I, Hongjun

The black shadow pierced through the clouds, revealing its enormous body in full.

It was a Fierce Beast resembling a gigantic tiger, its entire body covered in pitch-black scales, bone spines growing from its back, and four curved horns on its forehead pointing straight at the heavens.

Its body stretched ten thousand zhang long. Every step it took made vast swaths of forest tremble.

Its six scarlet eyes turned at once and quickly locked onto Qing Xuan in the valley.

There was no probing, nor was there any exchange.

The Fierce Beast opened its enormous maw. Dense baleful aura gathered into a black torrent, instantly withering the plants in its path and throwing even the spiritual energy of heaven and earth into chaos.

Qing Xuan watched the black torrent rushing toward him and raised a hand, pressing it forward.

Within a radius of ten thousand li, heaven and earth suddenly sank.

A phantom of mountains and rivers emerged beneath his palm. The surging black torrent seemed to crash into an invisible world and shattered in an instant.

There was no fear in the Fierce Beast's eyes, only even more frenzied killing intent.

It crushed a mountain beneath its feet, its massive body leaping into the sky as all four claws descended at once.

The gale force alone tore several bottomless fissures through the valley below.

Qing Xuan did not retreat.

Only when the Fierce Beast reached him did he bring down his palm.

Boom!

The void suddenly collapsed.

The Fierce Beast, large enough to blot out the sky, was forcibly slammed back into the earth. Its ten-thousand-zhang body smashed through several mountain peaks, and the scales across its body shattered one after another.

It struggled to rise, but the phantom of a vast world had already enveloped the space above it.

Mountains, rivers, earth, and stars flowed within it.

Then the entire world came crashing down.

The Fierce Beast's roar abruptly ceased.

Its enormous body, along with the fiendish aura within it, disintegrated completely, leaving behind only a massive sunken abyss.

From the moment it appeared to the moment it perished completely, only an instant had passed.

Qing Xuan descended above the abyss, his gaze sweeping over the lingering savage aura between heaven and earth.

This Fierce Beast possessed power at the Golden Immortal level, and its physical body far surpassed that of ordinary living beings. Yet its intelligence was extremely low, leaving it with only the instincts to destroy and kill.

Just as the Fierce Beast's aura completely dissipated, the baleful aura shrouding the valley began to recede as well.

A wisp of golden radiance gathered from heaven and earth and fell into Qing Xuan's body.

It was Merit of Heaven and Earth.

Qing Xuan already had his answer.

Killing this beast not only brought no karmic entanglement, but even earned the recognition of the Primordial World. That was enough to prove what such creatures meant to the Primordial World.

"The Fierce Beast Tribulation."

Qing Xuan looked into the distance.

At the beginning of the Primordial World, the lingering resentment of the Chaos Demon Gods intertwined with the baleful aura born from the creation of heaven and earth, giving rise to Fierce Beasts that knew only slaughter and destruction.

The Beast Emperor Shen Ni commanded countless Fierce Beasts, while the Four Great Fiendish Generals rampaged across heaven and earth.

This was the first great tribulation after the Primordial World was opened.

It was also one of the most ancient eras in the memories of Qing Xuan's previous life.

Now that Golden Immortal Fierce Beasts had already appeared outside Buzhou Mountain, it meant that even if this great tribulation had not yet reached its peak, it had fully erupted.

Qing Xuan waved his sleeve, dispersing the lingering baleful aura in the valley, and did not remain there for long.

He neither changed direction to deliberately seek out more Fierce Beasts nor retreated to Buzhou Mountain simply because the great tribulation had erupted.

With his current cultivation, the ones he truly needed to avoid were existences like Shen Ni and the Four Great Fiendish Generals, who stood at the Great Luo level.

As for ordinary Fierce Beasts, they were not enough to make him stop.

Perhaps he could take this opportunity to kill some Fierce Beasts in the outer regions and gain some merit.

The black-robed figure crossed the abyss and continued eastward.

Behind him, the murky baleful aura gradually dispersed, and spiritual energy of heaven and earth began gathering above the valley once more.

After leaving that valley, Qing Xuan continued walking across the lands of the Primordial World for another ten thousand years.

As he moved farther and farther from Buzhou Mountain, the number of Fierce Beasts appearing along the way gradually increased.

Some Fierce Beasts occupied mountain ranges, corrupting the spiritual energy of heaven and earth across hundreds of millions of li into murky filth.

Others traveled in packs, rampaging wherever they went and leaving shattered mountains and rivers, with all living things wiped out in their wake.

Most of these Fierce Beasts had yet to reach the Golden Immortal level.

Even the occasional Golden Immortal Fierce Beast could not withstand more than a few of Qing Xuan's moves.

Qing Xuan did not specifically hunt them down, but neither would he allow any Fierce Beast he encountered to continue wreaking havoc.

Over those ten thousand years, more than a hundred Fierce Beasts had died at his hands.

Wisps of Merit of Heaven and Earth continuously gathered around him, but he temporarily stored them within his body rather than directly using them to increase his cultivation.

At the same time, his judgment of this Fierce Beast Tribulation became clearer.

The farther north he traveled, the denser the fiendish aura between heaven and earth became.

Large numbers of Fierce Beasts were converging in the north. Tremors frequently came from that land, and from time to time, auras far surpassing Taiyi Golden Immortals swept across heaven and earth.

Clearly, the true battlefield was not beneath his feet, but in the far more distant northern reaches of the Primordial World.

Qing Xuan continued eastward.

He would not deliberately charge into a battlefield where even Great Luo Golden Immortals could perish simply because he knew the outcome of the Fierce Beast Tribulation.

The legends from his previous life could only tell him the broader course of events. They could not walk his own Great Dao for him.

One day, Qing Xuan passed through a mountain range shrouded in baleful aura, and his steps suddenly came to a halt.

More than a dozen Fierce Beast corpses lay scattered across the ground ahead.

Most of them were at the Golden Immortal level. At the very center lay a one-horned Fierce Beast whose body stretched for tens of thousands of li. Even in death, the lingering aura it gave off surpassed that of every Fierce Beast Qing Xuan had encountered before.

Taiyi Golden Immortal.

Qing Xuan's gaze narrowed slightly.

The Taiyi Fierce Beast's physical body was intact, and no obvious wounds could be seen on it. Yet the life force within it had been utterly extinguished.

The other Fierce Beasts were the same.

The surrounding mountains and rivers had not been damaged. Even the plants within the valley remained intact.

The attacker had taken only the Fierce Beasts' lives, without allowing the slightest trace of power to leak outward.

Such control over the Great Dao and magical power was far beyond what Qing Xuan could achieve at present.

"Since you have come, fellow Daoist, why not step forward for a chat?"

A gentle voice suddenly came from ahead.

Qing Xuan looked up.

At some point, a Daoist in plain robes had appeared at the end of the valley.

The Daoist appeared to be only in his twenties. His features were upright, and his aura was natural. Though he stood right there, he seemed to have merged with the whole of heaven and earth.

Above his shoulder, a damaged jade disc slowly revolved.

Three thousand Dao resonances descended from it, then silently merged into the surrounding heaven and earth.

At last, a ripple appeared in Qing Xuan's eyes.

Looking across the current Primordial World, there could be only one person who possessed such a manifestation of the Great Dao and was accompanied by a damaged jade disc.

Sure enough, the plain-robed Daoist stepped forward, smiling as he raised his hands in greeting.

"I am Hongjun."

"Hongjun." Qing Xuan's gaze narrowed slightly.

This name might not yet have spread throughout heaven and earth in the current Primordial World, but in the legends of Qing Xuan's previous life, it was known to all.

The future Dao Ancestor, founder of the Daoist Gate, and the first Heavenly Dao Sage of the Primordial World.

Yet the Hongjun before Qing Xuan had clearly not reached that point.

Though the aura around him was unfathomable, he was still a living being of the Primordial World, not yet the later representative of the Heavenly Dao who sat high within Zixiao Palace and looked down upon the tribulations of heaven and earth.

Qing Xuan neither underestimated him because of this nor revealed anything unusual.

He raised his hand and returned the greeting.

"I am Qing Xuan. Greetings, fellow Daoist."