At that very moment.
After eating thirty Huangzhong Plums in a row, Tianlu suddenly sensed something was off.
He hadn't had the Huangzhong Plum Tree for all that long, had he?
No matter how miraculous a Supreme-Grade Xiantian Spiritual Root was, it took one Yuanhui to flower, one to bear fruit, and another to ripen. There was no way it could produce fruit this quickly.
He'd already wolfed down thirty of them, so why did it feel like there were still plenty in his Abdominal Space?
Realizing this, Tianlu immediately split off a wisp of his soul and sent it straight into his Abdominal Space.
The moment his soul entered the Abdominal Space, Tianlu froze.
At the center of the space stood a massive Huangzhong Plum Tree, its branches lush and leafy as it radiated a blue-green divine light that blotted out the sky.
What shocked Tianlu was that all around the tree—and scattered across the space—were nearly a thousand ripe Huangzhong Plums, piled up densely.
The rich fruity fragrance and innate Qi of Creation had almost condensed into tangible liquid.
Tianlu's soul floated in midair, sinking into deep thought.
What was going on?
Had the Huangzhong Plum Tree mutated into some kind of super-productive sow?
No, that couldn't be right. His Abdominal Space could devour treasures and spiritual roots, and even reverse acquired treasures into innate ones or raise the grade of Numinous Treasures and spiritual roots—but it didn't seem to have any ability to accelerate time.
Without time acceleration, how had nearly a thousand Huangzhong Plums grown in such a short time?
The more Tianlu thought about it, the more certain he became that something was wrong. There had to be something fishy going on.
His soul then began roaming through the Abdominal Space, searching every suspicious corner.
He combed through countless places but couldn't find a single suspicious trace.
Just as he was about to give up and write it off as a hidden perk bestowed by the Great Dao—
Tianlu suddenly caught sight of something out of the corner of his eye. Wedged in a crevice between the Huangzhong Plum Tree's thick, coiling branches was a bead.
It was a bead the color of Chaos, its surface completely dull. It even looked a little gray and dusty.
Without a close look, anyone would have mistaken it for an ordinary stone.
But Tianlu was no ordinary cultivator.
He was a Peak Daluo Golden Immortal, an unparalleled divine being who controlled eight laws.
He hurried over and pulled the bead from the crevice in the trunk.
Wrapping it in his soul force, Tianlu began to examine it carefully.
He summoned the Laws of Spatial Great Dao and the Great Dao of Time within him, turning them into two chains of law that slowly probed into the bead.
Boom!
The instant the laws made contact, Tianlu's soul seemed to be pulled into a boundless expanse of Chaos and Void.
There was no heaven or earth there, no Yin-Yang—only endless currents of Chaos churning about, along with fifty complete Chaos restrictions.
Tianlu stared, stunned. With his knowledge, he naturally recognized what this thing was.
It was the Chaos Bead!
One of the Four Great Chaos Treasures, alongside the Heaven-Opening Divine Axe, the Jade Plate of Creation, and the Chaos Green Lotus. The Chaos Bead that could conceal the Heavenly Secrets and contained an entire Chaos World within it?!
Tianlu was completely dumbfounded.
When had this supreme treasure slipped into his belly without him noticing?!
Tianlu was genuinely overjoyed. This was a Chaos Treasure, after all—something that would make even Old Ancestor Hongjun drool.
But his confusion was just as genuine.
He racked his brains, trying to figure out when he'd obtained the Chaos Bead.
He thought back over everything since he'd crossed into the Primordial World: sleeping on Kunlun Mountain, devouring spiritual roots, listening to the Dao at Purple Heaven Palace...
Suddenly, a flash of inspiration lit up his mind. He remembered his early days after crossing into the Primordial World.
Back then, he'd clearly been the Child of the Great Dao, blessed with all kinds of heaven-defying divine abilities. Yet he'd wandered around Kunlun Mountain for ages without even picking up an ordinary innate spiritual herb.
At the time, he'd wondered whether his divine ability to bring him better fortune than anyone else had broken.
Now that he thought about it...
I must've hit the jackpot!
Tianlu suddenly understood.
That's got to be it. The Great Dao must've taken pity on how miserable I was at the start and stuffed the Chaos Bead into my Abdominal Space. The thing hides its own radiance, so it must've been tucked away in some corner where I couldn't find it!
Having found a reasonable explanation, Tianlu couldn't be bothered to think about it any further.
Who cared where it came from? Once it was in a Pixiu's belly, it belonged to him, Tianlu.
Tianlu promptly left behind a wisp of exceptionally powerful soul force and began refining the Chaos Bead inside his Abdominal Space.
The laws contained within the Chaos Bead were simply too vast. Even with his Peak Daluo cultivation, refining the first Chaos restriction would take a long time.
Meanwhile, outside.
Tianlu's main body lay on the Cloud Treasure. After learning the truth, he was in high spirits and immediately began eating with reckless abandon.
He clutched Huangzhong Plums in his two golden paws, devouring them one after another.
Even after he finished off the nearly thousand Huangzhong Plums in his Abdominal Space, he still had the Ren Water Flat Peaches he'd extorted from Hongjun.
Maybe by the time he finished the Huangzhong Plums, there'd be a thousand Flat Peaches, too.
After all, the Chaos Bead held supreme laws of space and time, which naturally included the ability to accelerate time.
Tianlu sensed it briefly and reached a conclusion.
For every day that passed in the outside world, tens of thousands of years passed in his Abdominal Space with the Chaos Bead's help.
No wonder the Huangzhong Plum Tree was bearing fruit like a patch of weeds gone wild.
Time passed, and the Primordial World lost count of the years.
In the blink of an eye, a thousand years had passed in the outside world.
For great powers like the Three Pure Ones, Nuwa, and Di Jun, a thousand years was no more than the time it took to doze off.
They were still searching high and low on Mount Buzhou, seeing nothing strange about it.
After all, treasure-hunting in the Primordial World often took tens of thousands of years at a minimum. Sometimes, the great powers would stake out a single Innate Low-Grade Spiritual Root for several Yuanhui.
Yet as the thousand years passed, their sense of an approaching opportunity grew stronger and stronger, as if it were calling to them from right beside their ears.
And yet they still couldn't find it. Even the usually composed Laozi couldn't help plucking out a few of his own whiskers.
Meanwhile, in the unseen Heavenly Dao Space.
After overseeing the operation of the many laws of the Primordial World, the Heavenly Dao consciousness, enthroned high above, finally reacted—belatedly.
The concealment formation had been set up to deal with that insatiable Pixiu.
But now the Pixiu had already returned from listening to the Dao at Purple Heaven Palace, and the formation still hadn't been lifted.
By this point, it had turned into an opportunity meant for someone destined to receive it.
The Heavenly Dao consciousness rippled faintly, seemingly a little embarrassed.
Then an invisible wave of law swept across Mount Buzhou, instantly dispelling the Heavenly Dao power that had concealed the opportunity.
Rumble!
The instant the Heavenly Dao power withdrew—
A world-shaking surge of Creation erupted halfway up Mount Buzhou.
The Xiantian Gourd Vine had emerged!
In an instant, wondrous signs rose from the earth and filled the heavens.
Endless seven-colored rays of light tore through the clouds and soared into the sky, while auspicious vapors stretched for thousands of miles and clouds of blessing unfurled by the myriad.
The vast spectacle spread across the boundless world. Nearly half of Mount Buzhou could clearly witness the innate radiance that illuminated the universe.
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