Lu Changsheng swallowed hard, completely unable to help himself.
Good stuff.
Really good stuff.
Any one piece was worth more than the whole shabby little mountain he'd found before.
If he could use these materials to reinforce his formations, the defensive power of his turtle shell would multiply several times over.
His greedy instincts screamed wildly in his mind, urging him to hurry and open the formation, then snatch those treasures inside.
But!
Just as Lu Changsheng was about to reach out and press the stone gate's switch, he suddenly bit down on the tip of his tongue.
The sharp pain brought him back to his senses in an instant.
"Lu Changsheng, Lu Changsheng! Have you lost your mind?!"
He slapped himself hard across the face.
"She's offering you a few meat buns, and you're actually going to open the door? Do you know that's like inviting a wolf into your home?"
"That woman is definitely fishing for a bite!"
"She's trying to trick me into opening the defensive formation with these materials. The moment the door opens, she'll charge in and slap me to death, then steal the Earth Dragon Pearl and Beast Horn!"
"I can't fall for it! Absolutely not!"
At that moment, the persecutory delusions of a man devoted to the Dao of Cowardice reached their peak.
Lu Changsheng took a deep breath and tore his gaze away from the tempting spiritual materials. His eyes grew firm and cold once more.
"Don't try to disgust me with this scrap metal!"
Facing the Sound Transmission Array Eye, Lu Changsheng shouted in an utterly scornful, disdainful tone.
"Do you think I'm some beggar who's never seen the world? You think a few lousy stones will buy me off? Save your little tricks!"
Outside the formation.
Nuwa's hand froze in midair.
She lowered her gaze to the innate spiritual materials in her hand, each of which could be tossed onto the Primordial Continent and start a stampede among True Immortals and Mystic Immortals.
Scrap metal?
In the eyes of a Daluo Golden Immortal, these items might only count as ordinary.
But to a cultivator hiding inside a formation made of trash, how could they possibly be called scrap metal?
For the first time, Nuwa's usually placid Dao heart stirred with a faint trace of anger.
"Fellow Daoist."
Nuwa's voice was still clear, but its warmth had cooled by several degrees.
"I have treated you with courtesy, advised you in good faith, and offered to compensate you. Yet you have repeatedly spoken recklessly and even twisted right and wrong."
"Could it be that you truly believe these crude formations can keep me out?"
The Creation Azure Light around Nuwa suddenly blazed.
An immense pressure, belonging to a Primordial Unity Golden Immortal at her peak and faintly brushing against the threshold of Great Luo, slowly bore down upon the three thousand layers of formations before her.
"Crack, crack, crack!"
The dozens of formation screens closest to Nuwa let out the sound of breaking under strain before this sheer pressure. Their formation patterns began to twist and flicker violently.
Inside the cave abode.
Feeling that terrifying pressure, which seemed capable of crushing the entire Nameless Low Mountain into a plain, Lu Changsheng's face turned deathly pale.
"She's shown her true colors! That stinking woman can't keep up the act anymore—she's going to use force!"
Lu Changsheng was sweating buckets as he frantically worked the control panel, setting the spiritual power output of every formation to its maximum to hold back the encroaching pressure.
But he knew perfectly well.
Three thousand layers of formations might sound like a lot, but before such overwhelming power, it was only a matter of time before they were completely breached.
A thousand years?
Or a hundred?
For an expert of this level, breaking through these Three Thousand Layer Turtle Shell formations wouldn't even require her full strength. She could just wear them down at her leisure.
"I can't let her keep testing me! I have to bring out the big guns!"
A vicious glint flashed in Lu Changsheng's eyes.
Since reasoning with her wasn't working—which was really because he was the one being unreasonable—he had no choice but to use his last trump card.
"Woman outside! Listen up!"
Lu Changsheng took a deep breath. His voice rang through the formation, no longer hysterical as before, but now laced with the crazed, ruthless resolve of someone burning his boats.
"You really think I'm hiding in here because I'm afraid of you?"
"You're wrong!"
"I'm hiding in here not to protect myself, but to protect you! To protect all the countless living beings on the Primordial Continent!"
Outside the formation, Nuwa's brows lifted slightly, and some of the pressure around her unconsciously receded.
Protect her? Protect all the beings of the Primordial Continent?
Hearing those words from a miserly coward with a filthy mouth struck her as absurd.
"What do you mean by that, Fellow Daoist?"
Nuwa asked calmly.
"What do I mean?"
Lu Changsheng let out a string of cold laughs.
"Aren't you curious how those Purple Heaven Divine Lightning bolts came down earlier?"
"Aren't you curious how that Old Earth Dragon died?"
"Today, I'll be merciful and tell you!"
Lu Changsheng's voice echoed across the empty wilderness.
"That dead mudfish touched me! Just lightly touched me—and the divine lightning sent down by the Heavenly Dao struck it until not even its ashes remained!"
"You think having a higher cultivation makes you so impressive? You think you can do whatever you want just because you're a Primordial Unity Golden Immortal?"
"Let me tell you! If you dare come one step closer, if you dare break even one more layer of my formation and force me to open the stone gate and go outside..."
Lu Changsheng deliberately paused, making his voice brim with a bone-chilling threat.
"The first thing I'll do when I step outside is charge straight at you and slam into you!"
"If you so much as scrape a single bit of skin off me, I guarantee that the Eye of Heavenly Punishment in the sky will open again at once and strike that pretty body of yours—and your poor little soul along with it—into a pile of minced meat!"
"If you don't believe me, go ahead and keep tearing it down! Let's see whether I dare risk my life and pull that stunt on you!"
Silence.
A dead, deathly silence.
For hundreds of miles around, there was nothing but the rustle of withered grass in the breeze.
Outside the formation.
Nuwa's exquisite face was filled with disbelief.
She stared at the glowing Iron Tortoise Shell before her, recalling the things Lu Changsheng had just shouted. Her Dao heart was rocked by a violent shock unlike any it had ever endured.
A mere touch could summon Purple Heaven Divine Lightning?
Slamming into someone could make the Heavenly Dao bring down its highest-grade punishment?
What kind of absurd, outrageous spell was this? What kind of lawless divine power?
As one of the top Innate Divine Beings, destined to become a saint in the future, Nuwa understood the laws of the Heavenly Dao far better than ordinary experts.
She knew that Purple Heaven Divine Lightning represented the Heavenly Dao's absolute impartiality and merciless judgment. It could never become a tool for some cultivator to vent a grudge—or to "fake an accident" for compensation!
Unless...
An unbelievable thought suddenly flashed through Nuwa's mind, one she herself could hardly believe.
"Unless his very existence represents some exalted, inviolable supreme law between heaven and earth in the Primordial Land."
"Any attempt to harm him would be regarded by the Heavenly Dao as a provocation and an assault against the origin of heaven and earth..."
"Could it be..."
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