Chapter 1510: The Hundred-Million-Year Immortal Emperor
Just as Li Fan predicted, the domain of black light, eerily similar to that of Ink Death, should have been a realm of absolute silence. But at the very moment the Great Rat Immortal was basking in his triumph, a sound like monstrous waves crashing against mountains, like the sea clashing with the peaks, pierced through the black domain.
It echoed throughout the Primordial Desolation Immortal Realm.
It drew forth a chorus of responses from every corner of the immortal continent.
The rustle of wind through mountain forests, the murmur of flowing streams, the sharp whistle of converging clouds, the vibrant cry of new life, the thunderous roar of shifting mountain ranges...
These notes of life, movement, and change resonated with the celestial song of mountain and sea, forming a symphony of surging waves that forcefully ripped the black domain asunder.
"Petty tricks! You dare show them off before a master!"
Cheng Dao let out a furious roar and burst from the black light. The instant he was free, his figure dissolved into the very fabric of the world, vanishing without a trace.
Sensing the turn of events, the Great Rat Immortal gave a strange laugh, not panicking in the slightest. He shook his corpulent body, and in an instant, a thousand fine, multicolored hairs shed from his brocade-like pelt.
As the hairs fell, they transformed into an army of standing figures.
"These figures are..."
"Nameless True Immortals?"
Li Fan saw it with perfect clarity. Every single hair that fell from the Great Rat Immortal represented a Great Dao. In essence, these Dao-incarnate figures were identical to the Nameless True Immortals who had become one with their Dao!
The Great Rat Immortal, a being transformed by its insatiable hunger for the Great Daos, was now regurgitating the very powers it had consumed.
After shedding these Daos, the Great Rat Immortal didn't weaken. Instead, its aura grew even more profound and unpredictable, a chilling transformation. Li Fan also noticed a subtle shift in the creature's appearance.
Its claws morphed into hands, its hunched frame straightened, and its facial expression grew distinctly more human.
A great wind rose through the world of mountain and sea.
It howled.
Scattering the Dao-incarnate figures that stood guard around the Great Rat Immortal.
Watching this, Li Fan felt as if he were witnessing the ghosts of countless possibilities, worlds, and living beings that had been lost to the tides of the mountain and sea.
Although Cheng Dao had carefully confined his divine power to a specific area, the sheer intensity of the battle caused stray gusts of wind to break free.
Like invisible blades, they sliced through the Primordial Desolation Immortal Realm.
Everything the wind-blades touched perished, leaving a massive, gaping scar in the void.
Even with a ceaseless flow of immortal energy, this wound upon the world could not be quickly mended.
This alone was a testament to the terrifying level of destruction at the heart of the battle.
Amid the howling gale, the figures danced like willow branches in a storm. Though scattered, they were not destroyed, stubbornly maintaining their forms against the mountain-and-sea wind.
At that moment, a bizarre series of sounds issued from the Great Rat Immortal's mouth—a sound that was at once the heart-rending shriek of a rat and the passionate chant of a poet.
More hairs shed from the Great Rat Immortal's body.
An army of True Immortals, as numerous as threads in a tapestry, drifted out from it.
With all its fur gone, the Great Rat Immortal appeared increasingly human, though it was still cloaked in a rat's hide.
The hurried chant stopped dead, as if a blade had suddenly fallen and sliced the skin open.
The Great Rat transformed into a man.
Unlike the surrounding Dao-shadows, which were just blurred silhouettes without clear features, this form was different.
The Great Rat Immortal, though stark naked, now looked entirely human.
"My two esteemed Daoist brothers..."
"The Great Rat offers you its sincerest greetings."
An androgynous voice, neither male nor female but possessing qualities of both, emerged from the mouth of the humanoid rat.
It offered the greeting for its own satisfaction, clearly not expecting a reply. Before the words had even faded, it spread its fingers, remotely manipulating the legions of True Immortal shadows.
It was like a puppet master pulling strings from behind a curtain.
Empowered by the Great Rat Immortal, the faces of the myriad True Immortal shadows began to sharpen, their features becoming vaguely human.
They no longer attacked on instinct alone. It was as if the Nameless Immortals had been reborn, and they unleashed their divine arts to their absolute limit.
They wielded not only the Daos known in the Primal Possibility—like the Five Elements, Solitude, and Silence—but also countless others that were entirely foreign to Li Fan.
Before the rat's transformation, the Dao-shadows had fought like a leaderless rabble. Now, under the humanoid's command, their true, coordinated power was unleashed.
The pressure on Cheng Dao instantly increased a hundredfold.
Li Fan could almost see it: a supreme, lofty figure marshalling its forces, annihilating formidable foes with a mere gesture, a casual word.
"These Nameless Immortals... they must have served under its command when they were alive."
"So, the Great Rat Immortal's true identity is..."
"A ruling figure? Like an Immortal Emperor?"
Li Fan's mind raced. Seizing on his suspicion, he suddenly called out in a mock-piteous voice, "Your Majesty! This loyal subject died such a wrongful death!"
The phantom-like cry cut through the howling winds and the battle lines of the Nameless Immortals, striking the Great Rat Immortal's ears directly.
The Great Rat Immortal, who had been reveling in its command of the Dao-shadows, suddenly went rigid.
Though it recovered in an instant, the flicker of hesitation did not escape Li Fan's notice.
"Senior Brother, hold on!"
"I'm coming to help!"
With his theory confirmed, Li Fan gave a cold smirk. The Infinite Sky Staff blazed a path forward, and he followed in its wake, charging straight for the Great Rat Immortal.
Sensing his charge, thousands of Dao-shadows moved to intercept.
The Infinite Sky Staff batted most of them aside.
The few who slipped past the staff's reach found themselves unable to breach Li Fan's twin defenses: the Myriad Dao Net and the Mountain and Sea Unmoving Body.
He shrugged off their attacks, his focus unwavering as he bore down on the Great Rat Immortal.
He would take the head of an emperor from the midst of his army!
Cheng Dao understood Li Fan's plan and immediately moved to support him. The wind of the mountain and sea shrieked with renewed fury, and high above the formation of Dao-shadows, a colossal, stooping figure began to materialize, gazing down upon the battlefield.
Its passive gaze alone, the silent vigil of the mountain and sea, was enough to obliterate countless True Immortal shadows.
By expelling all the Daos it had consumed, the Great Rat Immortal had vastly increased its fighting strength, but its true body was now undoubtedly at its most vulnerable.
Li Fan moved like lightning, closing the distance to within thirty feet of the rat emperor in the blink of an eye.
The surprise attack was so swift that the Great Rat had no time to recall its Daos.
Only a sparse layer of fur had managed to regrow on its body before Li Fan's assault was upon it.
The Infinite Sky Staff struck first, followed immediately by the Dao Sword and Dao Blade!
With no escape, a savage glint appeared in the Great Rat Immortal's eyes. It faced the combined assault of the staff, sword, and blade—three supreme treasures—without a shred of fear.
It opened its mouth, bared a set of horrifying fangs, and lunged forward to bite them.
It was going to devour the very weapons that sought to end its life!
Truly a creature of insatiable greed!
But its reaction was exactly what Li Fan had anticipated.
With a loud laugh, Li Fan made the staff, sword, and blade vanish. In their place, several pills shimmering with a purple haze appeared.
Even seeing the instantaneous switch, the creature's avaricious nature took over. It had no intention of pulling back its fangs.
It had once devoured the assembled immortals of a celestial court. It had devoured an entire world. What in existence would it not dare to swallow!
As it rapidly reabsorbed the thousands of True Immortal shadows it had unleashed, the Great Rat Immortal reverted from its humanoid form back into a vicious beast.
After swallowing the pills Li Fan had so generously offered, it searched for him again. But Li Fan was already long gone, having retreated a great distance to await the poison's effects.
"Gorge yourself on those. Let's see if you don't burst!"
However, the poison took far longer to act than Li Fan had anticipated. It seemed this formidable being, who had crossed the Mountain and Sea inside a coffin, had developed a slight resistance even to the power of near-Dao Annihilation.
Cheng Dao and the Great Rat Immortal remained locked in a stalemate for half a day before the first signs appeared.
The creature's once multicolored fur began to turn a deep purple. Then, uncontrollably, the hairs began to fall from its body.
It was the very phenomenon of Dao transformation, induced by Li Fan's poison pills.
At first, the Great Rat Immortal was oblivious. Only when the air was thick with drifting purple hairs did it finally realize what was happening, and panic set in.
It let out a shriek that tore through the heavens.
Forgetting its battle with Cheng Dao, it desperately scrambled to gather the hairs that were shedding from its body.
Li Fan detected more than just fear in the creature's cry; there was also desperation and a strange reluctance to let go. That was unexpected.
But whatever history the Great Rat Immortal had with its former subjects was irrelevant. Li Fan would not hesitate to press his advantage and deliver the final blow.
With a wave of his sleeve, he began snatching the Dao-transformed hairs from the air, competing with the frantic rat. Simultaneously, he ignited the full power of the poison within the creature's body, preparing to tighten the Myriad Dao Net.
The more fur it shed, the faster its strength faded. The weaker it grew, the less it could suppress the poison raging within.
Once the decline began, its defeat was certain.
Now that the time for harvest had come, Li Fan felt no need to be modest with Cheng Dao.
"Life and death as one, with the True Dao align. Beyond all things, this elixir of mine."
Li Fan chanted inwardly, using his Myriad Dao Net as the crucible and the power of Ink Death's immortal spirit as the flame.
Slowly, he began to refine this drifter from another possibility, this castaway from the Other Shore, into a single Dao Pill.
The Great Rat thrashed with all its might, but the net only drew tighter. Its struggles were in vain.
Cheng Dao reappeared. He watched Li Fan's refining process, and after a moment of quiet contemplation, chose not to interfere.
Stripped of its fur once more, the Great Rat Immortal returned to its human form. It stopped struggling.
It merely stared silently at Li Fan and Cheng Dao in the distance.
"He who devours will himself be devoured."
"How true that saying is!"
"My two Daoist friends... do not follow my path!"
"Hahahaha..."
Amidst its wild laughter, the Great Rat Immortal was utterly consumed by the flames of refinement.
It condensed into a single, perfectly round pill in Li Fan's palm. It was crystal clear, shimmering with a seven-colored purple aura.
This was, without a doubt, the most beautiful and most precious Dao Pill Li Fan had ever created since mastering the Medicine King's Scripture of Dao Refinement.
"A pity I can't just take it myself."
Li Fan glanced at the solemn Cheng Dao beside him, and an idea struck.
"Senior Brother, this is for you," he said with the utmost gravity, offering him the pill.
"Oh? There's no need for that." Cheng Dao was clearly taken aback by the offer, but he quickly shook his head in refusal.
It wasn't that he suspected anything was amiss with the pill. After all, even Li Fan himself wasn't entirely certain if the Scripture of Dao Refinement left behind by Sun Piao Miao was flawed; he was simply being cautious.
Cheng Dao refused the generous offer purely out of adherence to a rule instilled in him by Shou Qiu Gong: no matter how great the treasure, one must never take it from a fellow disciple.
As marvelous as this Dao Pill was, it was not so marvelous as to make Cheng Dao break his master's precept.
"We only defeated that creature because you confronted it directly, Senior Brother."
"If you hadn't tied down those countless Dao-shadows, I never would have gotten near its true body. You more than deserve the fruits of this victory."
"Besides," Li Fan added, "if you take it, you can teach me about all the Daos from other possibilities you comprehend. If I were to take it, I lack the skill to explain them to you in such detail!"
...
Li Fan's reasoning was sound.
Faced with such a sincere argument, Cheng Dao found it difficult to refuse. With some token reluctance, he took the Dao Pill and swallowed it.
After a long moment, Li Fan asked tentatively, "Senior Brother, how do you feel?"
"Alas."
"This Great Rat, and those thousands of True Immortal shadows... they were all just a group of pitiful souls," Cheng Dao said, shaking his head with a long sigh.
"What do you mean, Senior Brother?" Li Fan asked.
"It is what I see now... countless images from within the pill." As Cheng Dao spoke, he waved his hand, and a vision materialized before Li Fan.
The vision began in a magnificent Immortal Realm, a place of peace, harmony, and prosperity.
The Great Rat Immortal had reigned as the ruling Immortal Emperor for nearly two hundred million years. Under its rule, all the immortals of the realm were subservient, and an age of unprecedented growth had dawned.
Ever since it took the throne, even the three legendary Saints no longer interfered in the realm's affairs. In time, the immortals came to know only their Emperor, forgetting the Saints entirely.
This golden age began its decline with the sudden advent of the Dao Annihilation Calamity.
Initially, the Great Rat Immortal was immensely confident. It firmly believed it could lead the assembled immortals to conquer this so-called calamity.
But the Dao Annihilation was relentless. It would recede only to surge back, again and again. They could suppress it for a time, but there was never any sign that it could be truly defeated.
The Great Rat Immortal maintained a calm exterior, but inside, panic began to fester. It decided to secretly seek out the Three Saints and ask for their guidance.
But to its shock, it discovered an unthinkable truth...
The Three Saints were gone. It was as if they had vanished from the face of existence, completely unreachable.
Though most of the realm's immortals had faded memories of the Three Saints, they remained the ultimate symbols of stability and power.
The populace was already terrified by the ongoing calamity. If they learned their ultimate guardians had vanished, the Immortal Realm would descend into chaos long before the Dao Annihilation could consume it.
After long and careful consideration, the Great Rat Immortal resolved to hide the truth.
To prevent the secret from ever getting out, it took an extraordinary step: it began to impersonate all Three Saints by itself.
As an emperor of a hundred million years, its power was absolute, far beyond that of any other immortal. Impersonating a single Saint might have been manageable.
But to impersonate all three, and flawlessly... that was a monumental task.
And so, the Great Rat Immortal desperately sought a way to rapidly increase its own power.
Driven to the brink, it resorted to the unthinkable: devouring True Immortals to steal the Great Daos they embodied. The results were astonishing.
Leveraging its unparalleled cultivation base, the Great Rat Immortal managed the impossible feat of fusing countless disparate Daos within its own body.
(End of Chapter)
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