Chapter 1125: A Calamity of Their Own
Chapter 1125: A Calamity of Their Own
"The Heaven and Earth Myriad Spirits Array, connecting all the heavens and myriad worlds... How could such a bizarre change occur after its completion? Something must have gone terribly wrong."
An extreme sense of unease washed over him, and the cultivator prepared to shut down the formation.
But...
It was already too late.
For reasons unknown, the array suddenly began to operate on its own.
A colossal, blood-red eye slowly blinked open, revealing a sinister vertical pupil.
Boom!
The entire mortal world began to tremble violently.
He stared, stunned for a moment. As the reality of what had just happened sank in, the cultivator's face flooded with boundless despair and terror.
In the instant the blood-red pupil had appeared, every living being in this mortal world was slaughtered.
They transformed into beams of crimson light, all absorbed by that monstrous eye.
The cultivator’s body trembled uncontrollably as an endless chill seized his heart.
Though he had committed his fair share of sins in the past, they were nothing—absolutely nothing—compared to the act of annihilating an entire world in a single moment.
"We were all deceived! What 'compassionate True Immortal'..."
"This is clearly a terrifyingly evil god!"
Scenes from the past four years flooded his mind, and an indescribable fear gradually consumed him.
But in that moment, the last shred of conscience in his heart jolted him from his despair.
A glimmer of hope ignited in the cultivator's eyes as he remembered something. "No, I can't let the others repeat my mistake. I have to warn them... I have to warn them now!"
He turned, preparing to flee in a desperate panic.
But he found that the blood-red pupil in the sky had already locked onto him.
Just as a cold dread washed over him, as he resigned himself to death beneath the gaze of that colossal eye...
A gentle breeze seemed to sweep through the heavens and the earth, and out of thin air, a phantom inexplicably materialized.
It immediately captured the attention of the blood-red pupil in the sky.
Far away in the Xuanhuang Realm, Li Fan narrowed his eyes.
He was no stranger to that apparition.
"Mr. Bai?"
"Did killing too many beings at once cause the Immortal-Mortal Miasma to erupt so suddenly, triggering a countermeasure?"
The phantom stood between heaven and earth. Though its features were indistinct, an aura of boundless rage radiated from its form.
The phantom's gaze swept across the desolate landscape before finally settling on the sole survivor.
On the cultivator who had built the array.
The cultivator instantly found himself paralyzed as a wave of mortal terror crashed over him. He struggled, desperate to explain.
But the phantom had no interest in explanations.
In an instant, a ripple of power crossed the vast distance, descending from the phantom and striking the cultivator.
The man's body went rigid.
Then, strands of his black hair turned bone-white, and his skin shriveled and cracked like deadwood.
In the blink of an eye, the middle-aged cultivator withered into an old man, his life force flickering like a dying candle.
A moment later, he was nothing more than a skeleton.
It tumbled from the sky.
Having exacted its revenge, the phantom of Mr. Bai gazed upon the empty world, now devoid of all other life.
A trace of sorrow flickered across its indistinct face.
With one last, lingering glance, it dissolved into the wind.
...
In the Xuanhuang Realm, Li Fan shook his head slightly.
"I never expected the Immortal-Mortal Miasma to manifest in such a way."
"No wonder the cultivators of the Xuanhuang Realm agreed to the migration of mortals so readily. They must have discovered this secret as well."
"Every grievance has its cause, every debt its debtor. You should seek out the one who built the array; it has nothing to do with me," Li Fan said with a cold smirk.
"It even saves me the trouble of cleaning up."
The death of one perpetrator went unnoticed by the others.
As one great array after another was completed and integrated into the God-Refining Network...
Li Fan drew ever closer to his ultimate goal for this life.
He gazed at the innumerable consciousnesses swirling within the God-Refining Array. Even as the mastermind behind it all, even priding himself on the right to disregard the world after obtaining [Truth]...
He still felt his skin crawl, and he dared not look directly at the swirling mass for too long.
"The power of endless sentient beings... it is truly terrifying, truly awesome."
"I imagine even a True Immortal would be utterly eclipsed in this ocean of consciousness."
For a fleeting moment, Li Fan's heart, once like ten-thousand-year-old ice, wavered ever so slightly.
But his gaze quickly hardened, becoming resolute once more.
"All of this is necessary."
"The path to immortality is severed. Even figures like the Dharma Spreader, the Xuantian King, and Mr. Bai are trapped here for eternity."
"Only by finding a true path to liberation can this all be resolved."
"Otherwise, even if I do nothing, the Xuanhuang Realm is doomed to destruction regardless."
...
Li Fan's gaze turned utterly cold again.
Under his direction, the construction of the Heaven and Earth Myriad Spirits Array accelerated once more.
Finally, the supreme grand array, spanning countless mortal worlds, was complete.
And just at that moment, five paper figures from the Salvation Sect appeared beside Li Fan.
This time, however, they did not bother him.
Instead, they all stared up at the sky of the Xuanhuang Realm.
"How strange. We take a short nap, and the Xuanhuang Realm seems to be accelerating out of control?"
"Could it be? Has the pull of the Immortal Ruins grown stronger?"
"Nothing so bizarre has occurred in all these years. The change was subtle, so we didn't notice it at first..."
The five small figures muttered among themselves, completely ignoring Li Fan's presence.
After a moment of careful observation, Li Fan realized these were not the same figures who would occasionally appear to admonish him.
These were new faces, individuals who had never shown themselves before.
They seemed to hold high positions within the Salvation Sect, tasked with monitoring the crisis in the Xuanhuang Realm.
Li Fan had no intention of speaking with them.
He simply activated the formation, forcibly pulling them back into the Calamity Crossing Book.
"Hmm?"
The unusual movement immediately alerted the five small figures.
They stared at Li Fan, and the expressions on their paper faces slowly twisted into horror.
"So, all this time, you were..."
"This is not good!"
The Calamity Crossing Book began to tremble violently, its pages flapping wildly as if caught in a phantom gale.
It seemed as though a swarm of paper figures was about to burst forth.
However, before they could accomplish anything, an invisible force constrained them.
The five small figures were forcibly dragged back into the pages of the book.
The book then slowly closed.
It continued to twitch and struggle.
Li Fan's expression remained unchanged as he methodically reinforced the sealing array.
He waited until the Calamity Crossing Book finally fell silent.
"If you choose to be cowards hiding in your shells, then stay that way."
"The Xuanhuang Realm has no need of your salvation."
Li Fan spoke softly, then suppressed the Calamity Crossing Book in the deepest reaches of the Five Elements Great Cave-Heaven.
The Heaven and Earth Myriad Spirits God-Refining Array was now complete.
With the final failsafe in place, Li Fan was ready to set his ultimate plan in motion.
"After a year of observation, I can confirm that the Dharma Spreader is not in the Xuanhuang Realm."
"Just as I expected."
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