Nuwa asked tentatively.
She truly didn't understand.
He was a walking weapon of causality. Wherever he went, people would have to worship him like an ancestor, afraid to bump him or jostle him.
So how could he live like a bird startled by the twang of a bow?
Inside the cave.
Lu Changsheng heard the complete one-eighty in Nuwa's tone.
He wasn't happy at all. If anything, he became even more wary.
There it is—the fox's tail is showing!
Lu Changsheng sneered inwardly.
One moment she was using her pressure to scare me, and the next she's put on that saintly, green-tea face. And now she's asking why I won't come out?
If I went out, you greedy immortals would have gobbled me up alive!
Lu Changsheng knew the ways of the Primordial Land all too well.
A common man was innocent, but his jade was a crime.
In this world of the strong preying on the weak, a weapon of causality was certainly powerful, but only if you had the strength to protect it.
He was just a True Immortal. If he swaggered outside and told everyone he was the embodiment of merit, those Daluo Golden Immortals and Quasi-Saint powerhouses would have ten thousand ways to trap him without directly harming him, then use him as a portable battery or refine him into some top-grade Innate Spirit Treasure.
"Drop the act!"
Lu Changsheng spoke into the Sound Transmission Array Eye, his tone still firm and even tinged with mockery.
"I'll live wherever I damn well please!"
"What? You think my formation's crude? You think I'm wasting my youth?"
"I'll tell you what this is: the greatest hermit lives in the busiest city! It's called keeping a low profile! You lot spend all day flying around in the sky, snatching magic treasures and fighting over territory. What the hell would you know?"
"I'm warning you one last time: leave at once! Don't make me come out and crash into you!"
Lu Changsheng dug in his heels and wouldn't budge.
Outside.
After Lu Changsheng's barrage of barbed criticism, Nuwa was left blinking in astonishment.
In all her life, it was the first time someone had pointed at her nose and called her clueless.
But she wasn't angry. If anything, she found him even more interesting.
"Keeping a low profile..."
Nuwa savored the words, the corners of her mouth lifting slightly.
"Fellow Daoist's Dao is truly fascinating."
She looked toward the water mirror. Even knowing he might be glaring furiously at her, her smile didn't fade in the slightest.
"Since you don't wish to be disturbed, I won't press you."
Nuwa nodded gently.
Inside the cave, Lu Changsheng let out a long breath, thinking the woman was finally going to leave.
Then Nuwa's next move made his jaw hit the floor.
She didn't summon a cloud and depart.
Instead, she turned around and went to the edge of the enormous abyss carved by the Purple Heaven Divine Lightning, less than ten li from the outermost edge of the formation.
With a gentle sweep of her sleeve, she cleared a flat, clean spot on a massive boulder, then sat down cross-legged, perfectly upright.
Her eyes closed slightly, and her hands formed an abstruse Creation Dharma Seal. A faint green light immediately swirled around her as she entered a deep meditative state.
"What the hell?"
Lu Changsheng rubbed his eyes in front of the water mirror, his face full of disbelief.
"What... what is she doing? She's going to squat here and refuse to leave?"
"I told her I'd come out and crash into her, and she still dares to sit at my doorstep?"
Lu Changsheng panicked and yelled into the Sound Transmission Megaphone again.
"Hey! Woman outside! Are you hard of hearing? I told you to get lost!"
"What are you doing, sitting here? Trying to stage a fake accident? I'm telling you, there aren't any security cameras outside my door. Don't think you can pin this on me!"
"..."
No matter how much Lu Changsheng shouted and threatened from inside, Nuwa sat on the boulder like a lifeless jade statue, without even lifting an eyelid.
She cultivated the Dao of Creation, which valued natural harmony above all.
At that moment, she had completely blended her aura into the world around her,
quietly sensing the fleeting glimpse of Great Dao Merit she had caught earlier, along with the changes in the Earth Vein beneath her feet, transformed by the Earth Dragon Pearl and the Beast Horn.
Lu Changsheng shouted for three days and three nights straight.
His throat was hoarse, but the woman outside still hadn't moved an inch.
"Fine! You win!"
Lu Changsheng slammed a palm down on the control panel, then turned around in a huff and dropped onto the white jade bed.
"If you want to sit outside and eat dust, then sit out there!"
"Anyway, I've got three thousand layers of formations protecting me, plus plenty of time and fruit. Let's see who outlasts who!"
As the one-sided standoff continued, time began its long, sweeping march.
The Primordial Land kept no count of years.
In the blink of an eye,
a thousand years passed.
Then two thousand.
Three thousand years slipped quietly away like sand through one's fingers.
On the outskirts of Nameless Low Mountain.
The ruins, once battered beyond recognition, had sprouted weeds and low shrubs again, nourished by the scant spiritual energy in the area.
Nuwa still sat on the boulder in the same position as three thousand years ago, as though she had frozen together with the world around her.
A few bold birds even landed on her shoulder, mistaking her for a stone where they could rest.
Now and then, Nuwa woke from meditation.
When she opened her eyes, her gaze would pass through the transparent veils of the outermost illusion formations and look toward the depths of the cave.
Though she couldn't see Lu Changsheng through the three thousand layers of formations, she could clearly sense the flow and changes of spiritual energy within them.
"In these three thousand years, he seems not to have cultivated even once."
Nuwa analyzed the situation silently.
"The spiritual fluctuations in the formation are extremely steady, and they're filled with... an exceedingly strange sense of ordinary life."
"What on earth is he doing in there?"
Nuwa's curiosity hadn't faded with time. If anything, it had grown like weeds, thicker and more rampant.
Meanwhile.
Deep in the cave, at the very heart of the three thousand layers of formations,
Lu Changsheng was squatting beside a patch of spiritual farmland he had newly cultivated.
It was true that he hadn't cultivated in these three thousand years.
First, at the True Immortal realm, further progress required an enormous accumulation of spiritual energy or a fortuitous insight.
Now that he was hiding inside the formation and had suppressed the spiritual energy outside to the bare minimum, there wasn't enough to whet his appetite.
Second, he felt that improving his quality of life was a better use of his energy than sitting cross-legged in cultivation.
After all, the woman outside had been sitting there for three thousand years. It seemed she really didn't mean him any harm and had simply turned his place into a free ground for comprehending the Dao.
Since his life wasn't in danger, the second rule of the Dao of Cowardice applied: if you're going to live, you might as well live comfortably.
"Old tree, could you put in a little effort?"
Lu Changsheng took a small watering can and poured some water mixed with Earth Vein Spirit Spring onto the Red Sun Fruit Tree.
"Just look at you. It's been three thousand years, and you've only borne seven or eight fruits. I'm a True Immortal now, and that's not even enough to get stuck in my teeth."
The Red Sun Fruit Tree's leaves swayed gently in the breeze, as if protesting Lu Changsheng's exploitation.
After watering it, Lu Changsheng went over to the Starlight Grass.
He expertly pulled up a few of the most luxuriant stalks, then tossed them into a makeshift stove fashioned from a discarded pill furnace.
"Extra helping today: Starlight Grass stewed with Earth Vein Spirit Marrow."
Before you continue