu Changsheng let out a shriek like a pig being slaughtered.
He flailed as he fell back down, and before he could steady himself, he slammed headfirst into the stone pillar beside him. Stars burst before his eyes.
But he couldn't spare a thought for the pain.
His heart hammered frantically in his chest, as if it were about to leap right out of his throat.
"The alarm's gone off! A hundred layers! Someone's broken through a hundred layers of the outer formations!"
Lu Changsheng's face was full of terror and disbelief.
He had only just finished upgrading the Three Thousand Layer Array!
The hundred outer layers were there to make life difficult for intruders. Their offensive power wasn't much,
but those interlocking chain traps would frustrate even an ordinary Primordial Unity Golden Immortal for hundreds of years before they could slowly break through.
How long had it even been?
In his dream, he'd only just finished picking up the merit from two mountains, and already a hundred layers of his array had been broken?!
"Could the Dragon Clan's army have surrounded my mountain?"
Lu Changsheng scrambled to the control hub in the middle of the cave abode and slapped the enormous White Jade Platform.
"Water Mirror Technique, open!"
His hands trembled as he channeled his magic power.
Ripples spread across the air above the White Jade Platform, and the scene outside gradually came into focus, appearing in midair.
Lu Changsheng's eyes widened as he stared fixedly into the water mirror.
He'd prepared himself to see a vast army of aquatic creatures, or Dragon Clan elders bombarding his mountain with countless magic treasures.
But.
There were no thousands upon thousands of soldiers in the water mirror.
Nor were there any fearsome Primordial Land behemoths.
There was only a woman.
A woman dressed in a Flowing Cloud Skirt, with an ethereal air and peerless beauty.
She stood quietly at the edge of the array's ruins. Soft, sacred azure light shone from her hands as she unhurriedly melted away the Poison Mist Array before her.
There wasn't the slightest hint of violence in her movements. She was so graceful that watching her was a pleasure.
Yet Lu Changsheng felt all the blood in his body freeze at the sight.
His pupils contracted violently, and his teeth chattered uncontrollably, going "clack, clack, clack."
Beauty?
In the face of life and death, beauty was worth less than a lump of mud to someone who followed the Dao of Cowardice!
Lu Changsheng didn't spare a glance for Nuwa's breathtaking beauty. His eyes were fixed on the Creation Azure Light swirling around her hands.
That terrifying Daoist aura was effortless yet overwhelming, treating the array he was so proud of as though it were nothing. Even the laws of heaven and earth around her seemed to bow in submission.
"Primordial Unity Golden Immortal... no! She's definitely no ordinary Primordial Unity Golden Immortal!"
Lu Changsheng felt his bladder start to swell.
"This woman's aura is ten thousand times more terrifying than that dead Qilin and that damn mud loach from before, combined!"
"That sacred pressure, as if she could create all things—or strip them from existence... She's a top-tier Innate Divine Being!"
In an instant, Lu Changsheng's mind conjured up a several-million-word saga of grudges and revenge in the Primordial Land.
"I'm done, I'm done, I'm done!"
He paced frantically before the control panel, clutching at the feathers on his head until he yanked out several bright golden ones.
"I knew it! I knew killing in the Primordial Land would come back to bite me!"
"I beat the little one, and now the old one's come! This has to be some elder or relative of that Mystic Immortal Old Earth Dragon!"
"That Old Earth Dragon had a bit of Origin of Earth on him, and this woman has a bit of Creation vitality. They're obviously together! Maybe she's the master of this Earth Vein, and the Old Earth Dragon was her pet!"
"I didn't just strike down her pet with heavenly lightning. I also dug out her Earth Dragon Pearl to use as an array eye, and even forcibly occupied her Earth Vein!"
The more Lu Changsheng thought about it, the more airtight his reasoning seemed.
And the more certain he became that he was going to die today.
"No wonder she's dismantling my array so easily! She's savoring the pleasure of torturing her enemy!"
"She's going to peel away my shell layer by layer, then rip out my sinews and flay me alive to avenge her pet!"
In the water mirror, Nuwa lightly tapped again with her fingertip.
The hundred-and-first layer, the Thick Earth Defense Array—said to withstand a full-force strike from a True Immortal—melted silently, like snow beneath the blazing sun, leaving a gaping hole.
"My array! My money!"
Lu Changsheng stared at the array disk fragments scattered across the ground, their spiritual energy drained. His heart ached so badly that he nearly burst into tears.
He'd dug every one of those out of the mud and painstakingly repaired them. They were his hard-earned possessions!
She wasn't dismantling his array. She was dismantling his life!
"I can't let her keep doing this!"
Lu Changsheng gritted his teeth, a trace of desperation flashing through his eyes as he was driven to the brink.
"The outer formations aren't worth much, but at this rate, she'll reach my core defenses in a few thousand years at most."
"If she finds the Earth Dragon Pearl and the Half Beast Horn, she'll definitely fly into a rage and blast me—and the whole mountain—with everything!"
"I have to stop her!"
As the Primordial Land's foremost miser and follower of the Dao of Cowardice, Lu Changsheng knew exactly what he was capable of.
There was absolutely no chance he'd go out and fight.
Not in this lifetime.
Against an expert of this level, he had only one weapon—and it was the trump card he least wanted to use.
Lu Changsheng took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down.
He went to the edge of the control panel and found the array hub he'd named the Thousand-Mile Sound Transmission Megaphone.
"I don't know what realm you've reached, but as long as you're still in the Primordial Land, you have to follow the Heavenly Dao's rules!"
Lu Changsheng turned the Sound Transmission Megaphone's power up to the maximum.
He pressed both hands against the White Jade Platform and leaned toward the Sound Transmission Array Eye.
"You thief out there! Stop! Stop right now! Don't you dare dismantle another layer!"
A massive sonic wave, as tangible as a tsunami, burst from within the Three Thousand Layer Array on Nameless Low Mountain.
It was absurdly loud—not only deafening, but also stirring the spiritual energy within a hundred miles and sending the dead leaves and broken branches on the ground swirling into the air.
Outside the array's ruins.
Nuwa had raised a slender jade finger and was about to calmly undo the hundred-and-second layer, the Chain Earth Spike Array, when the sudden, earth-shaking roar made her fingertip pause.
The Creation Azure Light coiling around her finger rippled almost imperceptibly at the coarse, grating sound.
Nuwa froze.
In her eyes, which seemed to see through all things under heaven and earth and usually held only serenity and composure, a rare flicker of confusion appeared.
Thief?
Laozi?
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