Ancient Fierce Beast Remains

He muttered to himself while controlling the threads of merit fire to purify the Sha Qi.

During this process, his control over the Great Dao merit within his body also became increasingly proficient through subtle influence.

The thread of fire that originally required his full concentration to control could now be manipulated with precision using only half of his focus.

Five hundred years passed.

The Heavenly Dao merit accumulated within Lu Changsheng's dantian had gathered into a shallow golden puddle.

These Heavenly Dao merits were being assimilated bit by bit by his own Great Dao merit, transforming into his core source of power.

The bottleneck of the early-stage Celestial Immortal realm, which had trapped him for over five thousand years, finally showed a faint sign of loosening.

"There's a way! There really is a way!"

Feeling the loosening of his cultivation base, Lu Changsheng's exhausted spirit was invigorated once more.

Like a laborer who had just seen the hope of buying a house in full, he worked even harder.

Time slipped away like sand between fingers in this ripple-less repetition.

The alternation of spring, summer, autumn, and winter lost its meaning here; only the surrounding bushes withered and flourished, flourished and withered.

A full eight hundred years.

It had been a full eight hundred years since Lu Changsheng left that nameless low-mountain cave dwelling.

For these eight hundred years, he had not moved a single step.

He was surrounded by piles of discarded array disk debris, all of which he had tossed aside after his spiritual power was exhausted.

The various scrap-metal magic treasures hanging on his body had also become dim and lusterless due to the lack of mana nourishment for such a long time.

Yet, his eyes were brighter than they had been eight hundred years ago, revealing a sense of resilience and depth.

"Hum—"

As the final thread of merit fire swept across the air, it emitted a faint, light hum.

Above Lu Changsheng's head, another grain of golden Heavenly Dao merit drifted down.

He took a deep breath, gathered this grain of merit into his dantian, and then slowly opened his eyes.

The dark red Sha Qi that had churned for who knew how many ages had now completely vanished.

The air no longer held that nauseating, corrosive, and manic sensation; in its place was the cold and vast aura that originally belonged to the primordial world.

"Finally... drained it dry."

Lu Changsheng stretched his body, his bones emitting a series of pops like roasting beans.

He stood up, walked to the edge of the abyss that had lost its cover of Sha Qi, and looked down.

He had originally thought this was just an ordinary deep pit corroded by Sha Qi.

But when he truly saw the scene at the bottom of the pit.

His mood, which had just relaxed after earning a large amount of merit, instantly tightened.

The smile on his face froze.

"What... what kind of monster is this?"

In the bottom of the pit, which was hundreds of feet deep, there was no level soil or rock.

There, the earth had split into a hideous fissure, and a miniature ley line radiating faint spiritual energy had been forcibly severed.

And at the center of the broken ley line.

Stuck upside down was half of a massive beast horn, several feet long.

Although the beast horn was broken, it still radiated a pure aura of destruction and brutality that made one's soul tremble.

Lu Changsheng only glanced at it once before he felt as if his soul had been struck hard by a heavy hammer, nearly causing him to tumble into the pit.

He hurriedly retreated more than a dozen steps, falling onto the muddy ground with a thud.

His once brilliant golden eyes were now filled with shock and uncertainty.

In that split second of eye contact, he felt as if that pitch-black half-horn were a living creature, roaring right at him.

That brutal, bloodthirsty will to destroy all life in the world was simply not something that the current innate beings could possess.

"Remains of a fierce beast... This is definitely the remains left behind after a top-tier fierce beast king died during the Fierce Beast Tribulation!"

Lu Changsheng swallowed hard, feeling a chill run down his back.

He had been "lying low" in that nameless low mountain for five thousand years; although he had never stepped out, the mass of Great Dao merit he had integrated into his mind contained, to some extent, fragmented memories from when the world first opened.

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 from the creation of the world.

They had no reason and did not cultivate the Heavenly Dao; their only instinct was destruction.

Back then, the great powers of the hundred primordial clans joined forces, and no one knew how many lives were sacrificed before the fierce beasts of that era were completely wiped out.

"No wonder..."

Lu Changsheng looked at the massive black beast horn at the bottom of the pit, suddenly enlightened.

"No wonder a Sha Qi pit would appear in this remote place for no reason."

"So, the dark red mist I've been painstakingly draining for the past eight hundred years wasn't some natural Sha Qi at all, but the exhaust leaking from this severed beast horn!"

This half of a beast horn was like an abandoned source continuously leaking nuclear radiation.

It had jammed itself right into the fracture of this micro-ley line, polluting the ley line's spiritual energy day and night, converting it into Sha Qi, and then overflowing to the surface.

"If I don't pull this thing out and reconnect the ley line, this pit will be filled with Sha Qi again in less than a thousand years."

Lu Changsheng muttered to himself.

He braced himself against the ground to stand up and brushed the dirt off his backside.

True to his usual cautious nature, his first instinct upon recognizing this object as the remains of a beast king was to turn around and run—the further, the better.

After all, this thing was far too dangerous.

Even as a mere inanimate fragment, the destructive will attached to it was enough to cause a Celestial Immortal's soul to collapse and fall into madness in an instant.

"Retreat! Retreat immediately! This job is way above my pay grade."

Lu Changsheng grumbled as he turned around, lifting his claws to scurry away along the path he had come.

He didn't even bother to clean up the discarded remnants of the formation he had used.

One step.

Two steps.

Three steps.

Lu Changsheng hadn't even gone ten steps before his feet came to a grinding halt.

He stood frozen in place like a statue, completely motionless.

In his mind, two distinct voices were fighting tooth and nail.

One voice was screaming at the top of its lungs:

"Run! Do you want to die? That's the horn of a beast king! If you touch it, your Great Dao merit will be consumed frantically just to protect you, and you won't even have a place to cry when it's gone!"

Yet the other voice whispered in his ear with an irresistible temptation:

"But that's a ley line! Reconnecting a ley line and mending the flaws of heaven and earth—that's a top-tier, heavy-duty project in the Primordial World!"

"You've spent eight hundred years playing janitor, and just draining a bit of exhaust was enough to loosen your bottleneck. If you were to plug this 'nuclear leak source'..."

Lu Changsheng turned back around, his gaze locked firmly onto the beast horn and the fractured ley line at the bottom of the pit.

His eyes slowly turned red.

Not from falling into madness, but from greed.

"Fortune favors the bold... screw 'fortune favors the bold'! I never seek out danger!"