Ahead.
Less than fifty miles from him.
The rock strata underground suddenly turned as black as ink, and the air was thick with a baleful aura that could drive one's soul mad in an instant.
This baleful aura was more than ten times more terrifying than that of the Mystic Immortal Earth Dragon he had encountered years ago.
"We're here."
Lu Changsheng stopped his escape technique and slowly poked half his head out of the ground.
What met his eyes was a bottomless gorge.
The entire gorge was shrouded in a dense layer of gray-black mist.
This was no ordinary miasma. It was Heaven and Earth Calamity Sha, formed from the resentment of countless fallen experts, remnants of shattered laws, and the vengeful thoughts of severed Earth Veins!
This was the Phoenix Fall Valley Nuwa had mentioned.
"What terrifying baleful aura."
Lu Changsheng watched the roiling gray-black mist and couldn't help swallowing.
In a place like this, forget True Immortals—even an ordinary peak Mystic Immortal expert would be eroded by the Calamity Sha Qi and have their soul transformed into a monster that knew only slaughter, given no more than a short while to enter without a top-grade protective Spirit Treasure.
But to Lu Changsheng, it was as if he had returned to his happy place.
"The heavier the baleful aura, the more of the world's laws need repairing here—and the richer the merit!"
The fear in Lu Changsheng's eyes gradually faded, replaced by the fervor of someone gazing upon a field of gold.
He didn't swagger straight in.
Instead, he once again fell back on his old habits.
At the edge of the gorge, he found a relatively concealed cave, then skillfully pulled more than a dozen sets of concealment and defensive array plates from beneath his wings.
He built a thick tortoiseshell around himself.
Only after all that was done did he sit cross-legged in the center of the arrays and take a deep breath.
"Time to get to work!"
Lu Changsheng closed his eyes and sank his mind into his dantian.
Carefully, he drew out a wisp of Great Dao Merit and shaped it into a golden thread of flame finer than a strand of hair.
Through a gap in the array, he slowly extended it into the roiling Calamity Sha Mist.
"Tszzz—"
The instant that strand of pure, flawless Great Dao Merit touched the Calamity Sha Mist,
it was like a drop of cold water falling into a pan of hot oil.
The mist around Phoenix Fall Valley instantly churned violently, making a series of grating sounds as it dissolved.
Under the purification of Great Dao Merit, the highest source of the world, the frenzied fragments of law and boundless resentment quickly melted away, turning into wisps of pure Xiantian Spiritual Qi that flowed back into this battered land.
"Hum..."
As the first wisp of baleful aura was purified,
the Heavenly Dao sensed the restoration taking place.
A tiny particle of Heavenly Dao Merit, glittering with dazzling golden light, pierced through the void and fell directly into Lu Changsheng's body.
"Profit!"
Feeling a long-lost fullness in his dantian, Lu Changsheng's weary spirit instantly perked up.
The strain that had built up over the eighty thousand miles of nerve-racking travel vanished the moment that particle of merit came in.
"Keep going! Drain the baleful aura from this whole valley!"
Lu Changsheng increased the flow of the merit flame-thread.
Like a diligent cleaner, he quietly set to work repairing the world on the edge of this forbidden zone that no one dared approach.
Time flew by during the monotonous process of purification.
Five hundred years.
A thousand years.
Two thousand years.
Three thousand years passed.
Lu Changsheng had carved a hundred-zhang-wide clear passage through the dense Calamity Sha Mist on the outskirts of Phoenix Fall Valley.
Over those three thousand years, Heavenly Dao Merit had nourished his body and soul like a steady drizzle.
Pushed along by this immense store of merit, his True Immortal cultivation naturally broke through from the early stage to the middle stage, and he even seemed to be brushing against the threshold of the late stage.
But Lu Changsheng's thoughts were no longer on improving his cultivation.
His eyes were fixed on the end of the passage he had purified.
There lay the core of Phoenix Fall Valley—and the shattered Xiantian Micro Spiritual Cave.
As the baleful aura was steadily drawn away, the core of the Spiritual Cave, buried for countless years, finally revealed a glimpse of its true form.
In an underground fissure at the end of the passage,
a faint treasure-light shimmered weakly, carrying the pure aura of Xiantian Profound Yellow Qi.
"Found it!"
Lu Changsheng's eyes snapped open, and his breathing grew ragged.
He didn't even bother to remove the concealment arrays around him. Turning into a streak of dark-gold Escape Light, he shot through the safe passage he had purified toward the heart of the Spiritual Cave.
When he stopped at the edge of the enormous underground fissure and saw the object giving off the treasure-light,
he froze.
Floating deep in the fissure was a shield barely the size of his palm.
The shield was a weighty, antiquated shade of profound yellow. Its material was neither metal nor jade, and it was engraved with dense, naturally formed innate defensive runes.
Unfortunately, it was badly damaged.
Terrifying cracks covered its edges, as if it had once taken a blow capable of destroying heaven and earth.
The shield face, which should have been smooth and flawless, was dull and lifeless. Only a tiny core of its original essence remained, struggling to keep that faint glimmer of treasure-light alive.
And yet,
the very first moment Lu Changsheng laid eyes on the shield,
the Great Dao Merit within him, long kept suppressed, stirred with a rare sense of resonance and delight!
"An Innate Spirit Treasure...and a defensive one!"
Lu Changsheng reached out a trembling wing, wanting to touch the broken shield.
"And that's not all..."
His voice grew hoarse with excitement.
"The lingering Dao Yun on it... This treasure was formed from Heaven and Earth's Mysterious Yellow Qi! It may be damaged, but as long as I can nourish and repair it with merit..."
"This is practically an absolute tortoiseshell custom-made for a merit incarnation like me!"
Lu Changsheng stared at the broken Profound Yellow Shield in the fissure, his eyes nearly popping out of their sockets.
An innate defensive Spirit Treasure!
It was one of the most coveted treasures in all of the Primordial Land.
The Spirit Treasures focused on slaughter might be impressive, but amid a great calamity, defensive treasures were what kept you alive.
Whoever could endure someone else's bombardment for one moment longer would be the last one standing.
And for Lu Changsheng, a miser who revered the Dao of Cowardice above all else, even a damaged innate defensive shield
was worth more than ten flawless innate offensive weapons!
"Mine... It's mine now!"
Suppressing the urge to throw his head back and howl, Lu Changsheng cautiously extended his dark-gold claws into the underground fissure, from which wisps of baleful aura were still escaping.
The instant his claws touched the shield's surface,
"Hum—"
The shield seemed to sense an aura that suited it and let out a deep hum.
Instead of releasing the resistant pressure of a Spirit Treasure without an owner, it drifted smoothly into Lu Changsheng's palm.
It was incredibly heavy.
Though it was only the size of his palm, it felt as if he were holding up half a mountain.
Even in its damaged state, its profound, ancient, imperishable aura let Lu Changsheng truly feel what it meant to be an "innate object."
"What a treasure! What a treasure!"
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