Chapter 1568: Infiltrating the Merchant Immortal Boat
Ripples suddenly formed before the Great Heavenly Venerate's immortal puppet. Amidst the flickering phantoms, the faint image of a white cat materialized.
It lingered for only a moment before leaping toward a specific direction and vanishing without a trace.
Watching the faint, almost invisible white line drifting through the cosmos, Li Fan tracked it with his gaze until it disappeared into the depths of the Shuo Xinghai.
"It looks a little different from Cat Treasure," Li Fan mused, "but its aura and fluctuations are strikingly similar. The direction it vanished in is..."
Li Fan followed its trail, advancing stealthily into the unknown.
By the time the white line manifested by his technique faded completely, Li Fan had arrived before a strange structure floating in the cosmos.
It resembled a planet sheathed entirely in black metallic armor, hanging silently in the void before him.
The black metallic armor was crafted from some unknown material, capable of evading the divine sense of the Great Heavenly Venerate's immortal puppet. During his previous scans from outside the Shuo Xinghai, the immortal puppet had failed to detect its presence.
Only now, at such close range, was the planet fully revealed.
Upon closer inspection, Li Fan noticed something unusual.
This peculiar creation bore a striking resemblance to the current Xuanhuang Immortal Realm. Its connection to the Primal Possibility had grown incredibly tenuous, as if it might snap at any moment, leaving it to drift aimlessly like a solitary boat on a vast ocean.
"Or rather," he thought, "it was always an immortal boat."
"The Merchant Immortal Boat!" A strange light gleamed in Li Fan's eyes as he recognized the origin of this bizarre, planet-like vessel.
"Before, in Qin Zhuang's memories, I found information that Cat Treasure was a creation of the Merchant Immortal Boat. By the time I left the High Wall, the boat itself was long gone. However, according to the memories of certain individuals in the Shuo Xinghai, the Holy Merchants did indeed have creations similar to Cat Treasure. Qin Zhuang's memory was correct."
"But the actual performance of those creations was nowhere near as powerful as the Cat Treasure that had captured the Hunger Immortal in an instant. They struggled even against ordinary True Immortals. Qin Zhuang's cultivation was too low for him to discern the difference."
"I had assumed it was merely a coincidence, that the Holy Merchants had simply created artifacts resembling Cat Treasure. But now..."
Li Fan's interest was piqued.
He split off a thread of his consciousness and had it slowly approach the Merchant Immortal Boat.
Encased in its black metallic armor, the Merchant Immortal Boat seemed to occupy a space between reality and illusion.
Even when his divine sense reached its location, it failed to make physical contact, as if the black planet were nothing more than a mirage.
But such a defensive illusion was no obstacle for Li Fan.
"As long as it hasn't completely detached from the Primal Possibility and jumped into the Mountain and Sea, it must still be connected to the surrounding Great Daos."
Before Li Fan's eyes, the great web of the Dao suddenly materialized.
All living things in existence were caught within this web.
The Merchant Immortal Boat's contact with the web was as light as a dragonfly skimming the water's surface, almost imperceptible. Yet, with his profound understanding of the Primal Dao, Li Fan could pinpoint the faint distortions—the traces of Dao that still tethered the vessel to this reality.
Following these threads, Li Fan quickly pinpointed the Merchant Immortal Boat's true location within the Primal Possibility.
Its nature was quite peculiar; it didn't exist solely within the Shuo Xinghai.
Instead, like countless scattered points of starlight, it existed simultaneously in dozens of different star systems!
"The Merchant Immortal Boat maintains a tenuous, almost detached connection to the Primal Possibility, relying on dozens of anchor points to maintain its link."
"And this black planet before me is one of those anchor points."
"This structure is even more ingenious than the Xuanhuang Immortal Realm's flying-vessel form," Li Fan observed, his eyes lighting up. "At the critical moment of detaching from this reality and jumping into the Mountain and Sea, it can leverage these anchor points for propulsion. It makes the escape from the Primal Possibility far easier, allowing it to seek safer harbors elsewhere."
He committed the ingenious structure to memory.
Back in the Xuanhuang Immortal Realm, the world's Heavenly Dao sensed Li Fan's will and obediently began to evolve accordingly. In the shadows, the Dao One Worm quietly converged on the realm's nascent tendrils, initiating an even deeper transformation.
The transformation of a world is typically a glacial process, often taking tens or even hundreds of millions of years.
But when guided by a higher will and fueled by sufficient energy, its evolution could outpace that of any single living being.
Leaving aside the dramatic new changes unfolding in the Xuanhuang Immortal Realm for now.
Once the Great Heavenly Venerate's immortal puppet had unraveled the secret of the Merchant Immortal Boat's concealment, Li Fan attempted to send his separated wisp of consciousness into the black planet.
The black metal covering the vessel's exterior had a powerful suppressive effect on divine sense. Even though the wisp of consciousness Li Fan had sent out was nearly as strong as a True Immortal's, it was weakened so severely that it could barely sustain itself.
Fortunately, the core of his consciousness was unique, built upon the foundation of the Myriad Forms Dao Net. This allowed it to finally breach the vessel's outermost layer of defense.
"It doesn't just suppress divine sense," Li Fan noted.
"Its physical defenses are also formidable. At the very least, no one below the True Immortal realm could even scratch it."
"So, it's designed with True Immortals as the benchmark..."
Li Fan now understood that all of the Merchant Immortal Boat's defenses were designed with one specific enemy in mind: Immortals.
"This black metal, capable of resisting Immortals to some degree, doesn't seem to originate from the Primal Possibility."
"At the very least, among the remaining star systems of this reality, only the Merchant Immortal Boat should possess this material."
Although Li Fan hadn't traversed the entirety of the Primal Possibility, the Supreme Dao Scripture left by the Inscription Immortal gave him a precise understanding of its remaining Great Daos.
The Dao principles underpinning this strange black metal were not recorded in the Supreme Dao Scripture!
"Does it come from another possibility, then?"
Recalling how the Cat Treasure had appeared and then vanished into this very vessel, a theory began to form in Li Fan's mind.
But he needed to confirm it.
After the wisp of consciousness passed through the black metallic shell, its vision suddenly brightened.
Dazzling stars filled its view, shifting and flowing in a mesmerizing dance. It was like being lost in an endless cosmos, with no way to find one's bearings.
Seeing this, Li Fan couldn't help but shake his head and chuckle. "This array... it's like teaching a fish to swim."
Almost instantly, Li Fan identified the correct path through the countless stars and broke through the protective array.
The final layer of defense, however, was somewhat unexpected.
A narrow, gloomy corridor stretched arrow-straight into the distance.
At the far end of the corridor, a hunched figure stood motionless.
Li Fan assessed the situation. "I could either destroy this corridor and force my way in, or I can follow it..."
If his main body were present, he could likely destroy the entire vessel with ease.
But the wisp of consciousness he had sent forth lacked such power.
So, concealing its presence as best it could, the wisp of consciousness moved stealthily down the corridor.
The corridor held no other traps, and soon, Li Fan reached its end.
He finally got a clear view of the figure guarding the corridor's terminus.
He was completely bald, ancient beyond measure. The wrinkles on his face were like deep, terrifying ravines. The old man was hunched over in a simple, ochre-colored wooden chair, his gaze fixed calmly on the corridor.
Only his eyes still held a spark of life, vigilantly scanning his surroundings.
Li Fan wasn't sure if the old man had noticed him.
The man's eyes had clearly lingered on his location several times.
Yet for some reason, they only paused for a moment. The old man made no move, and then, as if seeing nothing at all, his gaze shifted elsewhere.
As Li Fan's consciousness drifted past the old man, he distinctly felt the figure let out a sigh of relief.
"Now that's interesting."
With that thought, he passed through the three layers of defense and finally entered the true interior of the Merchant Immortal Boat.
The sight that greeted him left him momentarily stunned.
He found himself in a vast, white space, where a multitude of humanoid puppets hung suspended in the air.
The puppets were all fashioned from some kind of metal. Though they emitted no spiritual energy, Li Fan could sense a profound 'weight' to them.
"In terms of raw combat strength, they're on par with ordinary Dao Integration cultivators."
"Moreover..."
Li Fan could perceive the humanoid puppets ceaselessly scanning the vast white space. Besides the corridor he had used, there were eighty other passages, each appearing to connect to a different star system.
"These puppets must have a shared consciousness, and they're made of a unique material. A single one might not be a threat, but in these numbers, they could cause trouble even for an ordinary True Immortal."
But Li Fan was no ordinary True Immortal.
And so, right under the noses of the countless puppets, he slipped past their blockade with ease.
Beyond the white space, he finally entered the true interior of the Merchant Immortal Boat.
Unlike the desolate, decaying interior of the Xuan Immortal Boat he had witnessed before...
...the Merchant Immortal Boat was a picture of bustling vitality.
Yet, to Li Fan, this vitality felt strangely unsettling.
Every inhabitant he saw had, to some degree, lost the characteristics of a living being. Parts of their bodies had been replaced by a strange, blue substance.
This blue substance was neither metal nor wood. It looked as if it were composed of pure light, and it pulsed with a steady rhythm, as if breathing.
None of the vessel's inhabitants communicated with spoken words.
A flash of blue light was all it took to convey complex thoughts. The efficiency was astonishing, and it seemed to eliminate the possibility of deception or lies.
Every inhabitant seemed burdened with a grave responsibility, their expressions grim as they hurried from place to place.
Li Fan followed one of the inhabitants—a person whose body had been almost completely replaced by the blue substance—into a crystalline structure.
After passing through multiple layers of verification, the individual arrived in what appeared to be a private space.
The blue light on his body pulsed incessantly.
With no one else around, the pulsations of the blue light grew several times more intense than they had been in public.
From this, Li Fan could vaguely sense the content of the man's thoughts.
"Only ten days left. The components for the Chen-Yi model must be submitted."
"But I'm still a long way from meeting the required specifications."
As the man's thoughts shifted, hundreds of thousands of different components materialized out of thin air before him.
Though each varied in minute detail, they all shared the same basic form.
Li Fan observed for a long time but could not deduce their specific function.
With a focused expression, the blue-tinged inhabitant began experimenting with the hundreds of thousands of components, one by one.
Afterwards, he shook his head slightly and sighed.
With another wave of his hand, he generated hundreds of thousands of new components, each with a different shape.
He then began another round of testing.
Li Fan didn't know how time was measured aboard the Merchant Immortal Boat, but he could clearly see the blue-hued man growing increasingly anxious.
"Whatever, I'll just have to test this one."
He suddenly let out a long breath, dismissing all the other components and leaving just one behind.
"Third-level immortal researcher, Sun Shengshan, requesting test for component Chen-Yi, 18762." The blue light on his head pulsed.
A short while later, Sun Shengshan's request was apparently approved.
A phantom image materialized out of thin air before him.
It was the image of an incredibly lifelike cat!
Sun Shengshan implanted the component he had created into the body of the phantom cat.
The image of the cat began to magnify continuously.
In an instant, it expanded by trillions of times, until after a mere moment, the cat was no longer visible on a macroscopic scale.
All that remained was a view of countless stacked components.
And amidst them, a vacant slot glowed with blue light.
Sun Shengshan placed his newly created component into the slot.
In an instant, the view zoomed back from the microscopic level to its normal scale.
The phantom cat instantly seemed to spring to life.
"Test one: replication."
A tattered piece of clothing materialized in the void before the cat.
Though it was in tatters, Li Fan's sharp senses detected the faint traces of an array on the fabric. It must have once been a magical artifact.
A blue beam of light shot from the phantom cat's eyes, locking onto the tattered garment.
After about three seconds, the beam shifted to an empty area nearby.
An identical copy of the garment slowly materialized within it.
Sun Shengshan watched nervously as both garments floated up and were instantly disintegrated into millions of invisible particles.
Both artifacts vanished, leaving only a single symbol behind.
Below the symbol was a downward-pointing arrow.
Although Li Fan had never seen such a symbol, it was like the True Immortal Script; the moment he saw it, he understood its meaning.
It represented the number 0.0028.
The moment the symbol appeared, Sun Shengshan looked as if he had been struck by lightning. His face went deathly pale.
The blue light on his head dimmed, flickering as if it might go out at any moment.
After a long while, Sun Shengshan finally recovered.
Gritting his teeth, he began the second test.
"Evolution."
In the void, where the garment had been, a white snake now appeared.
Once again, a beam of light shot from the cat's eyes, locking onto the white snake.
Within the beam, the white snake seemed frozen in place.
When the beam faded, the snake let out a piercing shriek, its body writhing as if in terrible agony.
Horns seemed to be forcing their way through the flesh of its forehead, and the scales all over its body took on a more mystical sheen.
The snake's transformation into a dragon lasted for thirty seconds.
After thirty seconds, the white dragon once again became frozen and still.
Just like the garment before, it was disintegrated into innumerable tiny particles of light.
A moment later, another symbol appeared before Sun Shengshan.
This time, the arrow beside the symbol pointed upwards.
Sun Shengshan let out a sigh of relief.
Li Fan saw clearly that this symbol represented the number 0.003.
"And now for the final test."
"Ensoulment."
The phantom cat's eyes once again released their blue radiance.
Only this time, the beam locked onto Sun Shengshan himself!
(End of this chapter)
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