Chapter 1695: Breaking the Cycle and Proving the Mystery
The Mountain and Sea Great Dao originally had no physical form.
Yet now, as Li Fan forcefully dragged it out, a long, iridescent serpent seemed to leap from the void!
The serpent was originally in a state of perfect balance, its head connected to its tail.
With its equilibrium shattered by Li Fan's external force, it instinctively retaliated.
A seven-colored radiance instantly enveloped him. Above the torrent of myriad possibilities, light and shadow flickered before accelerating, as if a fast-forward button had been pressed.
The following scenes unfolded in rapid succession:
After being captured, the serpent still tried to struggle. Its iridescent brilliance surged as it fought with all its might, but it ultimately failed to escape his grasp. A look of triumph crossed Li Fan's face as he gazed at the seven-colored serpent, now dissolving into mist, before opening his mouth and inhaling sharply.
The seven-colored profound energy surged into him.
As if struck by enlightenment, Li Fan sat upon the torrent of countless possibilities, his body gradually beginning to radiate the same aura as the seven-colored serpent.
Li Fan became completely immersed, unable to pull himself away. He grew still, as if turning to stone, his own aura seemingly vanishing.
Countless years passed. Li Fan’s figure became completely fixed in this nexus of spacetime, blending in so perfectly it was as if he had always belonged. As he merged, the existence known as "Li Fan" slowly faded away.
The light and shadow continued their rapid flicker, each instant marking the passage of hundreds of thousands of years.
The last remnant of Li Fan’s presence finally vanished, dissolving into motes of hazy, seven-colored energy. They converged from all directions, eventually coalescing into the form of a seven-colored serpent!
As if newly born and without awareness, the serpent acted on instinct. Its body slowly coiled until its head met its tail, restoring its original form.
Like the countless cyclical possibilities below, it was now trapped in an eternal loop.
A cloud of mist seemed to drift by, and the serpent vanished within it, leaving no trace.
The light and shadows warped, accelerating further.
An unknown number of years and countless cycles passed in this manner. Then, the seven-colored serpent once again manifested out of thin air.
It seemed as if something was struggling violently within its belly, the turmoil growing ever more intense.
Boom!
The serpent exploded into a cloud of ash, and a figure leaped out from the blast. It was Li Fan, who had long lost count of the years he had spent in this place.
It was as if he had forgotten his time lost in the cycle, returning to the very moment he first arrived.
Li Fan observed the mysteries hidden within the myriad looping possibilities, and his final choice was identical to the one he had made before.
He entered one of the possibilities, choosing to break the cycle with his own power and force the seven-colored serpent, the master of this domain, to reveal its true form.
His actions proceeded smoothly, just as before.
Once captured, the seven-colored serpent struggled endlessly but could not escape being refined by Li Fan.
As the ethereal energy entered him, Li Fan sat down to meditate on the Dao.
An eternity seemed to pass in a flash, and once more, his being merged with this place.
One cycle passed this way, as did a thousand more.
Li Fan, the hunter of the Mountain and Sea Great Dao, had become the hunted, trapped within his prey.
He was caught in what seemed to be an eternal loop!
...
On the Other Shore.
Tai Yi, observing the scene from afar, chuckled. "Our Traveler of the Mountain Sea seems to have run into a bit of trouble. Shall we offer some assistance?"
"Time and space turn like a wheel; life and death cycle without end. This [Zhouhui] Dao was not present at the dawn of the Mountain and Sea, but was a transformation born from the desperate need to survive under the pressure of the Dao Annihilation," Shou Qiu Gong noted with a nod. "Though our Traveler of the Mountain Sea is exceptionally gifted, without the mantle of a Saint, his cultivation is ultimately at the Transcendent stage. It's understandable that he would be trapped."
"It's easy to see clearly from the sidelines. If any of us were in his position, I doubt we would fare any better," Moral countered. Having been guided to Sainthood by Li Fan, he felt compelled to speak in his defense.
The other Saints remained silent, neither refuting his words nor agreeing with them.
It was Lian Shan who finally broke the silence. "Let us wait a while longer. From my perspective, there is a variable within this seeming constant. This Traveler of the Mountain Sea is not as simple as you think. You've all misjudged him."
A rare, silent smile touched Lian Shan's lips.
Hearing this, the other Saints looked surprised and turned their attention back to the unfolding events.
With the Mountain and Sea being reconnected, the Other Shore now encompassed the entirety of the current segment.
Beneath its shroud of white light, the passage of time held no real meaning.
Moreover, the cycle Li Fan was trapped in was a self-contained system. Even if a hundred million years were to pass inside, it would not affect the greater course of the Mountain and Sea.
Thus, it was no trouble for the Saints to wait and see.
...
Just as Lian Shan had predicted.
Within the seemingly endless cycle, a variable lay hidden.
And this variable was Li Fan's key to escape!
It all stemmed from the single sword strike Li Fan had unleashed upon his arrival to find a trace of the [Zhouhui] Dao.
That single strike had severed one of the possibilities here. Time in that thread had frozen, then withered away.
So when the Zhouhui Dao evolved its trap, ensnaring Li Fan within its cycle, it chose to incorporate that initial, instinctive act into the loop to prevent him from noticing.
As a result, with every turn of the cycle, one possibility was annihilated by the sword at Li Fan’s fingertips.
Though the torrent of possibilities here was endless, and though new ones were constantly being born to replace those destroyed...
as Li Fan became fully integrated into the [Zhouhui] Dao, each cycle became smoother and faster.
The cycles accelerated, and the rate at which Li Fan destroyed possibilities soon outpaced their regeneration.
No matter how the power of the Zhouhui Dao tried, it could no longer maintain its equilibrium.
If things continued on this path, the outcome was inevitable: the myriad torrents of possibilities would be utterly destroyed at Li Fan's hand.
Without the core possibilities to sustain it, the cycle itself was destined to collapse.
And if the Zhouhui Dao chose to forcefully sustain it...
...the outcome would remain the same.
Li Fan would simply be trapped for a longer period.
The end result would still be total annihilation.
Gradually realizing its predicament, the Zhouhui Dao made its choice.
At the beginning of another cycle, just as Li Fan captured the seven-colored serpent, consumed its ethereal energy, and was about to sink into meditative enlightenment...
...another, much smaller thread of seven-colored light flashed past, gone in an instant.
It was attempting a quiet escape.
In the next moment, it would leap from the torrent of looping possibilities and vanish into the boundless Mountain and Sea.
But at that exact moment, Li Fan, who should have been lost in his meditative trance, suddenly opened his eyes.
His face was impassive as he casually pinched two fingers together.
His fingers closed like a lock, trapping the Zhouhui Dao firmly within his grasp.
The tiny, iridescent serpent was instantly trapped, both shocked and furious.
It tried to manifest the phantom light of the cycles again, hoping to ensnare Li Fan once more.
But having already broken free from the great cycle, how could Li Fan fall for the same trick twice?
"If you had been more decisive and fled the moment I arrived, I truly might not have had any way to deal with you."
"But to contend with me through countless cycles, only to then try and sacrifice a part of yourself to escape..."
"Hmph! It's too late for that!"
He held the Zhouhui Dao in his palm.
With his eyes lowered, Li Fan slowly began to refine it.
Beneath him, the torrent of myriad looping possibilities, now deprived of their driving force, gradually froze over.
Soon, they would face complete annihilation.
Having comprehended this process countless times within the cycles, he was now an expert. This time, it took him a mere dozen breaths to completely integrate the Mountain and Sea Great Dao into his being.
An ineffably profound aura began to emanate from his body.
In that moment, Li Fan once again entered the realm of a Saint!
Opening his eyes, he saw the myriad possibilities below on the verge of collapse. Li Fan simply pointed a finger.
With an infusion of the Zhouhui Dao's power, the frozen possibilities began to flow once more.
This time, however, the cycle would not continue indefinitely as it had before.
Instead, with each successive loop, it would gradually find its final trajectory and meet its ultimate fate.
But that no longer had anything to do with Li Fan.
Once again cloaked in the mantle of a Saint, Li Fan looked up and faintly saw the Saints on the Other Shore smiling down at him.
Li Fan took a deep breath, shaking off the sense of dust and age that clung to him after being trapped in the cycles for so long. With a leap, he crossed the boundless Mountain and Sea and returned to the Other Shore.
He had been gone for countless eons, yet within the Armillary Ring, not a single thing had changed.
"My apologies for the long wait," Li Fan said.
The Saints observed Li Fan, who had once again attained the realm of a Saint, their expressions a mixture of various emotions.
"It seems Lian Shan was correct. We all underestimated you," Tai Yi said with a laugh.
Li Fan didn't understand his meaning, so Shou Qiu recounted in detail everything that had transpired on the Other Shore in his absence.
"It was merely a stroke of luck," Li Fan replied, feeling a bit abashed.
"There's no need for modesty. To escape that endless cycle and bind the Zhouhui Dao in return is a feat that even we might not accomplish so easily. You are truly worthy of your title, Traveler of the Mountain and Sea," came the appreciative words of Gui Hai, who rarely spoke.
Li Fan offered no further protest.
He knew his own situation best.
Capturing the Zhouhui Dao might have appeared effortless, but in truth, the entire affair had been fraught with peril.
In the beginning, when his consciousness was clouded and he was trapped in that endless cycle, he had genuinely been unaware of his predicament.
It only went to show that for a cultivator at the Transcendent stage, a Great Dao of the Mountain and Sea was an overwhelmingly superior power.
Because of that one unintentional sword strike that had severed a possibility, Li Fan was never destined to be trapped forever. That was why [Truth] had never intervened to warn him. After all, compared to the eons it had witnessed, Li Fan's "endless" cycle was little more than a fleeting moment.
With his 'golden finger' remaining silent, Li Fan's consciousness had been clouded, leaving him trapped and oblivious.
If no turning point had emerged, he would not have even noticed when the Zhouhui Dao eventually chose to flee.
He would have remained within the looping possibilities, only awakening when the cycle finally collapsed on its own.
He had set out to capture a Great Dao of the Mountain and Sea, only to be made a fool of.
And all under the watchful eyes of the Saints.
While the Saints would not have let him remain trapped forever, the situation would have been far less favorable than it was now.
What ultimately woke Li Fan was his own "intuition."
As he experienced the same events in cycle after cycle, a feeling of déjà vu began to surface with increasing frequency.
At first, it was faint.
But later, it became so strong that it was like prescience; he could clearly 'foresee' future events, as if he were a prophet!
While Li Fan's intuition had always been uncannily accurate, it had never reached this level of clarity. This aroused his suspicion, and his awareness slowly began to return.
However, he kept his awakening hidden, pretending to remain lost in the cycle.
Having grasped the full picture, Li Fan realized that thanks to his initial, subconscious sword strike, the cycle was doomed to fail as long as he was part of it.
Its collapse was inevitable.
He didn't need to break the cycle; he just had to wait long enough for it to break on its own.
Like a patient hunter, Li Fan waited for his opportunity.
He waited until the Zhouhui Dao attempted its escape, shedding a part of itself as a decoy, before he struck with decisive force.
In one swift move, he suppressed and refined it.
Of course, while it appeared that Li Fan had absorbed the Zhouhui Dao to attain Sainthood...
...in reality, the Mountain and Sea Great Dao had gone straight into the "stomach" of [Truth].
On the panel for [Truth], under the "Return to True" section, a new line of text appeared below [First Xuanpin].
[Second Zhouhui].
Brilliant light flowed around the characters, and one could faintly discern a seven-colored dragon coiling above them.
For Li Fan, feeding the Zhouhui Dao to [Truth] was clearly the superior choice.
Firstly, although he had suppressed and refined the Dao, with his own aptitude it would take an immensely long time to truly achieve Sainthood through it. This would contradict his established 'persona' as the Traveler of the Mountain and Sea, who could rise from obscurity with astonishing speed each time he crossed into a new realm.
Secondly...
In a sense, there was no real difference between [Truth] consuming the Dao and Li Fan achieving Sainthood himself. Now that the Zhouhui Dao had been integrated by 'Return to True,' whenever Li Fan chose to masquerade as a Saint...
...he could choose to manifest the power of either the Xuanpin Dao or the Zhouhui Dao.
With the power of [Change From Heart], he could even switch between them seamlessly. One moment he could be a Saint of the [Xuanpin] Dao, and the next, he could embody the unfathomable [Zhouhui] Dao.
Such a divine ability was far beyond what an ordinary Saint could achieve.
As for wielding both simultaneously...
...that seemed to be beyond his current capabilities.
However, Li Fan had a faint premonition that as he grew stronger, wielding the power of two Saintly Daos at once might not be impossible.
It all came down to the same principle.
These were merely his own limits, not the limits of [Truth].
"Subduing the Zhouhui Dao is nothing special."
"As I've reached the Saint realm, it's inevitable that I'll gradually gather all the wandering Daos of the Mountain and Sea."
"It's not worth dwelling on."
"But that intuition..."
Li Fan's thoughts returned to the moment he had awakened from the endless cycle.
"At first, I genuinely thought that vague premonition was just my intuition at work. The two feelings were so similar, they were nearly impossible to distinguish."
"Later, it became clear that my so-called intuition was merely the residual memories from countless cycles. But..."
"...if that was true in the endless cycle, what about in the actual Mountain and Sea?"
Endless doubt flooded Li Fan's mind.
Ever since he had first embarked on the path of cultivation, Li Fan had benefited immensely from his incredibly sharp intuition.
It had guided him time and again, allowing him to turn peril into safety and navigate crises.
He had always instinctively believed it was a personal trait, just like his [Infinite True Spirit].
But after this experience, he couldn't help but wonder.
"Is it possible that it's also just... residual memory?"
"Could it be that I simply haven't been through enough cycles yet, so the 'intuition' only appears intermittently, manifesting at critical moments that leave the deepest impression?"
"Mountain and Sea... Star... [Truth]..."
An image surfaced in his mind once more: the scene of [Truth] forcing back the [Star] and resetting the Mountain and Sea in an instant.
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