Chapter 1588: Survival in a Desperate Situation
Chapter 1588: Survival in a Desperate Situation
The fleeting brilliance Li Fan had witnessed from the outside was caused by the explosion of the collective bulwark of will.
"I knew it," Li Fan mused. "The Rotten Axe Dojo is supported by a phantasm of Shou Qiu Gong; there was no reason for it to fall so quickly. So it was these people causing trouble..."
Yet Li Fan, as the current de facto master of the Rotten Axe Dojo, felt no anger. What truly concerned him was the abnormal state of the Ancestor World of the Immortal Boat.
Even with the protection of the masses, the clash between the bulwark of will and the Dao Annihilation would inflict a nearly world-ending catastrophe upon the Ancestor World of the Immortal Boat. Therefore, the fused consciousness also had to divert a portion of its power to petrify the world, ensuring its safety.
Each act of salvation was an immense drain on the fused consciousness.
Within a hundred years, when the next wave of Dao Annihilation reached its peak, enough successors would have to sacrifice themselves, merging their own consciousness into the whole to maintain its strength. Otherwise, the Ancestor World of the Immortal Boat would face certain doom.
Li Fan had previously learned from Cheng Dao that the total "potential" of a single possibility might be a fixed sum. With the birth of each prodigious talent, the pool of potential would diminish. Thus, the number of powerful individuals that could emerge within a single possibility was finite.
The same logic could be applied to any given world.
Logically, the foundation of the Ancestor World of the Immortal Boat should be incapable of sustaining the continuous emergence of so many prodigies over such a vast expanse of time.
The flow of time in the Ancestor World of the Immortal Boat was nearly a hundred times faster than the outside world. Since the great calamity struck, tens of thousands of years had passed within the Rotten Axe Dojo. Here, that meant millions of years had elapsed!
For millions of years, the chosen ones have emerged without end, like an undying flame. And like moths drawn to that flame, they have sacrificed themselves to save their mortal world.
Magnificent. Wondrous. Strange.
"This fused consciousness Dao net before me, while incomparable to my own Myriad Forms Dao Net in every aspect, still has its merits."
Li Fan's consciousness withdrew from the cloud of fused will, once again scanning heaven and earth. He hoped to uncover the reason behind the Ancestor World of the Immortal Boat's undying prosperity.
But even with his perception, after several thorough scans, he could find no clue.
Even within this fused consciousness, he found nothing.
"'To solve a riddle, one must go to its source,' Li Fan mused. 'It seems if I want to find the answer, I'll have to enter this Ancestor World of the Immortal Boat myself!' After a moment of contemplation, a plan took shape in his mind."
"Heavenly Demon Reincarnation!"
To completely uncover this world's secrets, simply infiltrating it with a sliver of consciousness wouldn't suffice. He had to follow the example of the Heavenly Doctor, using the secret art of Heavenly Demon Reincarnation to deceive this world's Heavenly Dao. Only by becoming a true native would he have a chance to solve the enigma.
Within the Ancestor World of the Immortal Boat, as countless beings concluded their ritual of kneeling and praying to a "god"...
...a new life was born.
The Ancestor World of the Immortal Boat. Lin Mountain City, a territory under the dominion of the Yin Yang Demon Subduing Sect.
His surname was Li. His name, Fan.
All infants born on the Day of Divine Revelation were adopted by the city lord to be trained personally.
For it was rumored that beings born on this day received divine favor and possessed boundless potential. Past experience and long-standing tradition had, for the most part, confirmed this belief.
Thus, from a young age, Li Fan and the other divinely favored children received the meticulous tutelage of the Lord of Lin Mountain City.
And the seventy-two of them, Li Fan included, did not disappoint the city lord's high expectations.
More than half of them had officially stepped into the Qi Refining stage before their first birthday.
Reaching the peak of Qi Refining by one's first birthday was the crucial dividing line. Only those who met this requirement were deemed worthy of continued training as the divinely favored. As for those who failed, they lost their special status, though they were still provided for by the city lord and could live without worry.
A total of thirty-nine infants were taken by the immortal masters of the Yin Yang Demon Subduing Sect, led through the mountain gates to begin their formal cultivation.
The Yin Yang Demon Subduing Sect was one of the five great immortal sects of the land. Its sworn duty was to vanquish demons and exterminate evil.
What was a demon? What was evil?
The defiant were demons. The disrespectful were evil.
Disciples of the Yin Yang Demon Subduing Sect had to slay a specific quota of fiends and evils each year of their cultivation careers to retain their status as disciples.
Wherever the disciples of the Demon Subduing Sect roamed, evil spirits heard their names and trembled in fear.
Li Fan's talent was in the upper echelon among the divinely favored disciples.
At one and a half years of age, he officially reached Foundation Establishment. He received a personal empowerment from the sect master of the Demon Subduing Sect.
A tome known as the [Demon Subduing Heavenly Scripture], which recorded the cultivation insights and enlightenment experiences of countless past seniors of the sect, was forcibly infused into his mind.
A total of thirteen divinely favored disciples received the empowerment. Only six survived the onslaught of the Heavenly Scripture with their sanity intact.
Bolstered by the Heavenly Scripture, Li Fan's cultivation speed surged forward at an astonishing rate.
At three, he officially formed his Golden Core and descended the mountain to exterminate evil.
A three-year-old child setting out to slay evil. It sounded like a joke.
But in the Yin Yang Demon Subduing Sect, it was merely an ordinary affair.
After receiving the [Sorrow of Mountains and Rivers] sword, a personal gift from the sect master, he was flung ten thousand leagues away with a flick of his master's sleeve. Only after slaying ten thousand fiends would he be permitted to return.
The journey back, spanning ten thousand leagues, had to be paved with the blood of the wicked.
Wielding his sharp sword, Li Fan roamed the world, policing the mortal realm. Anyone who showed signs of being a fiend, he struck down with the force of a thunderbolt.
When he successfully returned to the mountain gates six months later, the Sorrow of Mountains and Rivers sword was already stained crimson with blood.
The sect master reached out and took the sword. Its crimson blade slowly condensed the blood into two characters—Li Fan—engraving them upon its surface. It radiated an eerie light.
Only then did Li Fan see that besides his own name, the blade was covered with hundreds of others, densely packed together. All were written in blood, differing only in the shade of their crimson.
"You rank among the top three." A flicker of delight crossed the sect master's eyes as he formally accepted Li Fan as his personal disciple.
After becoming the sect master's disciple, Li Fan received even greater privileges.
Most importantly, he was now able to spar with disciples from the other immortal sects.
"Do you know what it means to spar?" the sect master asked, stroking his beard.
Li Fan replied solemnly, "It is to determine not only who is superior, but also who lives and who dies. That is sparring."
A look of gratification appeared on the sect master's face.
In five years, Li Fan sparred nearly a thousand times with disciples from other immortal sects, never once tasting defeat.
He gradually became an undefeated legend among the disciples of the five great immortal sects.
After another exhilarating victory, he finally broke through to the Nascent Soul stage.
After reaching the Nascent Soul stage, he could no longer "bully" the junior disciples of the immortal boat. Instead, he was given a new objective.
Guided by a mysterious figure in black, the newly ascended Nascent Soul disciples from the five great immortal sects gathered within a grotto-heaven.
The grotto-heaven was filled with ancient formations and ruins.
They emanated a heart-pounding aura.
According to the mysterious figure, these ruins were all the handiwork of immortals.
They would be sealed here for ten years.
After ten years, the restrictions within the ruins would erupt. If they failed to unravel the mysteries of the immortal restrictions by then, a gruesome death would be their only fate.
This was the trial they had to endure after ascending to the Nascent Soul stage.
Faced with this life-or-death situation, the disciples' expressions remained calm. No one clamored to return to their sects. In their eyes, life and death were ordinary matters. To be able to spend ten years in peace was already a great blessing.
Within the sealed grotto-heaven, there was no master to guide them. Everything depended on their own comprehension.
Some formed factions to decipher the secrets together. Others, solitary by nature, immersed themselves in their research alone.
Conflicts occasionally erupted, and many died in the fighting.
But for the most part, everyone was absorbed in studying the immortal ruins.
Just when they thought they would truly have to spend the full ten years in the sealed grotto-heaven...
On a certain day in the sixth year, the grotto-heaven suddenly rumbled and shook. As everyone watched in confusion, a long-unseen ray of light from the outside world shot down from the sky.
It shone upon Li Fan.
The gazes of all the prodigies from the five great immortal sects turned to Li Fan, their faces filled with disbelief.
The mysterious figure in black who had led them into the grotto-heaven reappeared.
Staring at Li Fan, he muttered, "Fifty-second among all who have tried. That result is acceptable. Hopefully, we can add one more."
Hearing the figure's words, the prodigies were even more shocked. They had thought Li Fan's premature unraveling of the immortal secrets was already heaven-defying. They never imagined he would only rank fifty-second. What kind of monsters were the fifty-one before him?
Just as they were struggling to calm their shaken hearts, they heard the man in black speak again.
"As for the rest of you..."
"Go and be tempered in the cycle of reincarnation again."
"I hope you're born into a better life next time. With higher comprehension."
The man in black took only Li Fan, leaving the others to be buried in the collapsing grotto-heaven.
Li Fan watched in silence as the grotto-heaven, having consumed over a hundred prodigies from the various sects, transformed into a black pill in the man's hand.
"Eat it," the man in black said flatly, tossing the pill over.
Without hesitation, Li Fan swallowed it in one gulp.
In an instant, his mind lit up as countless thoughts burst forth—all the insights and ideas of the other prodigies within the grotto-heaven. Though their progress in understanding the immortal ruins was inferior to his, their perspectives still held value.
Five years of seclusion, plus the pill formed from the grotto-heaven and the prodigies.
Li Fan stepped into the Soul Transformation stage in a single leap.
Before he even had a moment to rest, Li Fan was whisked away by the man in black, soaring towards the nine heavens.
The astral winds were piercingly cold, possessing a corrosive quality that rendered his protective spiritual energy useless. The wind stung Li Fan's cheeks.
Before long, thin streams of blood began to seep from all over his body.
Li Fan merely narrowed his eyes, impassively wiping the blood away. He kept close behind the man in black.
They continued their flight into the highest heavens.
It seemed endless. The higher they went, the greater the resistance became.
Finally, after crossing a certain threshold, Li Fan's vision suddenly opened up.
A magnificent purple Daoist palace, like the abode of an immortal, stood atop the clouds.
The people in the palace all moved with hurried expressions, indifferent to everything around them.
Li Fan followed him all the way to the central hall of the palace.
Standing in the hall was not a statue of some person.
But a strange apparatus.
Within countless concentric rings, a shimmering image was revealed: the teeming masses of the world below.
"This is the [Heaven-Peering Divine Ring]. Within it, you can witness all the secrets between heaven and earth."
"But do not be greedy. Remember, even if you see ten thousand Great Daos before you, you may only choose one."
"Go." The man in black offered a rare word of advice before gesturing towards the Divine Ring.
He did not mention the consequences of failure.
Li Fan had no other choice. Step by step, he approached the Divine Ring.
The closer he got, the more rapidly the images within the ring seemed to flicker.
The blood surged in his veins, feeling as if it would burst forth at any moment.
Li Fan suppressed his discomfort and slowly walked into the light.
The moment his body was engulfed by the ring's light, Li Fan felt as if he had vanished completely.
It was as if he had become the ring itself. All people, events, and things in the world played out before his eyes.
People: their names, their life experiences, their talents, their abilities—all were clear at a glance.
Events: from the time the Xuanshang Grotto-Heaven broke through the world boundary and the world was sealed, every past event, large or small, appeared before him.
Things: their outer forms were deconstructed inch by inch, revealing the foundational cornerstones of the Great Dao laws they represented.
...
Worthy of its name, the Heaven-Peering Divine Ring allowed Li Fan, at the mere Soul Transformation stage, to gaze upon all the principles of an entire world.
But he was, after all, a mortal vessel. Slowly, his body began to fail under the strain.
The light and shadows of the world grew faint, and the image of the ring itself began to emerge.
Li Fan knew he had to make his choice.
But instead of looking back at the world, his gaze remained fixed on the revealed form of the Heaven-Peering Divine Ring.
"If I could obtain this artifact, wouldn't it be the same as obtaining the world itself?"
"Why take the long way around?"
As if struck by an epiphany, he resolutely abandoned all that he had seen with the ring's aid.
He focused solely on the ring, determined to comprehend the principles within it.
If it had been a completely alien artifact beyond his comprehension, Li Fan certainly couldn't have analyzed it in such a short time.
But Li Fan discovered that he was not unfamiliar with the ring's essence. Though he had never encountered it directly, principles closely related to it had appeared throughout his cultivation journey, ever since the Qi Refining stage.
It was as if the entire world was, in fact, a manifestation of this Heaven-Peering Divine Ring. His path of cultivation had been a way of using his own body as a hand to touch and perceive a part of it.
As the thought took root, the ring before him solidified from illusion into reality.
The pressure it had exuded vanished, for Li Fan had truly become one of the countless parallel rings within the Heaven-Peering Divine Ring itself!
His vision blurred, and Li Fan found himself in a pitch-black space.
Countless figures were seated cross-legged on tiered, circular steps.
To Li Fan, the newcomer, they offered only a slight nod of acknowledgment.
Then, they returned their gazes to the center.
Although nothing tangible could be seen there...
...Li Fan keenly sensed that the space was somehow even darker, more profound, than its surroundings.
In fact...
...all the darkness in the space seemed to emanate from that very spot.
"This is..."
"Dao Annihilation?"
The term flashed inexplicably through Li Fan's mind.
Then, like a chain reaction, it triggered all of Li Fan's original memories.
Unnoticed by anyone present, a subtle change occurred in Li Fan's eyes.
"Finally awake. The selection process for cultivators in this world is... interesting. Even a bit cruel."
"All other living beings are expendable, sacrificed at a moment's notice, all to cultivate true prodigies capable of entering this place as quickly as possible."
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