"I have magic power now?! I've actually turned into a demon insect?!"
Feeling the faint, surging power within his body, the weak telekinesis born from his own mind, and the aura of icy frost constantly manifesting around him, Li Qi finally confirmed it.
He had become a demon!
Even if he was only the lowest-grade demon insect, he had crossed the shackles between ordinary and supernatural bugs, achieving a leap from zero to one!
In anything, the hardest part is not anything else, but how to achieve the transformation from zero to one.
After awakening his spiritual telekinesis, Li Qi sensed the special energy ubiquitous between heaven and earth.
The spiritual energy of heaven and earth!
This spiritual energy was like an endless fog, existing in the sky, the earth, flowers, plants, trees, rocks, sunlight, clouds and mist, and even in wind and rain.
All things in the world were attached to a certain mist of spiritual energy.
He could perceive their existence.
Yet Li Qi could not budge them; even the weakest wisps of heaven and earth spiritual energy possessed very strong inertia.
It was as if they were the heaviest things in the world, and moving even a fraction of an inch was extremely difficult.
Only his innate protective frost, sustained by his bloodline, absorbed wisps of spiritual energy and gathered it around him to form a protective barrier of frost that kept him safe.
This showed just how ubiquitous heaven and earth spiritual energy was, yet how difficult it was to control.
Without corresponding cultivation methods, spells, divine abilities, or innate techniques, attempting to control it was extraordinarily difficult!
And magic power was, in reality, heaven and earth spiritual energy branded with one's own mark, transforming it from ownerless to owned.
Li Qi carefully sensed this process.
Gradually, the boundless Karmic Luck upon his body began to empower him, and once again, he fell into a state of epiphany.
"Blessed with supreme fortune, you have once again fortuitously stumbled into a state of epiphany with an occurrence probability of less than one in a hundred million."
"You have comprehended a portion of the mysteries behind the manifestation of the protective frost!"
"You ought to have fully mastered the protective frost, but due to your excessively weak life origin, you have only mastered a portion of its mysteries!"
"Skill-type powers such as spells, innate techniques, secret techniques, and divine abilities are divided into the levels of Entry, Initial Mastery, Proficiency, Mastery, Great Accomplishment, Perfection, and Breaking Limits!"
"Your mastery of the protective frost innate technique has been upgraded from the Entry level to the Initial Mastery level. You can retract the protective frost at any time, or burst forth with it whenever you wish."
"You can now activate twice the amount of protective frost as originally possible!"
"The hidden Cold Silkworm bloodline within your green caterpillar body has undergone a slight awakening!"
"As a result, you have acquired 1% of the Cold Silkworm bloodline!"
As the state of epiphany continued, the white stripes on Li Qi's green caterpillar body upgraded from one to two.
These snow-white stripes were, in truth, the physical manifestation of his enhanced Cold Silkworm bloodline.
Emerging from the state of epiphany once again, Li Qi felt that the effective range of his protective frost had nearly doubled; he could now project the frost to a zone of about 30 centimeters around him.
At the same time, his Cold Silkworm bloodline had slightly improved, which enhanced the physical strength of his green caterpillar body by at least twofold.
His physical strength had increased by an even greater margin.
"It seems that my Karmic Luck manifests primarily as exceptionally good fortune!"
"Having powerful Karmic Luck is the fundamental basis for my survival in this world!"
"I just wonder, will my Karmic Luck also trigger a counterattack if someone harbors malice toward me?"
...
After sensing and analyzing his own strength, Li Qi came to understand his situation.
Karmic Luck was the core!
However, he still had no solid grasp of the extent and scale at which this powerful Karmic Luck would manifest.
Yet at that very moment, a mysterious prompt provided the answer.
"Although your Karmic Luck defies the heavens and your fortune is supreme, Karmic Luck is not omnipotent."
"Only when you suffer life-threatening harm, or when such harm is imminent, will Karmic Luck act to protect you to the maximum extent."
"Under ordinary circumstances, Karmic Luck will merely make you appear exceptionally lucky, with a higher degree of fortune than others, and it will not casually use Karmic Luck to counterattack enemies!"
These crucial mysterious prompt messages poured a bucket of cold water over Li Qi.
They made him realize that while supreme fortune was powerful and could save his life, he still could not act recklessly.
Actually, Li Qi had no intention of acting recklessly.
In this world where Daluo, Quasi-Saints, and Sages existed, doing something like that was absolute suicide.
Right now, even ordinary beasts below the level of immortals could potentially take his life.
Even if they didn't take his life, they could seal him away or trap him, and he would ultimately die of old age.
Powerful Karmic Luck could be his trump card, but it could not be his backing for running amok!
"This world is incomparably dangerous; the gods and Buddhas of the heavens scheme against all living beings, the powerful Quasi-Saints look down upon all things, and the Sages sit firmly above the fate of heaven and earth!"
"Moreover, the Journey to the West calamity is about to arrive, so I must be cautious, and then cautious again!"
"This is Huaguo Mountain, after all—the place where the Journey to the West begins!"
...
Li Qi pondered continuously in his heart, setting down his guiding principle for the future: in all things, he must be supremely cautious.
"You are blessed with supreme fortune, shrouded by heaven-defying Karmic Luck. Unless powerful immortals and deities look directly upon you, it will be extremely difficult for them to calculate your heavenly secrets or observe your existence!"
At this moment, the mysterious prompt brought more information, which could be considered good news.
Since others could not calculate heavenly secrets regarding him, as long as he carefully concealed himself, he would not fall into the eyes of mighty beings, nor would he end up on anyone's chessboard.
Thus, in the days that followed, he carefully hid among the bushes, coming out at night to forage while cautiously absorbing the moonlight for cultivation.
His magic power, telekinesis, and bloodline all began to grow bit by bit.
Initially, Li Qi's telekinesis could only observe things within a one-meter radius around him.
Yet as his cultivation continued, ten days later, his telekinesis observation range increased to ten meters, and after a month, it increased to one hundred meters.
Benefiting from the cultivation and advancement of the Transcendent Cold Moon Contemplation Technique, Li Qi's progress in strength was undoubtedly the fastest among his fellow demon insects.
After his observation range increased to one hundred meters, Li Qi finally sensed the extraordinary nature of this world.
Not far away, some fifty meters from him, a red fish swam in a small stream; upon its body was a faint aura of magic power and an ineffable air of majesty.
"You have observed a red carp possessing Flood Dragon bloodline; it possesses the faintest trace of dragon might!"
In a dark rock crevice more seventy meters away from him, a green, three-foot-long little snake lurked.
"You have observed the existence of a juvenile Wind Spirit Green Snake; it possesses the potential to grow into a Demon Immortal, and it is also your savior snake."
"Yet if it discovers you, it will surely swallow you to enhance its bloodline!"
Well, well!
This was the very snake that had once saved his life, except that the creature had no idea about it, and if they met again, it would only treat him as a mortal enemy.
However, this snake's potential was truly formidable, actually possessing the potential to grow into a Demon Immortal.
Yet very soon, Li Qi discovered another life aura possessing magic power.
That was a one-foot-long black centipede.
And the direction it was heading was precisely the rock crevice of the Wind Spirit Green Snake.
"You have observed a demon insect known as the Ten-Poison Black Centipede; it preys on poisonous things, devouring ten kinds of poisonous demons and absorbing their poison sources to advance into a Ten-Poison Black Centipede. If it devours a hundred kinds of immensely toxic demonic creatures and absorbs their poison sources, it can advance into the Hundred-Poison Black Centipede."
"It has now detected the aura of a new demonic poison spiritual source and is tracking its target!"
The black Ten-Poison Black Centipede discovered the existence of the Wind Spirit Green Snake. It quietly dug through the soil, using its venom to corrode the rocky earth until it became extremely soft, successfully carving out an underground passage.
Relying on this trick, the Ten-Poison Black Centipede silently lurked directly beneath the Wind Spirit Green Snake.
At this moment, the extraordinary instincts of the Wind Spirit Green Snake sensed an aura of danger.
It began to raise its snake head, flicking its tongue to probe the scent information in the air, yet it found nothing abnormal.
Still, the sense of danger made it decide to temporarily leave this place.
Yet right at that moment, the rock fractured, and the Ten-Poison Black Centipede rushed out from within, biting down directly on the Wind Spirit Green Snake's vital spot just behind its head.
Potent venom was injected straight into its heart; the venom, carrying supernatural power, coursed through the blood vessels across the juvenile snake's entire body, paralyzing it completely and causing its life functions to rapidly fade.
Before it had even thoroughly died, however,
the Ten-Poison Black Centipede bit open its body, devouring its flesh while it was still alive, until it found its core venom sac and swallowed it whole.
Next, the Ten-Poison Black Centipede guarded the corpse of the juvenile Wind Spirit Green Snake, absorbing the poison source while feeding on its flesh whenever it felt hungry.
A juvenile Wind Spirit Green Snake with the aptitude to grow into a Demon Immortal had perished here before it could even grow up!
Before one had grown up, whatever bloodline, aptitude, and potential one possessed were all empty things.
This scene delivered a massive shock to Li Qi.
In the Primordial World, all things fought to survive and preyed upon one another; it was truly incomparably dangerous.
Within just the hundred-meter radius of Huaguo Mountain that he had observed, three supernatural life forms already existed.
Just how many ordinary demonic creatures were there across the entire Huaguo Mountain? Their number was probably so vast it defied counting.
And this was just Huaguo Mountain!
One could easily imagine how cruel the competition for survival must be across the broader Primordial land.
It was then that Li Qi truly confirmed the correctness of his strategy to be supremely cautious in all things!