Chapter 1555: Will It Be Enough?
Chapter 1555: Will It Be Enough?
Scenes from the memory of the previous Hunger Immortal—or more accurately, the Devouring Dao being from another possibility—flashed through Li Fan's mind.
His bones dissolved into streams of light, coalescing into another celestial pillar.
Though it too was incomplete, it was undeniably a purer concentration of the primordial Dao of Hunger compared to the pillar Li Fan had acquired before.
Li Fan did not uproot this new pillar from the earth of the Immortal Ruins. Instead, he buried the other half, the one that had sealed the Hunger Immortal, right beside it.
He could sense that, because both beings had mastered the Dao of Hunger, the two pillars were already showing a tendency to merge, even though their cores were not the same individual.
"Unable to become a Nameless True Immortal in life, yet you get a chance after death. I suppose I've helped you fulfill your wish, in a way," Li Fan thought, nodding inwardly.
With the two celestial pillars settled for the moment, Li Fan turned his attention back to what he had just witnessed. The previous Hunger Immortal's memories were brief, but they contained three points that deeply concerned him.
The first was the Dao of Devouring Dao. The overwhelming ambition to swallow mountains and drink seas, hidden within the Dao of Hunger, had not been Li Fan's imagination. It was the very manifestation of Devouring Dao—a power capable of consuming the Great Dao of an entire possibility, turning it into sustenance. A truly terrifying power.
One could never truly comprehend the sheer scale and magnificence of the Infinite Sea and the Upper Mountain without witnessing them firsthand. Even the mortal realm, containing all possibilities, was but a tiny corner of the Mountain and Sea.
The previous Hunger Immortal paid the price for his hubris. After drifting through the Dao Annihilation for ages, he managed to escape to the Primal Possibility in a wretched state, barely surviving. But with the three Saints of the Primal Possibility reigning there, he dared not act brazenly. He was forced to conceal his true nature, masking the Devouring Dao with the Dao of Hunger.
Though the two Daos shared similarities, their powers were worlds apart. In the end, his fate was to be effortlessly transformed into a pillar holding up the sky.
The second point of concern was the Transcendent World Coffin, the artifact that had allowed the Hunger Immortal to survive his long drift through the Dao Annihilation. The memories he left behind were sparse, but this immortal coffin was mentioned time and again.
Clearly, the Hunger Immortal was deeply resentful about losing the coffin. A treasure so precious to a being ruthless enough to devour an entire possibility had to possess some extraordinary power.
"The question is, who stole it? With the Immortal Realm destroyed, if the coffin still exists, it must be somewhere in the Star Sea below."
Though he had witnessed the destruction of the Primal Possibility firsthand, Li Fan had yet to explore all its surviving domains. His travels had so far been confined to three major hubs: the Great Wall civilization, Shuo Xinghai, and Guangwu Xinghai.
There were several reasons for this. First, the Dao Annihilation made travel treacherous and difficult. Second, any power that had survived the fall of the Immortal Realm was bound to be formidable. In his past life, the superweapons unleashed by Guangwu Xinghai—the Dao Sword, the Dao Saber, the Dao Chronicle Projection Pearl—all possessed world-shattering might. And if Guangwu Xinghai was so powerful, the other star seas would be no different.
Against the backdrop of the Dao Annihilation, these star seas were naturally hostile to outsiders. Exploring every surviving civilization in the Primal Possibility would be no simple task.
Of course, the main reason was simply that he didn't need to. His future explorations were aimed far beyond the Primal Possibility—out into the Mountain and Sea, and even upstream into the Eternal Silent Void Realm. The Great Wall, Shuo Xinghai, Guangwu Xinghai... to Li Fan, they were all fundamentally the same.
As for the final point, the one that truly troubled and even alarmed Li Fan, it was the being known as the Moral True Immortal.
What little he gleaned from the Hunger Immortal's memories revealed that this Moral True Immortal was not only immensely powerful but also fundamentally different from any other supreme expert Li Fan had ever encountered.
Shou Qiu, the Mount Tai Emperor, Ziyi, the Three Saints—they were all powerful, certainly. But they all possessed a certain code of conduct, an air of dignity befitting their strength. They acted according to principles.
But this Moral True Immortal, despite his name, acted with no morality at all.
He habitually seized the moral high ground to manipulate and control others, utterly indifferent to their lives or deaths. He would pursue any benefit for himself without hesitation and mercilessly destroy anything he perceived as a threat...
Li Fan was all too familiar with that style of operation.
Though they had yet to meet, a premonition was already forming in Li Fan's mind: the Moral True Immortal was destined to become his greatest adversary.
"Interesting. We'll see, then, who is more 'moral'." The first-generation immortal puppet's feet touched down lightly on the desolate grounds of the Immortal Ruins.
The power of the Devouring Dao swept out, and in an instant, the ancient ruins of the Immortal Realm shattered into countless minuscule particles. The first-generation immortal puppet then swiftly devoured them all.
From that moment on, the Immortal Ruins ceased to exist. All that remained were two celestial pillars—one new, one old—both born of a Hunger Immortal, propping up the crumbling sky.
Through the body of the first-generation immortal puppet, Li Fan carefully savored the essence of the devoured ruins.
The entire Immortal Realm had been carved out of the Upper Mountain itself. Thus, as he slowly processed the ruins, visions of vast, unending mountain ranges began to appear before his mind's eye.
"This distant glimpse does grant some insight into the Principle of the Mountain," Li Fan mused, "but it pales in comparison to being there in person. It's not even close to Shou Qiu's Dao of Sit Mountain View Sea."
Li Fan wasn't surprised; he had only devoured a single ruin, after all. "It's like walking toward a mountain. The more I consume, the closer I get."
The Immortal Realm had long been shattered, and few ruins remained. Naturally, Li Fan's gaze fell upon the Immortal Realm chess pieces that Sun Piaomiao had left behind.
At this point in time, ten thousand years in the past, the locations of the pieces were slightly different from where they would be in his own era. Still, they were all within the Great Wall's territory, and Li Fan had already collected them all during the three years he spent setting a trap for the Hunger Immortal.
The survivors of the Medicine King Sect, believing they had escaped the Immortal Ruins and found a new beginning, joyfully began asking the cultivators ahead for information. They were horrified to discover they had somehow returned to the Xuanhuang Realm. Fortunately, the Ten Great Immortal Sects were currently too preoccupied with the Ten Thousand Immortals Alliance's offensive to have time to settle old scores.
After much deliberation, still terrified and unable to comprehend what had transpired, the remnants of the Medicine King Sect decided to take a leap of faith and defect to the Ten Thousand Immortals Alliance. They reasoned that with their skills in healing and medicine, they could make a place for themselves anywhere.
But the unique nature of the New Method cultivators—with their indestructible Grotto-Heavens, immortal souls, and undying bodies—rendered many of the sect's greatest techniques obsolete. Ironically, it was their more peculiar and previously neglected elixirs, once considered frivolous side projects, that gave them a foothold in this new world.
Li Fan paid little mind to their fate. That he had merely dropped them off instead of devouring them along with the ruins was already a kindness born of their past connection.
After devouring all the pocket Immortal Realms with his Devouring Dao, the first-generation immortal puppet reached its temporary limit. While the vision of the Upper Mountain grew slightly clearer, an immense, crushing pressure from the approaching mountains descended upon it like an inescapable shadow.
Immortals were beings born from the union of the Mountain and the Sea—the infinity of the Sea balanced against the towering might of the Mountain. This balance was what created True Immortals. But now, after the puppet had devoured an entire Immortal Realm, the power of the Mountain had begun to overwhelm the Sea within it.
Li Fan sensed an unfathomable change taking place within the puppet. He couldn't yet determine if this transformation was for better or for worse.
He decisively halted any further consumption and attempted to channel the power of the Infinite Sea, using its might to counteract the Mountain's.
Amidst the sound of crashing waves, the formless pressure from the shadow of the Upper Mountain finally began to recede. The first-generation immortal puppet managed to regain its mobility.
"That feeling... of being swallowed by the shadow of the endless mountains... it was remarkably similar to what I experienced when the three Daos merged."
The immortal puppet sat cross-legged to recuperate while Li Fan mulled over the experience. After a long while, he came to a conclusion.
"The difference is that when the three Daos merged, I felt myself dissolving into an unknown confluence of mysterious powers."
"But what the puppet just experienced was simply being overwhelmed by the Upper Mountain alone..."
Li Fan's thoughts turned to the Fallen Immortal Realm. In that realm, there was only the Infinite Sea, with no Upper Mountain.
"If I were to push the Devouring Dao to its absolute limit, regardless of the consequences... could I create an opposing version of the Fallen Immortal Realm, one built entirely upon the Upper Mountain?"
Li Fan narrowed his eyes. Drawing on his firsthand experience of the three-Dao fusion, he began to rapidly deduce the possibilities.
If he could maintain his consciousness while being engulfed by the shadow of the Upper Mountain, he theorized, he should be able to perceive this "opposing" Fallen Immortal Realm.
The Immortal Ruins, the pocket realms from the chess pieces—all the fragments of the Immortal Realm he had devoured—would reappear, whole and intact. Not in their physical forms, but...
...as they had originally existed upon the Upper Mountain!
They would appear as scattered points of light, nestled among the endless mountain peaks, like stars scattered across a dark sky.
"Being far from the confluence of Mountain and Sea, it could, in a sense, offer refuge from the Dao Annihilation. But the price..."
Like a phantom, Li Fan surveyed his surroundings.
The Upper Mountain was utterly silent. There were no tides of the Sea to signify life, only row upon row of colossal, silent peaks.
"Absolute order. Absolute hierarchy."
"Here, life is meaningless."
Li Fan suddenly understood why, in the Mountain and Sea fable left by Sun Piaomiao, all living beings were born from the Sea.
The Upper Mountain itself was the antithesis of life.
"Even if True Immortals can borrow the Mountain's power, it doesn't mean they become one with it. They are merely standing upon it. The same was true even for the three great Saints of the Immortal Realm."
"And the fate of those who merge with the mountains..."
The shadows of the peaks closed in from all sides. The points of light representing the lands he had devoured were quickly swallowed by the endless mountain range, vanishing without a trace.
Li Fan snapped out of his deductive trance, a cold sweat beading on his forehead.
It wasn't fear that caused it, but the instinctive awe of a living being in the face of the Upper Mountain.
Meanwhile, the body of the first-generation immortal puppet was now covered in vast, dark shadows.
"Swallowing mountains and devouring seas... it's not just a saying. But one must face the backlash from both."
"In devouring the Mountain and Sea, one is also devoured by them."
With a flash of insight, Li Fan helped the immortal puppet connect to the Infinite Sea, using its power to mitigate the encroaching shadows of the mountains.
It took more than half a year to finally cleanse the shadows from the puppet's body.
Li Fan couldn't help but marvel inwardly. "Gui Hai and Lian Shan... those two Sage Lords were truly prodigies of heaven. Without either one of them, the so-called Immortal Dao, taken to its extreme, would have led to a terrible end."
"The only fate would have been to dissolve into the Mountain and Sea, to be assimilated by them."
"But because of their monumental feat of connecting the two, they created a balance. And within that balance, a foothold for Immortals was born."
"The price, however, is that by taking a stand between the Mountain and Sea, one must also face their inherent calamities. The merging of the two... the Dao Annihilation..."
All the Great Daos of the world were merely principles of the Mountain and Sea. By devouring the Immortal Ruins, Li Fan had bypassed the long process of comprehension and come face to face with the source.
His cultivation speed was astonishing, but the side effects were more than any ordinary person could endure.
It was only thanks to [Truth] that Li Fan had managed to survive the calamity of the three-Dao fusion intact. That experience allowed him to remain stable in the face of this lesser form of "drowning."
"All things dissolve into the Mountain and Sea, and the Mountain and Sea merge, ascending to something higher."
"Even Longevity and [Truth], entities on par with the Mountain and Sea, are part of this sequence of fusion..."
Li Fan once again thought of the legend of the creator god.
"That legend," he realized, "subtly points to the greatest truth of the Mountain and Sea."
"The so-called creator god gave rise to the Mountain and Sea and created all things in the mortal realm. But in the end, all things must return to their origin."
"The mortal realm recedes, the Mountain and Sea merge. This is the grand cosmic tide, the inescapable destiny that all beings within this reality must face."
An image quietly surfaced in Li Fan's mind, one so dreadful it would make the Mountain and Sea themselves tremble in fear.
A solitary star, hanging high in the void like the single eye of a god, gazing down upon everything below.
"Were the True Immortals, who crossed time and space to pass on the torch, fighting against this very fate?"
Li Fan stood in the silent darkness of the Star Sea, his gaze fixed on the void beyond the Primal Possibility.
"If even I can grasp this truth, surely those transcendent masters—and even the Three Saints—must have known it."
"And yet, they showed no hesitation, no despair..."
"Remarkable."
Li Fan's admiration was genuine.
If something was guiding this fusion from the shadows, perhaps it was the will of that long-vanished "creator god."
To save the mortal realm and reverse this cosmic tide would mean contending with the creator god itself.
An ant within the Mountain and Sea, raising its feelers to defy a solitary star hanging beyond creation. The very idea was preposterous.
"When the sky falls, let the tall ones hold it up. Since they're still holding on, let them hold on a while longer..." Li Fan muttered, pushing down his unease.
Half of his unease stemmed from the terrifying truth he had glimpsed. The other half stemmed from a simple lack of trust.
After all, Li Fan had never been one to entrust his fate to others.
Not even to beings as powerful as Ziyi, Shou Qiu, or the Three Saints.
When his own life was on the line, he couldn't help but wonder: "These people... will they be enough?"
Until the cosmic tide of fusion was truly turned back, that doubt would never fade.
"In the end," he thought, "I'll probably only feel safe if I handle it myself."
His gaze turned deep and distant, as if piercing through the fractured river of time and space to reach the very source of all things.
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