Chapter 1702: The Three Saints Duel
The Stealing Opportunity Saint, who had resolved to keep his distance from Li Fan and sever all ties, found his gaze drawn back irresistibly. He was watching Li Fan extract the accumulated True Spirit from within the Eternal Silent Void Realm.
"So that's why the Three Saints entrusted you with such a heavy responsibility," he mused. "To think you possess such an extraordinary ability."
After observing intently for a moment and confirming that his eyes did not deceive him, Stealing Opportunity finally understood.
At the same time, the look he gave Li Fan grew complex.
He's not entirely useless, after all, Stealing Opportunity mused.
The realm of a Saint offered no immunity to injury or even death. In the past, Stealing Opportunity had been wounded several times during the Mountain Sea Connect operations. On one occasion, the damage had even reached his own True Spirit.
Such an injury was beyond the healing of ordinary methods. The only cures were a slow, natural recovery over countless ages or the aid of the Great Luck Saint Medicine refined by the Tai Wei Saint Emperor.
But if there were an external power that could replenish one's True Spirit at any time... The thought made the Stealing Opportunity Saint's heart race. It was as if he were looking at a living, inexhaustible divine elixir.
However... Stealing Opportunity did not let the potential benefits cloud his judgment.
After a moment of contemplation, Stealing Opportunity glanced impassively toward the hidden Sundial Fate, and a plan began to form in his mind.
"If the Three Saints were here, they would never allow you to perish in the Void. A pity..." Stealing Opportunity chuckled softly, then vanished in a flash.
It seemed as if he had truly vanished from the Eternal Silent Void Realm.
Li Fan, however, paid him no mind, remaining focused on absorbing the True Spirit to heal his wounds.
Only the tide of Dao Annihilation stirred, its tendrils pulsing like a predator eyeing its prey, ready to engulf Li Fan at a moment's notice.
As he absorbed more and more True Spirit, color returned to Li Fan's face. His aura regained its former might, and he was on the verge of returning to his peak condition.
Just then...
A tremendous force abruptly descended upon Li Fan.
It was not mere physical weight, but the crushing substance of countless ages, condensed and roaring into motion around him.
A Saint was not truly immortal, merely long-lived.
But under such terrifying temporal acceleration, even Li Fan, the Saint of the Cycle Return, was instantly touched by the frailty of age.
He desperately activated his Zhouhui Dao, attempting to diffuse the immense torrent of time with endless cycles of reincarnation.
But this torrent, a billion years flowing in a single instant, seemed powerful enough to annihilate reincarnation itself.
At a disadvantage in this contest of Daos, Li Fan's form inevitably began to wither, growing older with each passing moment.
"The Sundial Fate Saint? He came as well?"
The appearance of Sundial Fate was genuinely outside of Li Fan's expectations.
Though he appeared to be in a desperate state, he had not yet reached the end of his rope. More importantly, Li Fan was certain that Stealing Opportunity had not gone far. He was lurking in the shadows, waiting to reap the rewards of their conflict.
"He can clearly perceive the currents of fate. A difficult man to scheme against, indeed."
Perhaps, only by truly placing myself in a hopeless situation, by offering myself as bait, can I finally draw him out.
A flash of insight illuminated Li Fan's mind.
He ceased to spare even a sliver of his attention for [Truth], as if he had completely forgotten his ability to reset time.
He simply threw himself, resolute and determined, into the battle against the sudden assault of Sundial Fate.
In the era of the Mountain Sea that Li Fan had witnessed, Sundial Fate had been absent.
Yet, Li Fan had heard the other Saints occasionally speak of his deeds.
He gathered all of time unto himself, then "lent" it to the beings of the Mountain and Sea, calling this act "balance."
The myriad beings across the countless possibilities of the Mountain and Sea suddenly found themselves with seemingly inexhaustible lifespans.
But this was not a gift they had asked for; it was a burden forced upon them.
For the rest of their unending lives, every being had to labor ceaselessly to repay their temporal debt.
Though they offered Sundial Fate no direct aid on his path of cultivation, their every thought, word, and deed—their very existence—held value.
Sundial Fate used the living beings of the Mountain and Sea to comprehend the Dao, and his power was by no means weak.
The pressure Li Fan felt at this very moment was a clear testament to this fact.
As if in a daze, he experienced the complete life cycle of the Mountain and Sea several times over. A wisp of white slowly crept into his hair.
It had been a long time since he had tasted the bitterness of aging. Now, crushed beneath the weight of infinite time, Li Fan was helpless as the signs of decrepitude began to show.
His situation deteriorated with every passing second.
The older he grew, the weaker he became, and the protective effect of his endless temporal reincarnation dwindled to almost nothing.
Li Fan's body hunched over, his form curling in on itself.
His hair turned a stark, snow-white before withering and falling away.
His flesh and skin atrophied, hanging loosely upon a frame of brittle, aging bone.
Before long, Li Fan had transformed from a graceful young man into a withered figure on the brink of death.
Yet Sundial Fate, who seemed to have come for the sole purpose of killing him, showed no signs of mercy.
The torrent of a billion years of time continued its relentless assault, determined to grind Li Fan to dust.
In the far distance, the hidden Stealing Opportunity watched the battle unfold. He hesitated for a moment but ultimately chose not to intervene.
He was convinced that Li Fan still had a final card to play and would not perish so easily.
"It seems like a dead end, but in reality, a clear path to survival has always been present. As for Sundial Fate, despite his dominance from the very beginning..."
"The omens of his doom are all too clear."
The events that followed in the Eternal Silent Void Realm confirmed Stealing Opportunity's suspicions.
Just as all hope seemed lost, the tide turned.
Li Fan, who had been sitting with his eyes closed on the verge of death, suddenly opened his clouded, weary eyes.
His mouth moved slightly, uttering words unheard.
The next moment...
The illusion shattered like a soap bubble.
The doddering old man, the specter of death—it all vanished.
Without any discernible reason, the near-death Li Fan reverted to his original state. His expression was calm and untroubled, as if Sundial Fate's assault of a billion years of time had been utterly meaningless.
"What?"
Sundial Fate's astonishment was palpable.
The roaring torrent of time faltered.
But the Sundial Fate Saint was not one to give up easily. The pause was brief.
In the next instant, the infinite torrent of time once again descended upon Li Fan.
From youth to old age, from old age to decay.
Li Fan experienced the entire process once more.
But...
Just as before, on the very brink of death, a flash of light restored him. As if nothing had ever happened, he was back at his starting point.
All of Sundial Fate's efforts had been for naught.
This time, the pause in the temporal assault lasted longer.
But Sundial Fate remained undeterred.
The river of time roared, flowing ever faster over Li Fan.
In just a few breaths, he had become ancient beyond measure.
Yet the scene repeated itself.
A flash of light, and Li Fan was restored to his prime.
Sundial Fate seemed utterly enraged, continuously amplifying the corrosive power of time.
The temporal flow reached a certain limit, even drawing the attention of the tides within the Void.
It felt as though something in the deep darkness was about to open its eyes.
With every breath, Li Fan cycled between youth and old age dozens of times.
But in the end, he always returned to how he began.
Throughout this ordeal, Li Fan remained perfectly composed.
Sundial Fate, in contrast, was beginning to panic.
He considered himself well-versed in the mysteries of the universe, yet he had never encountered something so bizarre. Even in his past battle against the Three Saints, where they had crushed him with sheer power, they had still been subject to the passage of time.
Their aging had been real, a loss of moments from their long lives.
They were simply too powerful, suppressing him so quickly that the lost time was negligible to them.
"How on earth can this person ignore my divine ability?"
Faced with the unknown, even a Saint could not help but feel a mixture of fear and curiosity.
And as his mind wavered, the tide of battle quietly began to turn.
In a duel between Saints, one wind must inevitably overwhelm the other.
When the torrent of time began to show signs of fatigue, It was Li Fan's moment to strike back.
Seizing the fleeting moment of weakness, Li Fan broke free from the river of time that had suppressed him.
With a fierce glint in his eyes, he unleashed the endless cycle of decay he had endured upon Sundial Fate.
Where before, endless reincarnation had been no match for the torrent of time, now, each cycle became a shackle.
It trapped the long river of time within it.
Though Sundial Fate held dominion over the flow of time itself, he could not escape the cage of reincarnation Li Fan had meticulously woven for him.
And in one cycle of aging after another, Sundial Fate was far from displaying the composure Li Fan had shown.
Each brush with death, each moment of withered old age, was a heavy blow.
He could not predict when, or if, death would become real.
His body and mind were subjected to endless torment.
After a long and grueling struggle, Sundial Fate finally lost his composure.
Fear crept across his face, and he abandoned all thought of fighting Li Fan.
He only wanted to escape this cage of endless reincarnation.
Even though Li Fan now held the absolute advantage, killing a Saint was no simple task.
As Sundial Fate launched into a frantic counterattack, the reincarnation cage Li Fan had woven began to shudder violently.
It seemed on the verge of collapse.
But Li Fan's expression was resolute, his eyes burning with a savage light. "I will kill you!"
He threw caution to the wind, pouring his very essence into reinforcing the reincarnation cage.
The wounds he had just healed began to tear open once more under the strain.
His body started to break apart, and his True Spirit once again seeped out into the surroundings.
Li Fan ignored it all, continuing to weave the cycles of reincarnation while simultaneously drawing in more True Spirit from the Void around him.
He was determined to end the Sundial Fate Saint here and now!
At this point, their duel had transformed from a simple battle of Daos into a fight to the death.
Sundial Fate did not beg for mercy. Even the fear on his face vanished.
Within the ceaseless cycle of aging, he silently gathered his strength, preparing for one final, desperate gambit.
Li Fan sensed the coming storm, and his expression grew ever more solemn.
...
"A battle of Great Daos, this is how it should be!" The distant Stealing Opportunity Saint watched, his expression one of rapturous excitement.
The shifting currents of fate between the two Saints in the field of battle held him utterly captivated.
Even now, it was still impossible to say which of them, Li Fan or Sundial Fate, would emerge victorious.
"Sundial Fate was trapped in a dead-end. But as the saying goes, it is from the jaws of death that one finds life. With no hope of escape, he has cast aside all else for a final, desperate strike. In turn, the Saint of the Cycle's path to survival has grown dim. Marvelous, simply marvelous!"
As Stealing Opportunity watched, he did not forget to activate his own ability, siphoning luck from the two dueling Saints.
"All paths to survival, all possibilities, will be mine."
"The rest of you can just die!"
Stealing Opportunity finally saw it: the sliver of life that had clung to Li Fan like a protective charm was beginning to fade.
And the future of certain doom that had been tied to his own fate had vanished.
A secret joy bloomed in Stealing Opportunity's heart, but he still chose not to intervene. He would wait for the deathmatch to conclude.
Even Li Fan had not anticipated that Sundial Fate's final counterattack would be so ferocious.
His own Dao foundation was cracking apart as Sundial Fate's figure seemed to dissolve into the rushing torrent of a billion years, launching a final assault against the reincarnation cage.
Li Fan could no longer see Sundial Fate's form.
But he knew that if he allowed even a single wisp of this temporal torrent to escape, all his efforts would have been in vain.
In that moment, Li Fan forgot all his plans and schemes.
There was only one thought in his mind.
He would kill Sundial Fate here!
It was beyond grudges, beyond emotion.
It was simply the critical moment of the duel, a matter of life and death.
To ensure the reincarnation cage could withstand this final assault, Li Fan split his consciousness into countless thoughts, flooding them into every single cycle of reincarnation.
And so, beside every aging image of Sundial Fate, there stood the silent, watching figure of Li Fan.
He was everywhere, at the absolute limit of his power.
No matter how many times Sundial Fate's thunderous torrent crashed against it, the prison Li Fan had constructed remained unbreakable.
It did not yield an inch.
The counterattack, having reached its zenith, began to wane.
Once the fiercest part of the storm had passed, Sundial Fate's dying strike grew weaker and weaker.
The aftershocks rippled out, but they could no longer cause any real trouble.
Within the countless cycles of reincarnation, Li Fan's figures all appeared before the Sundial Fates they guarded.
Expressionless, they all struck out with a single palm.
Smash!
In that instant, a billion phantoms of Sundial Fate shattered simultaneously.
And in reality, a Saint had fallen!
The death of a Saint, had it occurred in the Mountain and Sea, would have been accompanied by heaven-shattering phenomena.
But this was the Void.
Even the fall of the far more powerful Three Saints had not caused much of a stir here.
Sundial Fate died in silence, without so much as a whisper.
Even the dissipating fluctuations of his Dao were absent.
As for the victor, Li Fan, his condition was not much better.
The all-out struggle had truly overdrawn his body.
Blood flowed unceasingly from the corner of his mouth, and the True Spirit he had forcefully absorbed was uncontrollably returning to the Void.
His face showed no excitement from winning the great battle, no thrill from slaying a Saint. Instead, it was etched with worry, and he paid no heed to his own grievous injuries.
He hastily tried to flee the area.
He paid no mind to the increasingly turbulent tides of the Void.
Far away, Stealing Opportunity, who had waited for so long, was still observing.
"His True Spirit has shattered to this extent. Even with that peculiar ability to absorb accumulated True Spirit, this is a fatal situation."
"Now is the time for me to be the fisherman. This is foolproof!"
Stealing Opportunity was finally at ease.
He was already planning how he would use Li Fan.
"I'll just erase his consciousness and refine him into a treasure that can absorb True Spirit at any time."
"With such a treasure, this perilous Void will become an inexhaustible treasure trove for me! Not even the Three Saints will be able to trap me again!"
"I might even have a chance to glimpse the very beginning of the Mountain and Sea..."
Lost in his reverie, Stealing Opportunity had already caught up to Li Fan.
A grievously wounded body, no matter how hard it tried to flee, was no match for Stealing Opportunity's speed.
"I wonder what that technique was that allowed him to repeatedly return to normal under Sundial Fate's assault. But it doesn't matter. Once I refine him into a treasure, everything will be mine to use."
Without another word, Stealing Opportunity gently placed his hands on Li Fan's head.
At that very moment, Li Fan, who had seemed completely incapacitated, suddenly opened his eyes.
In an instant, within Stealing Opportunity's sight, the currents of fate between them
were turned upside down.
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