During his captivity, Han Yi had also tried to escape.
Yet the monsters seemed to place great importance on him, guarding him around the clock without a single lapse.
They gave Han Yi no opening whatsoever.
Facing the monster guards who constantly glared at him with predatory, vicious eyes, Han Yi could only swallow hard and abandon his escape plan.
Fortunately, conditions in this cage were passable, and the monsters brought him food and drink punctually every day.
It was not too unbearable.
In this manner, more than ten days passed. Then, the monsters tied Han Yi up securely once again and marched him to the roasting stake.
"I am finished! Had I known this would happen, I would rather have died a quick death at the hands of that cultivator earlier!"
Just as Han Yi was thinking this, another bizarre turn of events occurred.
Rumbling thunder echoed across the heavens.
Soon, a torrential downpour came sweeping in, instantly extinguishing the bonfire that had barely managed to build up.
Now, not only were the monsters gripped by absolute panic, but Han Yi himself was stunned.
As if something had just struck him, he stared in a daze, not even noticing when he was carried back to the cage.
The third sacrifice was an exceptionally long time coming.
Some internal rift seemed to have broken out among the monsters. From inside his cage, Han Yi could faintly hear rather heated arguments breaking out from time to time outside.
Only after a full thirty-odd days was Han Yi carried out once more.
This time, the day seemed to have been painstakingly selected, exceptionally clear and sunny.
The expression on every monster's face was grave and dead-serious.
The clamorous scenes of the previous two times did not happen again.
Han Yi's heart, however, was as calm as still water.
Far from being afraid, he was anticipating something.
The monsters chanted mysterious songs in unison, dancing with abandon.
Amidst their singing and dancing, Han Yi was brought closer and closer to the blazing fire.
Right at that moment, an uncanny gust of wind suddenly swept between heaven and earth.
It not only sent the dancing monsters, who had been moving in disciplined harmony, stumbling in disarray, but also scattered the wood neatly piled in the center.
Flames ran wild, setting the monsters' village ablaze.
Yet Han Yi, standing right beside it, remained miraculously unscathed.
Seeing this, Han Yi could not help throwing his head back in laughter.
Meanwhile, the monsters thrown into chaos all cast fearful gazes, secretly taking in the figure amidst the firelight.
From then on, Han Yi's status in the monster village completely transformed.
Not only was he spared any further imprisonment, but he was also provided with the most comfortable house in the village.
His daily food was the very best the entire village had to offer.
When the monsters saw Han Yi, they were no longer ferocious and menacing as before.
Instead, they bowed low with hunched backs, not daring to look him in the eye.
Grand though the treatment was, Han Yi was nonetheless a proud Qi Condensation cultivator.
Living like an outright savage was naturally unacceptable to him.
The thought of escaping crossed his mind again, but after thinking it over, he abandoned the idea.
This world was vastly different from the cultivation world, and spiritual energy was entirely absent.
Here, he was no different from a mortal too feeble to truss a chicken.
For now, he was relatively safe in this monster village.
If he ran out rashly, he might run into other dangers and throw his life away for nothing.
Thus, Han Yi decided to settle in the village for the time being.
He began learning the monsters' language and attempted to communicate with them.
With the passage of time, Han Yi gradually came to understand his circumstances.
The village was called "Zhu," situated on an endless wilderness.
Across the wilderness, half-human, half-beast monsters like them were everywhere.
The fewer traces of "human" they bore on their bodies, the more powerful the monsters were.
A place like Zhu Village, where they had human bodies and beastly faces, counted among the weakest of villages.
It was said that deep within the wilderness, supreme beings who had completely transformed into beasts possessed power capable of cleaving mountains and halting rivers.
Meanwhile, an entirely human body like Han Yi's was regarded as "heresy"—a creature that offended the deities in heaven.
He had to be burned alive in a sacrificial rite to appease the wrath of the gods.
Yet three times in a row, the sacrificial rites had been disrupted by celestial phenomena.
The monsters of Zhu Village realized the extraordinary nature of this heretic Han Yi.
Consequently, they had no choice but to give up on burning him.
At the altar in the center of Zhu Village, Han Yi saw the statue of the deity the monsters spoke of.
It was an extraordinary bird standing proud with its head held high, magnificent and noble.
While the monsters of Zhu Village knelt all over the ground before the statue, Han Yi was shaken to his core.
It also confirmed his earlier suspicion.
This deity bore an astonishing resemblance to the Heavenly Destiny Profound Bird recorded in the *Heavenly Fortune Scripture* he cultivated.
"Although there is no spiritual energy and I cannot cultivate, the Feather of the Profound Bird prepared in my dantian for Foundation Establishment feels as if it has returned home.
"It seems to be continuously absorbing an enigmatic, stray energy drifting through the air, undergoing a metamorphosis."
An inexplicable gleam flashed in Han Yi's eyes.
According to the *Heavenly Fortune Scripture*, theoretically speaking, when the divine abilities of the Profound Bird clan were cultivated to the peak, it was "Heaven's fortune is my fortune, and my destiny is Heaven's mandate."
Heaven and self as one, with no distinction between the two.
In the Xuanhuang Realm, achieving such a state was naturally extraordinarily difficult. Leave alone a petty Profound Bird, even a sovereign of spirit beasts would likely find it impossible.
Thus arose a second-best compromise:
Finding a pocket world to serve as one's own dao sanctuary.
Fusing with the minor heavenly fortune of a pocket world would naturally be far easier.
Once achieved, within that pocket world, the Profound Bird would be an entity akin to the Heavenly Dao itself.
Reshaping mountains and rivers with a mere thought would be child's play.
"What the Feather of the Profound Bird is absorbing must be the shattered, drifting heavenly fortune of this world," Han Yi thought, lost in contemplation.
"Heavenly fortune originally belonged to the Profound Bird that refined this world; it shouldn't have been absorbable by an outsider like me. Not even if I cultivate the Heavenly Fortune Scripture and possess the Feather of the Profound Bird.
"For the current situation to occur, there is only one possibility.
"And that is..."
A sudden surge of excitement welled up in Han Yi's eyes.
"The Profound Bird that originally fused with this world's heavenly fortune...
"has fallen!
"And not much time seems to have passed since its demise. The world's original Heavenly Dao has not recovered, and its heavenly fortune is shattered and scattered all over the ground like ownerless treasure!
"The Dao of Fortune is profoundly abstruse. Ordinary cultivators cannot detect it at all. Even if they could faintly sense it, it would be useless to them.
"But I am different!
"To me, this place is an absolute treasure trove!
"A subconscious instinct to survive could stir the drifting heavenly fortune to summon wind and call down rain.
"If I can absorb all the heavenly fortune of this world..."
A glimmer of greed and ambition instantly surfaced in Han Yi's eyes.
"Surviving a great catastrophe truly brings immense good fortune!"
Looking out at this vast, unknown world, boundless heroic pride surged in his chest.
"Once I integrate this world's heavenly fortune and return to the Xuanhuang Realm, I shall be like a flying dragon soaring in the heavens, unstoppable!"
Picturing his future prospects, Han Yi could not help smiling with irrepressible delight.
Chapter 552