Yuanqing traveled leisurely along the way, stopping periodically to take in the scenery of the Primordial World.
Having broken through to the mid-stage Daluo Golden Immortal realm, Yuanqing decided to leave the East Sea and journey to Mount Kunlun to travel and gain experience.
Mount Kunlun was the ancestral vein of all mountains, the largest mountain range in the Primordial World second only to Mount Buzhou, and home to countless spiritual roots and spiritual treasures.
Kunlun Mountain was divided into West Kunlun and East Kunlun. East Kunlun was especially thriving and served as the place where the Three Pure Ones would take human form. While the West Kunlun mountain range was not as bustling as East Kunlun, it had nurtured an exceptionally beautiful female immortal of supreme strength, whom Hongjun would later enshrine as the head of all female immortals—none other than the Queen Mother of the West.
At this time, neither the Three Pure Ones nor the Queen Mother of the West had successfully taken human form, as the calamity of the fierce beasts had only just subsided.
Instead, a rare sense of peace pervaded Mount Kunlun, where low-grade innate spiritual roots grew in abundance—treasures that would be considered priceless if placed in a later, spiritually barren age.
Yet, considering the tribulations of the Primordial World, Yuanqing knew that this harmonious scene could not possibly last for long.
The tribulations of the Primordial World were endless, accompanied by unceasing strife.
Numerous factions and individuals sought to seize control of the entire Primordial World by winning over, suppressing, or outright eradicating other forces.
Yuanqing thought to himself with a sigh that the Primordial World was truly this cruel.
Survival of the fittest, natural selection!
There was the Dragon Clan led by Zulong, who had fought previously, along with the Phoenix Clan represented by Yuan Feng whom he had never met, and the Qilin clan represented by Shi Qilin.
To contend for Qi Luck and achieve hegemony over the Primordial World, they sought Sainthood, striving to become the focus of all attention. Yet achieving Sainthood was exceedingly difficult; it required gathering the Qi Luck of the entire Primordial World and bestowing it upon oneself. This necessity drove the major factions into fierce competition and warfare, with various groups constantly being coerced into alliances or wiped out entirely.
Yuanqing pondered quietly: for now, the Three Clans of Dragon, Phoenix, and Qilin were experiencing varying degrees of friction, which was not yet enough to trigger a large-scale war among them.
Once the Three Clans went to war, the Primordial World would suffer untold devastation. And during the Dao-Demon Struggle, the Demon Ancestor Luohou would detonate the ley lines of the Western Land. The karma for detonating those Western ley lines would fall entirely upon Luohou and Hongjun; because of Luohou's self-detonation, Hongjun was left to shoulder the repayment alone, ultimately incurring a massive karmic debt to the West. This very karma was why, when Jieyin and Zhunti later broke away from Xuanmen to establish Buddhism, Hongjun turned a blind eye.
Not to mention the Tribulation of the Magi and Demons, which tore a massive hole in the heavens and snapped Mount Buzhou, the pillar holding up the sky, clean in two. If not for Nuwa using five-colored stones to mend the heavens, and Yuanshi Tianzun cutting off the four limbs of the mysterious turtle to serve as pillars in place of Mount Buzhou, the sky of the Primordial World would have collapsed entirely.
And then there was the Investiture of the Gods tribulation, which threw the Primordial World into a recurrence of earth, water, fire, and wind, shattering the realm until only the Four Continents remained.
Ah, there was no use dwelling on it further. He would simply focus on his own path and stay out of matters that did not concern him whenever possible.
Afterward, Yuanqing slowly resumed his tour, admiring the scenery of Mount Kunlun.
After Pangu cleaved open the chaos to form the Primordial World, the nascent Heavenly Dao had launched a sneak attack upon him.
For at that time, Pangu had exhausted all his divine power and cultivation in opening the heavens, literally working himself to exhaustion, and had furthermore unleashed the nine strikes of heaven-cleaving to successively slay three thousand Chaos Demon Gods, finally bringing this Primordial World into existence.
Following Pangu's death, his body transformed into all things in the universe: his left eye became the sun, his right eye became the moon, his hair and beard formed the brilliant stars in the sky of the Primordial World, his torso turned into mountains and rivers, and his blood transformed into the rivers, seas, and lakes.
"Ah," Yuanqing sighed in awe, "Pangu is truly magnificent."