Chapter 1467: The Immortal Mound Keeper Who Watches the Sea
As the faces of the five phantoms materialized, a faint, utterly serene voice echoed through the space.
The words were not directed at Li Buren, who had so abruptly intruded, but sounded more like a pre-recorded message left long ago.
"Shengde, the Mound Keeper Immortal, ventures to address a worthy sage of a later age."
"To achieve the Nameless state is to seek transcendence. Yet, with the shadow of Dao Annihilation looming, we cannot forsake the heavy burden upon our shoulders."
"I have chanced upon a method of great merit—using shadows to stand in for the self, one can resist the surging tides of calamity."
"I share it now with you..."
The five phantoms spoke in unison.
What followed was not a sound in the ordinary sense. It was more like a chisel, directly carving the method onto the very being of Li Buren, who stood encircled by the phantoms.
He felt no pain, not the slightest sense of intrusion. It was as if a memory that had always belonged to him, one long sealed away by dust and time, had suddenly resurfaced. He was not being taught; he was *remembering*.
To know it was to have mastered it completely!
To Li Buren's slight disappointment, however, he realized the five phantoms had initiated this transmission because the simultaneous arrival of all the chess pieces from an entire immortal domain was, in terms of sheer presence, equivalent to that of a Nameless True Immortal. Therefore, the Mound Keeper Immortal treated all the pieces as a single, unified entity.
The inscription, the branding, was performed upon this collective whole.
What Li Buren himself received was but a small fraction of the whole.
Even so, this secret art—a technique that could only be practiced by those in the Nameless True Immortal realm—was more than enough to stagger his imagination and broaden his horizons immeasurably.
"This technique is called the [Shou Qiu Prose]."
"On the shore of a great ocean, there stood a small, nameless mound."
"Shengde kept watch over the mound for one hundred and twenty-three epochs, witnessing the tides ebb and flow, the waters rise and recede. Each time his heart was stirred, he would casually note down his thoughts. As the ages slipped by, these scattered notes became a prose..."
Li Buren sifted through the 'memories' now in his mind. The simple, unadorned words painted a picture of a solitary figure who had kept vigil on the edge of a vast ocean for one hundred and twenty-three epochs. Standing atop a nameless mound, gazing out at the infinite sea, becoming one with the rhythm of the tides.
"This Mound Keeper Immortal could bear the weight of the Dao Annihilation with just five phantoms. His true power and realm are surely far beyond the simple, self-deprecating tone of his prose."
Li Buren let out a long breath, as if trying to wrench himself free from the immense weight of ages conveyed by those few short lines.
"He recalled Sun Piao Miao's earlier transmission, which mentioned the Tianluo Epoch. 'Epoch,' he reasoned, must be a unit of time used in the Immortal Realm. The only question was how many years in the Xuanhuang Realm corresponded to a single one of their epochs."
"But no matter the conversion, one hundred and twenty-three epochs was undoubtedly a span of time so vast it was difficult to comprehend."
"And the sea and mound that required such an immense investment of time to guard were certainly no ordinary ocean and hill."
Li Buren suddenly recalled the allegory of the mountain and the sea from the book he suspected Sun Piao Miao had left behind.
"If the sea represents the Infinite Sea, then what, he wondered, does the mountain represent...?"
The prose left by Shengde, the Mound Keeper Immortal, did not merely impart the technique of leaving behind phantom bodies. It was an incredibly detailed record of the Immortal's entire journey of thought and experience that led to the method's creation.
This technique was not born of a sudden epiphany.
Rather, it was painstakingly refined over ages of accumulation, forged in the crucible of endless contemplation.
Receiving this knowledge was like being transported back in time, inhabiting the body of the Mound Keeper Immortal himself. Through his senses, his soul, his very thoughts, Li Buren re-lived those one hundred and twenty-three epochs of profound history.
Even though all he faced day in and day out was the mountain and the sea.
The seemingly infinite flood of data, of raw experience, threatened to drown him completely.
Fortunately, he was sharing this burden with all the other pieces from the immortal domain. Only through his unique constitution—a projection of the Dao Net for a mind and fragments of immortal law for a body—could he barely withstand the deluge.
"No wonder the Mound Keeper's phantoms only manifested before a Nameless True Immortal," he realized. "It wasn't out of stinginess or a refusal to share the technique with others. It was because anyone below the Nameless realm would be utterly incapable of withstanding the transmission!"
Carried away by the surging torrent of the Mound Keeper's thoughts, Li Buren felt as if he had returned to the Infinite Sea itself, where every single drop of water held the weight of a hundred million years.
"According to the Mound Keeper, the sea's assault on the mountain had existed since the dawn of time. But like the tides of the mortal world, its intensity was ever-changing, waxing and waning without a clear pattern."
"Since he began his vigil, the force of the assault had fluctuated, but the overall trend was one of increasing intensity. Worse, it was... still far from reaching its projected peak."
"The Mound Keeper had noticed this trend as early as his twentieth epoch on the mound. The subsequent one hundred epochs only served to confirm his observation."
"He had warned the world long ago, but it was a pity his words carried so little weight."
"But..."
Li Buren found this baffling.
However, Shengde's own account later provided the answer. At the time of his warning, the Mound Keeper was still just an 'ordinary' True Immortal. He had not yet even reached the Nameless realm, so it was natural that his words were ignored.
But in his eighty-eighth epoch, after long and patient accumulation, the Mound Keeper finally broke through into the Nameless realm.
He did not announce his achievement, however, choosing instead to continue his silent vigil, watching the sea from his mound.
It was around that time that the Immortal Realm was struck by a great upheaval, and its denizens had no time to spare for a lonely keeper on a distant shore.
The entire Immortal Realm, it seemed, had forgotten he even existed.
Until one day, the waves of the sea surged to the heavens and finally crashed over the mound itself.
...
Pulling his mind away from the Mound Keeper's seemingly placid yet secretly turbulent life, Li Buren began to focus on the technique itself: [Shadow Projection for Dao Bearing].
"According to the Mound Keeper, as he sat upon his mound watching the sea, the endless rise and fall of the waves was like directly confronting the countless Great Daos of the world."
"Every cresting wave, every splash of foam, was but another face of the rhythm of the Great Dao."
"A person standing on the peak is like a great stone. Battered daily by the waves, they are inevitably worn down. Yet, in that space between mountain and sea, they simultaneously leave a trace of their own existence."
"..."
The Mound Keeper's prose was profoundly esoteric. Even Li Fan, with his hundred lifetimes of experience, found it difficult to grasp at first.
"Were it not for [Truth], and for the fact that I have personally set foot in the Infinite Sea, I fear that even with this technique in hand, I would be utterly lost, like a man wandering in a thick fog. I might even have dismissed it as nonsensical rambling!"
"This is because this technique is utterly different from any known system of cultivation," Li Fan realized.
But herein lay the magic of the Mound Keeper's prose. Even if the recipient could not comprehend its mysteries, the direct imprinting by the five phantoms allowed them to wield the marvelous art of [Shadow Projection for Dao Bearing] as effortlessly as moving their own limbs.
"It requires no expenditure of one's own power. You simply distill the traces of your existence left behind in history and upon the Great Dao, shaping them into phantoms to bear the weight of the Dao Annihilation..."
"Such a divine art is truly beyond imagination!"
Moreover, Li Fan sensed that the marvelous art of [Shadow Projection for Dao Bearing] was for more than just resisting the Dao Annihilation.
Or rather, bearing the Dao was merely one of its many functions.
"Immunity to a thousand calamities, impervious to all arts, eternal life..."
"But beyond all that, the most crucial aspect was... [Transcendence]!"
"It was the fundamental path to leaping free from the Great Dao of this world."
The process of distilling all the traces one had left upon the world was also the process of severing every last connection to it.
Then, as a solitary existence, one would no longer be bound by the web of the Great Dao...
A tremor ran through Li Fan's heart, and a powerful sense of yearning washed over him.
Just then, the transmission from the Mound Keeper Immortal reached its conclusion.
The entirety of the [Shou Qiu Prose] had been completely branded into them.
The five phantoms left by Shengde, the Mound Keeper Immortal, turned toward Li Buren at the center and gave a slight, respectful bow.
Then, their forms rippled and slowly faded away.
They returned to their previous state, silently bearing the weight of the Dao.
Li Buren's expression was solemn as he returned the bow with equal gravity.
He understood the gesture. It was the Mound Keeper's hope that a worthy successor would likewise leave behind their own phantoms to bear the Dao.
That was the meaning behind their bow.
"The phantoms left by the Mound Keeper are likely not confined to this single location within the High Wall."
"After leaving these phantoms to bear the Dao, where is he now? Has he already departed from this current possibility?"
Thinking of the Star Sea below—a place ravaged by Dao Annihilation yet still clinging to life—a sudden realization dawned on Li Buren.
He had no doubt that this Immortal Mound Keeper who watched the sea possessed the power to traverse possibilities.
"Regardless, by leaving behind these phantoms to bear the Dao and passing on a miraculous, world-saving technique to his successors, the Mound Keeper Immortal had more than fulfilled his duty."
"He was truly worthy of the name Shengde—'Great Virtue'."
After a long moment of contemplation, Li Buren finally brought his focus back to the present, turning his attention to the immortal domain chess pieces scattered around him.
After being inscribed by the Mound Keeper, the pieces seemed different.
Before, the fragments of the immortal domain had simply floated there, emanating a terrifying aura. Now, they had returned to a state of profound simplicity, becoming utterly inconspicuous. A casual observer would likely overlook them completely.
"Or perhaps," he mused, "a more fitting description would be that they were 'gradually detaching from this world'."
A sharp sense of alarm suddenly pricked Li Buren's mind.
He had not forgotten what happened during a previous regression: the leg bone of a Nameless True Immortal, a fragment from another immortal domain, had seemed to sense something and had flown directly toward him.
"The Nameless realm can no longer be measured by simple concepts like life and death."
"Even though it is just a severed leg bone, who knows what might happen to it now that it has received the [Shou Qiu Prose]?"
Li Buren tentatively reached out with his power and drew one of the white chess pieces toward him.
Then, without a second thought for the others, he shifted from his state as a piece in the Dao Net and manifested his original body.
A powerful repulsive force struck him, and Li Buren, along with the Medicine King True Cauldron, tumbled down from the highest point of the circular hall.
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