Chapter 1523: Immortal and Indestructible Body
Chapter 1523: Immortal and Indestructible Body
Two figures streaked across the sky like meteors, coming to a halt high above Xuanjing City.
Every civil and military official in the imperial court paled. Many cried out, "Immortal masters!" and were about to drop to their knees on the spot.
Only Li Fan’s expression remained unchanged. "What is there to panic about?" he snorted coldly.
Having dominated the court for decades, the Grand Preceptor’s word was law, his unchallengeable authority deeply ingrained in the heart of every official.
His sharp command was enough to forcibly suppress their instinctive terror of the immortals, and for a moment, they calmed down.
Yet, as they looked up at the two figures hovering overhead, their faces still betrayed an irrepressible fear.
Throughout Xuanjing City, mortals fell silent, holding their breath. The conversation between the two cultivators continued.
"Kou Hong! Did you think fleeing to this Immortal Severing Land would save you? Hand over the cultivation technique you found, or I’ll hunt you to the ends of the earth!"
...
"This exchange... it sounds familiar."
"It seems this isn't the first time I've lived through this." As the thunderous voices of Kou Hong and Dao Xuanzi echoed, a sharp pain lanced through Li Fan's mind.
A flood of images surged into his consciousness.
"This is bad!"
He remembered what would happen next: the battle between these two would reduce Xuanjing City to rubble. A knot of tension formed in his chest.
And reality unfolded exactly as his memories foretold.
"Kou Hong! What do you think you're doing!"
"Just trying to survive!"
With Kou Hong's maniacal laughter, a colossal, crimson, gnarled dragon began to descend from the heavens.
Scorching flames radiated from it, threatening to incinerate everything in their path.
Witnessing this spectacle, every mortal in Xuanjing City was overcome with terror and despair.
All except Li Fan.
He remained utterly calm.
In fact, as he felt the crimson flames high above, a peculiar sensation stirred within him.
"This..."
"So this is the spiritual energy required for cultivation."
Li Fan tried to sense it more clearly.
The flow of time seemed to slow to a crawl. He could see the massive ball of fire with perfect clarity, as if it were frozen in mid-air, completely still.
To his surprise, this so-called immortal spiritual energy wasn't difficult to comprehend at all. In fact, it felt almost simplistic, and...
Obedient.
It felt as though he could command it with a single thought.
So, Li Fan tried. He willed the raging, scorching spiritual energy from the sky to enter his body.
It flowed into him as naturally as water finding its course, effortlessly.
The vast energy, potent enough to reduce Xuanjing to ashes, poured into his body like a river into an abyss, causing not so much as a ripple.
If not for the subtle changes he felt within himself, he might have thought the attempt had failed entirely.
"The fiery attribute of the spiritual energy has vanished," he noted. "It seems to have been restored to its purest form."
"Is this another quality of this body?"
...
The sudden change in the situation was completely unexpected.
Kou Hong’s ferocious expression was frozen on his face. His ultimate technique, the Fire Dragon's Roar, was inexplicably fading away. His savagery turned to stunned disbelief.
"You poisoned me?" Kou Hong immediately blamed his old friend, his voice laced with fury and disbelief.
"...What?" Dao Xuanzi couldn't follow Kou Hong's bizarre leap of logic and stared back, bewildered.
Before they could argue further, a cold, impossibly authoritative voice suddenly boomed from below.
"Insolence!"
"Get down here!"
A sudden, immense force slammed into them, as if countless hands were dragging them from the sky. Caught completely off guard, Kou Hong and Dao Xuanzi lost their ability to fly and plummeted to the ground.
Boom!
They slammed into the stone-paved streets of Xuanjing City, carving out two massive craters!
Xuanjing City fell utterly silent.
Who among the city's residents didn't recognize that voice?
There was no time to feel relief for their narrow escape; the entire city was suspended in a state of speechless shock.
In the Grand Preceptor’s manor, every official, from the highest minister to the lowest clerk, stared at Li Fan as if they were seeing a ghost.
One man, however, reacted faster than the rest. "The Grand Preceptor’s wisdom and divine might make even immortals bow! To have you, Grand Preceptor, is the greatest fortune of our Great Xuan!"
He declared, prostrating himself on the floor.
His words jolted the other officials from their stupor.
Whatever they were truly thinking, they all scrambled to echo his praises and bow down.
Li Fan paid them no mind.
He walked slowly toward the craters where the two cultivators had landed.
When he took his first step, faint wisps of spiritual energy still lingered in the air of Xuanjing City. By the time he reached the battered figures of Kou Hong and Dao Xuanzi, every last trace had been devoured by his body.
"Is that all there is...?" Li Fan thought, a flicker of disappointment in his mind.
He then turned his attention to the intruders.
The two "immortal masters" were now surrounded by the Xuanjing Guard. Despite their innate fear of these legendary figures, the guards dutifully held their long spears, pointing them at the intruders.
As Li Fan approached, they parted wordlessly, clearing a path for him.
Having tried every technique they knew, only to find themselves utterly unable to break free from the immense pressure pinning them down, Dao Xuanzi and Kou Hong felt despair creeping into their hearts.
"This Immortal Severing Land... it's far more dangerous than we ever imagined..." A wave of regret washed over them.
Just then, Li Fan stood before them.
Though he seemed to have no spiritual energy fluctuations whatsoever, the sheer weight of his presence was so palpable that it made the two cultivators tremble uncontrollably.
"Where are you two from?"
Now that he was closer, Li Fan could sense the spiritual power contained within their bodies with even greater clarity.
He suppressed the urge to act, reining in a strange, stirring impulse, and first asked in a cold voice.
"To answer, Senior... we are from the Cong Yun Heavenly Mountain in the Xuanhuang Realm," Dao Xuanzi stammered, cold sweat beading on his brow. "We entered this place by mistake... We apologize for any offense and beg your forgiveness."
Through a series of questions, Li Fan began to piece together a general understanding of the Great Xuan small world and the Xuanhuang Realm.
Simultaneously, with every word Dao Xuanzi spoke, a torrent of corresponding images flooded Li Fan’s mind.
He saw the Immortal-Forbidden Array sealing the Great Xuan world, located in the Ruins Abyss to the east. He saw the tomb of a Tai Yan Sect disciple named Yi Yin, and within it, the hidden Dao Transformation Stone and the Grand Derivation Boat. He even saw the Stop Tablet Fragment in Qian Hong's tomb...
Even more startling, when he heard the words "Cong Yun," an image flashed before his eyes: a crimson figure standing high in the heavens, wielding an ethereal flame that incinerated a vast ocean.
"Could it be... that I lost my memory after being gravely wounded in that catastrophe?"
Li Fan carefully examined the instinctive emotions that arose with the vision.
"No... that's not right."
"Was I once so powerful? Powerful enough to disregard a calamity of that scale?"
This realization brought Li Fan no joy. Instead, a sense of unease settled over him.
The more powerful he had been before his amnesia, the more terrifying the crisis that had struck him down must have been.
"I must proceed with the utmost caution."
...
"I'll borrow your spiritual energy."
Once the questioning was over, Li Fan made a grasping motion with both hands toward Kou Hong and Dao Xuanzi.
What happened next made the two cultivators' blood run cold.
It felt as if a void had opened within them, and all their spiritual power began to drain away uncontrollably. In a matter of moments, they were completely empty.
Stripped of their spiritual power, they were no different from mortals.
But there was something strange. Normally, when a cultivator is drained of all spiritual power, they suffer a severe backlash, resulting in grievous injury if not death. Yet not only did the two men feel no pain or weakness, they felt an unprecedented surge of vitality, as if they had just broken through several major cultivation realms at once!
To their astonishment, they discovered that their Foundation Establishment Wonders were reacting to this surge of vitality. They began to crystallize inexplicably, showing signs of a profound transformation!
"What... is happening?" The two men were shaken and utterly bewildered.
But they both instinctively suppressed any rebellious thoughts.
They may have been reckless, but they were not fools.
The power this old man had displayed meant he was at least a Nascent Soul expert!
"But after reaching the Nascent Soul stage, a cultivator forms their own grotto-heaven. Why would he lack spiritual energy?"
"Unless... he's from before the Great Calamity..." Kou Hong and Dao Xuanzi exchanged a look, believing they had stumbled upon the truth.
"Senior, if you have any request, please command us. We will not hesitate, even if it means death!" Kou Hong declared in a low voice.
...
Li Fan simply waved his hand. The Xuanjing Guard swarmed forward, seized the two unresisting men, and dragged them off to the dungeons to be placed under heavy guard.
Li Fan did not return to his manor, instead taking up a position to watch over the dungeons from above.
For a moment, just after absorbing all their spiritual power, a murderous impulse had stirred within him. But he had suppressed it, faintly sensing that these two might have some other purpose, and changed his mind.
Now, sitting in meditation, Li Fan followed that feeling, trying to recall more.
"Eternal Remembrance."
"Only I can be the vessel... a method of passage?"
As these few fragmented words surfaced in his mind, countless magnificent figures suddenly stormed his consciousness.
Splat!
Li Fan violently spat out a mouthful of blood. His head felt as if it were being repeatedly smashed with a heavy hammer, and the world spun around him.
This was no illusion; his brain had suffered a genuine, severe trauma.
In addition to bright red blood, viscous white matter erupted from his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth.
In an instant, Li Fan was drenched in his own blood.
Normally, such an injury would be instantly fatal, not just for a mortal, but for a cultivator as well.
But the moment Li Fan forcibly severed the connection to the memory, he recovered instantly from the brink of death. He felt not even a hint of weakness.
He reached up and wiped the blood from his face as if it belonged to someone else.
With a mere thought, the blood covering his body transformed into threads of green light and flowed back inside him.
He was not only fully restored, but Li Fan faintly felt that hovering on the precipice of life and death had drawn out even more of the latent life force within him.
As a result, he had grown even stronger.
"The life force of this body is almost frighteningly potent."
"Still, it's a good thing, all things considered."
Thinking of the Xuanhuang Realm that lay beyond the small world of Great Xuan, an idea began to form in Li Fan's mind.
Several hours later.
A body, identical to Li Fan's in every way, stood before him.
This was no mere avatar technique.
Instead, Li Fan had relied on his immense life force to literally grow another set of limbs, a torso, and even a head.
He then assembled them into a complete human form.
Strictly speaking, this new body was merely an extension of himself.
After a moment of adjustment, he grew accustomed to perceiving the world from two perspectives simultaneously.
Li Fan looked at his other self. Even as the creator of this masterpiece, he found it somewhat unbelievable.
"..."
"I'll let him scout ahead," he decided. "If he encounters danger, I can simply sever the connection and survive."
Seven days later, Li Fan took Kou Hong and Dao Xuanzi and flew out of Xuanjing City.
He flew straight toward the Ruins Abyss in the east.
He hadn't needed to ask Kou Hong or Dao Xuanzi how to fly; once the spiritual energy entered his body, the knowledge returned to him naturally.
Even carrying two passengers, he felt no strain at all.
In a short while, they arrived at the edge of the Ruins Abyss.
"Senior, ahead lies the Immortal-Forbidden Array that seals this mortal world. It is fraught with danger. We, too, were..."
Before Kou Hong could finish his warning, Li Fan, after a moment's observation, simply furrowed his brow and plunged straight down, taking them with him.
The two cultivators’ hearts leaped into their throats.
Fortunately, their fears were unfounded.
For some reason, all the restrictions within the Immortal-Forbidden Array seemed to have failed.
They passed through without incident.
The two men were left speechless.
They broke through the darkness, and light flooded their vision once more.
The sprawling Cong Yun Mountain Range appeared before them.
Kou Hong and Dao Xuanzi greedily absorbed the spiritual energy from the air.
Once their power was restored, they both let out a long sigh of relief.
But when they looked at Li Fan, they realized that the senior hadn't shown any sign of absorbing spiritual energy at all. He was simply staring up at the sky, his gaze fixed on something unseen.
They didn't dare disturb him and simply waited obediently by his side.
"How many years has it been since this place changed from mountains to a sea?"
Li Fan finally asked after a long silence.
The two were taken aback. Dao Xuanzi was the first to recover. "It's been about twenty years, Senior. How did you know?"
Li Fan narrowed his eyes but didn't answer.
He was sensing the crimson figure within his own body.
The moment he had entered the Xuanhuang Realm, Li Fan had sensed that figure standing tall in the sky.
It was identical to the one from his memory—the entity that had burned mountains and boiled seas.
Yet, faced with such a terrifying entity, Li Fan felt no fear. Instead, a peculiar sensation stirred within him.
And so, with a simple thought, he had "grabbed" the crimson figure and sealed it within himself.
From it, Li Fan could perceive the many principles of "Flame."
But they seemed incredibly simplistic.
As shallow and naive as a toddler's first words.
"It seems my original accomplishments were far greater than I imagined," Li Fan slowly realized.
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