Chapter 1533: The Lost War of the Fallen Immortals
Chapter 1533: The Lost War of the Fallen Immortals
Li Fan looked up and saw a solitary crescent moon hanging in the blood-red sky. It radiated an overpowering stench of blood, as if it had condensed the very life force of a billion souls.
"This must be the culprit behind this realm's strangeness," Li Fan mused.
Gazing intently, he could even make out endless mountains of corpses and seas of blood stretching across the moon's surface.
Li Fan had witnessed scenes countless times more horrific, so he remained completely unmoved. The other disciples of the Great Dao Sect, however, reacted as one might expect.
Their faces turned deathly pale, and many of them doubled over, vomiting on the spot.
Fang Dingge offered no reprimand, his gaze simply sweeping over them with a cool detachment.
Li Fan feigned a retch as well, careful not to draw any attention to himself.
"Their blood must wash away the shame of our sect's near-breach!"
As a sect master, Fang Dingge was undeniably effective. With just a few words, he stirred the disciples' emotions.
Their initial panic vanished, replaced by a palpable killing intent that radiated from every Great Dao Sect disciple.
"Kill them all!" Fang Dingge commanded. At his order, the disciples swiftly fanned out, each brandishing their artifacts and unleashing their techniques.
As expected of one of the Ten Great Immortal Sects, even the junior disciples below the Golden Core realm possessed a depth of skill and resources far exceeding that of rogue cultivators.
To avoid standing out, Li Fan merely conjured a blade of water and rode it, falling in line behind another disciple.
The man's name was Lei Fanzi. Li Fan recognized him from Senior Sister Zhao's memories as one of the future elders of the Great Dao Sect. The fact that he survived to see that future suggested he wouldn't face any mortal peril in this battle.
With his true power, Li Fan could have easily dominated this strange world, even at the Golden Core level. But that held no real purpose for him. Being swept into this conflict was a mere accident; his plan was to lie low, see it through, and then discreetly spread the Supreme Dao Scripture among the Ten Great Immortal Sects.
"Junior Brother, that sword-riding technique of yours is truly remarkable!"
Li Fan had been as discreet as possible, but given his current knowledge and mastery, even the slightest display of his skill was enough to make an ordinary cultivator take notice, to instinctively sense its exceptional quality.
"How about we travel together?"
Lei Fanzi asked, his tone tentative. It was clear he was still quite green, perhaps on his first mission of this brutal nature. Li Fan could distinctly feel the tension radiating from him.
"Then I'll be in your care, Senior Brother," Li Fan replied with a smile.
Following Fang Dingge's orders, the pair ventured deep into the Blood Moon Realm, wiping out pockets of resistance.
Their orders were simple: if it was alive and not a disciple of the Great Dao Sect, they were to kill it without question.
Though the realm's environment was bizarre, its inhabitants were not so different from ordinary humans, save for their unnervingly purple skin.
After slaughtering another settlement, Lei Fanzi stared blankly at the flames consuming the ruins, a flicker of pity in his eyes.
"They are not our kind; their hearts are bound to be different."
"The moment they attacked our sect, they should have foreseen this end," Li Fan said, his voice ice-cold as he reminded him.
He said this partly because he truly believed it, and partly because he could feel Fang Dingge's divine sense sweeping over the disciples, monitoring them.
Lei Fanzi sighed but offered no rebuttal.
Just as they were about to leave, Li Fan let out a low, startled cry. "Senior Brother, what's this?"
Lei Fanzi followed his voice and saw Li Fan pulling two gleaming, thin plates from the blackened rubble. They were covered in intricate patterns that swirled around a vision of mountains and seas—clearly no ordinary artifacts.
Lei Fanzi's heart leaped. He instantly appeared by Li Fan's side and took the two plates to examine them.
"I don't understand the characters on these plates," Li Fan began, his voice trembling, "but the moment I saw them, four words flooded my mind: the Supreme Dao Scripture. Senior Brother, this..."
Lei Fanzi held the plates, scrutinizing them. His expression shifted from confusion to utter astonishment.
Suppressing a tremor in his hands, he instinctively glanced around. Once certain they were alone, he took a deep breath and handed one of the plates back to Li Fan. "This... this must be a lost scripture from the Immortal Realm. It's an unparalleled stroke of fortune for us."
"I've examined them; the two plates are identical. We'll each take one..."
"I am in your debt for this discovery. I will surely repay you in the future."
Though he had effectively claimed one of the treasures for himself, he had at least returned the other and been forthright about it. He was no saint, but neither was he a villain—just an ordinary man making an ordinary choice in the face of temptation.
What surprised Li Fan was how quickly the man had grasped the profound nature of the Supreme Dao Scripture.
"The elites of the Ten Great Sects are truly on another level compared to disciples from lesser sects," Li Fan thought, feeling another corner of the Great Dao manifest within the mist. He nodded to himself in approval.
Outwardly, however, he maintained a look of shocked hesitation. "Such a treasure... shouldn't we turn it over to the sect? If we keep it for ourselves and the sect master finds out, won't we be punished?"
Lei Fanzi snorted dismissively. "What are you talking about? The Ten Great Sects' legacy originates from the Immortal Realm; we have countless immortal treasures. For the sect master to snatch a single scripture from us... that would be utterly beneath him. Don't worry."
"Besides, only heaven, earth, you, and I know of this. As long as we keep our mouths shut, we'll be fine."
Li Fan felt Fang Dingge's divine sense sweep past them once more and nodded in agreement.
The purge of the Blood Moon Realm proceeded without any major incidents.
Aside from one large-scale battle that erupted in another region, the rest of the cleanup operation went smoothly.
When Fang Dingge, wielding a Dao-Burning Furnace, finally absorbed and incinerated the blood moon hanging in the sky, the suppression this realm exerted on cultivators returned to normal levels.
Though its threshold remained at the Golden Core realm, cultivators could now unleash their true power for a short time, at the cost of being expelled from the realm moments later.
"Now that this realm is ours, it will serve as a bridgehead for the Great Dao Sect's campaigns."
Fang Dingge stood high in the sky, his gaze following a golden chain that extended from the realm out into the distant, starry void. His voice boomed, echoing across the land.
"The Floating Starry Sky Grand Array," Li Fan mused. "At this point in time, it hasn't been damaged yet."
From Fang Dingge's words, it was clear that the war engulfing the Ten Great Immortal Sects was far from reaching its climax.
"A war of this magnitude, yet utterly unrecorded in later ages. How interesting..."
The true war, the conquest of other cultivation realms, was clearly not a stage for Golden Core cultivators. Their mission complete, the hundred or so disciples were led back to the sect by Fang Dingge.
The stench of blood still lingered over the Great Dao Sect, but some disciples had already begun to return from the front lines.
Their spirits were broken, and a deep, haunting terror flickered in their eyes. The front lines had clearly left them with profound psychological scars.
That night, Li Fan quietly slipped into the minds of several disciples who had returned from the front. However, it seemed that to prevent tactical leaks, their memories had all been wiped to varying degrees.
They were hazy on the specifics of the war, but the horrific scenes of countless cultivators falling suggested the conflict was even more terrible than Li Fan had anticipated.
"Wait... I seem to recall that in the future, cultivators would re-experience this world-shattering war within the Fallen Immortal Realm." The images triggered a distant memory in Li Fan's mind.
"Only a place like the Fallen Immortal Realm could have preserved the records through such a purge. It seems, however, that the war didn't end well for the Ten Great Sects. If they had been victorious, there would have been no need for such a thorough cleansing of history." Li Fan's gaze flickered towards the peak where the Great Dao Sect's main hall stood.
The war was like a silent, deep ocean, swallowing countless lives without a ripple. And now, the seeds Li Fan had quietly planted were finally beginning to sprout.
A divine sense, immensely powerful relative to Li Fan's current cultivation level, suddenly intruded upon the Supreme Dao Scripture.
"Dao Integration!"
A surge of delight went through Li Fan, and his focus sharpened instantly.
Even a Dao Integration cultivator would become instantly lost before the starry expanse of the Great Dao that Li Fan had crafted.
They were ensnared even more quickly than the Golden Core disciples had been.
Only upon reaching the Dao Integration realm could a cultivator begin to glimpse a corner of the world's magnificent Great Dao. Thus, only they could truly comprehend the scripture's immense value upon seeing it.
This new divine sense had entered through the plate in Lei Fanzi's possession.
Just as the cultivator's mind was lost in the scripture, a majestic aura erupted from a peak within the Great Dao Sect, soaring into the heavens. A golden longbow appeared, drawing its string and loosing an arrow that tore through the sky, shot past the bounds of the Xuanhuang Realm, and vanished into the depths of the Star Sea.
"That is..."
"Trapped for nine hundred years, on the verge of his Dao dissipating, Elder Fu has finally broken through! A joyous occasion! A truly joyous occasion!"
"Fu Xiwen was said to be the strongest combatant among the prodigies of the previous generation, a master of unparalleled archery. When his bow was drawn, the sun would set; when his arrow sang, the golden crow would cry! It's a pity he focused so much on his art that he neglected his comprehension of the Great Dao, leaving him trapped at the peak of the Soul Transformation realm. We all thought his path was at an end, but to think that today..."
Exclamations of astonishment rose from every corner of the Great Dao Sect.
Li Fan, too, understood what had happened.
"Fu Xiwen... Lei Fanzi's master. Lei Fanzi must have given him the Supreme Dao Scripture."
"His divine sense was already at the Dao Integration level, however. He just needed one final push. Guided by my Supreme Dao Scripture, his breakthrough was only natural."
Publicly, the Great Dao Sect had gained a new Dao Integration master.
Secretly, through Fu Xiwen, Li Fan had touched a greater portion of the Xuanhuang Realm's Great Dao.
Golden Core, Nascent Soul, Soul Transformation, Dao Integration.
Confined to his small room, the aura emanating from Li Fan surged, shifting through a thousand transformations in a single instant.
It resembled the legendary ascensions of ancient cultivators who achieved enlightenment in a single day, but the underlying process was entirely different.
It was not Li Fan comprehending the Dao, but the Dao itself returning to him.
The turbulent aura of the breakthrough lingered on the Great Dao Sect's peak for a long while, but in Li Fan's room, all had long since returned to tranquility.
Even through the eyes of a Dao Integration cultivator, the view was still limited. Yet, it provided Li Fan with a sufficient fulcrum of power.
In the current Xuanhuang Realm, while the highest attainment was the Longevity stage, their actual combat prowess was not much different from Dao Integration, as their longevity was granted by an external treasure.
Ignoring the hidden monstrosities, Li Fan had, for all intents and purposes, returned to the pinnacle of the Xuanhuang Realm.
"But it's still not nearly enough."
"A single Dao Integration cultivator is far from enough for me to reconstruct the Myriad Forms Dao Net."
"And while I've made some progress with the True-False Transformation, it's merely a single small step."
A triple jump in cultivation realms was barely more than a drop in the ocean when it came to manifesting the Myriad Forms Dao Net.
This alone was a testament to the immense chasm between each realm beyond Dao Integration.
"I need more of the Xuanhuang Realm's Dao Integration cultivators to lend me their strength." Li Fan's gaze drifted toward the raging war.
As he was lost in thought, a sudden knock came at his door.
Not much time had passed since Li Fan had infiltrated the Great Dao Sect, and the only person he could even remotely call an acquaintance was Lei Fanzi.
Seeing the conflicted, complex expression on Lei Fanzi's face, Li Fan understood his purpose in an instant.
With a faint smile, he opened the door.
Then, seemingly without any suspicion, he agreed to the man's request to accompany him on a trip outside the sect.
"As you know, my master has finally broken through to the Dao Integration realm. It's a momentous occasion."
"He's asked me to leave the mountain and extend invitations to the other sects for the celebration..."
Lei Fanzi explained, his words halting.
"Congratulations, Senior Brother! With a Dao Integration master, your standing in the sect will be completely different from now on. When you've made it big, don't forget little old me," Li Fan said with what seemed to be genuine delight, apparently oblivious to the clumsiness of the excuse.
Lei Fanzi merely managed a noncommittal noise, his expression still troubled.
When they reached a desolate, uninhabited area, a sharp blade suddenly plunged through Li Fan's chest.
"Junior Brother, don't blame me for this!" Lei Fanzi cried.
Then, with brutal finality, he severed Li Fan's head.
Fearing Li Fan might not be truly dead, he retrieved the Supreme Dao Scripture from the body and, trembling, incinerated the corpse until nothing but ash remained.
He stood frozen on the spot for a long time before finally coming to his senses. Shaken, he scrambled back to the sect.
He never noticed that behind him, Li Fan—who should have been well and truly dead—had simply reappeared out of thin air.
"Destroying the body to erase all traces. Excellent."
"Even if the Ten Great Sects uncover some clues in the future, the trail will go cold right here." Li Fan watched him leave, a smile on his face.
But the very instant Lei Fanzi's figure passed through the gates of the Great Dao Sect, the smile vanished from Li Fan's face, replaced by a look of alarm.
He snapped his head up, sensing an imminent danger.
This crisis didn't originate from anyone in the Xuanhuang Realm.
It came from spacetime itself.
It was as if he were back in the River of Time, and a turbulent current was beginning to rise.
This temporal tide had no effect on spacetime itself; it was aimed solely and exclusively at him.
Without the protection of the Dao of Longevity, and with his Reverse Flow Boat shattered, Li Fan had to face this sudden upheaval on his own.
"This is..."
"a storm caused by the River of Time altering its course!"
"As someone who has altered history, I must naturally bear the backlash!"
(End of Chapter)
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