Chapter 1207: The Manifestation of the Wind Tribulation
Chapter 1207: The Manifestation of the Wind Tribulation
Even on the journey back, Sun Luyuan could clearly feel the Immeasurable Mirror stirring restlessly in his arms, and hear the familiar, uncontrolled roars of his younger brother, Sun Luyao. He forcefully suppressed the mirror until he was safely back, only then releasing its seal.
"Brother, give it to me! Quick! I can't stand it anymore!"
The mirror's surface trembled violently. Sun Luyao's smoke-like shadow writhed as if battered by a hurricane, twisting and contorting without end.
"Calm down!"
Sun Luyuan barked, skillfully offering a drop of his own blood essence to calm his brother's frenzy.
Only then did he produce the other mirror, the one he had retrieved from the ruins of the Hundred Stones Grotto-Heaven.
An aura of the same origin confirmed it: the mirror was forged from a fragment of the Immeasurable Mirror. It had been reforged, however, transformed into a separate artifact entirely.
Sun Luyuan carefully broke the lingering seals on the artifact before tossing it to his brother.
A beam of shadowy light erupted from Sun Luyao's form, corroding the ancient relic.
As the fragment dissolved into the dark light, the old, damaged Immeasurable Mirror—the one that housed Sun Luyao's spirit—began to transform at a rate visible to the naked eye.
The ravages of time slowly faded. Its old, worn look was replaced by a profound, venerable aura—the look of an object that had weathered countless trials.
The surface of the Immeasurable Mirror now pulsed with a heart-stopping luster.
It was enough to send a shiver through Sun Luyuan's very soul.
So this is the power of an immortal artifact... he mused, his anticipation growing for what his brother would be capable of once he awoke from his consumption.
But the true master of the Immeasurable Mirror, Li Fan's divine consciousness hidden within, witnessed its transformation far more intimately.
Or rather, its restoration.
The once-fragmented Boundless, Primordial Vision Array was slowly piecing itself back together.
As if it had found its core, an ineffable, wondrous power began to well up from the formation, flowing like a gentle stream.
It nourished the Immeasurable Mirror's time-worn body.
This was why, to an outside observer, the immortal artifact seemed to become new again in the blink of an eye.
Li Fan's divine consciousness benefited as well, beginning its transformation from a mere sliver of thought into a true divided soul.
Li Fan even had the sense that if he continued to absorb this energy, this sliver of his consciousness could, in time, grow even stronger than his original soul!
This was a startling thought. Li Fan had reached his current realm one step at a time, building an incomparably solid foundation.
Setting aside the theoretical gains from countless cycles of reincarnation, his mastery of the Five Elements Great Cave-Heaven and the Xuanhuang World-Ending Transformation alone represented the very essence of the Xuanhuang Realm.
And yet, the power of his soul—forged at the peak of the Dao Integration realm upon such a foundation—could be matched by the energy within this single, damaged mirror!
Even if it was limited only to the soul, the realization left Li Fan deeply shaken.
He echoed Sun Luyuan's earlier sentiment: So this is the power of an immortal artifact?
The energy surging within the Immeasurable Mirror felt akin to order itself, to the very essence of life.
Yet, just as Li Fan believed the energy would completely restore the mirror, it suddenly and uncontrollably fell to the floor.
Its surface projected a swirl of light and shadow that enveloped the secret underground chamber.
Images flashed across the projection in rapid succession.
The prophetic scenes they depicted shook both Sun Luyuan and Li Fan to their core.
The peaceful lands of the Xuanhuang Realm, now engulfed in the flames of war.
Cultivators of the Ten Thousand Immortals Alliance clashed violently with another, unknown power.
Arrows of light streaked across the sky, unleashing earth-shattering explosions wherever they landed.
A towering giant, gleaming with golden light, was locked in a desperate struggle with a bare-chested, black-haired man.
The shockwaves of their power rippled outwards, causing even the white mist barrier that separated heaven and earth to twist and fracture.
Even more terrifying, another figure appeared on the battlefield: an entity clad in black imperial robes, its face obscured from view.
It stood poised high above all others.
Opposite this being, another figure appeared, equally indistinct.
BOOM!
As if it had reached the absolute limit of its divination, the image projected by the Immeasurable Mirror instantly twisted into a distorted mess.
Then, it erupted in a blinding flash of white light.
When the light faded, only a dead, silent darkness remained.
Crack!
A new crack spread across the surface of the Immeasurable Mirror, which had only just begun to recover.
Sun Luyao let out a piercing scream as his shadowy form was violently dragged back into the mirror.
"Brother!"
Sun Luyuan snapped out of his shock. His expression changed drastically as he reached for the Immeasurable Mirror.
But the instant he drew near, he snatched his hand back as if burned by a scorching flame.
Sun Luyuan stared at his outstretched right hand, his expression grim.
In that brief moment, it had aged thousands of years. The skin was withered, the flesh shrunken, and deep wrinkles had appeared.
It wasn't just his physical body.
Sun Luyuan felt that a part of his very soul had genuinely weathered the passage of time, and it would be impossible to ever restore it to its former state.
If a mere accidental touch could do this, one could only imagine the fate of Li Fan's consciousness within the mirror.
When the mirror had spontaneously begun to divine the future of the Xuanhuang Realm, Li Fan, though shocked, had tried to get a clearer look.
But a sudden, overwhelming sense of fatal crisis had forced him to abandon the thought.
This power of annihilation was hidden in the mirror's deepest recesses. Even Li Fan's consciousness, which had achieved a fundamental level of control over the artifact, had failed to detect it before it erupted.
And its arrival was swift and violent.
As if eroding time itself, the force ravaged the Immeasurable Mirror. The artifact, having just recovered some vitality from absorbing the fragment, was instantly subjected to eons of wear, decaying once more.
At the mirror's core, the Primordial Vision array looked as if it had been scoured by a gale.
Its once-complete structure was again left in tatters.
Li Fan's consciousness, of course, could not escape unscathed.
Already just a wisp of his soul, it flickered like a candle in the wind, on the verge of being extinguished entirely.
Fortunately, two things saved him. First, he had already used the array refining method to largely refine the mirror. By residing within it and drawing upon its power, he gained a measure of resistance.
Second, at the critical moment when he felt his consciousness about to be destroyed, Li Fan instinctively recited the Xuanhuang Celestial Heart Mantra.
While it couldn't restore what had already been lost, it significantly slowed the rate at which his consciousness was dissipating in the storm.
After a long and bitter struggle, the terrifying calamity within the mirror finally began to subside.
Li Fan sensed that it hadn't vanished, however.
Rather, it had retreated back into the mirror's depths, lying dormant once more.
Only then did Sun Luyuan's anxious voice reach him.
"Brother, what happened to you?"
But Sun Luyao was too severely damaged to respond.
Seeing this, Sun Luyuan reacted swiftly.
He immediately took the Immeasurable Mirror to the Sun family's blood essence pool.
Despite its name, the pool carried no metallic stench of blood. Instead, it was filled with the sweet fragrance of rare celestial treasures.
The water was not blood-red but a dreamlike, seven-colored iridescence, like liquid starlight flowing from the heavens.
Immersed within it, Li Fan's aged and battered consciousness finally found some relief.
"How is it being consumed so quickly?" Sun Luyuan exclaimed, shocked by the speed at which the pool's vibrant colors were draining away.
Nevertheless, he gritted his teeth and departed, evidently to procure more blood essence.
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