Chapter 1057: The Tianyang Immortal War Puppet
"As if I needed you to remind me. I locked those kids up the moment they returned. It's just that the interrogation hasn't yielded any results yet," Zhou replied coolly.
...
Li Fan left Transmitter Zhou's small world, emerging on the border of Tianquan Province.
After a glance in the direction of the nearby Gloomy Prison, Li Fan slowly drew back his gaze.
"I'll have a chance to go down and take a look eventually. No need to rush."
Then, he sped toward the Spirit Wood Realm.
"Junior Brother, no one's following us, are they?" After flying for some time, Li Fan suddenly asked in his mind.
In an instant, a suit of transparent, sharply angled armor materialized around him, completely encasing his body.
Tianyang's voice emanated from the armor. "Don't worry, Senior Brother. I've already severed the two spiritual senses tracking us. I even gave them a little warning."
And all these changes were brought about by this immortal-grade [War Puppet]. This war puppet, or more accurately, battle armor, was the very source of Li Fan's confidence to face two Dharma Transmitters alone.
Deeply provoked after being outmaneuvered by Mo Rubin, Li Fan had transferred that pressure onto everyone in the Spirit Wood Realm.
The Master Artisan, in an extraordinary display of skill, completed the immortal-grade puppet in just five years. Even the Medicine King Sect produced a string of successes that greatly pleased Li Fan, but that is a story for another time.
After his complete transformation, Tianyang's power had undergone a cataclysmic change. Even at full strength, Li Fan couldn't breach his defenses. His own divine abilities, like the Drawing Silk and Life Cutting technique or the Five Elements Annihilation Sword, were utterly powerless against Tianyang.
Even spiritual sense attacks were like a clay ox sinking into the sea, vanishing without a trace. Only the replicated Chaos Character technique could give Tianyang any trouble, and even that was limited.
Powered by the transcendent energy of Source Power Essence, Tianyang's current strength was certainly no less than that of a Longevity cultivator practicing the New Method of the Xuanhuang Realm. He might have lacked offensive techniques, but with the body of an immortal-grade puppet, he could only be suppressed, never destroyed, even in defeat.
With Tianyang's puppet body—a defense comparable to a Longevity cultivator—acting as his armor, why would Li Fan give a second thought to a mere pair of Dharma Transmitters? If not for the unexpected discovery that Mo Rubin secretly controlled the entire Ten Thousand Immortals Alliance, Li Fan would have simply captured and subjugated them both on the spot.
The protection Tianyang provided was absolute. It was not merely physical; any spiritual attack would first have to shatter Tianyang's indomitable will before it could even touch Li Fan. And how formidable was that will? During his Foundation Establishment, it had remained crystallized and undying for millennia, becoming an eternal echo of his consciousness. Now, as an immortal puppet, that will had been elevated to a state that even Li Fan found humbling.
In short, encased within Tianyang's armor, Li Fan experienced an unprecedented sense of security. He felt fearless, filled with enough confidence to face Mo Rubin himself.
Tianyang swiftly guided Li Fan back to the Spirit Wood Realm. Five years had passed, and the realm had once again transformed dramatically.
The small worlds once connected to the Spirit Wood Realm via spatial passages—such as the Li Realm, the Empire, and the Beast Seed Realm—had slowly begun to fuse with it.
By simulating the Heavenly Dao and observing how the Xuanhuang Realm fused with other cultivation worlds, Li Fan had grasped the method of world-devouring and integration.
However, with his current power, replicating this process on the scale of the Xuanhuang Realm was still a considerable stretch.
He had to find an alternative, relying on the method of Array Refining.
From a macroscopic perspective, the Spirit Wood Realm now resembled a misshapen creature, with numerous smaller worlds grafted onto its body.
But aesthetics had never been Li Fan's priority—functionality was all that mattered.
Besides, this was his first attempt. As the saying goes, practice makes perfect; he was confident his technique for "fabricating" and fusing worlds would only improve with time.
Beyond the changes to the Spirit Wood Realm itself, the Federation of All Worlds had been organized into various departments based on function. It was now a proper organization, no longer just an empty framework.
There was [Alchemy], with former members of the Medicine King Sect at its core. [Artifact Refining], led by the Master Artisan, Fang Zaiji, and numerous apprentices. [Exploration], headed by his clone Li Qing, its backbone formed by elite, death-sworn soldiers selected from the various small worlds. And [Dao Illumination], composed mainly of young, prodigiously talented cultivators from the Mountain River Pavilion and beyond.
...
It had grown in scale and projected a magnificent aura.
Without disturbing anyone, Li Fan went straight to a vast space that had been carved out next to his underground chamber.
At present, he was the only one who knew of its existence. The entire space was shielded by a barrier of seven-colored divine light.
Li Fan had named this fledgling department [World Annihilation].
True to its name, the future task of its cultivators would be to research various methods for destroying the Xuanhuang Realm.
The concept was so shocking that, despite the absolute loyalty of the Federation's cultivators, Li Fan had not yet revealed the department's existence to them.
"It seems I'll have to find people who are just as extreme," he mused. "The Xuanhuang Realm is vast. If I search hard enough, I'm bound to find them."
As he pondered this, Li Fan's gaze fell upon the objects suspended within the [World Annihilation] space, each shrouded in a globe of seven-colored light.
Most were patches of grey mold, cultivated over the last five years and kept in reserve for emergencies. But there were a few new additions as well.
Li Fan extended his hand, and a seemingly faded, listless globe of seven-colored light drifted into his palm.
"The World Destruction Arrow..."
"By simulating the Heavenly Dao, I was able to clearly perceive the power of the weirdness. And now, I can finally replicate it."
The World Destruction Arrow was the ultimate weapon used by Heaven Alliance cultivators in a previous cycle to fight back against the Profound Net. It harnessed the destructive power of the weirdness to inflict localized damage upon the network.
Now, in a reality where the Heavenly Profound Mirror has not yet taken the place of Heaven, the arrow's effect is different: it triggers widespread outbreaks of weirdness, causing the Xuanhuang Realm's Heavenly Dao to spiral out of control.
Li Fan didn't generate the weird power for the arrows himself. Instead, he personally traveled to regions where weirdness had erupted, collecting it bit by bit before sealing it away in the seven-colored divine light.
His supply was finite—once an arrow was used, it was gone. However, given the frequency of weirdness outbreaks across the Xuanhuang Realm, he wasn't concerned about running out anytime soon.
Aside from the World Destruction Arrows, the other great weapon in the [World Annihilation] space was the Chaos Character technique.
Drawing on his experience with automatic detonation from his 115th life and incorporating design improvements from the Master Artisan, he had engraved the Chaos Character technique inside an intelligent puppet.
The puppet could travel to a designated location and detonate the Chaos Character technique at a precise time, all according to Li Fan's instructions.
Best of all, the puppet was inherently capable of interfering with causality, making it exceptionally difficult for anyone to use divination to trace the attack back to its mastermind.
(End of Chapter)
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