Chapter 1457: The Coffin Duel
Chapter 1457: The Coffin Duel
Within the Transcendent World Coffin, the chanting grew faster, more urgent.
An ethereal, otherworldly aura began to shroud the black coffin.
The gap in the lid was shrinking, closing millimeter by millimeter. It seemed Qian Ruochang, inside, truly intended to emulate the two Immortals, Xi and Yi, and use the coffin to escape this world entirely.
The new recruits of the Immortal Hunt, equally captivated by the coffin and poised to leap inside, suddenly found themselves ensnared by the Dao Net, unable to move a muscle. They could only watch in silence as the situation spiraled toward disaster.
As a nameless panic seized the group, it was Dao Yuan who first spoke to steady their nerves. "Don't panic," he declared. "Have faith in Leader Qian!"
In truth, however, faith was their only option. They were powerless to do anything else.
But it seemed their faith was misplaced.
The lid continued its steady descent, sealing shut completely under their despairing gazes.
But...
The departure they had anticipated—the coffin vanishing from this world—never came to pass.
Instead, the chanting ceased, cut short in an instant.
The seven-colored light froze, as if solidified in time.
This small haven of life within the Annihilation Zone plunged into an eerie, deathly silence.
Then, the Transcendent World Coffin lurched, a single, violent shudder.
THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!
The commotion grew, each heavy tremor resonating deep in their chests. It was as if a savage beast were trapped within, desperately trying to break free!
Just as they stood there, at a loss, they suddenly realized the Dao Net's restraints had vanished.
It wasn't an intentional release. At that moment, the vast majority of the local Dao Net's power had been redirected, so much so that it could no longer spare the sliver of energy required to hold them.
"Does this mean... the Nameless Immortal is in the coffin, and Leader Qian is fighting him in close quarters?" Jin Changyue was the first to realize, gasping in shock.
"We didn't detect any sign of his approach? And this entire area is supposed to be under the surveillance of the local Dao Net!"
"This is bad. Leader Qian is facing the Nameless Immortal alone. Is he in danger?"
The members of the group exchanged uneasy glances.
They were stunned by the Nameless Immortal's unfathomable power and deeply concerned for Qian Ruochang's fate.
But they were helpless.
Despite all their bravado before the mission, now, faced with a true battle between Immortals, they understood with stark clarity that without the power of the Dao Net, a conflict of this magnitude was far beyond their ability to influence.
Besides, the coffin was sealed. Even if they had the courage to join the fray, they had no way to open it and get inside.
"The Nameless Immortal is so elusive that Leader Qian had to use himself as bait, forcing his hand by making it seem the coffin was about to seal and escape this world. Now that the lid is shut, no matter how skilled the Immortal is at escaping, he's trapped with no way out. Therefore, what we must do..."
After a moment of thought, they all came to the same conclusion.
"Quick! We need to get this coffin back to Immortal Hunt headquarters!"
Even with the full suppressive force of the local Dao Net, the coffin—once bait, now a cage—trembled with increasing violence.
Even from a distance, they could feel their hearts pounding in their chests.
They feared the Nameless Immortal trapped within would burst free at any moment.
"We're too far from Shuo Xinghai; conventional flight is out of the question. We need to stabilize the local Dao Net and re-establish our connection with the main network!" They quickly agreed on a course of action.
After training together for so long, they had developed a degree of unspoken coordination.
Without needing a commander, orders flew, and the local Dao Net, which had been pushed to the brink of collapse by the battle of Immortals, slowly began to stabilize.
The next step was to reconnect their local network to the main Dao Net.
The Dao filament that had previously linked them was severed, but they weren't too far from the network's edge. They only needed one person to race to the border and act as a conduit to re-establish the link.
"I'll go!"
This was no time for pleasantries. Jin Changyue's voice was low and firm.
She opened her triple-pupiled eyes once more.
Perhaps from being used too frequently in such a short time, her strange eyes were still laced with a web of crimson veins, an unsettling sight. Two of the pupils fixed on the distant target, while the central, void-like pupil scanned the surroundings with an eerie detachment.
With a flash of sword-light like a fleeting rainbow, Jin Changyue vanished from sight before her words had fully faded.
Her next words seemed to arrive an instant later, echoing in the space she had just left.
"The headcount... it's wrong!"
The others froze for a moment, then turned to look at one another.
A few breaths later, a bone-chilling dread washed over them.
There were twenty-eight new recruits on this mission.
With Jin Changyue gone and Feng Zengyuan having died during the earlier dissection of the True Immortal, there should have been twenty-six of them left.
But now, there were only twenty-five.
More disturbingly, as they tried to recall who was missing, they found they couldn't remember the person's name, their face, or any detail about them at all.
It was as if that person had never existed.
As one, they all turned their gazes to the Transcendent World Coffin.
A terrifying thought surfaced in their minds. "Was the Nameless Immortal... hiding among us the entire time?"
Li Fan's expression was also grim.
Even when he tried to recall using the miniature Dao Net within his divine sense, he could only conjure a blurred silhouette, unable to pinpoint the person's identity.
Li Fan's thoughts raced. *Did he infiltrate the group from the start? Or did he replace someone along the way?*
"But either way, if he knew this was a trap, why did he still enter the coffin at the last second?"
Recalling the brilliant flash of seven-colored light from the coffin, Li Fan fell into thought. "Qian Ruochang must have anticipated the Nameless Immortal's infiltration."
"Throwing himself into the coffin was a blatant, open gambit. If the Nameless Immortal hadn't revealed himself at the last moment, Qian Ruochang might have truly used the coffin to escape, just like Xi and Yi!"
"With a chance to escape this calamity right before his eyes, the Nameless Immortal couldn't resist the temptation. He must have been observing Qian Ruochang up close for some time, and perhaps he believed that even if it was a trap, his own power was sufficient to overcome his opponent. And so he took the gamble..." Li Fan mused, piecing together the likely truth of the situation.
But this line of reasoning quickly led to a new question.
"If that's true, then Qian Ruochang somehow managed to resist the lure of his own bait—the escape from this world. The moment the Nameless Immortal appeared, he abandoned his original objective and committed to the hunt..."
"Could capturing this True Immortal truly be more important to him than his own escape?" Li Fan couldn't help but see Qian Ruochang in a new light.
As time passed, the struggle within the coffin showed no signs of abating. On the contrary, it seemed to be growing more intense.
Qian Ruochang seemed to be losing ground.
Even with the combined efforts of the remaining recruits, they could no longer stabilize the local Dao Net.
It was like a leaf in a storm, about to be torn from the fabric of the Dao to which it clung.
Just as despair began to take root in their hearts, a glint of sword-light pierced the distant darkness.
It was speeding toward them!
It was the valiant figure of Jin Changyue.
Trailing behind her, they could faintly make out a filament of crystalline white light—the Dao filament.
Though no thicker than a thread, the filament was as heavy as a world. The pressure on Jin Changyue as she pulled it was no less than that of carrying an entire realm of cultivation.
Even so, her speed didn't falter in the slightest, a testament to her remarkable power.
Her figure grew larger, the connection to the Dao Net almost within reach.
But for some unknown reason, her flight suddenly slowed. They could faintly see her eyelids fluttering over her triple-pupiled eyes.
"Damn it, she must be at her limit! Go, help her!"
someone exclaimed.
Dao Yuan and most of the others remained at their posts, struggling to maintain the Dao Net.
Jiang Yuming, however, led a team of three to intercept Jin Changyue and the life-saving Dao filament.
Jin Changyue seemed to have truly exhausted every last reserve of her strength. Her flight through the dark void grew slower and slower, until finally, she stopped completely.
Her eyelids drifted shut, and she seemed to fall into a deep slumber right there in the void.
Seeing this, Jiang Yuming's heart leaped with anxiety, and he pushed himself to go even faster.
However...
Before the rescue team of four could even reach her, their own flight began to slow.
Finally, just like Jin Changyue, they too drifted into a silent sleep.
Back at the coffin, the rhythm of the commands from Dao Yuan and the other remaining recruits faltered in unison.
They didn't know what was happening, but a deep sense of foreboding washed over them.
Before anyone could speak, a strange, unfathomable power enveloped them all.
It was as if the accumulated fatigue of a lifetime had erupted all at once.
Many of the Immortal Hunt members fell unconscious in an instant.
Even the most exceptional among them, like Dao Yuan and Nangong Hongzhao, could not resist the overwhelming wave of weariness for long.
Soon, they too sank into a deep slumber, lost in a land of dreams.
The 'Ma Tiande' that Li Fan possessed was no exception.
Across the entire star-dusted void, nothing moved save for the still-trembling coffin.
The new recruits slept soundly, while inside the coffin, the contest between the two True Immortals remained undecided.
One day, two days...
After thirty days had passed, the occupant—or occupants—of the coffin seemed to sense that something outside had changed. Or perhaps, the duel inside had finally reached its conclusion.
The sounds of struggle slowly subsided.
Yet, no one emerged.
The Transcendent World Coffin simply floated in the silence of the void.
...
Xuanhuang Realm.
Through the power of dreams, Li Fan observed the floating coffin from a great distance.
His decision to intervene had been carefully considered. He was even prepared for the possibility of his true identity being exposed, ready to use [Truth] to escape at a moment's notice.
Whether the Nameless Immortal targeted by the Immortal Hunt was the 'What Matter' Immortal or not, there was value for Li Fan in resolving this situation and making contact.
Having infiltrated Shuo Xinghai, he had already gained a preliminary understanding of its various factions.
However, he remained completely ignorant about the True Immortals who stood in opposition to Shuo Xinghai.
Li Fan's own state, aside from the lack of immortal spiritual energy in his body, was not so different from that of an 'Immortal'. He could, arguably, be considered on the same side.
If he could rescue this Nameless Immortal and learn something from him, it would undoubtedly advance his own plans.
Still, Li Fan was not about to recklessly reveal himself and confront the victor.
Instead, he watched the coffin silently, waiting.
Like a hunter waiting for his prey to walk into a trap, he had all the patience in the world.
The silence from within the coffin lasted a full seven days.
Still sensing no change in the outside world, the person inside seemed to be losing their patience.
The sacred chanting echoed forth once more.
It seemed they intended to escape this world, regardless of the circumstances outside!
But the chanting did not last long.
From the void, another sound arose in unison—an ethereal, indistinct murmur.
The tone was completely different from the chanting, and it caused a subtle dissonance in the sound emerging from the coffin.
The seven-colored light also seemed to be affected, flickering erratically, unable to coalesce.
The person inside the coffin did not give up.
After a brief pause, the colored light flared violently, and the volume of the chanting doubled.
But for every measure they took, the countermeasure was ten times stronger. The illusory sound from the surrounding dreamscape intensified by several dozen times.
It completely overwhelmed the chanting.
The seven-colored light receded back into the coffin, which then fell silent once more.
Having completed its disruption, the murmuring faded away as mysteriously as it had appeared.
In this stretch of the void, only the coffin remained.
And the quietly floating bodies of the new Immortal Hunt recruits.
Li Fan had personally woven a pleasant dream for them. For the sake of caution—inspired by the concept of the local Dao Net—he had made this dreamscape independent of the main Xuanhuang Realm's dream paradise. It could be discarded at any time like a sacrificial pawn. With the additional barrier of the High-wall, it would leave no trace.
By focusing all the dream power he had cultivated outside the High-wall, and combining it with the demonic sounds from the Xuanyuan clan's bloodline memory, he was able to interrupt the Transcendent World Coffin's attempt to travel.
Previously, Li Fan had used the Grandmaster's disaster-averting mystic tones to neutralize the influence of the Xuantian King's demonic sound.
Thus, when he heard the coffin's activation chant and noted its similarity to those mystic tones, this idea had come to him.
Now, putting it into practice, he found it worked perfectly.
"It seems these two Dao harmonies are, to some extent, diametrically opposed," Li Fan mused.
The Immortal Hunt of Shuo Xinghai had not simply abandoned the trapped coffin.
Clearly, their headquarters had been aware of Qian Ruochang's plan, at least to some degree.
They had already dispatched search parties to the fringes of the Dao Net to look for the missing coffin and its escort.
However, to ensure his trap for the Nameless Immortal was convincing, Qian Ruochang had evidently kept the full details to himself.
To the people of Shuo Xinghai, the Annihilation Zone remained an unknown and perilous territory.
Combined with the fact that Li Fan had already severed the Dao filament, it meant the search parties would not be finding them anytime soon.
"Let's see how long you can hold out."
To capture the Nameless Immortal, the coffin had likely been modified to only open from the outside. Unless someone inside was powerful enough to shatter it, there was no escaping the sealed container.
This had been the cornerstone of Qian Ruochang's otherwise perfect trap.
Now, however, it had become the very reason Li Fan dared to make his move.
(End of Chapter)
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