Chapter 1747: Serenity Before the Divine
The familiar white mist bloomed from the nutrient vortex.
It swirled into existence without a sound.
At that very moment, Shou Qiu's towering figure froze, as if encased in ice.
His expression was locked in place, fixed on the very instant he had pointed a finger at the newborn god.
An invisible ripple radiated outward, and Shou Qiu's form shattered, piece by piece.
Compared to the silent demise of the purple and azure specks of light, Shou Qiu's end was marginally more eventful.
He wasn't crushed silently like an insect; his fall even stirred a faint ripple in the nutrient vortex.
But that was the extent of it.
He still vanished irrevocably, fading away like dust on the wind.
His final, void-piercing strike had, in the end, managed to affect the god, however slightly.
It created a minuscule flaw in the otherwise impenetrable nutrient vortex—the very birthplace of the divine.
Seizing this opening, the white mist of [Truth] surged forward and enveloped Li Fan.
With Li Fan at its core, the mist now had a focal point, a source of power.
The mist no longer recoiled from the divine radiance. Instead, it billowed majestically, pouring in from the void.
Such a disturbance, of course, did not escape the notice of the new "god."
An invisible, colossal hand seemed to clamp down, and the roiling white mist instantly solidified.
Then, as if being relentlessly compressed, the mist grew visibly denser, its form compacting under immense pressure.
"Truth to lies, reality to dream!"
Like a life-saving mantra, Li Fan chanted the words over and over in his mind.
It was a panicked, instinctual reaction, but it was remarkably effective.
The frozen mist began to churn once more, growing ever thicker, walling off all external threats.
The divine pressure seemed to vanish entirely.
Nothing seemed to exist in the world anymore except for the mist and Li Fan within it. The silence was absolute, almost suffocating.
*Did it actually work?* Li Fan wondered, his heart still pounding with residual fear.
Just then, the white mist began to shudder violently.
It felt as if countless fists were pummeling it from the outside. With every blow, the dense mist thinned, growing a fraction more transparent.
Soon, the world beyond the fog, which had been completely obscured, started to become faintly visible again.
And then...
A colossal, cold, and merciless eye abruptly appeared at the edge of the mist.
Its indifferent gaze bored into the mist, locking onto the cowering form of Li Fan within.
In that instant, Li Fan's heart felt as if it were caught in a vise, and a chilling pain shot through him, born of pure terror.
His mind went utterly blank.
Without his will to anchor it, the mist began to turn transparent at an alarming rate.
It showed signs of dissipating completely!
"No! It hasn't found me!"
On the precipice of life and death, after a moment of stunned paralysis, his survival instincts kicked in, jolting his thoughts back into motion.
A thousand thoughts flooded his mind in an instant, his reasoning sharper and quicker than ever before.
"Before, when I merely fell into the new god's line of sight, the impact on my spiritual sense was so great that I lost consciousness."
"And that was while it was still feigning death. Now, with its eye pressed so close, all I felt was a momentary blankness?"
"That blankness came from my own fear, not from any external influence from the god itself."
In a flash, Li Fan understood.
Thanks to the concealing veil of the [Truth] mist, even with the divine eye pressed so near, it still hadn't detected his presence.
The god hadn't seen him.
He had seen the god.
"So I haven't been discovered after all."
With this realization, his fear evaporated.
Instantly, the white mist solidified, growing dense once more.
So much had happened in such a short time. He naturally noticed how the [Truth] mist had changed in direct response to his state of mind.
"So this is the nature of the [True False Transformation]."
A glimmer of understanding sparked within him. Li Fan sat down cross-legged, ignoring the divine eye that loomed like a second sun.
He focused his mind, recalling his own past triumphs and glories.
"The Saints of the Mountain and Sea, even this newborn god... they have all been reset by a single thought from me."
"No matter who claims the divine throne this time..."
"they cannot escape this destiny."
"Truth... and... Falsehood!"
Li Fan's eyes grew calm, all traces of fear and apprehension gone.
All that remained was absolute confidence.
The mist moved with his mind.
More and more of the white mist billowed out from the void.
It poured in, its pace accelerating.
For a moment, the sound of howling wind and rumbling thunder filled the air.
Layer upon layer of mist stacked upon itself.
Finally, the god's single eye was completely obscured.
In the final moment before it vanished from sight, a flicker of anger finally crossed that eternally calm eye.
Then, a muffled roar seemed to echo from beyond the white mist.
"It worked!"
Sensing the danger had passed, Li Fan, having survived the ordeal, couldn't help but let out a long sigh of relief.
Then, without warning, a wave of exhaustion washed over him.
He felt dizzy, utterly drained.
As if all his strength had been sapped away, he could only allow the white mist to carry him along.
"The cost was that high?"
Li Fan's head was swimming, and his eyelids felt as heavy as lead.
He had planned to observe the subtle changes before and after the [Truth] reset.
But that plan was now impossible.
He simply fell into a deep slumber.
...
Anchor Point: Year 1.
The initial anchor point.
When Li Fan awoke, he felt as though he hadn't fully escaped the perils of his previous life.
His entire body ached, as if he had just endured a long and grueling session of cultivation.
It was a pain that seemed to originate deep within his very soul, an innate ache he was born with.
Even after he rapidly cultivated to the Dao Integration realm, the soreness didn't vanish.
It only subsided slightly.
Li Fan didn't rush to ascend to immortality again or connect to the Infinite Sea.
Nor did he hurry to select an inheritance from [Truth].
Instead, he began to review the events of his past life.
"It's truly a case of one change begetting a hundred changes."
"I never would have imagined that by simply taking advantage of [Snare], I would cause the war for divinity at the Beginning of the Mountain and Sea to actually reach a conclusion."
"The return of the Mountain and Sea, the birth of a new god. What a spectacle!"
Even now, recalling the torrent of divine return, Li Fan felt a tremor of awe.
"It was a vast and mighty tide that annihilated everything in its path. Even the Saints of the Mountain and Sea were like ants before it. The power of that torrent itself was hardly inferior to the newborn god. If I hadn't been protected by the [True False Transformation], my fate would have been the same as the other Saints—instant annihilation."
His thoughts followed that divine torrent back to the Beginning of the Mountain and Sea.
Two white specks, one purple, one azure, and the newborn god, all gathered within that immense nutrient vortex.
"That white speck..."
Li Fan's eyes narrowed.
The memory he'd recalled earlier surfaced once more.
"Fellow Daoist Fan, have we met before?"
"The heroes of the Mountain and Sea are numberless! How can you deceive them all!"
Li Fan mulled over these two phrases, his eyes narrowing slightly.
"This white speck, much like Qiu Xinhui at the End of the Mountain and Sea, seems to have faintly perceived the truth—that the Mountain and Sea is being endlessly reset."
"Upon meeting me again, it developed a vague sense of familiarity and thus kept pressing the question."
"Though I never answered, after another cycle, that white speck's intuition must have grown stronger..."
"It was unstoppable. That must be why it lamented that the heroes of the Mountain and Sea could not all be deceived."
"Hmph. My past self was too rigid. I should have just made up some excuse to throw it off the scent from the very beginning. By remaining silent, I basically admitted everything."
"If it couldn't be deceived, I should have either killed it and suppressed it, or brought it to my side. Instead, I just let it continue to grow unchecked..."
Scornful of his past self's choices, Li Fan shook his head slightly.
He recalled the scene he had witnessed at the end of time: in the final moments before the void swallowed the Mountain and Sea, two white specks had leaped out.
He was almost certain now. After countless cycles, those two white specks must have become faintly aware that the Mountain and Sea was trapped in an endless loop.
They might not know that he, with his [True False Transformation], was the cause, but that didn't stop them from going into hiding, lying dormant.
Until the Mountain and Sea restarted.
"Having them as parasites within my [Truth] cycle is... quite irritating."
Each time [Truth] resets, the Mountain and Sea is restored to its original state.
But these two beings persist, like stains on a pristine canvas.
With every reset, their imprint remains, however faint.
"They certainly don't retain complete memories of the previous cycle like I do. But they must have some form of intuition, similar to my own."
"If those two are like this... what about the newborn god?"
A sudden apprehension gripped Li Fan's heart.
But after careful consideration, his anxiety slowly subsided.
"A lingering intuition from the past isn't so terrifying."
"What's truly terrifying is the power of a god."
"Back at this point in time, that newborn god is merely an ordinary Saint at the Beginning of the Mountain and Sea."
"The war for divinity is fraught with endless variables. Even if this cycle repeats, there's no guarantee the same entity will be victorious."
He had to admit, having absorbed nearly all the energy of the Mountain and Sea, the newborn god was an entity that far surpassed any Saint.
The purple and azure specks were among the very last surviving Saints.
Yet the new god had crushed them with ease.
Even powerful beings like the silver and pale lights, who could retain their intuition through the cycles, had no power to resist and could only flee in disgrace.
The gap in power was despairingly vast.
"Across the entire Mountain and Sea, only the [True False Transformation] can affect the new god, even slightly."
"I wonder if Shou Qiu will be able to glean anything from his final attack in the last cycle."
Shou Qiu's finger, empowered by [Truth], had definitely made contact with the newborn god.
While it could hardly be called an "injury," Li Fan was confident that with Shou Qiu's insight, that single touch would yield some kind of harvest.
"The first time, he could make contact. The second time, and the third..."
"he might just gain the strength to truly fight the divine!"
"However... that newborn god is not yet in its truly perfect state," Li Fan thought, his gaze sharpening.
All things in this world originate from the divine.
Leaving himself aside, the silver and pale specks had not yet returned to the divine fold.
Add to that the nutrient vortex, which the god had yet to fully absorb...
"The newborn god I witnessed in the last cycle was, in reality, only a demigod."
"Compared to the [True God] that the beings of the Mountain and Sea once devoured and divided, there is still a massive gap."
"I fear it would still be no match for the [Star]."
"The newborn god probably knows this as well. That's why it resorted to such a crude tactic as feigning death—to lure out the four hidden specks and complete its true metamorphosis."
"A pity it didn't succeed."
"In that case, I was truly fortunate. A mere demigod was already on the verge of shattering the white mist of [Truth]. If a true god had descended..."
"Even so, it is not an enemy that an ordinary Saint of the Mountain and Sea could face with conventional means."
"At that moment, I truly thought the white mist of [Truth] was about to be torn asunder."
An image of the newborn god's merciless, colossal eye flashed before Li Fan's mind.
Even in his thoughts, his heart skipped a beat. But the Li Fan of today was not the same man who could be traumatized by a simple Cat Treasure.
He steadied his mind and banished the lingering influence of the divine being.
"The white mist of [Truth]..."
"The [True False Transformation]."
With a flick of his will, a small branch materialized in his palm.
It was a pure fabrication, brought into being by his [True False Transformation].
He gripped it tightly, his spiritual sense wrapping around it, observing every minute detail.
Then, Li Fan began to recall his past glorious achievements.
Though his past remained a rushing river of innumerable, fleeting fragments, as he focused his thoughts, he felt as if he were truly reliving those moments.
His strength and confidence grew with each passing moment.
"I think," he mused, "this branch should be a little more real."
As the thought formed, Li Fan keenly sensed the branch in his hand become more "real"!
This wasn't just a feeling; it was a tangible change, reflected in the duration this conceptual creation could persist.
"If I relied solely on my own mastery of the [True False Transformation], this branch could last at most..."
"a thousand years."
"But if I channel the sense of mastery from my past self..."
"it can last for ten thousand years?"
Li Fan was stunned.
A simple act of will, a mere mental reinforcement, had increased the efficacy of his [True False Transformation] more than tenfold!
This was the discovery he had made in the previous cycle, during that critical moment when the newborn god was about to tear through the white mist of [Truth].
Now, with it confirmed, he couldn't stop the thrill of excitement from surging through him.
"Could this be called borrowing the power of my former self?"
Li Fan knew exactly how powerful his past self had been.
The Saints of the Mountain and Sea, the gods of the Void Realm...
...even the solitary [Star] could be reset by a single thought from him.
If Li Fan could borrow even a fraction of his former self's power, it would be more than enough to navigate the war for divinity with ease.
"Although... there are side effects."
A fresh wave of aching pain washed over him, originating from the depths of his soul.
His hand went limp, and he nearly dropped the newly created branch.
"I can borrow the power, but I can't exceed my own limits."
"Otherwise..."
"the damage could be irreversible," Li Fan realized.
"I'll need to rest for a while. But it's absolutely worth it."
The power gained from borrowing from his past self didn't just vanish into thin air.
Instead, it deepened his understanding of the [True False Transformation] and accelerated the recovery of his past memories.
When Li Fan had recovered slightly and once again gazed into the torrent of his past memories, the flow of time seemed to slow, allowing him to perceive more of the scenes within.
"My past self's experiences are a treasure trove, as vast as the Mountain and Sea itself."
"If I use it properly, I can quickly locate reliable, like-minded allies."
"Not to mention the countless insights into the Great Dao..."
However, Li Fan didn't delve into it rashly.
He waited a hundred years, hidden away in the Xuanhuang Realm, until the throbbing pain in his soul had completely faded. Only then did he proceed to the next step.
First, he expertly opened the [Truth] panel and selected his inheritance...
"The [Star Radiance Rhythm Summary]."
The moment he made his choice, Li Fan felt the skies of the entire Xuanhuang Realm seem to dim.
This wasn't limited to the Xuanhuang Realm or the Primal Possibility.
The entire Mountain and Sea was plunged into the same gloom.
Against this dim backdrop, a strange radiance began to pulse and spread.
It was like the rhythmic beat of a heart, or perhaps a sweeping gaze, ceaselessly scanning everything.
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