Why are you feeling wronged, you vine?

He carefully opened one of the crimson jade boxes.

Instantly, a scorching and pure essence of fire rushed toward his face.

In the center of the jade box lay a thumb-sized crystal, its entire body burning with a miniature flame.

"Phoenix Blood Divine Gold!"

Lu Changsheng gasped.

Legend had it that only when a pure-blooded phoenix underwent nirvana could its heart blood drip down and fuse with the Earth Vein divine gold. After millions of years, such a small piece of Phoenix Blood Divine Gold could be nurtured!

This was a supreme immortal material for refining top-grade post-natal spirit treasures, or even the embryos of innate spirit treasures!

He hurriedly closed the jade box, terrified that even a sliver of its essence might escape.

Afterward, he discovered in the other jade boxes the Deep Sea Nether Marrow unique to the Dragon Clan, Nine Revolutions Purple Ginseng over ten thousand years old, and several rare spirit herbs that had long gone extinct in the outer regions of the Primordial Land.

"As expected of the elites of a hegemonic clan; whatever they leak out is a hundred times richer than the scraps I've spent eight thousand years scavenging."

Lu Changsheng joyfully sorted these precious spirit materials and stored them in his core storage jade box.

Once all the heavenly treasures were tallied, only a primitive blood-colored jade slip remained on the open ground, lying lonely amidst a few discarded ores.

This jade slip had fallen from the deepest part of the storage bag belonging to that old Phoenix Clan member.

"To be kept personally by an expert at the peak of the mid-stage Mystic Immortal realm, could it be some earth-shattering inheritance technique?"

Lu Changsheng's heart stirred. He dismantled the array and took the blood-colored jade slip into his hand.

The jade slip felt icy to the touch, and a trace of extremely obscure resentment still lingered on its surface.

Lu Changsheng did not rashly probe it with his divine sense. Instead, he first filtered it with the yellow light of the Mysterious Yellow Shield, and only after confirming it was safe did he project a wisp of his divine sense into it.

The next moment.

The joy on Lu Changsheng's face instantly froze.

His pupils contracted violently, and his previously ruddy complexion turned as pale as paper in a flash.

What was recorded in the jade slip was not some inheritance technique, nor was it a treasure map.

It was a battle report.

A top-secret military intelligence report that detailed the current situation on the battlefields of the Primordial Land between the Dragon, Phoenix, and Qilin clans!

Through this jade slip, Lu Changsheng felt as if he had seen the terrifying, purgatory-like scene of the outside world with his own eyes.

In the Western Continent, the once spiritually rich Mount Sumeru mountain range had been beaten until the mountains collapsed and the Earth Veins fractured under the frenzied slaughter of the three clans' powerhouses.

Countless living beings turned to ash in the collision of divine abilities, and the blood rain that filled the sky had not ceased for ten whole epochs.

On the shores of the East Sea, the Dragon Clan diverted the waters of the four seas to flood the inland, drowning an unknown number of thousands of miles.

Countless aquatic creatures and birds and beasts slaughtered each other in the turbid waves; blood dyed the azure East Sea a glaring dark red, and corpses piled up like mountains, literally filling in the deep-sea trenches.

The Southern Immortal Volcano was home to tens of millions of elites from the three clans.

Every day, powerhouses at the Golden Immortal or even Primordial Unity Golden Immortal level fell, and Zenith Heaven Golden Immortals entered the fray themselves, their every gesture possessing the peerless power to tear through the void and destroy all laws.

"This... this isn't a war, this is clearly the destruction of the world!"

Lu Changsheng threw the jade slip to the ground violently and panted heavily, as if some terrifying monster might crawl out of it.

Although he had known the Dragon-Han First Tribulation was tragic, his understanding had been limited to the literal concepts he read in novels before he transmigrated.

Only at this moment did he truly and intuitively feel what a "tribulation" meant!

It was an absolute despair where the heavens and earth overturned and all living beings were but ants!

On a meat-grinder battlefield of that level, let alone a small True Immortal like him, even those four Mystic Immortal remnants were nothing more than slightly larger cannon fodder, not even leaving a whole corpse behind!

"Too terrifying... the Primordial Land is too terrifying!"

Lu Changsheng clutched his head with both hands, his body trembling uncontrollably.

He had originally thought that with the Mysterious Yellow Shield and the Three Thousand Layer Array, he had a certain ability to protect himself, and he had even harbored a faint thought of perhaps scavenging for scraps in the outer regions in the future.

But now, this blood-colored jade slip was like a basin of ice water poured over his head, extinguishing the insignificant sense of arrogance in his heart until not even a spark remained.

"Scavenging? Scavenging my foot!"

Lu Changsheng jumped up abruptly and pointed at the closed stone door of his cave dwelling, as if thousands of troops were charging toward him from outside.

"The water outside is deep enough to drown a Primordial Unity Golden Immortal! If my weak self goes out, I'll just be fertilizer for others!"

"Seclusion! I must stay in absolute seclusion!"

"Until I reach the Zenith Heaven Golden Immortal realm, even if I starve to death in this cave, I will never take another step outside the mountain gate!"

Lu Changsheng was thoroughly terrified by the horrific situation in the outside world.

He did not dare to delay for a moment and immediately began to act, converting all the resources he had harvested this time into the defensive capabilities of his cave dwelling.

He first pulled out several miniature, incomplete spirit veins seized from the storage bags and, using his merit-based techniques for smoothing out Earth Veins, forcibly integrated them into the deep underground of the Nameless Low Mountain, further strengthening the spiritual foundation of his protective array.

Afterward, he took those few broken post-natal defensive magic treasures and thoroughly melted them into a pool of molten iron using the Pure Yang Fire.

Mixing in some precious immortal stone powder, he coated the stone door of his cave dwelling layer by layer.

A full hundred years passed.

Lu Changsheng, like a tireless mason, reinforced the cave dwelling from the inside out ten times over.

"Cowardly Immortal Vine, come out!"

Once finished, Lu Changsheng beckoned.

The emerald vine wrapped around his wrist immediately flew out, swelling in the wind until it reached a thousand feet in length. Like countless green dragons, it plunged deep into the rock walls surrounding the cave.

Having absorbed the Nine Heavens Breathing Soil and the Three Lights Divine Water, this Cowardly Immortal Vine had long since gained sentience.

Over these past eight thousand years, it had accompanied Lu Changsheng in his cultivation, absorbing the stray spiritual energy, and now it possessed a cultivation base faintly at the peak of the Heavenly Immortal realm.

"Listen well."

Lu Changsheng looked at the emerald vines flickering in and out of the rock walls, his expression as stern as if he were reprimanding a disciple.

"From today on, you are to shrink your detection range to within a hundred miles of the mountain gate!"

"Do not probe any aura that exceeds the Mystic Immortal realm. Even if a powerful expert passes by, you are to play dead!"

"As long as they don't attack the formations, even if they tear the sky down outside, you are not allowed to emit a single ripple that might draw their attention!"

The leaves of the Cowardly Immortal Vine trembled slightly, as if expressing grievance.

"What are you aggrieved about?"

Lu Changsheng slapped a vine beside him, teaching it with earnest sincerity.

"Look at those arrogant Dragon Clan and Phoenix Clan members outside, fighting and killing all day long. And what is the result?"

"The result is that they turned to ash, and their treasures have now become fertilizer for our cave dwelling! That is what we call karmic retribution!"

Lu Changsheng pointed to the ground beneath his feet, where he had just buried a spiritual vein.

"The essence of the Cowardly Great Dao we cultivate lies in the word 'concealment'."

"A tree that stands above the forest will surely be destroyed by the wind. In this Primordial Land, as long as you live longer than others, even if you sleep all day, you are the final winner!"

"Remember, the world outside is full of schemes and slaughter. Only within these three thousand layers of formations is the only pure land."