Chapter 1717: The Truth of 'Return to Truth'
In an instant, a net of pure void enveloped the entire battlefield between the Mountain and Sea and the Outer Void Realm.
At its heart, a thin black line, moving with the speed of a serpent, had just finished tracing a perfect circle.
Li Fan...
...was trapped within!
The very instant Shou Qiu perished and the mastermind behind the Void Realm revealed itself, Li Fan had already silently invoked [Truth].
An infinite expanse of white mist surged forth, threatening to conceal all of existence.
Yet, this very act seemed to betray his location. The net of void instantly shifted, ensnaring him completely!
A scene utterly different from any previous activation of [Truth] began to unfold.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The frequency of the impacts accelerated.
Each strike seemed to land at a critical juncture, interrupting the white mist's process of engulfing reality.
Tendrils of blackness, like venomous snakes, slithered in. Though the mist formed a barrier, the violent hammering seemed to create fissures in its vast expanse.
It was just enough of an opening for the Void Realm's mastermind to exploit!
The activation of [Truth] was being thwarted!
Faced with such a dire crisis, Li Fan was startled but not panicked.
Thanks to the effect of Same Heart Same Virtue, he was still immersed in the transcendent state he had shared with Shou Qiu—that resolute willingness to sever all ties and face death.
Fearless of death, he was naturally unafraid of any unforeseen circumstances.
Even as this state rapidly faded with Shou Qiu's departure, it did not diminish the crystalline clarity of Li Fan's mind.
He had witnessed [Truth] itself take action, reducing everything to the Star with a single thought.
The mastermind of the Void Realm was clearly no match for the Star.
Therefore, it was impossible that this entity had overpowered the True False Transformation of [Truth].
"Those impacts are merely interrupting the process," he reasoned.
"Even though invoking [Truth] takes but a single thought, the mastermind's methods are somehow forcibly elongating that infinitesimally brief moment."
"As for those countless black tendrils invading from beyond the mist..."
He recalled a past life when the Primal White Bone had entered the space of [Truth], regressing alongside him.
The mastermind's current actions were likely the same.
"The mastermind knows it cannot stop [Truth], but it's trying to piggyback on the process—to usurp my place."
"It should have witnessed Shou Qiu's epiphany."
"[Truth] is not something just anyone can wield!"
With a cold snort, Li Fan acted as if the thousands of invading black threads were nothing more than air.
He held his breath, focused his spirit, and quieted his mind, slowly pushing aside the mastermind's disruptive influence.
The rhythmic pounding from beyond the mist seemed to diminish, becoming almost imperceptible.
At the same time, using his hand as a brush, he began to write swiftly in the air around him.
His fingers danced like dragons and snakes, their traces perfectly mirroring the patterns of the invading black threads.
"When the true is made false, the false is also true!"
With every stroke he completed, one of the mastermind's methods of intrusion was forcibly erased!
Through Same Heart Same Virtue, Shou Qiu's enlightenment was his own!
Shou Qiu had been able to erase countless avatars of the Three Saints with a single thought, negating the Void Realm's fully charged strike.
And so could Li Fan!
Moreover, unlike Shou Qiu, who would have suffered a backlash from using this power, Li Fan—having been tempered by over a hundred regressions—was completely immune to its negative effects.
At first, his movements were clumsy, a testament to the gap between understanding and true practice.
But the effect of Same Heart Same Virtue was truly profound.
It felt as if he had done this all before, only now in a more suitable body. After a brief period of adjustment, his fingers became a blur, their movements growing increasingly fluid.
One by one, Li Fan erased the thousands of black threads conjured by the Void Realm's mastermind.
What did its myriad divine abilities matter?
Before the Great Dao of Truth and Falsehood, all was but illusion.
The mastermind's power was undoubtedly far greater than Li Fan's.
But in the face of the "True becomes False" power Li Fan now wielded, that strength was utterly useless.
It was neutralized with casual ease.
"This is the Dao of Truth and Falsehood," he thought, "an authority that transcends all else."
"Even the solitary Star suspended on high must avoid its edge! What chance do you have, you paltry Void Realm!"
After erasing the last of the black threads, Li Fan's eyes snapped open. His spirit soared, and with a voice like thunder, he declared to the unknown existence beyond the mist.
It was a pity he was destined never to hear a response.
Having repelled the mastermind's influence, Li Fan's mind returned to normal.
The white mist, which had seemed frozen in time, now began to surge forward once more.
This time, there were no interruptions.
It swallowed all light, and the familiar darkness descended once more.
Only this time, his consciousness did not immediately succumb to sleep.
Instead, he fought to keep his eyes open, struggling to remain awake.
He had annihilated thousands of Saintly apparitions and repelled the invader from the Void Realm.
As the turmoil finally subsided, an absolute silence fell.
It felt as though he was the only thing left in existence.
And yet, in the darkness, Li Fan could faintly perceive countless phantoms flashing past at incredible speeds.
They were visions of everything the Mountain and Sea was meant to experience.
"Right now," he realized, "[Truth] is guiding me across the expanse of the Mountain and Sea, toward its very end, to await the arrival of the Star."
"To put it bluntly, nothing that happens between the Mountain and Sea and the Void Realm is worthy of [Truth]'s intervention. Not even that so-called mastermind. I, with my rudimentary grasp of the Great Dao of Truth and Falsehood, could repel it with ease..."
"Only the Star—the entity that swallows the Mountain and Sea and erases the Void Realm—is its true concern. The moment the Star appears is the moment [Truth] will finally act."
"This," he thought, "is what it truly means to be unrelated to the final outcome."
As he traversed the void, Li Fan managed to remain conscious at first.
But gradually, an overwhelming fatigue began to wash over him, as if he had worked for a billion years without a single moment of rest.
The exhaustion was like a collapsing mountain. His eyelids grew heavy, and he found it impossible to resist the crushing wave of sleepiness.
"This isn't just an illusion of sleepiness," he realized with a jolt. "This is..."
"...fatigue born from consumption."
"I... am being consumed?"
In his state of extreme exhaustion, Li Fan finally perceived it clearly: as he traveled across the Mountain and Sea, something within him was being consumed in tandem.
He could no longer spare any attention for the overlapping phantoms of the Mountain and Sea; what little focus he had left was turned inward, upon himself.
The feeling of being hollowed out grew increasingly intense.
He even had the terrifying illusion of a lamp running out of oil, of life itself flickering out. A terror unlike anything he had ever known began to grip him.
The transcendent state of mind he'd inherited from Shou Qiu had completely vanished with the activation of [Truth].
Now, he was just Li Fan again.
"[Truth]... what are you?"
"Why is my infinite spirituality draining away so rapidly?"
"What is it being used for? Where is it going?"
A storm of terror and doubt raged within him, momentarily suppressing even the boundless exhaustion.
It was enough to keep a sliver of his consciousness awake.
But he was like a man trapped in a dream—muddled, confused, capable only of instinctive thought.
There was no room for rational deliberation.
An unknown amount of time passed, and then, the evolution outside the darkness seemed to halt.
It was as if he had reached the End of the Mountain and Sea, and the aura of absolute stillness grew ever more profound.
A lone sliver of starlight threatened to pierce the gloom.
But it was swiftly extinguished.
In that place of absolute nothingness, where the solitary star had appeared and then vanished, countless motes of light and shadow began to ripple once more.
The Mountain and Sea, and the Void Realm, were reborn!
Li Fan felt the drain on his being finally cease, and the taut string of tension within him snapped.
No longer able to fight off the exhaustion, he plunged into a deep slumber.
...
Anchor Point: Year 1.
When Li Fan awoke again, his eyes were vacant for a moment.
Then the memories—Shou Qiu, the mastermind, the endless draining of his true spirit—came rushing back like a tidal wave.
The sensation of being hollowed out felt terrifyingly real, even after the regression.
His pupils constricted in horror.
"[Truth]!" he screamed in his mind.
He wasn't trying to activate it again.
He was confronting it, demanding an explanation.
Unsurprisingly, [Truth] remained silent.
Rage flared in Li Fan's heart, but he managed to calm himself after a moment.
"Thinking about it, my past regressions were probably no different from this one."
"The only difference is that I was asleep before. This was the first time I witnessed the entire process while fully conscious."
"..."
"So there really is a reason why [Truth] attached itself to me and won't let go."
"But this reason..."
The corner of Li Fan's mouth twitched.
But after all he had been through, he was no longer a hot-headed youth driven by pure emotion.
[Truth] seemed unable to leave him, but by the same token, he was unable to leave [Truth].
"Besides, even if I lazed around and did nothing, [Truth] would still activate upon my death. I would just suffer the torment of being drained for no reason..."
After careful consideration, Li Fan had no choice but to accept this reality for now.
The resistance in his heart slowly subsided.
"Thanks to Shou Qiu's reminder, I managed to stay conscious and glimpse the truth of how [Truth] operates. But now I just have more questions..."
"The Dao of Truth and Falsehood, in theory, should possess the power to create the Mountain and Sea from nothing. Why does it need to drain my infinite true spirit?"
"To reconstruct the Mountain and Sea?"
"And where does my 'infinite' true spirit even come from?"
Li Fan lifted his hand, feeling the mortal body he had yet to infuse with his cultivation.
"The hollowed-out feeling is gone."
"I'm back to normal."
"My infinite true spirit really does seem to be infinite."
But the memory of that near-fatal exhaustion, of being drained to the very dregs, was still vivid.
Li Fan's eyelid twitched, his mind unable to find peace.
"No wonder you're always flashing so fast, what's the rush!"
Frustrated, he ignored the blinking characters of the inheritance option before him.
He strode to the peak of Jieli Mountain, hoping the view would clear his troubled mind.
"How laughable. All this time, I've been desperately seeking eternal, carefree life."
"[Truth] is both the key that opens the path to longevity and the shackle that binds me to it."
"Only on the day I completely cast it aside will I ever find true freedom."
He suddenly recalled his hundred lifetimes of Foundation Establishment.
And realized how fundamentally wrong he had been.
"My true Foundation Establishment Through Oneself shouldn't have been about incorporating [Truth] into my Dao foundation."
"It should have been about completely excluding [Truth], forging a foundation from my own pure self."
"And yet, both paths lead to the same destination. Both are difficult, difficult, difficult!"
Frowning deeply, Li Fan sat on the peak of Jieli Mountain for several years.
Watching the clouds drift by day after day, he slowly came to terms with his situation.
"The True False Transformation..."
Li Fan stood and pointed lightly at an empty space on the peak.
A wooden house materialized from thin air.
It was born from the void, a falsehood made real.
With another light tap, Li Fan used the power of "True becomes False" and erased it from existence.
Contemplating the difference between the two actions, a thoughtful expression appeared on his face.
He spent his days on the mountain peak, endlessly repeating the process of "False becomes True" and "True becomes False."
Gradually, a realization dawned on him.
"My level of comprehension for 'True becomes False' and 'False becomes True' is not the same."
"Especially after witnessing Shou Qiu erase the Saints in the last life."
"My skill with 'True becomes False' is far greater than my skill with 'False becomes True'."
"With my full power, I can erase the influence of the Void Realm's mastermind. But to do the reverse, to create a catastrophe of that magnitude from nothing..."
Li Fan narrowed his eyes and tried to trace a pattern in the distant sky.
He raised his hand several times, only to lower it again.
Finally, with a sigh, he came to a conclusion: "I can't do it."
He pondered further. "Though they are two sides of the same coin, the Dao of Truth and Falsehood isn't like Dao and Virtue. While one's understanding of Dao and Virtue can vary slightly, they always maintain a certain balance. But now, my understanding of Truth and Falsehood has such a massive disparity..."
"It's as if the Dao of Truth and Falsehood is cobbled together from two different Daos."
"True becomes False, False becomes True. When the true is made false... the false is also true."
"Return to Truth."
Li Fan felt like he was on the verge of grasping something profound.
But it was all just speculation, without a shred of proof.
"Perhaps, if I travel to the End of Time again and meet with that Final Saint, I might clear up some of my doubts. But..."
"It's meaningless."
"If I want to touch the real answer, to solve all these mysteries, I must stand at the appropriate height."
"The God. The Star."
A sharp glint flashed in Li Fan's eyes.
His ambition was rekindled.
If before he was driven by the vague hope of attaining a carefree, eternal life, now he was driven by a primal instinct to break free from his chains.
With the experience of the last life, and now knowing the "truth" behind [Truth], Li Fan's style of thinking and acting changed dramatically.
"Even the mastermind of the Void Realm couldn't stop me. And even if I were no match for it, [Truth] would step in."
"As Shou Qiu said, the mysteries of Truth and Falsehood have never cared about being hidden or exposed."
"It's time to act as my heart desires!"
With that thought, Li Fan no longer hesitated. He chose to inherit Shou Qiu's memories!
He flicked his sleeve, sat down on the ground, and quietly awaited the dramatic changes within the Armillary Ring on the Other Shore.
Within the Void Realm, Shou Qiu, who was painstakingly trying to reconnect the Mountain and Sea, showed several changes in his expression.
Then, the phantom within the Armillary Ring quietly departed, arriving in the Xuanhuang Realm, in the small world of Great Xuan, atop Jieli Mountain.
"How does it feel to be alive?" Li Fan asked with a faint smile.
"More like... how does it feel to have died once," Shou Qiu corrected after a moment of contemplation, giving his earnest answer.
"...Not bad."
"'Not bad!' A fine answer! Shou Qiu, you are truly magnanimous. I am not your equal!" Li Fan clapped his hands and praised him.
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