Chapter 1764: The Mortal's One Thing
It was only when he truly began to taste them that Li Fan discovered the countless versions of himself in his sea of consciousness were not mere illusions, nor were they simply frightening visages cloaked in a familiar guise.
Every single one of them was, truly and genuinely, Li Fan himself.
As each face entered his belly, Li Fan could feel, with piercing clarity, that other self’s terror, resentment, and despair.
Each even possessed its own unique life experiences.
All of their stories mirrored Li Fan's: rising from humble beginnings in the Xuanhuang Realm, cultivating arduously all the way to the dawn of the Mountain and Sea's parting.
Even though Li Fan knew perfectly well that such events had never transpired in the true Mountain and Sea, as he devoured himself mouthful by mouthful, the memories belonging to his "food" inevitably surfaced in his mind.
It was as if all of it was something he had experienced in countless past lives!
"The power to blur the line between illusion and reality..."
"But so what if they truly were my past selves?"
"I care not for your origins or your pasts. You will all become fuel for my Dao."
Li Fan's mind remained perfectly still. With an expression of utter calm, he devoured and digested the countless versions of himself.
His thoughts did not even descend into chaos from the sudden influx of innumerable memories.
He simply regarded them all as the experiences of a past Li Fan across endless cycles of reincarnation.
"His experiences, his karma—what have they to do with me?"
"I will enjoy his gift. Everything else is irrelevant."
Li Fan felt perfectly justified, as if this was the natural order of the world.
Faced with the curses of countless selves, he was completely unmoved.
His spirit remained utterly unshaken by the act of consuming himself.
The vortex in his sea of consciousness churned, gradually devouring every last face.
Then, he once again looked up toward the divine body.
"These distracting thoughts are all, in truth, side effects of devouring a god."
"And yet, the divine clouds I've absorbed are but a drop in the ocean..."
"I will eat, and I will digest."
As Li Fan finished digesting the first mouthful, the clamor from the Mountain and Sea completely faded away.
The world seemed to hold nothing but him and the fallen divine body.
Just like that, Li Fan continued his solitary, relentless feast.
With every bite, he seemed to grasp more truths. In the beginning, Li Fan would still savor the myriad flavors.
But later, as the novelty faded, he chose to simply ignore them.
He devoured them whole, caring only for the act of consumption itself.
The power of a god was an indescribably exquisite delicacy to any cultivator in the world. Even the Saints of Mountain and Sea would fight to the death for a single taste.
But what of the second bite, the third, or countless more?
The fallen divine body was of an immeasurable scale.
The sheer act of finishing the meal became an unbearable burden.
Li Fan felt painfully full, yet the divine body before him had shrunk by a mere thousandth.
As memories of his supposed reincarnations flooded his mind, Li Fan found himself growing dazed from time to time.
He would forget his name, forget why he was here.
Only a stubborn obsession drove him to continue the act of consumption.
After Li Fan had finished eating one-third of the entire divine body, he felt as if he had disappeared.
He was no longer Li Fan, but had become part of the vast divine cloud.
The essence of the fallen True God was being revitalized through him, this newborn organ, regaining its vitality.
He felt a vague sense of wrongness.
But the inertia built over untold years kept him mechanically performing the act of consumption.
The deathly silent divine cloud seemed to have changed somehow.
An exceedingly ancient consciousness was slowly reawakening within it.
Li Fan, however, was oblivious to this.
Seeing the ever-dwindling portion of the divine body yet to be consumed, he continued instinctively.
He wanted to complete his task, but also to escape this endless torment as quickly as possible.
A mortal devouring a god.
This journey was far, far too long.
So long that Li Fan had already forgotten himself, forgotten why he had set out in the first place.
Untold ages passed once more.
Having ceased to think for so long, Li Fan seemed to have lost his own consciousness completely.
And of the vast, divine cloud, only a final, small piece remained untransformed.
With his current power, a single final bite was all it would take to complete his long journey of devouring a god.
The vortex turned slowly, drawing the last of the cloud inward.
But at the last moment, Li Fan suddenly stopped.
"This feeling is..."
"Unease?"
Li Fan pondered for a long while before finally recalling the name of the emotion echoing in his heart.
"And fear... and anger."
Having devoured the better part of a god, he was no longer a "mortal" in the ordinary sense of the word.
Li Fan felt that all these emotions stirring within him were utterly alien.
"How could I feel this way?"
"Why?"
His thoughts, frozen and stagnant for so long, naturally began to turn once more.
Just a sliver away from completing his transformation.
And yet, Li Fan had stopped.
It was as if a great river, flowing eastward, had suddenly been dammed.
A certain emotion was gradually accumulating, brewing.
When it reached a certain point, it instinctively generated a motive force, an urge to continue. The fallen body should not have produced such a change on its own.
But now, the god's revival was only a breath away.
The vast consciousness within the cloud was on the verge of awakening.
Like someone in a dream, it instinctively reached out.
"Hm?"
Sensing the urging from this "other," Li Fan's brow furrowed.
During his untold years of solitary consumption, he had long grown accustomed to being the "solitary self."
To suddenly sense another presence within the cloud was like a clap of thunder on a clear day.
His frozen thoughts shattered, layer by layer.
Li Fan's consciousness quickly recovered.
"Am I devouring the god? Or is the god devouring me?"
"That was close."
Surveying his entire being, Li Fan instantly understood his current predicament.
"This is just like the moment before a True God descends."
"Except, a True God's descent is the return of all things to the divine, death and rebirth."
"But this... this is a soul returning to a borrowed corpse!"
Li Fan ignored the ever-increasing pressure from the cloud and thought calmly.
"How could devouring a god be a simple matter? Any sliver of this cloud can blur the line between illusion and reality, fabricating authentic past experiences."
"If I continue this crude, direct consumption, even if I manage to swallow it all, there can only be one outcome."
"The fallen True God will use my body to return."
"Just one step away from godhood, all subsequent events would be rewound to a time before they happened."
"The retreat of Mountain and Sea, of all creation, was no illusion. It's because they truly no longer exist here."
A faint understanding dawned in Li Fan's heart.
The place where Mountain and Sea parted was no ordinary time or space.
It was an axis of evolution centered on the state of the [True God].
The moment the True God fell, at its most complete, was the beginning of the Mountain and Sea's separation.
When the separation ended, and the divine body vanished without a trace, that was the end.
As Li Fan devoured the divine body step by step, he drew closer to the god's complete state.
And thus, he arrived at this initial moment.
Thinking of Mountain and Sea, Li Fan finally understood a question that had long puzzled him.
Why would Mountain and Sea agree to "share" something as tempting as a god's body?
The desire for sole possession is universal.
Even for worldly cultivation treasures, one would instinctively want them all for oneself. How much more so for the power of a True God?
"It wasn't a matter of willingness, but of capability."
"If either Mountain or Sea had tried to devour the god whole, they would have ended up just like me."
"They would have become the raw material for the True God's revival."
"Only by compromising, with Mountain and Sea depending on each other, could they resist the divine might together."
Li Fan understood.
Mountain and Sea had each other for company, but Li Fan, having come this far, was destined to be alone.
Fortunately, his initial goal had never been to devour the god.
It was to witness the mystery of the god's fall!
"The situation now... although I still can't see the god's complete body, this should be enough."
The pressure from the vast cloud was like water building behind a dam, more and more of it accumulating.
The urging gradually became a compulsion.
Li Fan knew his time was short. He calmed his mind and began to observe.
"Hopefully, this nearly complete corpse holds some clue."
In all the divine flesh he had consumed, there had been no clue as to how the god had fallen.
There were no memories at all.
Only pure principles, pure laws.
The foundation of all creation, the basis of existence.
Having come to his senses, Li Fan had to admire himself for being able to swallow such a massive "stone."
Such hardship was, of course, not without its rewards.
The divine cloud was vast and endless.
But the present Li Fan could scan it all with a single thought.
Only a hair's breadth from becoming a god himself, Li Fan's observation was akin to a departed soul floating out of its body to inspect its own corpse.
He was searching for the cause of his own demise.
He observed it for the first time.
"All Daos, all laws, are perfect and flawless, without the slightest damage or abnormality."
Li Fan mused, his divine sense sweeping over it a second time.
The conclusion was the same.
"An event that could make a god fall must have been world-shattering. I wouldn't be surprised to see a giant scar. Why is everything so normal?"
Li Fan found it hard to understand.
"Could it be that one must truly become a god to know the reason for a god's fall?"
But it was obvious that if Li Fan took that step, not even [Truth] could save him.
"The Dao of Truth and Falsehood can turn back time again and again, so long as the [God] has not truly appeared."
"But if I return to godhood..."
"The Dao of Truth and Falsehood will also be subsumed into the god. It will naturally be impossible to reverse anything."
Li Fan was well aware of this, so the moment the thought of becoming a god arose, he ruthlessly suppressed it.
He would rather live forever in a cycle of world-ending reincarnation, maintaining his own independent will.
He would never become a so-called god and lose himself.
Unwilling to give up, Li Fan continued to observe the divine body again and again.
And the god's instinct for revival became increasingly difficult to suppress.
The vast cloud was gradually spinning out of control.
Li Fan felt that as he delayed, the divine body was beginning to reject him.
Or, to be more precise, the dam formed by that instinctual drive was about to burst through its stone confines. It would revive on its own.
And Li Fan, standing in the path of this overwhelming tide, would be crushed to dust by its magnificent divine power.
"I must return before the True God revives. Otherwise, I'm doomed..."
Li Fan made his final decision.
Although he had failed to glimpse the mystery of the True God's fall this time, by devouring its body, he had come to know all the laws and all things in the world.
If he could fully digest his gains, Li Fan's understanding of the Dao of Truth and Falsehood might surpass his former self, reaching an inconceivable realm.
At that time, apart from recreating the god itself, all of life and death in the Mountain and Sea would be subject to a single thought from Li Fan.
"Such a harvest is already enough."
"I'll digest this for a while, then come back to investigate!"
With that thought, Li Fan was about to activate [Truth].
But in that instant, as he watched the increasingly restless divine cloud, a thought suddenly struck him.
"Only a True God can witness the mystery of a god's fall."
"If that's the case, then I shouldn't stand in the way of its revival."
"The change between truth and falsehood is in my hands. A god is not a god. There is a fleeting chance..."
Li Fan's eyes flashed as he settled on a final plan.
His consciousness soared, no longer acting as a barrier. The will to revive, like a rushing flood, spread through the cloud in an instant.
A moment later...
Li Fan felt the endless cloud vanish from his vision.
Stunned for a moment, he immediately reacted and looked up.
In the endless dark and void, it was as if a star had ignited.
Like the single eye of a god, descending upon the world.
Starlight scattered everywhere, spreading faster than even the return of all things at the end of the Mountain and Sea.
Everything Li Fan saw and felt was consumed by starlight.
And then, as expected, he felt the power of return pulling at him from above.
The Dao of Truth and Falsehood came from the god; now it must return to the god.
Having already experienced a similar scene, Li Fan was startled but not panicked.
He held on with all his willpower.
His gaze was fixed, waiting for the god's true form to be revealed.
He simultaneously compared it with the fallen divine body he had seen before.
Time seemed to freeze in this moment.
Li Fan disregarded his own safety, seeking only an answer.
The starlight grew more and more brilliant.
It filled everything.
And in that instant, all the starlight suddenly converged.
The world plunged back into dark silence.
Li Fan almost thought it was an illusion caused by the starlight reaching its peak intensity.
But soon, he realized something was wrong.
In the darkness, a vast, formless presence seemed to stand silently before him.
If Li Fan were in the state he had been in when he first arrived at the parting, he would never have been able to see the god's true face.
But after countless years of accumulation from devouring the god, it was enough for him to witness the scene before him.
The True God sat on the ground.
A perfect body, rendered imperfect by a single point of emptiness at its brow.
...
The True God was formless and shapeless, so naturally, there was no such thing as a brow or the act of sitting.
It was merely Li Fan applying his own cognition to the god.
He was trying to perceive and explain what had happened to the fallen True God.
And so he saw a god that should have been high above, looking down on all creation, but for some reason, could only sit on the ground.
And so he saw a divine body that should have been perfect and flawless, yet had a trace of emptiness between its brows.
It sat on the ground because it was gravely injured.
And the reason for its near-fatal injury was that single point.
"Is this the mystery of the god's fall that I've been searching for?"
Li Fan stared intently at that point, as if possessed.
For some reason, he felt a sliver of familiarity from that point.
*Rumble, rumble, rumble...*
A tremendous sound echoed.
The True God, sitting on the ground, seemed to be trying to stand up again.
Like a fierce gale blowing past, the Dao of Truth and Falsehood wavered precariously.
It was about to be irresistibly drawn toward the sky, toward the True God.
"Re...turn!"
Li Fan took one last look, determined to carve that inexplicable point deep into his mind.
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