Chapter 1388: Array-Refining the Xuanhuang Realm
Chapter 1388: Array-Refining the Xuanhuang Realm
Time flew, and in the blink of an eye, fifteen years had passed since the anchor point in the Xuanhuang Realm.
On this day, Li Fan employed his old trick once more, capturing the Medicine King Cauldron as it returned from beyond the heavens.
As always, he intimidated the members of the Medicine King Sect, forcing them to toil for him.
At the same time, he quietly seized Ruan Tianxiao, returned to the old site of the Medicine King Sect, and had him swallow that strange "stone pill" again.
It was just like the last lifetime.
After consuming the pill, Ruan Tianxiao's form and aura shifted, becoming ethereal and transcendent, like a banished immortal descended from the heavens.
He then began to lecture to his surroundings, reciting the *Medicine King's Scripture of the Dao of Alchemy*.
The profound and mystical sounds echoed, faint yet unending.
It felt as though his own mastery of the Dao of alchemy had invisibly taken another step forward.
The echoes of the scripture lingered long after, a persistent resonance in the air.
Combining his newfound understanding of the Medicine King's scripture, Li Fan once again made minute adjustments to his plan for the sublimation of the Xuanhuang Realm.
"After more than a decade of careful nurturing, bolstered by numerous subtle measures, the Xuanhuang Realm has gradually recovered from its former state of decline."
"The conditions are finally right. It's time to begin the first step of the refinement."
A faint glimmer flashed in Li Fan's eyes. His gaze pierced the firmament of the Xuanhuang Realm, revealing the countless small worlds connected to it.
"Thousands of worlds, all shall return to Xuanhuang."
"All paths converge, all under heaven as one!"
A strange, almost unsettling undercurrent laced his tone. With a soft whisper, Li Fan sealed the fate of those thousands of small worlds.
At that very moment, the Fabricated Heaven Personalities within those small worlds began to mobilize the power of their respective realms.
They autonomously expanded their worldly forms, extending like countless tentacles along the channels Li Fan had long since prepared.
They reached out, touching and connecting to the Xuanhuang Realm.
First, a single point of light in the darkness was tinged with the color of Xuanhuang.
Soon after, hundreds, then thousands of golden stars ignited, orbiting the Xuanhuang Realm in a dazzling and brilliant display.
"False Claiming Heavenly Geography..."
Li Fan sent a projection of himself soaring into the sky.
He murmured the name of the technique under his breath.
The return of so many small worlds naturally required the cooperation of the Xuanhuang Realm itself.
Otherwise, it was highly probable that the Heavenly Dao of the Xuanhuang Realm would perceive it as an attack from an unknown external enemy.
"Although the power of a single small world is almost negligible compared to the Xuanhuang Realm, there are simply too many worlds surrounding it. A quantitative change is enough to trigger a qualitative one."
"Injecting them all at once, like a raging flood, might provoke a backlash."
"The same strategy applies. I need a catalyst."
As the thought flashed through Li Fan's mind, indistinct figures—Spirits of Heaven and Earth—began to descend.
They paused in place for a brief moment before swiftly flying off toward every corner of the Xuanhuang Realm.
They had received a "heavenly duty": to absorb the subservient small worlds.
Li Fan roughly divided the regions among them. Given the endurance of a Spirit of Heaven and Earth, absorbing a dozen or so small worlds into itself was not a problem.
Even so, to complete Li Fan's initial plan, hundreds of Spirits of Heaven and Earth were now being generated in a continuous stream.
Their descent was like that of heavenly demons, causing the very aura within the Xuanhuang Realm to churn and roil.
Compared to their natural counterparts, these Spirits of Heaven and Earth, falsely summoned by Li Fan, were far more indistinct.
They possessed very little converged power of law.
They were more like empty shells, serving merely as vessels for the return of myriad worlds to Xuanhuang.
Nevertheless, they still belonged to the category of Spirits of Heaven and Earth.
This bizarre procession, like a night parade of a hundred demons, naturally and quickly drew the attention of the cultivators within the Xuanhuang Realm.
Consequently, more and more people began to notice the profound changes occurring in the world.
Was this a natural transformation of the Xuanhuang Realm, or was there a hidden hand manipulating events from behind the scenes?
The people of the world were filled with doubt.
But a greater number of cultivators were restless, eager to hunt these Spirits of Heaven and Earth.
After all, for the vast majority, simply reaching the Dao Integration stage was a lifelong dream. The quality of the Spirit of Heaven and Earth they used for their breakthrough was hardly a consideration.
Just as cultivators gathered in groups of three and five, calling upon friends and allies to track the movements of the Spirits of Heaven and Earth, Boundless, ominous clouds swept across the skies of the Xuanhuang Realm.
Night descended upon the world.
A thousand different premonitions of doom welled up in the hearts of the cultivators.
Yet none could pinpoint the source of this profound unease.
Soon, the dark clouds vanished. The teeming masses of the world returned to their unfinished business.
Everything seemed to have returned to normal.
However, in Li Fan's eyes, the living beings of the Xuanhuang Realm had already been plunged into an endless, illusory dream.
The Great Array of the Xuanhuang Delusion had truly descended upon all living things!
With the exception of a few locations like Yuandao Province and the Fishing Pool, every living creature in the Xuanhuang Realm was now ensnared within the formation.
Empowered by the infinite might of the Star Sea and fueled by the vast reserves of Source Power Essence accumulated by the Ancestral You Clan members over the past decade, Li Fan was able to unleash this peerless immortal array, blanketing the entire Xuanhuang Realm.
This array was a step beyond the one that had trapped the Heavenly Doctor in the previous lifetime.
Although the deductions of the Final Dissociation Disc had reached a bottleneck, Li Fan had integrated his own insights on the Dao of Alchemy and the True False Transformation into the array's design.
He had further upgraded the Great Array of the Xuanhuang Delusion.
It was no longer a simple illusion array.
If someone were to unfortunately perish within the illusion, death would truly befall them in reality.
Conversely, if they experienced various things within the illusion and made gains over time, those gains would not be synchronized with their real selves.
They would simply be absorbed by this peerless illusion array, becoming tribute and sustenance for Li Fan.
Under the shroud of the immortal array, the masses of the Xuanhuang Realm would, from this day forward, only regress, never advance.
Every tiny drop of their evolution toward a "better" state would be intercepted and harvested by Li Fan.
Until the array was broken, they were doomed for all eternity to serve as diligent slaves, toiling for Li Fan's benefit.
Yet, Li Fan had no intention of keeping all of this harvested essence for himself.
In fact, he would only retain a small fraction.
The overwhelming majority would be offered up to the Xuanhuang Realm.
This was certainly not because Li Fan had suddenly had a change of heart or been overcome with benevolence.
The first reason was to gain even more of the Xuanhuang Realm's trust. Through his various manipulations in this lifetime, Li Fan's favorability with the Heavenly Dao had already reached an unprecedented level. With the descent of the Great Array of the Xuanhuang Delusion, which had ensnared all the cultivators—the parasites of heaven and earth—in one fell swoop, this favor reached a new zenith. When Li Fan had just used False Claiming Heavenly Geography to summon thousands of Spirits of Heaven and Earth, the Heavenly Dao of the Xuanhuang Realm had shown no anger at all. Instead, it had sent a faint, fawning connection, as if to ask whether Li Fan required more.
"For every moment the Great Array of the Xuanhuang Delusion operates, the Heavenly Dao's trust in me grows by another fraction."
"Until..."
"Hehehe."
Li Fan sneered inwardly.
Completely ignoring the friendly overtures from the Heavenly Dao, Li Fan narrowed his eyes, gazing upon the Xuanhuang Realm trapped within his array.
"On the side of the Five Elders Association, none were spared, save for those under the protection of the Land of Carefree Joy."
"The moment the array descended, Wuyou seemed to want to divide his power to shield all the living beings under the Five Elders Association, just as he did when the world-ending immortal array appeared before. But for some reason, he ultimately backed down."
Li Fan mused, choosing not to confront Wuyou directly.
"As for the Ten Thousand Immortals Alliance..."
"The Tianxuan Mirror within the Alliance headquarters seems to have evaded the array's influence. An immortal artifact, indeed."
"And there are a few other places that have also managed to escape the array's effects."
His interest piqued, Li Fan examined each one.
He discovered that most had escaped due to their unique spatio-temporal locations—some were secret realms, others were remnants from shattered cultivation worlds that the Xuanhuang Realm had devoured and stitched into its fabric.
"With a few minor modifications, I'll be able to cover them all next time."
Li Fan paid these exceptions no mind. None of them housed even a single Dao Integration cultivator; they were incapable of making any waves.
Of all the exceptions, only one caught his attention.
In a small mortal town within Liuguang Province of the Ten Thousand Immortals Alliance, nearly a hundred people were almost completely unaffected by the illusion array.
He thought "almost completely" rather than "completely" because they had indeed been captured by the array and plunged into the boundless illusion.
But remarkably, these hundred or so people quickly broke free.
Even the Heavenly Doctor had not awoken so quickly!
With great caution, Li Fan dispatched a wisp of his consciousness to investigate closely.
"The world is full of strange things. What the storyteller once spoke of has actually come true!"
"But a dream is still a dream. The storyteller told us that we just need to remember: if something feels too perfect, there's a problem. That's how we can wake from the dream!"
"Wait. Hiss... if you put it like that, wasn't our awakening also a little too... smooth? Could it be that we're still dreaming?"
...
Before the words could fade, The several hundred people in the small town were once again enveloped by the power of the Great Array of the Xuanhuang Delusion, plunging back into the illusion.
"A storyteller," Li Fan murmured thoughtfully. His divine sense swept out, and he quickly located the person they spoke of.
At that moment, the storyteller too was just awakening from the illusion.
His expression was calm, devoid of shock or fear.
Looking out at the world of mortals, which seemed frozen in time, a flicker of pleasant surprise appeared on his face.
"This man... even I cannot see through his cultivation."
"Could there still be a master hidden within the Xuanhuang Realm?"
"Impossible. He showed no sign of abnormality during the two previous world-ending events."
Li Fan shook his head, refusing to frighten himself.
He reached out a hand and drew the storyteller to him through the void.
"Gr-greetings, Immortal Master." The storyteller was momentarily stunned, but then he offered a respectful greeting, tinged not with fear, but with a hint of delighted surprise.
Li Fan confirmed that the man was indeed a mortal, utterly devoid of physical strength.
"How did you awaken from the illusion?" he asked in a slow, measured tone.
The storyteller shook his head, a look of confusion on his face. "I don't know. I just felt that the world I saw had an indescribable dissonance to it."
"Dissonance?"
The storyteller mulled over his words for a moment before looking at Li Fan and explaining hesitantly, "The dreamscape was real, to be sure, but it was still different from reality."
"I know my own limits. No matter how hard I try, my audience never exceeds a hundred people. But in the dream, nearly half the town had come to listen..."
Upon hearing this, Li Fan's brow furrowed.
The Great Array of the Xuanhuang Delusion could not possibly have made such a rudimentary error.
"What could have interfered with the array's judgment?"
A thought stirred in Li Fan's mind, and he began to carefully scan the storyteller once more.
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