Chapter 1210: The Bones of the Grandmaster
The One Beginning Sect was one of the former Ten Great Immortal Sects, on par with the Heavenly Sword Sect and the Great Dao Sect.
However, its presence was considerably weaker in comparison.
Not only had Li Fan encountered almost no trace of them in the Fallen Immortal Realm, but records of them in the current era were also exceedingly rare.
It was as if they had simply vanished from the world.
Aside from what the stone slab senior had once told him—that the Five Elements Great Cave-Heaven he had used to reach the Nascent Soul stage was the handiwork of the One Beginning Sect—Li Fan knew little else about them.
He never expected to find traces of the One Beginning Sect today, ten thousand meters beneath the Great Rift Valley.
But they were merely traces.
The entire ruin was deserted.
“It seems the One Beginning Sect didn’t fare too well,” Li Fan mused.
After asking Sun Luyao, he learned that this was indeed the ruin where they had discovered the Immeasurable Mirror years ago.
However, at that time, they had only managed to breach a small section of it.
Now, for some unknown reason, the arrays that had partitioned the different areas had vanished, revealing the true face of the One Beginning Sect’s domain.
“Boundless, Primordial Vision!” Li Fan’s avatar murmured.
Silently, the Immeasurable Mirror once again emitted an ethereal glow, imperceptible to ordinary people.
In an instant, it enveloped the entire ruin of the One Beginning Sect.
A complete structural map of the ruins immediately materialized within the Immeasurable Mirror.
It even included details such as which areas still had fluctuations of spiritual energy, where hidden chambers were located, and the danger levels of each location...
All this information was gathered in its entirety.
This all happened right under Ji Hongdao’s nose.
Yet, this formation master, who was already among the absolute elite of the Ten Thousand Immortals Alliance, remained completely oblivious.
Li Fan’s mind drifted back to his 114th life, when he had traveled from the Cong Yun Sea to Tianyu Province to study formations, and Ji Hongdao himself had lectured over a thousand of the Alliance’s brightest formation prodigies.
Back then, in his eyes, not just Ji Hongdao, but even Huangfu Song possessed a level of mastery in formations that was utterly beyond his reach.
But after a mere dozen or so reincarnations, his own skill in formations had reached a level that Ji Hongdao could no longer even comprehend.
“I am constantly moving forward with every life, while they remain stagnant...”
“The gap between us will only grow wider.”
Li Fan glanced at Sun Luyuan and Ji Hongdao, who were still cautiously exploring step by step, and shook his head slightly.
Losing patience, he directly commanded Sun Luyao to guide the two of them to the only place of value left in the entire ruin.
“Brother Sun, be careful. The aura of the formation here is the most intact...” Ji Hongdao warned, taking the lead.
Sun Luyao felt a sense of exasperation but couldn't let it show.
The two advanced with extreme caution, passing through a wall concealed by an array and entering a hidden chamber.
At the far end of the chamber stood two statues, one large and one small.
The larger statue sat cross-legged on a meditation cushion, holding a horsetail whisk.
The smaller one stood behind it, a faint smile on its face.
The peculiar statues immediately captured their attention.
Without acting rashly, they observed them closely.
“They seem to be just ordinary stone statues, nothing more,” Ji Hongdao concluded after a long moment.
Sun Luyuan breathed a sigh of relief upon hearing this.
Meanwhile, inside the Immeasurable Mirror, Li Fan looked at the scene scanned and mapped by the Boundless, Primordial Vision Array, then back at the hidden chamber.
His heart sank.
“Can you see those two statues?” Li Fan asked Sun Luyao.
“Statues? What statues?” Sun Luyao was baffled, finding the question strange.
“Tell your brother not to touch them,” Li Fan commanded without explanation.
Alerted by Sun Luyao, Sun Luyuan, trusting his younger brother, stopped Ji Hongdao’s attempt to investigate further.
“Brother, what’s the danger with these things?” he asked.
He had examined the statues repeatedly but couldn’t discern anything unusual about them.
“I once came across a description in an ancient text that was somewhat similar to these two statues. They appear to be the source of the Ten Great Immortal Sects’ legacies, the Tiandu Grandmaster...” Sun Luyao relayed Li Fan’s judgment.
“The Tiandu Grandmaster?” Both Sun Luyuan and Ji Hongdao took a step back in unison.
They had heard of this legendary figure.
He was said to be a half-step True Immortal.
Anything associated with a True Immortal was enough to instill a deep sense of dread.
The higher one’s cultivation, the more one understood the chasm between a cultivator and a True Immortal, and the greater the fear.
Within the Immeasurable Mirror, Li Fan’s avatar’s thoughts raced.
He had suffered a great loss at the hands of the Faceless Immortal’s statue before.
It had taken him six reincarnations to eliminate the influence it had on him.
Although the Tiandu Grandmaster was not on the same level as the Faceless Immortal, he had also left a mark on Li Fan in the past.
He had to be cautious.
“The One Beginning Sect’s legacy comes from the Tiandu Grandmaster, so having statues of him in their sect seems reasonable.”
“But...”
“None of the other Ten Great Immortal Sects seem to have any statues of the Grandmaster.”
“And even if they wanted to pay homage, they should have placed them in a grand, solemn main hall. Why hide them away in a dark, underground chamber?”
Li Fan’s intuition told him something was amiss.
“The One Beginning Sect hardly seems like a group that revered their masters. According to the stone slab senior, they had already planned to cultivate the Five Elements Great Cave-Heaven and devour the Xuanhuang Realm to create a new world for cultivation as soon as the great calamity began to manifest. They were only stopped later.”
“The one who stopped them was undoubtedly Mr. Bai.”
“Before the heavens and earth of the Xuanhuang Realm turned completely against cultivators, cultivators still revered the Heavenly Dao. They were born and nurtured by it, like children to their parents.”
“Yet the One Beginning Sect carved up the essence of heaven and earth without the slightest hesitation, no different from the practitioners of the New Method.”
“Tiandu Grandmaster...”
Li Fan once again used the Boundless, Primordial Vision Array to scan the statues of the Tiandu Grandmaster.
There was a large one and a small one.
Legend said it was the seated figure who had generously bestowed countless techniques and secret arts upon the Ten Great Immortal Sects.
But a deep-seated intuition told Li Fan that the standing child might be even more significant.
He directed the Boundless, Primordial Vision Array to focus on the statue of the smiling child.
The mirror’s ethereal, boundless light swept over the area of the statues again and again.
With each scan, faint lines gradually began to appear in the image displayed by the Immeasurable Mirror.
At the same time, however, these lines would slowly fade with the passage of time.
Li Fan narrowed his eyes and increased the scanning speed of the Immeasurable Mirror.
The lines began to slowly accumulate once more.
“Brother. Help me.”
Straining under the overload, Sun Luyao cried out to his brother for help.
Only after receiving the support of Sun Luyuan’s blood essence could the Immeasurable Mirror finally see the true form of the statues in the secret chamber.
They were two bones.
It was as if some creature had been stripped of all its flesh, leaving behind only these two bones from its entire body.
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