Chapter 1114: The Spirit Wood War Begins
Time seemed to have lost all meaning in the Gloomy Prison.
Each day offered nothing but the same, unchanging gloom, accompanied by the ceaseless, tormented wails that seemed to echo eternally.
The black mist jailors seemed to possess little intelligence. They regarded Li Fan, their newest prisoner, with nothing more than sinister cackles before mechanically activating the formations within his prison pillar, intent on tormenting him.
Li Fan, of course, effortlessly dispelled every one of them.
Still, he played along, simulating agonizing screams to deceive the jailors, who would then depart, content with their work.
Aside from these low-level jailors who haunted the halls, Li Fan occasionally spotted patrolling cultivators from the Ten Thousand Immortals Alliance.
There were three of them in total, taking turns. They treated their patrol duties as a mere formality, simply going through the motions. After all, the Gloomy Prison had been quiet for millennia, never once causing any trouble.
After a period of observation, however, Li Fan realized he was in the outermost layer of the Gloomy Prison. The Ten Thousand Immortals Alliance paid little mind to the inmates confined here. He had even witnessed one of his neighbors, unable to endure the formation's torment, have his soul utterly annihilated. For a long time afterward, no one even came to check on the empty cell.
It wasn't until the black mist jailors made their routine rounds that the discovery was made. They activated a purification array, cleansed the black pillar, and left it ready for the next unfortunate soul.
The risk of discovery was minimal, and no one ever came to disturb him.
Enjoying the tranquility, Li Fan began preparations for his final, world-ending plan while simultaneously observing the situation in the Spirit Wood Realm through his sacred avatar.
For a long time after Li Fan had ordered a full mobilization and made his own escape, the world remained deceptively calm. There was not the slightest indication that the Ten Thousand Immortals Alliance was preparing for war.
It reached a point where his followers began to murmur amongst themselves, their faith in his judgment wavering.
However, awed by the might of the "Red Dust Compassionate Immortal," they dared not show their uncertainty.
Li Fan, however, knew it was merely the calm before the storm.
As it turned out, Li Fan's prediction was correct.
Then one day, the sealing formation at the entrance to the Spirit Wood Realm began to ripple, silently and almost imperceptibly.
Li Fan's sacred avatar noticed the anomaly instantly.
Focusing his senses on the disturbance, Li Fan observed for a moment before letting out a cold snort. "They have a few tricks up their sleeves, it seems. It looks like they've thoroughly studied the formations I gifted them. Their skill has improved by at least a century's worth compared to before. A pity, though..."
"...they're still more than a generation behind me!"
"At their glacial pace, it would take them at least three months to break the formation—and that's only if I don't bother to repair it. Then again, the Ten Thousand Immortals Alliance isn't known for its patience. If they can't break it through skill, they'll surely resort to a brute-force assault..."
Li Fan had no illusions that a single formation could hold back the full might of the Alliance's army.
"I might as well feign a weakness," Li Fan mused, his mind racing. "Lure a batch of them inside and trap them like fish in a barrel!"
Though his true self had already retreated for safety, Li Fan had no intention of simply rolling over in the face of the Alliance's aggression.
After all, he had poured immense effort and energy into building up his assets in the Spirit Wood Realm during this lifetime; it wasn't something he could easily part with.
Now that the Alliance was at his doorstep, he was determined to put up a fight.
"This is the perfect opportunity to test the mettle of the Ten Thousand Immortals Alliance."
"Let's see if they truly deserve their reputation as one of the two ruling powers of the Xuanhuang Realm."
Li Fan's avatar instructed the inhabitants of the Spirit Wood Realm to prepare for battle. Simultaneously, he began to subtly weaken the formation's defenses, seemingly in response to the Alliance's efforts to break it.
It created the perfect illusion that the formation was genuinely being dismantled.
The feigned vulnerability widened until a thin crack finally appeared in the entrance passage.
Instantly, the first wave of the Ten Thousand Immortals Alliance's assault force poured through the fissure and into the Spirit Wood Realm.
For a brief moment, as the two sides came face to face, both were taken aback.
The Alliance forces were stunned to find the defenders of the Spirit Wood Realm already in formation, as if they had anticipated their every move.
Li Fan's side, however, was surprised that the Alliance's supposed vanguard consisted not of elite soldiers...
...but of hundreds of arrows, each one glinting with a cold, deadly light.
"Sky Patrolling Arrows?!" Li Fan exclaimed, surprised.
The Sky Patrolling Arrow was a superweapon developed by the Alliance in this era. They were incredibly fast, capable of traversing an entire province in mere moments. Their destructive power was also astonishing, with each arrow packing the force of a blow from an ordinary Dao Integration cultivator.
But that wasn't their most terrifying aspect. What made the Sky Patrolling Arrows truly formidable was their ability to link together, forming a special array like a vast net that could distort and influence the very laws of heaven and earth.
During the great war against the Five Elders Council, the Alliance had used these very arrows to disrupt the principles of the world on a massive scale, preventing the Council's Longevity Heavenly Venerates from intervening.
"It seems the Alliance is going for a decapitation strike," Li Fan noted. "One hundred and sixty-eight Sky Patrolling Arrows... Against an ordinary small world, a volley like this would annihilate all its defenders. However..."
Li Fan sneered, his reaction instantaneous.
First, he used the grand array enveloping the Spirit Wood Realm to interfere with the arrows, preventing them from forming their net. Then, he dispatched Tianyang, whose overwhelming power allowed him to intercept, capture, and suppress each arrow before they could scatter and unleash their devastation.
The Sky Patrolling Arrows were fast, but Tianyang was faster.
Tianyang transformed into a streak of azure light, darting across the sky in a breathtaking display.
In the blink of an eye, he had brought every last one of them under control.
"Take a few of these for research," Li Fan's avatar said to a master craftsman. "See if we can reverse-engineer them for our own use."
The master craftsman accepted the Sky Patrolling Arrows with great excitement and immediately set off to begin his research.
Meanwhile, the sudden and mysterious loss of over a hundred Sky Patrolling Arrows seemed to have caught the Ten Thousand Immortals Alliance completely by surprise.
They hesitated for a long time, delaying the next wave of their attack.
Seeing their hesitation, an idea sparked in Li Fan's mind. He made a show of activating the sealing formation, pretending to repair the breach at the entrance.
Seeing the fissure they had worked so "hard" to create slowly begin to close, the Alliance forces predictably lost their composure and launched another assault.
This time, a squad of cultivators clad entirely in golden armor stormed through the crack, appearing before the defenders of the Spirit Wood Realm.
Shrouded in a golden radiance that obscured their features, their exact positions were even difficult to pinpoint. Upon entering the Spirit Wood Realm, the golden-armored cultivators swiftly scattered.
They moved with incredible speed, even faster than the Sky Patrolling Arrows.
What made them particularly troublesome was the trail of afterimages they left in their wake as they moved.
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