Chapter 1389: Visitors from the High Wall
Once, twice.
Li Fan's spiritual sense swept over the man again and again, yet he could find nothing on the storyteller that explained the immortal array's miscalculation.
"Perhaps it's not the man himself..."
His brow furrowed as he began to carefully inspect the surrounding objects.
Finally, his gaze fell upon the small wooden block the storyteller used.
"This thing..."
It appeared utterly unremarkable, just a simple, dark block of wood.
Yet, the moment Li Fan took it in his hand, a faint coolness seeped into his divine soul.
Ever since he mastered the Limitless Fullness and Emptiness technique, Li Fan's divine soul had existed in a state of perpetual 'perfection,' constantly pushed to the very limit of his power. Any damage it sustained would be instantly healed by the cyclical flow of the Five Elements.
His divine soul was already immensely powerful; it could only grow in stages, with each of Li Fan's major breakthroughs. In fact, its strength had not increased at all since he had advanced to the Soul Transformation realm.
But now, as that cool sensation seeped into him, Li Fan felt his divine soul slowly condensing, the bottleneck that had held it in check beginning to loosen!
"Hiss... What kind of treasure is this block?" More than delighted, Li Fan was wary.
After all, the current strength of his divine soul was already comparable to that of a Longevity cultivator in the Xuanhuang Realm.
Once a limit was reached, improving even a fraction further was no longer a matter of mere effort.
"The vaults of the Immortal Boat held countless treasures, yet I never found a single one useful to me. To think the Xuanhuang Realm was still hiding something like this..."
With great caution, Li Fan set up an immortal array to isolate the black wooden block.
He then searched the storyteller's mind, seeking the origin of the wooden block.
It turned out not to be some ancient heirloom, but a simple piece he had fashioned himself by chopping down a tree in his courtyard and polishing the wood.
Li Fan brought the storyteller, a man named Ge Daoquan, to his home.
In the courtyard, a lush, verdant tree stood tall.
The moment he stepped into the courtyard, Li Fan felt a distinct change.
It was like walking for hours under a scorching sun on a sweltering summer day, only to suddenly step into the cool relief of shade.
It could be summed up in a single word.
Soothing!
An ordinary cultivator would have likely groaned aloud from the sheer contrast.
Li Fan took a deep breath. He did not let down his guard as he gradually approached the tree.
Suddenly, though there was no wind, the leaves began to rustle.
Li Fan had encountered many peculiar trees throughout his countless reincarnations.
In the Xuanhuang Realm, there were the Myriad Spirits Tree, the Heavenly Splendor Tree, and the Earth Vein Tree—the three great ancient trees of Xuanhuang—as well as the Ruo Tree, the very source of life.
Aboard the Mysterious Immortal Boat, there was a divine tree from the ancient Divine Wood Sect.
But this tree was different from all the others.
Whether it was the three great ancient trees or the Ruo Tree...
They all possessed their own consciousness, giving Li Fan the unsettling feeling of plants that had gained sentience.
But the one in this courtyard...
It was purely a tree.
Pure, but not ordinary.
The crisp rustle of leaves brushing against one another slowly eased the tension Li Fan had carried with him throughout this entire life.
Li Fan didn't know the tree's name.
Nor did he feel any desire to investigate its origins. He simply sat cross-legged beneath it, meditating as if in search of enlightenment.
Another gentle breeze whispered through the branches, and dozens of emerald-green leaves, so vibrant they seemed to drip with color, drifted down.
They flew into Li Fan's body like streams of light.
Li Fan's eyes slowly closed.
When he opened them again, ten days had passed.
The struggles and life-or-death battles across a hundred reincarnations; the constant fear of monstrous, peerlessly powerful beings appearing from nowhere; the lingering terror from countless brushes with death...
All of this accumulated fatigue, weighing down his very soul, was completely erased.
It was as if he had enjoyed a long, deep sleep.
Body and soul, he felt completely renewed.
Rising to his feet, Li Fan felt his spirit in a state of unprecedented clarity and vigor.
He gazed at the tree in the courtyard.
Its brilliance had receded, and to his eyes, it now seemed to have no special qualities.
It looked just like any other ordinary tree.
Li Fan recalled the images that had flashed through his mind during his ten days of slumber.
Memories originating from the tree itself.
A streak of light tore across the sky, crashing down near the tree.
It lay motionless, like an inanimate object devoid of any life force. It appeared to be a sphere, mottled with bloodstains and charred over half its surface.
As time passed, the decaying outer layer of the sphere slowly flaked away.
From within, an infant crawled out.
The infant didn't wail like a newborn. It simply glanced from side to side, chose a direction, and began to crawl with a look of firm resolve.
It soon disappeared from the tree's view.
As for the sphere's outer shell, it was slowly broken down by the wind, sun, and rain, dissolving into nutrients that the tree absorbed.
...
The sky was filled with terrifying tremors and bursts of fire, the signs of a brutal, ongoing war.
A figure appeared silently near the tree.
"Why is it a tree?"
"Did the target lock malfunction?"
"This blasted place..."
In the man's hand stood a small, one-eyed mechanical figurine. A golden light emanated from its eye, pointing directly at the tree.
His expression a mixture of confusion and anxiety, the man fiddled with the device, but the direction of its gaze remained fixed.
The man cursed, angrily hurling the mechanical figurine to the ground.
It seemed some cultivators in the sky above had noticed the man below.
The man's expression flickered, and he vanished in a streak of golden light.
Countless days passed, and the mechanical figurine became buried deep beneath the earth.
Suns rose and moons set. The scars of that world-shaking battle were gradually erased by the passage of time.
Mortals who chanced upon this place would feel an incomparable sense of peace.
Eventually, people began to settle here, and a small mortal town grew.
Ten generations of people lived and died near this tree. They all possessed remarkably positive outlooks. Though their lives were ordinary, they were always content. Even in the face of hardship, they would simply smile and move on.
This continued until a descendant of the eleventh generation chose to become a storyteller to make a living. Needing a quality wooden block for his trade, he simply chopped a piece off the tree in his family's courtyard.
...
His thoughts churning, Li Fan's first move was to start digging around the base of the tree.
Knowing his spiritual sense would be ineffective, Li Fan had no choice but to do the work himself.
Before long, he found it: the mechanical figurine the man had discarded centuries ago.
Buried for so long, it was still pristine when he unearthed it.
It bore not the slightest trace of time's passage.
The mechanical figurine's third eye, however, was closed for some unknown reason.
No matter how he tried to activate it, it remained completely unresponsive.
Li Fan toyed with the mechanical object, sensing a familiar aura from it.
"Falling into the Mortal Dust..."
Li Fan's heart grew heavy.
After a moment of contemplation, Li Fan made his decision.
He took out the white ring, Falling into the Mortal Dust, and directed its light at the mechanical figurine.
Falling into the Mortal Dust was the physical manifestation of the Great Dao's law of the Primordial.
For over a decade, Li Fan had held the white ring, constantly replaying the vision he had seen on the wordless stele in his previous life.
Hoping to comprehend this Great Dao.
But to his disappointment, no matter how he tried, he couldn't grasp its principles as he had with the other True Immortal Scripts.
It was as if...
the world's principles of the Primordial had already converged into a single point, a domain that no one else could touch.
Li Fan didn't force the issue. In any case, [Truth] was already bound to the white ring, and for now, the ability to call upon its power at will was not so different from comprehending it himself.
Now, the white ring's light locked onto the mechanical figurine.
Bathed in the white light, the figurine—which should have disintegrated into nothingness—remained completely unharmed!
It wasn't that its existential level was higher than that of Falling into the Mortal Dust, granting it immunity to the ring's disintegrating effect.
Rather, upon sensing the figurine, the light emanating from the white ring had suddenly turned green.
The figurine was thus spared the fate of disintegration.
Illuminated by the ring, the previously dormant mechanical figurine stirred back to life.
It flew up and hovered in Li Fan's palm, its third eye opening.
It began to spin, as if searching for something.
But for some reason, the figurine began to spin faster and faster.
It spun wildly, as if out of control.
It became a spinning top.
"Is it... broken?"
Li Fan frowned slightly.
He didn't stop it, letting the figurine continue to whirl.
Li Fan first looked back at the green tree in the courtyard.
"A century ago, the figurine pointed to this tree because the tree had absorbed the shell that encased the infant."
"That substance must have properties that awaken the mind and grant enlightenment."
"But over time, and especially after I absorbed its essence, the effect has become negligible. That's why the figurine is trying to point elsewhere now."
"I can't imagine how much its potency has faded, yet it was still so miraculous for me. It's hard to fathom its original power."
Li Fan's eyes gleamed as he continued his line of thought. "The white ring, Falling into the Mortal Dust, reacted to the figurine. That's enough to confirm they share the same origin..."
"That means my suspicions from my last life were correct. The being imprisoned in the depths of the Gloomy Prison must also be from beyond the High Wall."
Li Fan's expression immediately turned grim.
Indeed, the man from the tree's memory was the same skeleton Li Fan had encountered in the depths of the Gloomy Prison in his past life.
The cultivator who called himself Qin Zhuang!
"I searched his soul, but I didn't find this memory."
"He must have used some secret art to conceal and fabricate his memories. Impressive."
Li Fan praised him inwardly. Instead of anger at being deceived, he felt a flicker of excitement.
"He thought his actions were flawless, but he failed to realize that every action leaves a trace."
"Under normal circumstances, such a trace would be nearly impossible to find. But before the Xuanhuang Grand Illusionary Array, where all beings are equal, it has finally been exposed!"
Li Fan thought back to the tree's memory, to the image of the infant crawling from the sphere.
"Qin Zhuang... I'll call him that for the time being."
"He seems to have come inside the High Wall to search for that infant."
"Does that mean the infant is also from beyond the High Wall?"
"Qin Zhuang is connected to the Heavenly Sword Sect. Could the infant be one of their descendants as well?"
In an instant, a thousand questions flooded Li Fan's mind.
In this lifetime, the Alliance's Gloomy Prison was already enveloped by the Grand Illusionary Array of Xuanhuang's Myriad Beings. Qin Zhuang had inevitably fallen into it.
But he suspected the outcome would be the same as in his last life's test—Qin Zhuang would reveal no weaknesses.
"Ineffective twice in a row..."
"It seems that methods for resisting illusion arrays are quite common beyond the High Wall."
Li Fan pondered for a moment, deciding not to rush into capturing and interrogating Qin Zhuang.
"If he's immune to an immortal array, physical punishments will likely be useless as well."
"I'll need to develop a more specialized approach. Perhaps I'll find a new method after I reach the Dao Integration stage."
...
Reigning in his thoughts, Li Fan turned his attention back to the spinning mechanical figurine.
It still showed no sign of stopping.
Li Fan watched it carefully, deep in thought.
"It seems to be just spinning, but there are distinct pauses between each turn."
"It's as if..."
"it's found multiple targets simultaneously, all scattered across the Xuanhuang Realm."
Li Fan reached an incredible conclusion.
"Wait a minute, could it be..."
In a flash, an idea struck him like lightning.
To test his theory, Li Fan held the mechanical figurine and flew slowly in one direction.
Sure enough, as he drew closer, the figurine began to orient itself toward his direction of travel with increasing frequency.
Finally, Li Fan arrived at his destination.
Looking at the figurine, which had finally stopped spinning, Li Fan smiled meaningfully.
Before him was a wooden building, and on its sign were three large characters.
Thousand Mile Hall!
The mechanical figurine's third eye stared directly into the hall, fixed upon the sleeping form of Jiao Xiuyuan.
Then, as if its energy was once again depleted, it slowly closed.
"So he was the infant from all those years ago."
"Jiao Xiuyuan... from beyond the High Wall?"
"But unlike Qin Zhuang, he isn't immune to the illusion array..."
A storm of thoughts churned in Li Fan's mind.
He then closed his eyes for a moment before taking the figurine and entering the Grand Array of Xuanhuang's Myriad Beings.
Inside the illusion, Jiao Xiuyuan was his usual self, hawking his wares and conducting business.
The moment Li Fan appeared before him, Jiao Xiuyuan seemed to sense something. His shouting stopped abruptly, and his gaze fell upon the mechanical figurine in Li Fan's hand.
Li Fan pretended to turn and leave.
"Fellow Daoist, please wait!"
Jiao Xiuyuan called out and stepped forward to block Li Fan's path.
"Since you've come all this way, why not step inside? Come, have a seat," Jiao Xiuyuan said, his face beaming, his dark features conveying an air of simple honesty.
With the perfect composure of a seasoned merchant, he never once glanced at the figurine in Li Fan's hand.
Li Fan put the figurine away and sighed. "It's a family heirloom. I was considering selling it, but after much thought, I've decided to keep it."
"Farewell!" Li Fan said with a cupped-fist salute, making to leave again.
"Don't be in such a rush, my friend," Jiao Xiuyuan insisted, thumping his chest with a righteous air. "I like the look of you. If you're in any trouble, just say the word. If I can help, I will."
Li Fan hesitated for a moment before finally taking a seat.
Jiao Xiuyuan silently closed the doors of the Thousand Mile Hall.
He focused his full attention on Li Fan.
"I won't hide it from you, my friend. Ever since I was born, I've been having the same dream, over and over."
Li Fan paused briefly, and his very first words captured Jiao Xiuyuan's complete attention.
"In my dream, I see a brilliant light falling from the sky. An infant crawls out of a sphere..."
As he spoke, Li Fan carefully observed Jiao Xiuyuan's reaction.
Jiao Xiuyuan listened with rapt attention, but he showed none of the tells Li Fan had expected.
"I suspect the dream has something to do with this figurine, a family heirloom," Li Fan added.
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