This time, there was no hesitation or struggle in his eyes.
More than five thousand years of stagnation, along with ten years of repeatedly preparing himself mentally, had brought his mindset to its current limit.
As a being incarnated from Great Dao Merit, he was never going to spend eternity safe and sound, hiding away in this secluded cave.
He raised a claw and pressed it against the mechanism on the stone door.
"Click, click, click..."
A heavy grinding noise echoed through the passage as the stone door slowly swung open once more.
The wind outside still carried a hint of chill. The stench of blood seemed fainter than it had ten years ago, but only a little.
Lu Changsheng poked half his head out and looked around.
For dozens of miles in every direction, there was nothing but silence.
Apart from the rustling of wind through the bushes, there was no sign of life and no powerful surges of spiritual energy.
Once he had confirmed it was safe, he took a deep breath and stepped out. At last, he had completely left the cave that had sheltered him for more than five thousand years.
The moment his feet landed firmly on the slightly hard earth outside, the Primordial Land's weighty, vast, ancient aura rushed up through his soles and filled his heart.
Lu Changsheng looked back at the wide-open stone door.
He raised his right wing, deftly formed a complex hand seal, and sent it into the array's control hub above the stone door.
"Rumble—"
The stone door crashed shut.
Right after, the outline of the entire Nameless Low Mountain began to twist and blur in an eerie fashion.
The light around it refracted, and the once-bare mountain swiftly vanished from sight, replaced by an utterly unremarkable stretch of flat ground and a few withered ancient trees.
Even the faint trace of spiritual energy that had leaked out when the stone door opened was completely concealed and smoothed away by the Illusion Array.
Lu Changsheng stood still and swept his divine sense over the area seven or eight times. Only after confirming that even he, the one who had personally set up the array, would have a hard time spotting a flaw without sensing the array's core did he nod in satisfaction.
"Let's go. Primordial Land, here I come."
Lu Changsheng gave himself a pep talk.
He didn't choose to take to the skies.
In the danger-ridden early days of the Primordial Land, unless you were a Quasi-Saint-level powerhouse or had some heaven-defying escape art, flying through the sky was like making yourself a bright, obvious target—as if you were telling every bird and beast in the world, "I'm right here. Come eat me!"
With a thought, Lu Changsheng immediately drew in the faint golden flames covering his body.
He suppressed the unique aura of Great Dao Merit deep within him.
To anyone looking at him, he was now just an ordinary Fire Crow with slightly brighter feathers and a slightly sturdier build. Tossed among a flock of demons, he wouldn't even qualify as the lowest-ranking patrol demon.
He flapped his wings twice and stayed less than half a meter above the ground, slipping into a thick patch of bushes as cautiously as a thief.
He crept forward for a dozen or so miles.
Along the way, Lu Changsheng moved with his heart in his mouth, treading as carefully as if on thin ice.
If he came across a somewhat tall tree trunk, he absolutely refused to pass beneath its branches, preferring to take a detour of several hundred meters.
If he spotted brightly colored flowers or plants on the ground, giving off a strange fragrance, he held his breath and didn't go anywhere near them, in case they were man-eating flowers or poisonous spirit plants.
Even when he occasionally came across an ordinary wild hare that hadn't even awakened its intelligence, he would immediately flatten himself in the grass and hide behind a rock, watching it for ages.
Only after confirming that it really was just a wild hare would he dare to continue creeping forward.
And so he kept walking, stopping, and walking again.
About seven or eight days passed.
Lu Changsheng was just preparing to go around a huge black boulder when he suddenly stopped.
He twitched his nose, his gaze falling on the ground a short distance ahead.
There lay a ravine dozens of yards long, its bottom nowhere in sight.
There was no water in it, only a mass of dark-red mist churning violently. Faint, heart-chilling wails came from within.
"This is... a Sha Qi Pit!"
Lu Changsheng's eyes lit up.
During the Ferocious Beast Tribulation, when powerful Fierce Beasts fell, the remnants of their resentment and destructive power combined with the Earth Vein to form these pits.
This baleful energy was full of corrosive and frenzied forces. Ordinary Primordial Land creatures avoided it at all costs.
Even a cultivator at the True Immortal stage who came into contact with just a little would have their foundation damaged, or even suffer qi deviation.
But to Lu Changsheng, a being incarnated from Great Dao Merit, this stuff was a surefire experience pack!
As long as he used his own merit power to slowly purify this mass of baleful energy and soothe the wounds of the land, the Heavenly Dao would naturally sense his good deed and bestow merit upon him in return.
This was exactly the upgrade resource he had dreamed of—and the first genuine opportunity he had come across since leaving the old nest where he had spent more than five thousand years lying low.
An ordinary transmigrator would probably have been so excited at this point that they'd shout at the top of their lungs and jump straight into the pit to absorb the energy.
But Lu Changsheng didn't.
Not only did he refuse to leap out, he pressed himself even lower, until he was practically plastered against the cold, muddy ground. He slowed his breathing to the bare minimum.
"Don't rush. Absolutely don't rush."
Lu Changsheng repeatedly warned himself.
"In this damned Primordial Land, the more something looks like an opportunity, the more likely it is to be a deadly trap."
"The Sha Qi Pit is tempting, sure, but who knows if it's hiding some poisonous insect or ferocious beast that's been corrupted by the baleful energy?"
"What if a severely wounded remnant of the Fierce Beasts is lying asleep at the bottom? What if some evil cultivator powerhouse left this here as bait to fish for prey?"
All kinds of paranoid suspicions churned through his mind.
To be on the safe side, Lu Changsheng decided to stay put for now.
Like a stone that had lost all life, he lay motionless where the bushes met the mud, his eyes fixed on the abyss dozens of yards away, where the dark-red mist churned.
A day passed.
The wind and the waves stayed calm. Not even a bird feather drifted by.
Three days passed.
The baleful energy continued to churn mindlessly in the pit, with no sign of anything entering or leaving.
Ten days passed.
Then half a month.
For a full half-month, Lu Changsheng maintained the same pose. Even when a few poisonous insects with no awakened intelligence crawled over his head, he didn't move a muscle.
Only after he had checked hundreds, then thousands of times and confirmed that within ten miles, apart from the wind and the churning baleful energy, there was absolutely no other sound of breathing did he carefully climb out of the mud.
"Phew... it should be safe now."
Lu Changsheng shook the dried, caked mud off his body and crept toward the Sha Qi Pit.
It was a mere few dozen yards away, yet it took him the time it took an incense stick to burn to get there.
With every step, he stopped to look all around. At the slightest stir in the wind or grass, he would immediately drop to the ground and play dead.
After painstakingly making his way to the edge of the pit, he felt the cold, frenzied air wash over him and took a deep breath.
But he still didn't immediately start purifying it.
"When you're away from home, safety comes first. Before getting to work, I need to get my safety precautions in place."
Before you continue