Chapter 1391: The Stele Reveals an Immortal Character
Chapter 1391: The Stele Reveals an Immortal Character
"Crude" was the only word for it, especially when compared to the white ring, Falling into the Mortal Dust, which was so perfectly forged, so utterly seamless, that it seemed a work of nature itself.
In truth, the three-eyed little man—this technique of refining a living person into an object—was completely beyond Li Fan's current understanding.
Even with the physical object right before him, he was at a loss for where to even begin his research.
Of all the theories he had ever encountered, only the [Medicine King Scripture of Dao Refining], personally passed down by Sun Piao Miao, bore the slightest resemblance to it.
And even that was a stretch.
"To transform a person into an object, yet preserve the person's attribute of life," he mused.
"While simultaneously imbuing it with the attributes of an object."
"..."
First, he confirmed that the little man's consciousness had been completely erased. It could only act according to a set of predetermined rules.
Next, Li Fan tested its durability.
After the three-eyed man had malfunctioned, Qin Zhuang had tossed it aside without a second thought, suggesting that it was hardly a high-value item beyond the High Wall.
And yet, to inflict any noticeable damage on this small thing, Li Fan had to resort to one of his most powerful techniques: the Nine Heavens Descending Dust Finger.
"If it were merely a cultivator from the Chenyuan Realm, even with their rumored True Immortal bloodline, they couldn't possibly be this tough. It's the overlay of an object's properties, the two fused so perfectly as to be seamless, that has increased its defensive capabilities so dramatically..."
Beings from beyond the High Wall seemed to possess an extraordinary resistance to illusion arrays.
Li Fan tested the three-eyed man against most of the immortal arrays in his arsenal. He found that the little man, even in its unconscious state, could invariably evade the arrays' fatal strikes, moving through them with nonchalant ease.
"Beyond person and object, there seems to be a third attribute superimposed here."
While observing, Li Fan continuously adjusted his immortal arrays based on the three-eyed man's evasive maneuvers.
He would then test it again with the new array, optimized by the Final Dissociation Disc.
The result remained unchanged; the little man still dodged with ease.
Without a hint of frustration, Li Fan began another round of iterations.
After the fiftieth refinement of his arrays, the three-eyed man's flawless evasive movements finally showed a flaw. It began to be occasionally caught by the workings of the immortal arrays.
A bright gleam flickered in Li Fan's eyes.
"My immortal arrays are like a large, woven net."
"Although they seem invincible within the Darkest Star Sea, capable of enveloping all living things the moment they are deployed, to this creation from beyond the High Wall, the gaps in the net's weave are all glaring weaknesses!"
"But as I patch these weaknesses one by one, making the net's weave tighter and the holes smaller..."
"It's no longer so easy for it to rely on instinct to resist the arrays!"
"In short, while the fundamental level of my array Dao hasn't improved qualitatively, it has become increasingly difficult to breach!"
Li Fan's thoughts churned as he stared intently at the little Chenyuan Realm man within the immortal array.
He applied all the detailed modifications from his iterative upgrades to his entire repertoire of grand arrays.
It was as if what was once a rough sketch was becoming an increasingly detailed and refined copy through the constant addition of minutiae.
"This level of refinement to the details of an array is absolutely not something one person can achieve in a short time. It would require the successive, unyielding efforts of generations of researchers, like the people of the Immortal Boat, to reach such a level of mastery!"
For a fleeting moment, Li Fan seemed to see countless figures toiling day and night, immersed in the study of the Dao of arrays.
"My ability to complete this so quickly is simply because I'm taking what's already there and applying it. In fact, without the aid of the Dissociation Disc, I could never have iterated through the arrays at such a speed!"
"The three-eyed little man was brought from beyond the wall by Qin Zhuang five hundred years ago."
"But the white ring and the Cat Treasure are creations from the recent past."
"In five hundred years, have the methods of the High Wall advanced so tremendously?"
With a thought, Li Fan took out Falling into the Mortal Dust and tossed it toward the evolving array in front of him.
He wanted to compare its response to the shifting array against that of the three-eyed man.
However, just as Li Fan expected, Falling into the Mortal Dust was immune to all the array's effects.
His observation plan failed before it could even begin.
"I didn't even see it perform evasive maneuvers like the three-eyed man did."
"It's as if all the immortal arrays I currently command simply have no effect on it!"
"They seem to exist on completely different planes of reality..."
Li Fan's eyes flickered thoughtfully. "It appears that in the last five hundred years, the technology beyond the High Wall has undergone a qualitative leap."
Inspired by the phenomenon of inconsistent time flow within the Darkest Star Sea, Li Fan had previously speculated that the rate of time beyond the High Wall might be far greater than within it.
More than ten thousand years had passed in the Darkest Star Sea since the great calamity of the Immortal Realm. Perhaps a million years had elapsed beyond the High Wall.
"The disparity between the three-eyed man and the other creations that arrived in the Xuanhuang Realm seems to corroborate my theory in some way."
"Of course, it's also possible that the Cat Treasure and Falling into the Mortal Dust are extremely rare even beyond the High Wall. The difference could simply be one of common value..."
But in his heart, because both the Cat Treasure and the white ring had been fished from the Fishing Pool, Li Fan instinctively felt that items used as "bait" were unlikely to be particularly rare objects.
"With the three-eyed man helping me calibrate and reduce the flaws in my immortal arrays, I might have a chance to perfect them in this lifetime."
"And then, I can dig some useful intelligence out of that Qin Zhuang's mind."
The experiment was now on track and unlikely to encounter any further mishaps. What remained was simple, mechanical repetition.
Li Fan split off a fabricated personality to handle the array refinements. Next, he turned his attention to the rays of golden light the three-eyed man had shot out to capture Jiao Xiuyuan.
He had already determined that this golden light was an innate divine ability of the Chenyuan cultivators, representing some law in and of itself.
And what could be better for analyzing a law than the leg bone of a Nameless True Immortal?
Carrying the golden light with him, Li Fan teleported into the small world of the You Clan.
Under the protection of Li Fan's illusory statue, the once nearly extinct You Clan had reclaimed most of the small world's territory.
However, every so often, the terrifying stone stele at the world's center would erupt with a boundless calamity, claiming the lives of nearly half the You Clan's population.
The existence of the stele and the illusory statue kept the You Clan perpetually suspended between terror and fervent prayer.
Arriving before the Nameless True Immortal's leg bone, Li Fan first checked the progress of the True Immortal Script manifesting on its surface.
Perhaps it was a case of quantitative change leading to a qualitative one; having devoured the flesh and blood of a vast number of You Clan members, the blank stele was revealing the character much faster than Li Fan had anticipated.
The mysterious character was currently less than a fifth of the way revealed, yet Li Fan could already feel a unique sort of power emanating from it.
Unlike the "Hunger" and "Congenital" characters...
This True Immortal Script, related to the transformation between immortal and mortal, was actually able to penetrate the stele's restraining power to some degree as it manifested.
It radiated its own might into the outside world.
It was this faint influence that caused the You Clan's atavistic process to slowly advance, even without Li Fan's direct intervention.
All of this happened silently, without a trace.
Even the fabricated personality assigned to supervise the process hadn't noticed.
Only now, with Li Fan present in person, did he keenly perceive the change in this place.
Li Fan frowned slightly and decisively set up layers of immortal arrays around the stele, isolating the True Immortal Script's influence from the outside world.
"This doesn't mean the station of this 'Immortal-Mortal Transformation' character exceeds that of the Nameless True Immortal."
"Rather, this character itself has a certain peculiarity. The Great Dao it involves may have even influenced the Nameless True Immortal during his lifetime."
"And this stele is not the complete Southern Immortal Heavenly Pillar, just a shattered fragment of a leg bone."
"It's not surprising that such a change would occur."
"But anything involving a True Immortal is truly fraught with hidden dangers. I cannot afford the slightest carelessness!" Li Fan silently reminded himself.
He then proceeded with his main task.
He projected a frozen ray of golden light toward the stele.
The moment it drew near, it was absorbed by the stele.
The imprint of a brand-new True Immortal Script began to appear in a corner of the stele.
What Li Fan found somewhat strange, however, was that whether it was "Hunger," "Congenital," or the still-forming "Immortal-Mortal Transformation" character...
They had all appeared in the central region of the stele.
But this new character, ignoring the vast open space in the middle, had squeezed itself into the farthest corner to appear.
Li Fan tried to recall which True Immortal Scripts had appeared in the corresponding area on the blank stele in his previous life, but unfortunately, it had been a fleeting glimpse, leaving no lasting impression.
Thus, after pondering for a long while, he couldn't find a single clue.
He decided to ignore it for now and continue feeding it the golden light.
As expected of a creation of pure law, it was far more efficient than simply feeding the stele material substances and having it analyze them.
With one ray of golden light left to be devoured, the True Immortal Script on the stele was already fully revealed!
"This is..."
"Detain?"
Like all True Immortal Scripts, the moment he saw it, its true meaning surfaced in his mind.
The character itself was not particularly complex.
But to Li Fan, it held a different kind of significance.
After coming into contact with a large number of True Immortal Scripts, Li Fan had once attempted to classify them simply.
Not based on the strength of the characters' power, but on their purpose.
The vast majority of True Immortal Scripts were annotations on the Great Dao laws between heaven and earth. But a small portion were derivations of Immortal Realm edicts!
For instance, the "Return" character that had previously caused the Nine Stars Red Pearl, the core of the ancient Xuanhuang Realm's array, to inexplicably vanish.
And the "Detain" character now before him also fell into this category.
"The Chenyuan Realm... possessing the bloodline of a True Immortal. This is likely no mere boast."
"For a True Immortal to descend to a lower realm comes at a great cost. The Immortal Realm would need to find representatives in the lower realms to execute its will. It's probable that the cultivators of the Chenyuan Realm served as the Immortal Realm's enforcers..."
Li Fan's thoughts then turned to the legends that the Chenyuan Realm was one of the first cultivation worlds to be affected when the great calamity of the Immortal Realm descended. It should have been wiped out long ago.
Yet, after so many years, there still seemed to be surviving cultivators, who were then refined into objects by powers from beyond the High Wall.
"There are several possibilities."
"One: there is more than one Chenyuan Realm in all the lower realms. The one in the Darkest Star Sea is just one of them."
"Two: some cultivators from the Chenyuan Realm survived back then and managed to escape the confines of the Darkest Star Sea before the High Wall was established. They then propagated beyond the High Wall. But judging by the current situation, their circumstances are likely not very good."
Li Fan reined in his thoughts and began to test the newly acquired "Detain" character.
It was remarkably similar to the "Binding Insect" divine ability he had obtained long ago.
Or rather, it was a complete and superior replacement for the Binding Insect ability.
Binding Insect still required the caster's strength to be greater than the target's.
But under the "Detain" character, as long as the target was not immune to the power of a True Immortal Script, they would be seized in an instant.
Their body, soul, and mind would all fall into a state of frozen stillness, completely at the mercy of the caster!
Li Fan summoned Autumn Water and Tianyang to run some tests.
Both were of the Supreme Realm.
But perhaps because Tianyang had once absorbed the combat experience of an immortal puppet and was thus tinged with some of its characteristics, he fared extremely poorly under the "Detain" character.
He had to unleash nearly his full power to barely break free.
Autumn Water's response, however, was much better. By borrowing the infinite power of the Star Sea, she could minimize the influence of the "Detain" character.
"The True Immortal Scripts derived from Immortal Realm edicts seem to be of a different origin from those transcribed from the Great Dao laws."
Having personally experienced the power of the "Detain" character, a thought flashed through Li Fan's mind.
"In addition to its power within the normal scope, it also has a special suppressive bonus against certain existences."
Li Fan's eyes narrowed slightly.
He had once been fortunate enough to glimpse the full panorama of the Immortal Realm.
In that boundless, vast sea, True Immortals were but a minority. The vast majority of the Immortal Realm was populated by True Immortal creations like immortal puppets and immortal servants.
"The Immortal Realm edicts were likely the means used to specifically control these beings."
"And perhaps, from a higher authority to a lower one, these edicts could also be of use."
When Li Fan spoke of higher to lower, he didn't just mean from a True Immortal to a mortal.
It also included the towering figure from that True Immortal's memory, looking down upon another True Immortal.
"...your servant..."
Pondering the fragments of that descended True Immortal's memory, Li Fan had an inkling of understanding.
"Their name is unknown, so I'll refer to them as the Sovereign for now. In the Sovereign's eyes, even True Immortals are like ants. This might be inextricably linked to the strict Immortal Realm edicts..."
"It's like an imperial edict in a mortal dynasty, where a single word can lead to the confiscation of property and the extermination of a clan!"
"But an imperial edict derives its authority from the emperor. The authority of the Immortal Realm edicts, however, comes from..."
Li Fan once again wrote a "Detain" character.
"It seems... something is missing," Li Fan murmured with a slight frown.
It wasn't that the "Detain" character manifested by the stele was incomplete, but that Li Fan faintly sensed that in the process of writing it, certain restraints were absent!
"Under normal circumstances, not just anyone would have the authority to write the 'Detain' character."
"But with the shattering of the Immortal Realm and the sovereigns who ruled over the True Immortals turning to dust, this restriction has vanished along with them."
With great acuity, Li Fan perceived the precious nature of these Immortal Realm edict-type True Immortal Scripts.
"As long as I master their composition, I can unleash their power."
As his thoughts surged, Li Fan couldn't help but look up at the sky.
He wondered what would happen if he used the "Detain" character on that True Immortal of the Immortal Ruins above.
(End of Chapter)
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