He muttered to himself as he controlled the merit flame to purify the baleful qi.
As he did so, his control over the Great Dao Merit within his body also grew more and more skillful, little by little.
The flame thread, which had originally required his full concentration to control, now took only half his attention to wield with precision.
Five hundred years passed.
The Heavenly Dao Merit accumulated in Lu Changsheng's dantian had gathered into a shallow golden pool.
Bit by bit, his own Great Dao Merit was assimilating this Heavenly Dao Merit, transforming it into his most fundamental source of power.
The bottleneck at the early stage of the Heavenly Immortal realm, which had trapped him for over five thousand years, finally showed the faintest sign of loosening.
"There's hope! There really is!"
Feeling his cultivation loosen, Lu Changsheng's exhausted spirits lifted once more.
He was like a wage slave who'd glimpsed the hope of buying a home outright, working with even greater zeal.
Time slipped away amid this utterly uneventful repetition, as swiftly as sand through his fingers.
The changing seasons had lost all meaning here. Only the surrounding shrubs withered and flourished, then withered and flourished again.
A full eight hundred years.
A full eight hundred years had passed since Lu Changsheng left the cave dwelling on the Nameless Low Mountain.
In all those eight hundred years, he had not moved a single step.
Scraps from discarded formation plates were piled all around him, all of them things he had tossed aside once his spiritual energy ran dry.
The battered, mismatched magical treasures hanging from him had grown even duller after going so long without being nourished by magical power.
But his eyes were brighter than they had been eight hundred years ago, gleaming with tenacity and depth.
"Bzz—"
As the last thread of merit flame swept through the air, it let out a faint hum.
Another speck of golden Heavenly Dao Merit drifted down above Lu Changsheng's head.
He drew a deep breath, took the speck of merit into his dantian, then slowly opened his eyes.
The dark-red baleful qi that had churned there for countless ages had now vanished completely.
The air no longer carried that nauseating, corrosive, frenzied feeling. In its place was the cool, vast aura that had originally filled the Primordial Land.
"Finally... drained it dry."
Lu Changsheng stretched mightily. His bones crackled like beans popping in a pan.
He stood and walked to the edge of the abyss, now uncovered by the baleful qi, and peered down.
He had thought it was just an ordinary pit, eroded by baleful qi.
But when he finally saw what lay at the bottom—
His spirits, which had just relaxed after earning a great deal of merit, tensed in an instant.
The smile on his face froze.
"Wh-what in the world is that?"
At the bottom of the pit, hundreds of feet deep, there was no flat earth or rock.
The ground had split open into a jagged fissure, and a miniature Earth Vein, faintly radiating spiritual energy, had been forcibly severed in the middle.
At the very center of the broken Earth Vein—
A gigantic Half Beast Horn, several yards long, had been driven point-first into the ground.
Though the Beast Horn had broken off, it still radiated an aura of pure destruction and savagery that made his soul tremble.
Lu Changsheng took just one look, and it felt as if a heavy hammer had struck his soul. He nearly pitched headfirst into the pit.
He hurriedly lurched back more than a dozen steps, then dropped onto his backside in the mud.
His once-radiant golden eyes were now filled with uncertainty and alarm.
For that brief instant, the half of the black Beast Horn seemed almost alive, roaring right at him.
That savage, bloodthirsty will, that desire to destroy every living thing under heaven and earth—it was beyond anything the innate beings of this age could possess.
"Fierce Beast remains... They absolutely have to be the remains of some top Fierce Beast King that died during the Ferocious Beast Tribulation!"
Lu Changsheng swallowed, a chill running down his back.
He had stayed holed up on that Nameless Low Mountain for five thousand years without ever venturing out, but the mass of Great Dao Merit fused into his mind carried, to some extent, fragmentary memories from the dawn of the world.
Fierce Beasts were monsters born from the resentment of the Three Thousand Chaos Demon Gods after their deaths, mixed with the earth, water, fire, and wind unleashed when heaven and earth were created.
They had no reason, did not cultivate the Heavenly Dao, and had but one instinct: destruction.
Back then, the great experts of the hundred races of the Primordial Land joined forces. Who knew how many lives they had sacrificed before they finally wiped out the Fierce Beasts of that era?
"No wonder..."
Lu Changsheng stared at the enormous black Beast Horn at the bottom of the pit and suddenly understood.
"No wonder a Sha Qi Pit appeared out of nowhere in this remote place."
"So the dark-red mist I've spent eight hundred years painstakingly draining wasn't natural baleful qi at all. It was just the exhaust leaking from this half Beast Horn!"
The Half Beast Horn was like a discarded source that kept leaking nuclear radiation.
By sheer rotten luck, it had become lodged in the break in this miniature Earth Vein, polluting its spiritual energy day and night, turning it into baleful qi, and seeping it up to the surface.
"If I don't pull this thing out and reconnect the Earth Vein, the pit will fill with baleful qi again in less than a thousand years."
Lu Changsheng muttered to himself.
He braced himself against the ground and stood, then patted the mud off his backside.
By his usual Dao of Cowardice, after realizing this thing was the remains of a Fierce Beast King, his first instinct should have been to turn and run as far away as possible.
After all, this thing was far too dangerous.
Even though it was now only a dead fragment, the destructive will clinging to it was enough to make a Heavenly Immortal cultivator's soul collapse and send him into cultivation deviation in an instant.
"Retreat! Get out of here! This job is way above my pay grade."
Muttering to himself, Lu Changsheng turned and started to scurry back the way he had come.
He didn't even plan to pick up the scraps of the formations he had used up.
One step.
Two steps.
Three steps.
Lu Changsheng had gone fewer than ten steps when his feet abruptly came to a halt.
He stood frozen in place like a statue, not moving an inch.
In his mind, two entirely different voices were fighting furiously.
One voice shouted itself hoarse:
"Run! Do you want to die? That's the horn of a Fierce Beast King! Touch it, and your Great Dao Merit will be consumed like crazy to protect you. When that happens, you won't even have anywhere to cry!"
But another voice whispered in his ear, carrying an irresistible temptation:
"That's an Earth Vein! Reconnecting it and repairing a flaw in heaven and earth—that's a top-tier undertaking in the Primordial Land!"
"You spent eight hundred years cleaning up, and draining a little exhaust was enough to loosen your bottleneck. If you plug this 'nuclear leak'..."
Lu Changsheng turned around and stared fixedly at the half Beast Horn and the broken Earth Vein at the bottom of the pit.
His eyes slowly reddened.
He wasn't possessed. He was drooling with greed.
"Fortune favors the bold... Screw fortune favoring the bold! I've never been one to take risks!"
Before you continue