Chapter 1178: The Sword Star Appears in Daylight
Chapter 1178: The Sword Star Appears in Daylight
Having concluded his performance for Shang Shaojun, the Sacred Embryo Li Fan turned his full attention to the changes outside the Dust Crossing Boat.
The Dust Crossing Boat had now reached the edge of the world.
The entire Xuanhuang Realm lay beneath him, spread out in a single, unobstructed vista.
Li Fan had observed the Xuanhuang Realm from such a vantage point before. But back then, much like what he had witnessed from within a long-range teleportation array, the world was shrouded in a hazy, yellow glow, appearing as little more than a great sphere of light. The intricate details of the world within, the landscapes upon its surface, were impossible to discern.
Now, however, under the influence of an immense pull from the depths of the Star Sea, a portion of that faint, yellow light had been peeled away.
It revealed the true face of the world hidden beneath.
The Sacred Embryo Li Fan saw the distorted barrier of white mist, and...
"A monster stitched together from severed limbs and mangled flesh."
Even from this height, high above the nine heavens, he could still perceive the subtle differences between the various regions. A creature living within one of those provinces might never notice, but from a vantage point outside the Xuanhuang Realm, the incongruity was immediately apparent.
The Sacred Embryo Li Fan quickly shook himself from his momentary stupor.
The Dust Crossing Boat began to groan and creak, a clear sign of the intense pressure being exerted upon it from the outside.
Devoid of fear, the Sacred Embryo Li Fan paid the sounds no mind, instead pushing the Dust Crossing Boat to go even faster.
As he broke free from the Xuanhuang Realm completely, the world around him plunged into darkness.
It was as if the sun had vanished below the horizon in an instant.
Darkness. Cold. A dead silence...
A wave of sensations washed over the Sacred Embryo Li Fan.
The Xuanhuang Immortal Heart Mantra began to circulate on its own, shielding him from the tide of negative emotions.
He realized that what he had learned through images and puppets was nothing compared to experiencing it firsthand.
Neither the synchronized senses of his puppets nor the lingering impressions from the Medicine King Cauldron could compare to the raw reality of this moment.
Just as the thought crossed his mind, the Sacred Embryo Li Fan abruptly turned his head.
In that brief moment, a baseless sense of insecurity had welled up within him. It was a chilling premonition, as if something was about to materialize at his back and deliver a fatal blow. His spiritual sense had already swept the area, assuring him with absolute clarity that there was no danger behind him. Yet, the feeling persisted, an insistent whisper in his mind, compelling him to turn and look with his own eyes.
Only after he had turned and confirmed that no imagined threat existed did the strange feeling finally begin to subside.
The faint creaking of the Dust Crossing Boat had now escalated into a deafening roar.
It sounded as if countless ancient beasts were ramming the hull, and a web of cracks began to spread across its surface.
The formations carved into its structure also showed signs of fracturing.
The Sacred Embryo Li Fan was already prepared to abandon the vessel.
Ninety-nine sword phantoms materialized around him, spinning in a ceaseless orbit. They sliced through reality itself, carving out a buffer zone of absolute space.
The Sacred Embryo Li Fan's body began to wither, the color draining from his flesh. In its place, his skin took on a strange, metallic sheen.
Although the immense power from the depths of the Star Sea had indeed counteracted the pull of the Immortal Ruins to some extent...
...the Immortal Ruins still held the advantage in its own domain. Furthermore, some time had passed since the anomaly, and the unknown power from the Star Sea had already diminished considerably.
As a result, the Dust Crossing Boat didn't drift toward the depths of the Star Sea as the stone puppets he had previously deployed had done.
Instead, it was slowly, inevitably, pulled toward the Immortal Ruins.
However...
Both the curvature of its altered trajectory and the magnitude of its change in velocity...
...were vastly different from when Li Fan had piloted the Medicine King Cauldron and charged headlong into the Immortal Ruins.
"My guess was correct!" Li Fan thought with a surge of confirmation. "This truly is a once-in-a-millennium opportunity to escape the Xuanhuang Realm!"
Seeing the Dust Crossing Boat on the verge of complete disintegration, the Sacred Embryo Li Fan hesitated no longer.
"Myriad Swords as Me!"
Behind him, the phantoms of thousands of rusted swords from the Sword Tomb materialized. A moment later, every last one of them dissolved into his body.
The dark void around the Dust Crossing Boat was suddenly illuminated as a blindingly brilliant white light erupted from Li Fan.
It completely engulfed his form.
Man and sword became one.
Then, a resplendent beam of sword light, bright enough to split the heavens and sunder the earth, slashed out in an instant.
The Dust Crossing Boat was consumed by the light, vanishing without a trace.
But the white beam of light shot away from the Immortal Ruins, heading resolutely into the depths of the Star Sea!
The beam of light was so intensely bright, so dazzling...
...that in the skies of the Xuanhuang Realm far below, a new star blazed into existence, one that vied with the great sun for brilliance even in the light of day.
In that moment, countless cultivators turned their gazes toward the Sacred Embryo Li Fan's position.
Shang Shaojun, in particular, stared blankly for a moment, a profound sense of loss welling up in his heart.
The peerless beam of light sped onward.
The Sacred Embryo Li Fan could feel the grip of the Immortal Ruins weakening.
His success was due not only to transforming into the Black Sword—a Heaven's Wonder—and unleashing a strike of ultimate power, but more importantly, to the influence of the mysterious force from the depths of the Star Sea.
Outside the Xuanhuang Realm, free from the interference of the world's many laws...
...he could more clearly perceive the forces that still lingered in the void.
"Unlike the constant pull of the Immortal Ruins," he mused, "this power from the Star Sea is like a tide—it comes in vast, surging waves, an intermittent yet boundless force."
He felt the vast, mighty power wash over him in waves, giving him the distinct illusion of piloting a small skiff, tossed about on a stormy sea at the mercy of the wind and rain.
"Hm? Are those my stone puppets up ahead?"
He hadn't been traveling through the void for long before he re-established the connection that had been previously severed.
But what made his heart skip a beat was the realization that not all of the puppets were accounted for.
At least a third of them had vanished for reasons unknown!
"It's possible they were simply unlucky and failed to break free from the shackles of the Immortal Ruins."
"But it's also possible..."
The Sacred Embryo Li Fan accelerated toward the puppets' location.
Suddenly, however, he instinctively slowed his pace.
Because just a moment ago, another one of the seventy-four surviving puppets had vanished without a trace!
It had happened right under his watch, within the range of his senses, and had simply... disappeared!
And Li Fan had no idea how it had happened!
"The Darkest Star Sea is as perilous as they say."
An inexplicable chill crept into the Sacred Embryo Li Fan's heart.
Controlling his speed, he let the remaining seventy-three puppets act as his vanguard, keeping a safe distance behind them.
In the time that followed, the puppets continued to vanish, one by one, revealing to Li Fan the insidious dangers of the void in the Darkest Star Sea.
As more puppets disappeared, Li Fan slowly began to understand.
"It doesn't seem like the puppets are being attacked by some unknown entity," he reasoned. "Rather, it's the space they're passing through."
"There..."
"There... space itself doesn't exist. There's only a pure, absolute emptiness."
"It's like a flat road pitted with dark, bottomless holes. One wrong step, and you vanish completely—no trace left, living or dead."
As Li Fan mulled this over, another puppet vanished.
Only sixty-one remained.
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