Over ten thousand people shouted in unison, their voices shaking the mountain.
Yet the sight only drew even more unbridled laughter from the goose-headed half-human. "Hahahaha! You want to leave?"
The fiend spoke:
"Let me enlighten you all. To refine the spirit, one must harvest the fortune of heaven and earth. Only then can one grasp the Heavenly Mandate.
"The reason these five earthbound Pill Fruits could merge into one and assume the guise of a false divinity was that they borrowed Mount Lu's Fortune.
"If they leave this place and abandon Mount Lu's Fortune, they will be beaten back into their original forms on the spot, reduced to the Pill Fruit realm."
Those words reached Fang Shu and the others, filling them with shock and doubt.
"The Pill Fruit realm? Does he mean the golden core realm?"
"Without fortune, one cannot refine the spirit? Just what is this fortune?"
"Wait, a false divinity? Beaten back into their original forms? Hasn't the Beauty Palace Master already refined the spirit? How can someone who has refined the spirit be beaten back into their original form!?"
The tearful pleas on the earthen mound dissolved into confusion. Many raised their heads, gazing at the goose-headed half-human either in disbelief or with eyes full of hatred.
Someone among them shouted:
"You Goose Demon! Stop trying to shake our Dao hearts and slander our Mount Lu Divine Immortal!"
"Damn you! Who would have thought someone from the Profound Teaching would show such a face? You devour people to cultivate, and still stoop to belittling our Mount Lu Divine Immortal!"
Standing amid the outraged crowd, Fang Shu saw even the Deer Cart Earth Immortal, always so gentle and refined, lose control and curse:
"Bullshit! Our Mount Lu Dao Lineage has declined and flourished time and again.