Chapter 1587: A Tale of Survival in the Ancestral Land
Chapter 1587: A Tale of Survival in the Ancestral Land
The world was steeped in a dim, deathly silence. Everything, from the blade of grass to the towering peak, seemed frozen in stone.
This was the sight that greeted Li Fan upon his arrival in the Ancestor World of the Immortal Boat.
The stillness, however, did not last.
Like the first breath of spring, a gentle force swept through the land, and the world began to stir from its stony slumber. Light flooded back into existence, and life reawakened.
The world was once again a symphony of clamor and vitality.
The inhabitants of the Ancestor World, however, were not ignorant of their plight. Having been snatched from the jaws of oblivion, they fell to their knees in unison, their voices rising in praise of their divine savior.
The realm was not vast—smaller, even, than the Xuanhuang Realm before its great transformation. In a single, fleeting moment, Li Fan's spiritual sense swept across its entirety.
And with that, he grasped the nature of this so-called deity.
In the depths of their despair, a divine being of immense compassion discovered the sole method of salvation.
Before the cataclysm could strike, the deity would act first, turning all life—and the world itself—to stone, a shield against the impending doom. Once the danger had passed, everything would be restored to its former state.
It was hard to imagine how the inhabitants of the Ancestor World first reacted to such a radical plan. Yet, after countless cycles of turning to stone to evade destruction, they had grown accustomed to this century-spanning upheaval.
"The flow of time in this realm is different from the outside world."
"One year here is only about equivalent to one day in the Xuanhuang Immortal Realm."
"Yet, the circumstances here are the inverse of what I observed from without. When the world outside is shrouded in the black of Dao Annihilation, this place thrives with life. And when the white light of vitality shines beyond, this realm falls into petrified silence."
Li Fan raised his gaze to the sky.
There, an immense consciousness coiled, the very culprit behind this world's strange cycle.
"Vast," that is, only in comparison to the native inhabitants. Next to the sliver of consciousness Li Fan had manifested, it paled in comparison.
Seeing no need for caution, Li Fan dove straight in, determined to uncover the truth.
Though life had returned to the world, its "deity" had fallen into a deep slumber. Whatever meager defenses it possessed were no obstacle for Li Fan.
And so, Li Fan perused its memories at his leisure.
A torrent of images flooded his mind.
It all began with the defection of the Xuanshang Immortal Boat. What was meant to be observed data had escaped the experiment, triggering an emergency protocol that sealed this testing ground off from the rest of the world.
The world's original observer was punished for the failure, utterly annihilated. Had the Rotten Axe Dojo still been functional, a replacement would have been swiftly dispatched. But with the Dao Annihilation looming, the dojo lay abandoned.
And so, the Ancestor World was left to its fate, completely isolated.
In truth, this era of isolation, free from the dojo's interference, became the Ancestor World's golden age. Factions that once vied for power united, pooling their knowledge to understand the immortal boat's escape and the cataclysmic changes plaguing their world.
They eventually unearthed a staggering truth: their entire world was nothing more than an experimental ground established by the Immortal Realm.
Who would willingly live as a laboratory rat?
Naturally, they yearned to follow in the footsteps of the Xuanshang Immortal Boat and break free from their designated fate.
They began to study and deconstruct the immortal restrictions and arrays hidden within their world. Old rivalries were set aside as every sect and clan worked in concert, seeking to harness the immortal power for their own ends.
As a result, the collective power of the Ancestor World's cultivators surged.
Yet they remained a far cry from shattering the seals of the Rotten Axe Dojo.
Just then, the Dao Annihilation arrived.
To be precise, what befell the Ancestor World was not the true tide of Dao Annihilation that had consumed the Immortal Realm. Sheltered within the Rotten Axe Dojo, they were protected by the phantom of Shou Qiu. They only faced the merest droplets, scattered from the colossal impact between the tide and Shou Qiu's projection.
Even so, this "Dao Annihilation" was far more than the Ancestor World could bear.
A once boundless world, dotted with grotto-heavens as numerous as the stars in the night sky, was almost entirely devoured in a flash.
A small remnant survived, clinging to existence in sheer terror.
Fortunately, their prior collective study of the Rotten Axe Dojo's immortal arrays gave them a fighting chance. By activating what remained of the formations, they found the means to resist the encroaching "Dao Annihilation."
It was a reflection of the Immortal Realm's own ancient struggle against the tide.
In the long years that followed, the survivors of the Ancestor World exhausted every resource and explored every possibility, desperate to find a way to endure in the shadow of Dao Annihilation.
Perhaps it is true that in the crucible of life and death, one's potential can be infinitely unleashed.
The cultivators of the Ancestor World, against all odds, discovered a possible solution.
Li Fan observed the slumbering consciousness before him.
This consciousness was no singular entity, but a fusion of thousands upon thousands of disparate minds.
Each thread of will belonged to a cultivator of exceptional genius from the Ancestor World.
"These cultivators each comprehend and practice different Great Daos."
"They each master a different Dao, weaving them together to form something like a Dao Net. And this Dao Net... it can bear the weight of Dao Annihilation!"
"Mere mortal cultivators, of course. The depth of their understanding cannot compare to that of a True Immortal. But then, they aren't facing the true tide of Dao Annihilation either. So, in theory, if enough cultivators were willing to sacrifice themselves, to merge with this collective consciousness one after another, they might actually have a chance of succeeding."
"A pity..."
Li Fan's gaze pierced through the fused consciousness, penetrating to its very core.
There, a minuscule void seemed to exist.
Wisps of blackness seeped from this void, trickling together like a nascent stream.
"Dao Annihilation is no static thing. Quite the opposite—it is cunning, as if it possesses a will of its own. What began as mere scattered droplets was just the start. The true Dao Annihilation is insidious, seeping through those tiny footholds, slowly but surely."
"The people of this world, however, could not realize this. Or rather, by the time they discovered it, it was already too late."
Reinforced, the once-faint droplets began to swell, threatening to become a true tide.
A calamity of this magnitude was beyond the means of mortal cultivators to resist, regardless of their genius.
"However, even in such a desperate situation, they were still able to find a way to survive..."
"Truly remarkable," Li Fan praised, his admiration genuine.
"Even if it was a method born of utter desperation."
The final desperate measure of the Ancestor World did not escape Li Fan's notice.
They had adopted a strategy of redirection rather than containment.
They drew all the seeping Dao Annihilation into a single point. With their collective consciousness, they forged a great dam, a high wall of will, to hold it back.
And when that wall of will reached its breaking point, they would detonate it themselves, diverting the catastrophic flood—directing the Dao Annihilation into the other pocket dimensions within the Rotten Axe Dojo.
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