Chapter 1126: Truth Before the Immortal
Nine Mountains Prefecture.
“What a marvelous day,” Zhao Xian declared, scrawling his name across the golden contract before him. As a sliver of golden light shot into his body, sealing the agreement, he let out a hearty laugh.
The delegation from the Five Elders Council in his shop, their faces equally bright with satisfaction, put away their copy of the contract and echoed his sentiment.
For the better part of the day, Zhao Xian hammered out the finer details of the trade agreement with the Council’s representatives. It wasn't until he had seen them off to their designated guest residence in the city that he finally allowed himself a long, deep sigh of relief.
Instead of returning to his own abode, he turned back, re-entered his shop, and descended into the secret chamber below.
Gazing at the faceless stone statue concealed in the shadows, his expression grew complex, a whirlwind of thoughts stirring in his mind.
Ever since the Ten Thousand Worlds Allied Forces had been annihilated by the Ten Thousand Immortals Alliance and its members placed on a permanent kill-on-sight list, Zhao Xian, a deep-cover agent for the Allied Forces in Nine Mountains Prefecture, had lived in a state of perpetual fear.
His nerves were frayed, and he was constantly plagued by visions of the Immortal Alliance suddenly appearing at his door to drag him away.
Without the Allied Forces providing supplies, his shop’s inventory had been decimated. Foot traffic dwindled day by day until he was on the brink of ruin. In the end, he had to call in every favor and exhaust every connection, spending his entire life's savings just to painstakingly rebuild his supply chain.
The storm surrounding the Allied Forces had finally passed.
Even during the height of the Immortal Alliance's most rigorous manhunts, they had failed to uncover his true identity. The danger, he reasoned, was surely gone for good.
After years of painstaking effort, his business was finally back on track. Better yet, he had just secured a commercial agreement with a caravan from the Five Elders Council. The fixed annual trade alone was valued at over ten million contribution points.
Although I no longer receive rewards from the True Immortal, the profits from the shop alone are more than enough to support my cultivation all the way to the Soul Transformation realm.
With the Allied Forces gone, I don't have to turn over a single coin. All the profit is mine to keep. Life is even more comfortable than before... he mused with a touch of smug satisfaction.
Truly, fortune and misfortune are two sides of the same coin. The world is full of unpredictable turns.
Casting one final glance at the faceless stone statue, Zhao Xian made up his mind: he would seal this secret chamber for good.
The secret of his past as a member of the Ten Thousand Worlds Allied Forces would remain buried forever.
The True Immortal is merciful, surely he won't hold this against me, Zhao Xian thought. He offered one last, reverent bow before sealing the secret chamber tight.
Once it was done, a tremendous weight lifted from his shoulders. He felt as if he had been reborn.
But on the way back to his residence, he glanced up at the azure sky of the Xuanhuang Realm, and an inexplicable wave of anxiety suddenly washed over him.
Zhao Xian had always trusted his instincts, and he stopped dead in his tracks.
He carefully retraced the recent events of his life, mulling over every detail, but after long deliberation, he couldn't pinpoint a single thing amiss.
“How strange...”
The turmoil in his heart intensified. A sudden impulse made him look at the people around him.
The sight made a cold sweat break out across his entire body.
He wasn't the only one.
Here in the free-trade city of Nine Mountains Prefecture, every cultivator out on the streets seemed to have sensed it too. A subtle wrongness hung in the air, leaving them with tangled thoughts and tense expressions.
Some were even worse off, their foreheads beaded with sweat, their steps unsteady.
“This is...” The image of ants frantically relocating their nest before a torrential downpour flashed through his mind.
Could a heaven-spanning catastrophe be about to strike?
He was suddenly reminded of the origin story of the Nine Mountains trade prefecture.
The area had once been a chaotic region of treacherous powers and towering peaks. Then, during a war between the Immortal Alliance and the Five Elders Council, a Heavenly Venerate had merely glanced this way, and his manifestation had flattened the mountains into a plain.
And so, the bustling Nine Mountains Prefecture was born.
Don't tell me... history is about to repeat itself? The thought sent a violent shiver down his spine.
His rational mind told him that neither the Immortal Alliance nor the Five Elders Council would start another war here—it wasn't in either of their best interests.
But the unsettling scene unfolding before him screamed otherwise. He was certain a disaster was about to strike!
“Run!”
A moment later, his decision was made.
Yes, he was greedy.
And yes, he dreamed of becoming a mighty Soul Transformation cultivator, a master of his own domain.
But none of that mattered if he couldn't save his own skin.
With the skills he had honed over the years, he could lose everything and still start over, rising from the ashes in a new place.
Besides, he always kept his shop's most valuable treasures on his person.
With that thought, he spun around and, ignoring the city's no-flight regulations, shot toward the borders of Nine Mountains Prefecture at maximum speed.
His sudden, panicked flight instantly drew the attention of the other cultivators in the city. Like a spark in a tinderbox, it triggered a chain reaction. Without knowing why, they too began to flee in every direction.
It was the primal, desperate scramble of animals sensing mortal danger.
As it turned out, their instincts were correct.
They hadn't fled far before a terrifying ripple of power descended from behind.
The sky instantly plunged into darkness.
Countless cultivators were devoured by some unknown, terrifying presence before they could even scream.
He felt the auras of tens of thousands of cultivators behind him vanish in an instant, and absolute terror seized his mind.
At that moment, his thoughts raced with unprecedented speed.
Some terrible calamity must have descended upon Nine Mountains Prefecture.
My power is nowhere near enough to survive this.
I'm still a long way from the border. There's not enough time to reach safety.
The reason there are no teleportation arrays in Nine Mountains Prefecture is because the spatial structure here is notoriously unstable. Activating one recklessly won't send you to your destination—it will teleport you to a random location. You might even be lost to the void forever...
But it's still a chance... a chance to live...
As his thoughts spun, his body reacted on pure instinct.
He activated a random teleportation array he kept in his storage ring.
The world around him twisted and blurred.
After a brief, disorienting vertigo, he found he had escaped Nine Mountains Prefecture. He was somewhere new, somewhere strange.
But the sight that greeted him brought no joy, no relief from his narrow escape.
Instead, a chilling dread plunged him into an icy abyss, his mind going utterly blank.
He seemed to be floating high in the sky, gazing down upon the entire Xuanhuang Realm.
Below, the surface of the world was pockmarked with over a thousand black dots.
Each one was a pitch-black abyss, devouring everything in its vicinity.
The entire world looked as if it were being torn apart by these voids, ripped into a thousand curling shreds of paper.
Down on the surface, cultivators struggled in vain. None could survive for more than a moment within the encroaching darkness.
They were reduced to distorted streaks of light before vanishing into the black voids.
...
“So... the cataclysm wasn't just happening in Nine Mountains Prefecture?”
“What is this?”
“Is this the end? Is the world being destroyed?” Zhao Xian was stunned, frozen in place.
But his shock was quickly overshadowed by another bizarre spectacle that complemented the apocalyptic vista.
High above the Xuanhuang Realm—now a canvas torn into a thousand twisted shreds—a picture suddenly materialized, looking like a masterpiece formed from countless splatters of cosmic paint.
Upon this swirling canvas, countless scenes flickered and shifted with every passing moment.
And before this surreal masterpiece, a lone figure stood with his hands clasped behind his back.
As if sensing Zhao Xian's distant gaze, the figure turned its head.
Before he could even make out the other's features, the sheer pressure of that gaze caused Zhao Xian's body and soul to detonate, shattering into innumerable fragments.
Nothing remained of him.
“Hm?”
A moment later, Li Fan understood how this unfortunate soul had ended up here.
Shaking his head slightly, he dismissed the man from his thoughts and focused once more on the thousands of worldly transformations erupting from the Xuanhuang Realm.
The countless black dots were, naturally, the result of his world-annihilation plan: the power of the immortals from the Immortal Ruins, drawn forth as the bait puppets flew toward their destination.
The power of the immortals from the Ruins traveled along the connections established by the puppets, pouring directly into the Xuanhuang Realm.
The result was a boundless, world-ending catastrophe.
Just as Li Fan had anticipated, the moment the power from the Immortal Ruins manifested, it triggered a spontaneous reaction from the statues of the Faceless Immortal that he had placed near the bait puppets.
These statues were not solid objects; Li Fan had created them purely from the condensed Source Power essence of the Faceless Immortal.
When the world-ending power from the Immortal Ruins swept toward them...
An indescribable power surged forth from the Source Power essence.
It was like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis, like fruit forming where a blossom had fallen.
The Source Power essence melted away like ice in the sun, vanishing completely. In its place, an incomprehensible force emerged and collided with the power from the Immortal Ruins.
Like two colossal waves crashing against each other, they threw up a spray of ten thousand new realities.
In that instant, the Xuanhuang Realm was torn into a thousand fragments.
Yet it seemed this very struggle between the two forces was what kept the already battered Xuanhuang Realm from being utterly annihilated in that first moment.
“It seems my worries were unfounded.”
“The Faceless Immortal doesn't seem to have detected my presence.”
Li Fan mused.
“To draw the marrow from heaven and earth, and claim its soul.”
Muttering an incantation, he drew the entire bizarre, swirling canvas before him into the phantom of the Five Elements Great Cave-Heaven that manifested at his back.
Scenes from the Xuanhuang Realm's past, present, and original future flashed before Li Fan's eyes in a kaleidoscopic procession.
Beyond these visions, Li Fan could feel a powerful, desperate will to survive emanating from the world itself.
The images spun like a vortex, faster and faster, as if something was about to be born from their chaotic dance.
As he carefully savored the experience, Li Fan detected a plea from the Xuanhuang Realm itself—an offer of cooperation.
“A dying world is no different from a dying person.”
“It knows I've been faking the Heavenly Dao, yet for the slightest chance of survival, it not only refrains from blaming me but even offers to work with me...”
“Now that is something I hadn't anticipated.”
Li Fan scoffed but neither accepted nor rejected the Xuanhuang Realm's offer.
Instead, he quickened the pace at which he drew out the world's marrow.
As countless nascent transformations merged into his being, his Five Elements Great Cave-Heaven began to undergo a cataclysmic transformation of its own.
In stark contrast to the apocalyptic state of the Xuanhuang Realm, the Five Elements Great Cave-Heaven flourished with unprecedented vitality.
The five elements flowed and merged.
Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, and Earth united as one, and the once-distinct barriers between their respective domains gradually dissolved.
A new world, brimming with infinite life, was taking shape.
...
And at that very moment, just as he was on the verge of breaking through to the Soul Transformation realm, Li Fan felt an inexplicable flicker of danger.
A beam of light shot from the void, arriving in an instant.
“No!”
The arrival let out a roar of fury upon seeing the current state of the Xuanhuang Realm.
Then, in the blink of an eye, it crossed an immense distance and locked its gaze onto Li Fan.
Their eyes met, and expressions of shock appeared on both their faces.
Li Fan was stunned. He had expected the Dharma Spreader to return.
He never imagined that the figure appearing in this lifetime would be...
The Heavenly Doctor.
The Heavenly Doctor, in turn, was shocked to see Li Fan—nominally, the last successor of the Tianfa Realm—here of all places.
And what's more, mercilessly draining the very marrow of the Xuanhuang Realm.
He returned so quickly, Li Fan sighed inwardly.
“Truth Realization.”
Without a moment's hesitation, Li Fan invoked the name in his mind.
Under the influence of the power from the Immortal Ruins, Li Fan could feel that the True Immortal's net had loosened its grip on him.
The Heavenly Doctor had found him.
No longer willing to press his luck, he immediately activated Truth Realization.
The world around him dissolved into nothingness.
In that instant, Li Fan clearly saw the astonishment on the Heavenly Doctor's face and the brilliant light that erupted from within his murky eyes.
What did he see? Li Fan's heart clenched.
But the world around him had already ground to a near halt.
Even for someone as powerful as the Heavenly Doctor, his movements now seemed agonizingly slow to Li Fan.
A thick mist enveloped all of creation.
Reality was about to dissolve into illusion, substance into nothingness.
But just then...
A blinding light suddenly erupted from the thousands of black voids scarring the Xuanhuang Realm.
The power from the Immortal Ruins, a force capable of shredding the world, was utterly suppressed in that instant.
In this frozen tableau, this single point of brilliance was the least affected by the temporal distortion.
It still appeared in slow motion to Li Fan...
...but it was surging toward him at a terrifying speed.
“The Faceless Immortal!”
Li Fan's heart felt as if it had been caught in an iron grip.
The threat of the Heavenly Doctor was instantly banished from his mind.
He found me after all...
“Spirits of heaven and earth, souls of all living beings, refine the divine!”
A vast, blood-red net unfurled around Li Fan.
It was dense and multi-layered, a tapestry of agony.
It was woven from countless tormented human faces.
The crimson net expanded wildly from his position, spreading in all directions.
Trillions of souls trapped within the net let out a simultaneous, soul-shattering wail of death.
The brilliant light ignored the crimson net, pressing forward toward Li Fan with unwavering resolve.
Li Fan had never known the activation of Truth Realization to be so agonizingly slow.
The brilliant white light was about to strike.
His body grew rigid and cold.
Even his thoughts began to freeze.
But thankfully...
The crimson net, for all its futility, did manage to slow the light by the barest fraction.
In the very last instant before the brilliant light could lock onto him...
Li Fan successfully activated Truth Realization.
Everything dissolved into illusion.
Everything, that is, except for that single, dazzling point of white light, which still burned brightly against the void.
...
Anchor Point: 1 Year.
On the peak of Jieli Mountain.
Having narrowly escaped death, Li Fan stood drenched in sweat, gasping for breath.
“So this is the might of a True Immortal?”
“The combined will of trillions of souls... utterly powerless before it.”
As he pondered this, a strange sensation prickled at him. Something was wrong with his body.
He wasn't seeing with his eyes, because...
He reached up to touch his own face, and his entire body began to tremble.
His face was gone.
(End of Chapter)
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