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Chapter 1464: The Compassionate World Reincarnation Sect

This method of concealment—one where the secret could only be uncovered by someone already aware of the object's unique properties—was a hallmark of Sun Piao Miao's relics.

The statue before Li Buren shared a similar style with the few artifacts Sun Piao Miao had left behind on the Mysterious Immortal Boat, a realization that struck him just in time.

"Sun Piao Miao's creations almost always possessed some unique, wondrous function. The humanoid puppet could double the charging rate of [Truth]. The three-pronged tree granted [Truth] an additional simulation. As for the bronze crane, a secret message would whisper in one's ear upon its destruction."

"Heavenly Net Era, two hundred thirteen. From the rising of Shangzhang Dayuanxian and the coming of Zuo'e E'feng, to the setting of Zhuyong Chifenruo and the end of Yanmao Xuanyi..."

Lost in thought, Li Buren slowly approached the humanoid statue.

The objects that had abruptly appeared in the grand hall all seemed connected to the experiments conducted at this site. While he had been granted the authority to observe them, their physical forms appeared to exist in a different space-time, out of his reach. He could look, but he could not touch.

Only the humanoid statue was different. Through the deep connection Li Fan shared with Sun Piao Miao's other relics, Li Buren could faintly perceive its touch.

His fingers felt as though they were passing through a layer of cool mist rather than touching a solid object.

Even with only that hazy sensation, Li Buren experienced the same profound, mysterious feeling he always did when encountering one of Sun Piao Miao's relics. "If my main body were here," he mused, "I might be able to directly absorb it using [Truth], bypassing this place's defenses. But this site seems purpose-built to ensnare [Truth]. Until I have completely unraveled its secrets, my true self would never personally step into such a dangerous trap."

He had managed to establish a preliminary connection with the statue, but he found himself unable to proceed any further.

Every form of energy he projected, even his divine sense, passed harmlessly through the statue, which hovered between the tangible and the illusory.

After numerous fruitless attempts, Li Buren's thoughts turned once more to Sun Piao Miao and his eccentricities. Suddenly, that secret, whispered message echoed again in his mind.

"Heavenly Net Era, two hundred thirteen..."

A deep hum resonated through the hall.

The instant the phrase materialized in Li Buren's mind, the puppet emitted a heavy, grinding sound, like a machine stirring to life after centuries of disuse. The humanoid figure seemed to shift from ethereal to solid as its arms, once hanging limp at its sides, slowly rose to chest level.

It extended its right hand, pointing toward the center of the panoramic mural on the wall.

At this gesture, the vast starscape depicted in the cylindrical hall—a mosaic of countless small, block-like worlds—underwent a dramatic transformation.

The panoramic mural flickered, a rapid interplay of light and shadow.

It was as if the pages of a book were being flipped backward at an incredible speed, or a recording was being rewound at fast-forward.

Starry skies that had been extinguished into lifeless darkness blazed back into brilliant light.

The flickering, block-like starscapes gradually ceased their frantic pulsing and settled into a stable image.

The few remaining pockets of life erupted with sudden brilliance, transforming from faint specks of light into dazzling, radiant stars.

Before he knew it, Li Buren found himself enveloped by a boundless sea of cosmic life. The entire star sea under the facility's surveillance seemed to have rewound to an era before the devastation of the Dao Annihilation Calamity.

The light and shadows of the star sea continued to leap and flicker, constantly shifting.

Finally, at a precise moment, the motion froze. After a brief pause, the scene on the panoramic wall resumed playing at a normal speed.

The images changed with breathtaking speed. Even with the formidable strength of his divine sense, Li Buren found it strenuous to fully process and distinguish the details.

But after a moment of intense focus, he quickly understood. He was watching a recorded segment, replaying on a loop.

"So time hasn't been reversed to before the Great Calamity," he concluded. "This puppet has simply accessed the surveillance data previously recorded by this facility."

"Heavenly Net Era, two hundred thirteen..."

"Then the next part of the message must be..."

Li Buren silently recited the next line: "From the rising of Shangzhang Dayuanxian and the coming of Zuo'e E'feng."

The puppet responded to the new command, moving once more.

Its left hand, which had been hanging low, rose slowly.

This time, it didn't simply point. Instead, its hand traced a wide circle in the air, demarcating a specific area within the looping visual records.

Li Buren watched as the beginning of the recording from the Heavenly Net Era's two hundred and thirteenth year was trimmed away.

At the same time, the gesture wiped out ninety percent of the block-like starscapes on the panoramic wall.

The once-brilliant sea of cosmic life dimmed drastically.

Li Buren proceeded to recite the final line of the whispered message.

"To the setting of Zhuyong Chifenruo and the end of Yanmao Xuanyi."

The looping record was compressed once more. According to Li Buren's calculations, the original recording for the two hundred and thirteenth year of the Heavenly Net Era had spanned a period equivalent to about a thousand years in the Xuanhuang Realm.

But after the two commands, the timeframe had been drastically narrowed. Watching the repeating images, he calculated that the segment now covered a span of roughly fifty years.

And just as before, it wasn't only the time that was being refined. The puppet waved its hand again, slicing through the starscape.

This time, only three of the block-like starscapes remained, twinkling brightly against the void.

The three small, previously unremarkable blocks were suddenly magnified, expanding to occupy the entire panoramic wall.

Within these magnified starscapes, the events of that fifty-year period replayed in a rapid sequence of scenes.

One of those starscapes was instantly, deeply familiar to Li Buren.

It was the Darkest Star Sea, home to the Xuanhuang Realm!

With a flicker of intent, he extended his divine sense, attempting to probe the recorded images before him.

This time, there was no resistance. It felt as if he were truly soaring through the cosmos. Li Buren quickly zeroed in on the location of the Xuanhuang Realm.

"There are no Ten Great Immortal Sects."

"No Xuantian Sect."

"The Desolate God Sect, the Reincarnation Sect, the Divine Wood Sect... This is a distant era, when the Immortal Realm still thrived. There's no sign of the impending Great Calamity, and the cultivation sects can still communicate with the realms above."

Even so, fifty years was too long a period for Li Buren to observe every event that transpired across the vast lands of the Xuanhuang Realm in minute detail.

He had to focus on the most unusual occurrences.

"The number of Desolate Gods the Desolate God Sect could summon reached its peak in the fifth year. A total of twelve different Desolate Gods manifested simultaneously, crushing all dissent. They were unrivaled in the Xuanhuang Realm. But in the forty-third year, the sect abruptly lost contact with one of them—an event unprecedented in their history."

"Though they managed to connect with a new Desolate God eight years later, the incident left the sect master and elders deeply unsettled."

"Compared to the Desolate God Sect, the Reincarnation Sect was far more discreet. Their practice wasn't about establishing a grand cycle of reincarnation for the world, but small, personal cycles for individuals. Relying on their Indestructible Samsara Body, they could reincarnate and be reborn endlessly. While their cultivation base was wiped clean with each rebirth, certain crucial memories always remained."

"And the purpose of this constant reincarnation wasn't to ascend to the Immortal Realm. It was to..."

Li Buren narrowed his eyes.

The scenes recorded on the facility's panoramic wall seemed to encompass nearly everything that had ever happened.

He couldn't fathom what method allowed it, but his divine sense could explore unimpeded, even penetrating secret chambers and sealed formations.

He could even overhear certain divine sense transmissions with perfect clarity.

But not everything was recorded.

Whenever a Xuanhuang sect communicated with the Immortal Realm, the recording would become distorted. In certain mysterious regions, the surveillance would fail entirely—some images became hopelessly blurred, while others were simply blank.

The master of the Reincarnation Sect seemed somehow aware of this omnipresent surveillance.

Each time he prepared to impart the sect's ultimate arts to his direct disciple, he would first bathe, burn incense, and establish a connection to the Immortal Realm.

As a result, the recording would always be interrupted.

"This sect master of the Reincarnation Sect is named Jiang Lianshi."

"I don't recognize his direct disciple, a man named Chu Zhiyi. However, one of Chu Zhiyi's own disciples looks somewhat familiar."

The disciple's name was Zhang Ruyu. At this point in time, he was only a boy in his early teens, but Li Buren could already see the faint shadow of Zhang Qianmo in his features.

"The Reincarnation Sect."

Although the ultimate purpose of their arts remained hidden from the surveillance, Jiang Lianshi's behavior was deeply suspect.

Aside from his habit of evading surveillance by contacting the Immortal Realm...

...Jiang Lianshi frequently visited the top floor of a tall pavilion within the sect to meditate in solitude.

The top floor consisted of a single, vast hall.

Hanging on the walls were tens of thousands of painted scrolls, each one a self-portrait of Jiang Lianshi himself.

He seemed to have painted them all himself. In every portrait, his expression, attire, and posture were unique.

When he wasn't painting, Jiang Lianshi would simply sit in the pavilion, face to face with his tens of thousands of portraits.

The entire process was devoid of any spiritual energy fluctuations.

But as an observer watching from far in the future, Li Buren still sensed something profoundly strange about this bizarre cultivation practice.

At times, he even had the distinct, unsettling illusion that for a fleeting moment, all the portraits in the pavilion had come to life.

Over the course of fifty years, Jiang Lianshi made no apparent breakthroughs. The entire Reincarnation Sect remained quiet and unobtrusive.

The only time he took action was when an elder from the Divine Wood Sect appeared at their gates, asking to borrow the sect's treasure, the One Glance Ten Thousand Years Bead.

According to the elder, the bead could accelerate the growth of their sect's sacred tree without any negative side effects. He pleaded sincerely, offering anything they desired in exchange.

Jiang Lianshi refused him outright.

The Divine Wood Sect elder pleaded several more times, to no avail. Furious, he attempted to seize the treasure by force, only for Jiang Lianshi to tap a single finger between his brows.

The man, well into his sixties, seemed to reverse in age, his body shrinking until he was little more than a babbling infant.

Not only was his cultivation base erased, but his mind also appeared to have reverted to that of a toddler.

Jiang Lianshi did not kill the elder. He simply ordered his disciples to return the man to the Divine Wood Sect, along with a talisman he had personally inscribed.

It was a seemingly ordinary piece of yellow paper, on which a single eye was drawn with crude, almost childish strokes.

Upon receiving the talisman, the Divine Wood Sect sent a formal apology and expressed their gratitude, offering a gift of commensurate value.

Jiang Lianshi politely refused and strictly forbade his disciples from having any unnecessary contact with the Divine Wood Sect.

...

"This Jiang Lianshi's cultivation..." Li Buren had observed the man for fifty years, yet with all his current insight, he still couldn't fully gauge his power.

On the surface, he appeared to be a mere Dao Integration cultivator. But that single touch, capable of reversing the flow of time, spoke volumes.

Considering the sect's ability to endlessly reincarnate, there was no telling how long Jiang Lianshi had actually lived. And those tens of thousands of self-portraits in the pavilion inevitably brought three words to Li Buren's mind: "Primal Possibility."

"Could it be? Is the ultimate secret of the Reincarnation Sect related to one's self in other possibilities? Not crossing over, but... faintly connecting?"

Li Buren grew increasingly curious about Jiang Lianshi's ultimate fate.

For now, however, the recording was locked within this fifty-year span, preventing him from seeing any further.

Within these fifty years, aside from the affairs of these powerful sects, another event in the ancient Xuanhuang Realm caught Li Buren's attention.

In the thirtieth year, in a remote southeastern corner of the Xuanhuang Realm, a True Immortal appeared to have descended into the mortal world.

A large swath of the recording was distorted light and shadow, obscuring any and all details.

Furthermore, this True Immortal had not descended alone. Someone had been waiting in the Xuanhuang Realm to receive them.

The person responsible for the reception appeared to be a mere mortal.

For the first three decades of the recording, he had lived the utterly unremarkable life of an old farmer in a mountain village. But in the thirtieth year, he abruptly left his wife and children and ventured deep into the mountains.

There, he performed a reception ritual.

After completing it, he returned to his village as if nothing had ever happened.

He died barely six months later.

As for the True Immortal he received, they seemed to have slipped free from the unseen surveillance, vanishing without a trace.

What deeply concerned Li Buren was that the area where the mortal had lived was extremely close to the location of the Fishing Pond.

However, there was no trace of the Fishing Pond in this recorded footage.

Therefore, he couldn't yet determine if the mysterious Angler Immortal was involved behind the scenes.

"In this period of time, there is no Medicine King Sect, nor any sign of Sun Piao Miao."

"So what exactly did he intend to reveal with the message from the bronze crane? Or is it possible that even he didn't have the full picture, and could only narrow down this specific time and place?"

Li Buren's attention shifted away from the Xuanhuang Realm for the moment.

He turned his focus to the greater star sea.

He had to admit, the ancient cultivation world was a starkly different place from the present. It pulsed with vitality, and celestial phenomena frequently manifested in the star sea.

Li Buren finally understood the old rumors claiming that even True Immortals had to give a wide berth to the star sea's celestial phenomena.

"If my senses are correct, the eruption of these phenomena somehow interferes with a True Immortal's connection to the Infinite Sea."

"Stripped of their infinite nature, even a True Immortal might not be able to escape unscathed from these strange and unpredictable anomalies."

In fifty years, the Darkest Star Sea had experienced seven phenomena on a scale large enough to pose a threat to True Immortals.

The hazy recordings recounted the magnificent and terrifying scenes that had once played out across the star sea's history.

Li Buren's divine sense roamed through the fifty-year history of the Darkest Star Sea.

He silently committed every anomaly in every cultivation world to memory.

"As I suspected, the Xuanhuang Realm is unique."

"Putting all else aside, the very ability to contact the Immortal Realm is something no ordinary cultivation world can achieve."

"Furthermore..." Li Buren could distinctly feel that the "spirituality" of the beings in other cultivation worlds seemed far weaker than that of those in the Xuanhuang Realm.