Chapter 1768: Fate Slayer Lord
Ambition was a fine thing, but life rarely unfolded as smoothly as one hoped.
None who had risen from obscurity wielding the power of [Truth] were simple folk.
Zhang Fan had only managed to kill Lin Fan thanks to the overwhelming advantage of his divine abilities. But in a life-or-death struggle, such powers were only one factor among many, not the sole determinant of victory.
Ever since one of his targets had unexpectedly escaped an encounter, the secret techniques he had learned from the shelter world had spread like wildfire throughout the Mountain and Sea.
Now, everyone knew he possessed the formidable abilities of [Hooked One's Wish], [Life Death Separation], and [Swallow Heaven Luck]. They were on their guard from a great distance and often ganged up on him in groups.
Zhang Fan, on the other hand, usually knew nothing about the other wielders of [Truth] he faced.
It put him at a severe disadvantage.
“Damn it all! I should have been more ruthless back then!”
The thought filled Zhang Fan with a bitter, useless regret. But he couldn't entirely blame himself.
As Zhou Fan's soul neared annihilation, Zhang Fan had felt the same phantom agony, the same terror.
Horrified, a strange, misplaced compassion had bloomed in his heart—a pity for a version of himself.
The shock had rattled Zhang Fan’s spirit, and his killing blow faltered. In that single moment of hesitation, Zhou Fan had broken free of his restraints and fled at the speed of light.
“Just you wait! I will have my revenge for this!”
The man’s hateful voice still echoed in his ears. At that moment, Zhang Fan could never have imagined the sheer magnitude of the trouble this wretched fugitive would bring him.
“Thankfully, I still have one last ace up my sleeve, [Reincarnation Destroy Machine]. I’ve never used it, but it could be my final gambit.”
“But no matter how powerful I am, I can’t withstand this constant war of attrition. I have to lie low for now.”
“Hiding isn’t a permanent solution, though. Sooner or later, someone will find me.”
Techniques of transformation and concealment might work on other cultivators, but they were useless against those who, like him, also possessed [Truth].
Children of Destiny—that was the name they had for all wielders of [Truth]. He wasn't sure who had coined the term, but with the Great Dao of Truth and Falsehood at their command, they were indeed the favored children of fate. The name had stuck.
The moment two Children of Destiny met, even from an immense distance, the resonance between their [Truth] and their souls would alert them to each other’s presence instantly.
What infuriated Zhang Fan most was that Zhou Fan had somehow managed to broadcast his identity to all the other Children of Destiny.
Now, whenever they encountered him, even if they had never met or heard of him before, a complete profile on Zhang Fan would spontaneously appear in their minds.
Worse still, this public awareness seemed to be shared and constantly updated among them all.
At first, Zhang Fan hadn't realized the extent of the problem. During one deadly duel, his [Hooked One's Wish] and [Life Death Separation] were countered one after another, and he had been steadily losing ground. He had only turned the tide by using [Swallow Heaven Luck] for the first time, finally killing his opponent. Zhang Fan was certain he had been thorough in destroying the body and erasing all traces, even cleansing several adjacent possibilities to ensure there were no witnesses.
But the next time he encountered other Children of Destiny, they were already prepared for [Swallow Heaven Luck]. They carried filth with them, tainting their own karmic fortune to break his divine ability.
The failure of his technique had cost him dearly. The wounds he’d sustained in that battle had yet to fully heal.
For now, his only option was to shrink back into the shell of an ordinary mortal world, slowly siphoning the fortune of its inhabitants to recover.
“This public awareness... it must be Zhou Fan’s doing.”
“This knowledge only exists among the Children of Destiny; other cultivators are completely unaffected.” Zhang Fan had confirmed this by soul-searching countless individuals.
“He must have exploited some shared characteristic between us. A characteristic that might be the very reason we all carry [Truth]. It could even be a clue to the conspiracy behind all this...”
As the pieces fell into place, Zhang Fan was struck by a startling realization: he knew far too little about himself.
“Where did [Truth] come from? And where did I come from?”
Forgetting his grand ambitions, forgetting the dangers lurking outside, Zhang Fan turned his focus inward, sinking into his own mind, searching for an answer.
To see the mind is to know the self; to observe the self is to find the truth.
For others, this might have been an impossible task. But for Zhang Fan, for reasons he couldn't explain, it was strangely easy.
He had a faint suspicion it was connected to the time he spent in the shelter world.
“In that place, heaven and earth grew without limit, and all living things knew no decay. It must have been secretly blessed by the Great Dao of [Longevity].”
“And in all my time there, I rarely encountered conflict or killing. Some Great Dao must have been subtly transforming and nurturing the hearts of all creatures.”
Though he hadn’t been gone long in practical terms, the string of life-and-death battles had forged a new man. Things he had once taken for granted now seemed strange and suspect in hindsight.
A fleeting sense of nostalgia for his "newbie village" crossed his mind, then vanished.
Zhang Fan’s consciousness sank deeper, as if coming face to face with his own soul.
It was translucent and radiant, a marvel of the universe. Yet, at its core, it seemed no different from the countless other souls in the Mountain and Sea.
“Where is the connection?”
Zhang Fan tried to view himself from an outsider’s perspective.
In an instant, he felt himself split in two.
One self remained in his body, while the other drifted out, observing from a distance.
Slowly, a profound understanding dawned in his heart.
“All that is ‘Fan,’ all that is ‘Zhang Fan’—I return to you.”
“All that is ‘me’—I reclaim for myself.”
As he spoke these cryptic words, a transparent white light seemed to flow from his observer-self.
It returned to the seated body of “Zhang Fan.”
In that moment, Zhang Fan felt as though he had escaped the fate of a Child of Destiny. He was now able to observe himself from the perspective of an "outsider."
A single, fine thread—or perhaps countless threads representing destiny—extended from his body.
They connected him to innumerable corners of the Mountain and Sea.
And beyond the Mountain and Sea...
In that unknowable place, all the threads converged at a single point!
Boom!
The vision lasted but a moment before a powerful gravitational pull from his own body dragged him back.
He coughed up a mouthful of blood.
Tampering with the very source of his soul had injured him far more severely than he had anticipated. He had nearly lost his Transcendent cultivation, almost falling back to the Nameless Realm.
But it had all been worth it.
In that fleeting glimpse, Zhang Fan had not only seen a way to evade the [Known to All] effect, but he had also seen the mastermind manipulating all the Children of Destiny!
“A pity. I only know how to break the [Known to All] ability, not how to use it myself. Otherwise, I would expose that mastermind’s location, and we could all storm the gates together...”
Zhang Fan’s expression shifted, a storm of emotions crossing his face.
He never knew that, in that very instant, his thoughts froze solid.
A hazy, indistinct figure materialized before him, having crossed an infinite expanse of spacetime in a single moment.
It was [Truth] itself!
As the orchestrator of Li Fan’s plan, it held sway over all the "God Bodies" that had been released.
Their every action, their every thought, could not escape its notice.
The moment Zhang Fan showed the slightest sign of going off script, it intervened.
[Truth] had not expected any of them to uncover the connection between the God Bodies so quickly.
The power that had allowed Zhang Fan to step outside himself still seemed to linger in the air.
[Truth] stared at it for a moment, and understanding dawned.
“The Fate Slayer Lord.”
Its gaze then shifted to the location of the God-Becoming Guests.
Without causing the slightest ripple, the assembly of God-Becoming Guests and the shelter worlds they had created vanished from the Mountain and Sea, erased from existence ahead of schedule.
Then, [Truth] turned its attention to the frozen form of Zhang Fan, but for the first time, it hesitated.
This God Punishing Variation seemed to have gone awry, but who was to say that this, too, was not part of the intended sequence of variables?
Just as [Truth] wavered, Li Fan’s faint voice echoed through the void.
“Since it is a variable, it has a reason to exist.”
“Let us see just how far he can go.”
The voice faded, and the figure of [Truth] vanished, returning to whence it came.
...
“...storm the gates together, capture that mastermind, and wouldn’t that be a fine thing,” Zhang Fan’s thoughts resumed their flow.
From beginning to end, he was utterly unaware of [Truth]’s arrival, or of how close he had just come to obliteration.
After recovering slightly from his injuries, Zhang Fan began to savor the new divine ability he had just grasped, the one that could counter the [Known to All] effect.
“That feeling... it must have come from the butcher who occasionally cleans the Mountain Sea Angler’s catch.”
The Mountain Sea Angler did not release every fish he caught.
On rare occasions, he would find a prize that satisfied him and keep it to admire, much like the stone slate.
But before taking it with him, he would always hand it over to a disheveled-looking butcher for processing.
Only after the butcher’s knife had risen and fallen would the Angler safely store his new treasure away.
“So obvious, yet he’s no ordinary cultivator. And yet, before this, I never noticed him. I instinctively overlooked him.”
“That level of power...” Zhang Fan’s heart trembled in awe.
Now that the butcher’s image was in his mind, his connection to that particular Dao grew stronger.
The clean, decisive flash of the blade replayed over and over in Zhang Fan’s thoughts.
Slowly, he mirrored the motion, slashing out into the empty air.
It was as if a single strand of hair fell silently to the ground.
Then a thousand, ten thousand more followed, drifting down like a cascade of snow.
Innumerable bloody lines appeared on Zhang Fan’s body, the price for severing his connections to the other Children of Destiny.
But far from being alarmed, a smile of joyous relief spread across his face.
“The Fate Slaying Blade. A fine name!”
To shatter the shackles, to sever all destiny.
With a single cut, all bonds were gone.
The effect of [Known to All] slowly faded. The dark cloud that had loomed over Zhang Fan’s head for so long finally seemed to dissipate.
An unprecedented sense of security enveloped him.
Zhang Fan fell into a deep, heavy sleep.
When he awoke, he was still alive, and his injuries were fully healed.
“If I get the chance, I must go back and properly thank those seniors,” Zhang Fan thought to himself.
He knew that his escape from the shared destiny of the Children of Destiny was not due to his own special talent. It was entirely thanks to the subtle, cumulative influence of the Angler and the other great powers.
“I just wonder, what realm have they reached?”
“Could they all be the so-called Saints of the Mountain and Sea?”
As he pondered, Zhang Fan continued to sever his remaining connections.
When only a single, final thread remained, his Fate Slaying Blade faltered, unable to fall.
The moment the blade’s light began to form, an indescribable terror washed over him.
It was as if the severing of that final thread would mean his own death.
After a long hesitation, Zhang Fan chose to trust his intuition and did not force the strike.
“The time is not yet right.”
“Perhaps when I prove my Dao and become a Saint, I will finally be able to make this cut,” Zhang Fan murmured, a flicker of understanding in his eyes.
“Speaking of which, am I truly this gifted? This [Fate Slaying Blade] ability is so profound, yet my comprehension of it was remarkably smooth, and it grows more natural with every use. And the other abilities too...”
Zhang Fan was baffled, but ultimately attributed it to the secret tutelage of those great powers.
He could never have guessed that all the God-Becoming Guests, including the Angler, had already been erased by [Truth].
Their various Daos were now, temporarily, masterless.
As the only being in the Mountain and Sea currently connected to these Daos, he had become the sole inheritor of the God-Becoming Guests’ legacy. Naturally, his comprehension was exceptionally smooth.
But Zhang Fan didn't dwell on it.
His mind was now consumed with a single thought: revenge on Zhou Fan.
“Now, it’s my turn to hide in the shadows. I hope you don’t make it too easy for me.”
Zhang Fan’s eyes narrowed, a cold light glinting within.
Zhou Fan’s [Known to All] ability had made his life a living hell.
If he didn’t repay this debt, what kind of man would he be?
Soon, Zhang Fan left the mortal kingdom where he had been recuperating and began to hunt for his target in secret.
But Zhou Fan was indeed cautious.
Relying on the mutual sense between wielders of [Truth], Zhang Fan had already eliminated nearly a hundred Children of Destiny, but he still hadn't found a single trace of him.
The rapid, drastic decline in their numbers had not gone unnoticed by the others.
They ceased their overt activities, and one by one, they all went into hiding.
This brought Zhang Fan’s quest for vengeance to another standstill.
The turbulent Mountain and Sea fell into an eerie, unsettling calm.
After painstakingly tracking down and killing one more Child of Destiny, a sudden chill ran down Zhang Fan’s spine.
“Strange. Far too many have disappeared in such a short time.”
“The numbers don’t add up...”
“Could it be... that besides me, someone else is hunting the Children of Destiny?”
His heart skipped a beat, as if confirming his suspicion.
Zhang Fan’s expression grew grim.
“Who could it be?”
He wasn't entirely surprised by this development.
After all, the number of Children of Destiny that had appeared in such a short period was truly staggering.
They fought amongst themselves, treating the other powerhouses of the Mountain and Sea as if they were nothing.
Furthermore, since every Child of Destiny carried the supreme treasure [Truth], it was inevitable that they would attract covetous eyes.
“Those with the strength and motive... it must be the Saints of the Mountain and Sea.”
There was a time when Zhang Fan had dreamed of crossing the Dao Annihilation and traveling to the so-called Other Shore, to the Sacred Dynasty, to witness the splendor of the Saints.
Now, he wanted nothing more than to avoid them.
“I am strong enough now. With my divine abilities, killing Transcendent cultivators is as easy as slaughtering chickens.”
“And yet, I am not strong enough. Even without having truly fought a Saint, I know in my heart that in my current state, I am no match for one.”
“A breakthrough is impossible in the short term. If I want to protect myself, I’ll have to rely on the True False Transformation!”
After this period of killing, the power of the Great Dao of Truth and Falsehood that Zhang Fan had absorbed and accumulated was already quite substantial.
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