Chapter 1475: The True Orthodoxy of Truth
With no time for other thoughts, the Hunger Immortal immediately immersed herself in the guidance she had been given.
Based on her years of seclusion, she knew that moments of enlightenment were often like sparks—brilliant but fleeting. If she didn't seize this chance to comprehend it, the insight would soon vanish back into the vast ocean of her thoughts.
Not daring to hope for a second pointer, the Hunger Immortal grasped the opportunity and focused her mind on the Dao.
It had to be said that after sitting in desolation for ten thousand years, her understanding of the Dao of Hunger was truly extraordinary.
Not long after she resumed her meditative posture, faint ripples of a profound and mysterious aura began to emanate from her body.
They were identical to the nameless traces beneath her!
"It seems guiding her to the Nameless stage will be even easier than I thought," Li Fan mused inwardly.
Although Li Fan had long since perceived the "Hunger" character on the grounds of the Immortal Ruins, his own comprehension of that particular Dao—even with the insights from many reincarnated lifetimes—was by no means superior to the Hunger Immortal's at this moment.
This commanding, top-down perspective cut straight to the core, a far cry from the Hunger Immortal’s solitary and isolated efforts.
Li Bu Ren's guidance was like a powerful shove from behind.
For the Hunger Immortal, who was already on the verge of a breakthrough, she likely could have reached the True Immortal stage on her own without any help; it was merely a matter of time. She would probably realize this later.
But for now, caught in the middle of her enlightenment, she had no time to grasp this truth. She simply dedicated herself wholeheartedly to comprehending the Dao.
Li Bu Ren stepped aside, observing her from the shadows.
Her body, which had become full and vibrant after being infused with his power, began to wither once more as she delved deeper into her enlightenment.
She was reduced to a gaunt skeleton, a clear sign that she had fully entered a state of comprehending the Dao of Hunger.
Immersed in the Dao of Hunger, she felt an instinctual urge to devour everything around her.
The immense suction force, which had temporarily vanished with Li Bu Ren's arrival, suddenly reappeared, emanating from her with even greater ferocity than before!
Across the entire star sea, only the Immortal Ruins and the figure of Li Bu Ren standing upon it remained unshaken.
Everything else was instantly pulled out of control, sliding inexorably toward the Immortal Ruins, which had now become the central vortex.
Within the Xuanhuang Realm, the newly revived spark of life was instantly thrown into jeopardy by this colossal suction, flickering like a candle in the wind, on the brink of extinguishment.
Fortunately, Li Fan manifested a projection of the Dao Net, shielding the entire world.
He then began to pull the Xuanhuang Realm further toward the edge of the Star Sea, attempting to distance it from the Immortal Ruins.
"This sudden surge of suction is far stronger than before."
"Does that mean the Hunger Immortal was consciously restraining it all this time...?"
Li Fan frowned, gazing toward the distant Immortal Ruins.
As if to confirm his speculation, a series of crisp metallic clinks suddenly echoed through the silent expanse of space.
The golden chains binding the Hunger Immortal tightened their grip.
While they restrained her, they also seemed to be controlling her insatiable desire to consume the entire world in her extreme state of hunger.
"Only by being in the most extreme state of hunger can one truly comprehend the Dao of Hunger."
"A path of ascetic self-denial..."
The golden chains bit deep, sinking into her withered flesh and grinding against her bones, producing a grating, unsettling sound.
Yet, through it all, the Hunger Immortal remained perfectly still, not even a twitch.
She silently endured her own desires and the torment inflicted upon her.
The Dao of Hunger was like a ferocious beast trapped in a cage. Though it roared and struggled to break free, it remained firmly bound within her body.
This method of control, of seeking but never attaining, was actually increasing the efficiency of her enlightenment, pushing it to new heights!
Li Bu Ren took in every change happening to the Hunger Immortal. Putting himself in her position, he slowly began to taste the flavor of her method.
"The more one is tormented by their Dao, the deeper they sink into it, the more they can comprehend its principles."
"This method of enlightenment..."
"It bears some resemblance to the reverse cultivation of the Xuanhuang Heart Refining Mantra. Could it be a technique passed down from the Immortal Realm?"
As Li Bu Ren observed and pondered, he noticed the discrepancy in the flow of time caused by the reappearance of the suction from the Immortal Ruins.
In the blink of an eye, before he could even fully register it, three months had already passed in the Xuanhuang Realm.
And beyond the High Wall, a full thirty years had slipped away!
Worse, this temporal disparity was continuing to grow.
Fortunately, during those thirty years, nothing had occurred that required the power of the Shou Qiu projection to resolve. Qian Ruochang and the others from Shuo Xinghai had visited several times to report on the progress of their cooperation.
Li Fan had simply played dead, offering a curt "I know" before falling silent again.
Not daring to disturb him, Qian Ruochang and his companion had tactfully withdrawn.
...
One moment he was thirty years in the past; the next, he had arrived thirty years in the future.
Countless scenes experienced by his true self now flooded his mind in a delayed, sequential wave.
The immense temporal dissonance was disorienting even for Li Bu Ren, inducing a faint spell of dizziness. His Dao Net body warped slightly, a distortion perceptible only to him, like a reflection seen through a rippling bubble.
Li Bu Ren first attempted to curb the change in the flow of time caused by the immense suction.
But this effect wasn't an attribute of the Dao of Hunger itself.
It was an axiomatic phenomenon that existed in the mortal world.
Even with the power of Shou Qiu's projection, he couldn't completely eliminate it. He could only minimize the impact of the Immortal Ruins' suction on the outside world.
In Li Bu Ren’s eyes, the great vortex of the Immortal Ruins was devouring everything in existence.
His task was to build a great dam outside the vortex, to prevent anything from being drawn in.
Just like the High Wall that separated the experimental field from the world beyond!
"Settle!" Li Bu Ren chanted inwardly.
His star-like Dao Net body began to shine with renewed brilliance.
It stood like a colossal boulder against a monstrous wave. But contrary to all logic, not a single drop of spray was thrown up. Instead, just as it happened in the Dark Star Sea, the blocked suction force pooled at the foot of the High Wall.
With that single word from Li Bu Ren, the suction of a True Immortal, which had ravaged the Dark Star Sea for ten thousand years, was easily confined to an area within about three hundred meters of the Hunger Immortal.
Li Bu Ren had a feeling he could compress it even further, pushing this "second High Wall" inward. But doing so might interfere with the Hunger Immortal's final enlightenment.
Thus, he stopped where he was.
The suction force, like surging waves, condensed without dissipating, gathering and swirling at the base of the new wall.
For a fleeting moment, Li Bu Ren thought he saw an image of the Mountain and Sea that Shou Qiu had once gazed upon, and he paused, momentarily stunned.
Today, Li Bu Ren finally began to understand the reason behind this strange phenomenon—why the suction from the Immortal Ruins was blocked and gathered by the High Wall.
"The power of Immortals comes from the Infinite Sea."
"And the power of the High Wall, or Shou Qiu's projection, partly comes from the [Mountain] that accompanies the Infinite Sea."
"Mountain and Sea share the same origin. They are not entirely in opposition, which is why they can attract each other to some extent."
"So, in a way, the phenomenon occurring at the edge of the Dark Star Sea is a projection of what Shou Qiu once witnessed."
Standing on the edge of the second High Wall, Li Bu Ren was flooded with a myriad of insights.
With the suction from the Immortal Ruins no longer a factor, the flow of time within the Dark Star Sea finally returned to normal.
The beings within the Star Sea, however, were completely unaware of this dramatic change.
Only Li Fan looked up slightly, his gaze directed toward the center of the Dark Star Sea.
Having once connected with the true will of the Star Sea's origin, he could faintly sense its jubilant emotions. It was not just due to the disappearance of the threat from the Immortal Ruins, but also seemed to stem from its synchronization with the Star Sea beyond.
Li Fan paid it no mind for the moment, instead turning his attention to his [Truth] panel.
The instant the time flow inside and outside the High Wall became consistent, the number representing the lifespan limit of the mortal world flickered and quietly changed.
The change, however, was not significant.
It merely decreased from 7.36 million years to 7.23 million years.
"This isn't the result of me creating the second High Wall. It must be because the time flow of my environment has changed."
"Which means the time difference between the inside and outside of the High Wall was fundamentally insignificant to the overall lifespan of the mortal world."
"But how exactly does [Truth] calculate this lifespan?"
Li Fan was puzzled.
Getting bogged down in such questions was bound to be fruitless, so Li Fan decisively chose to ask [Truth] directly. Given the precedent of its previous guidance, [Truth] did not respond with silence this time.
A massive stream of light and shadow, pure data, flooded into Li Fan's mind in an instant.
A sharp pain pierced his brow, and Li Fan instinctively chose to view it selectively.
It seemed [Truth] knew that, with his current capabilities, he was not yet able to process the full image it had casually sent. The vision itself was already truncated.
He couldn't see the details, only the vague trajectory.
"This is..."
"A simulation of the maximum possible value, using my current strength as a fixed template and assuming my immortality as a premise."
The concept was a bit convoluted, but Li Fan quickly understood what [Truth] was trying to convey.
He stared intently at the light and shadow flashing before him. More than seven million years of time passed like a revolving lantern, lasting only thirty-three breaths.
In the end, all light was extinguished, and not even darkness remained.
It simply vanished from his mind.
When Li Fan tried to recall the specific contents of the vision he had just witnessed, he found that not a single memory remained.
He only vaguely remembered that [Truth] had shown him a simulated scene.
"The annihilation of the mortal world."
"So the 'lifespan limit' is measured and calculated from the perspective of me, the bearer of [Truth]."
"The future holds endless possibilities, but this current simulation is the result projected from the perspective of my current strength."
"In this projection, although I do not die, my strength and cultivation do not advance in the slightest. I can only watch the changes in the mortal world like a bystander..."
Li Fan narrowed his eyes.
He couldn't help but recall the incident with the Black Heaven Physician breaking through the High Wall, and the corresponding change on his lifespan panel.
The number had skyrocketed from over seven million years to a figure that seemed virtually infinite.
"In that simulation by [Truth], though I wouldn't have died, I would have still fallen into the hands of the Black Heaven Physician."
"If the bones of a Nameless True Immortal could be smuggled through with [Truth], the Black Heaven Physician certainly could as well. Therefore, my fate would surely have been anything but pleasant. Perhaps I would have become something like the Deduction Jade..."
"And yet, with the help of [Truth], the Black Heaven Physician could have almost saved the mortal world from disaster."
Having reasoned this out, Li Fan couldn't help but snort coldly.
His perspective remained unchanged.
Sacrificing himself to save the mortal world was an absolute impossibility.
"The mortal world is only meaningful because I exist. If I were to perish, what would it matter to me if the world endured for eons?"
"Besides, in the projection of [Truth], even if the Black Heaven Physician had obtained its power, the upper limit of the mortal world's lifespan still had a specific number."
"It was not infinite!"
"Even if that number was unimaginably vast, a day of annihilation would eventually come."
"Since the ending is the same, whether it's seven million years or seven hundred billion years..."
"...it makes no difference."
Perhaps it was some inexplicable influence from the scene [Truth] had just shown him, but Li Fan felt his state of mind had been elevated to a new level.
He could now look upon that string of enormous numbers representing the world's potential lifespan with an air of detached calm.
It was as if he had truly lived through those long ages, only to inevitably face the final destruction.
An unshakeable thought even surged irrepressibly from the depths of his heart.
Only in his hands could [Truth] ultimately change the mortal world's predetermined fate of destruction.
Only he could completely break free from the destiny of Dao Annihilation.
This confidence seemed to come from nowhere.
As time passed, it slowly began to fade.
Once he had fully recovered, even Li Fan himself thought his previous notion was a bit too arrogant.
But as he pondered it carefully, he vaguely guessed that he must have seen something in that seven-million-year simulation of light and shadow.
That was why such an idea had emerged from the depths of his being.
With this realization, Li Fan's heart settled.
When he tried to verify his guess with [Truth], it had once again fallen silent.
But Li Fan was not annoyed.
"Silence, not denial."
After spending so much time with [Truth], Li Fan could roughly interpret the emotions it sometimes expressed.
Sometimes, silence was an answer in itself.
Having confirmed that he was the true orthodoxy of [Truth], Li Fan was in high spirits.
He turned his attention back to the Immortal Ruins.
Li Bu Ren, his body forming a wall to block the suction, was also sensing the minute changes in power generated by the Hunger Immortal's enlightenment with extreme precision.
"Because of the time distortion caused by this power, the Hunger Immortal's last enlightenment lasted for ten thousand years in the Xuanhuang Realm."
"This breakthrough will definitely not take that long."
"And..."
Li Bu Ren observed that because of the "second High Wall" he had personally constructed, the enlightenment-driven suction that had accumulated at its base was, to some extent, counteracting the Hunger Immortal's influence on the outside world.
This had greatly reduced the time disparity between the inside and outside of the second High Wall.
While waiting to reap his harvest after the Hunger Immortal emerged from her seclusion, Li Bu Ren first looked down at the expanse of the Immortal Ruins.
Aside from the endless rubble, the most conspicuous feature was the enormous character for "Hunger."
"The source of this evolved 'Hunger' character..."
"It comes from the remnant of the previous Nameless True Immortal, the one who achieved the Dao through hunger, right beneath the current Hunger Immortal."
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