Chapter 808: Red Dust Compassionate Immortal
With a gentle touch from the immortal master, a torrent of images flooded Su Yuqing's mind.
The vision of the Fire World, a realm ravaged by innumerable, raging flames, drained the color from Su Yuqing's face. For a girl who had never set foot outside the capital, the sight was terrifying.
But now, she understood. She saw with perfect clarity the origin of the Li Realm's crisis.
"The strong devour the weak. Such is the law of heaven and earth."
"It is true for all living things, and it is true for worlds as well."
"The Li Realm was doomed from the moment it drifted through the void and collided with the Fire World."
The immortal master sighed softly.
"I could level that volcano with a wave of my hand."
"But that would only address the symptom, not the cause. In fact, it would provoke the Fire World into a far more violent retaliation."
Hearing the immortal master's words, Su Yuqing's face fell into an expression of utter despair.
"Is there truly no hope?" she whispered.
But seeing the expression on the immortal master's face, and recalling his actions, a flicker of understanding sparked within her.
She immediately began to kowtow again, her forehead meeting the floor repeatedly. "I beg you, Immortal Master, teach me!"
Only after she had completed a full nine prostrations did the immortal master raise a hand, gently halting her.
He spoke slowly. "This is precisely why I have instructed you to cultivate."
"The positions of strong and weak are never fixed. The Li Realm faces this crisis simply because your enemy is strong and you are weak. If the roles were reversed—if the Li Realm were stronger than the Fire World—then not only would you escape the threat of annihilation, you might even turn the tables and devour it."
"And in doing so, your world itself would ascend!"
As Li Fan spoke these resonant words, he felt the world's omnipresent malice, which had been pressing in on him from all sides, suddenly dissipate, vanishing like smoke into thin air.
Indeed.
From the moment he had begun to act as an immortal master, even as he was persuading the young Su Yuqing, the malice of the Li Realm had been surging toward him from every direction.
It was a hostility far more intense than anything he had ever felt from the Xuanhuang Realm.
Li Fan feared not even the Heavenly Dao of the Xuanhuang Realm, so the animosity of this tiny Li Realm was hardly a concern.
Still, the constant sensation of being watched with such intense malevolence was decidedly unpleasant.
It had taken a small stratagem, but he had finally managed to reverse it.
After all, what he had told Su Yuqing was no lie.
It was a truly viable, practical solution.
"But how could the Li Realm possibly become stronger than the Fire World?" Su Yuqing asked, her face a mask of confusion.
The Fire World she had witnessed in her vision was terrifying beyond measure.
The entire world was not just a sea of molten rock; it teemed with innumerable, wondrous flames that seemed to possess a consciousness of their own.
It was not a force that a world of mere mortals could ever hope to resist.
Li Fan gazed at the bewildered young woman and smiled. "There is an old saying: humanity can triumph over the heavens!"
"To help the Li Realm triumph over the Fire World, the people of this realm must be the ones to act!"
As he spoke, Li Fan extended his hand, and a small, white jade pagoda materialized in his palm.
"This is the Immortal Spirit Tower," he explained. "Provide it with enough raw materials, and it will ceaselessly generate a boundless supply of spiritual energy, day and night."
"In your mortal forms, you are powerless to help your world. Only as cultivators will you have the power to join the struggle between worlds—and perhaps even lead it."
Su Yuqing gazed at the Immortal Spirit Tower in Li Fan's palm and could indeed feel waves of spiritual energy pulsing from within it.
Yet, as she looked closer, she sensed something else—a faint, yet distinct, scent of blood that made her brow furrow in concern.
*This girl's senses are remarkably sharp,* Li Fan thought, observing her expression with perfect clarity. He nodded to himself in approval.
He was right to be impressed. The so-called Immortal Spirit Tower was, in truth, an artifact he had casually crafted based on the "Spiritual Energy Synthesis" technology of the Empire.
At its core, the process used vast quantities of beast flesh to generate spiritual energy crystals, which were then broken down into pure spiritual energy.
To this end, Li Fan had even made a special trip to the Beast Seed Realm.
He had collected a massive supply of beast flesh.
The other materials he needed—the feather of the Mystic Bird and the blood essence of Xu Ke—were located deep within the Beast Seed Realm.
With his current strength at the Golden Core stage, seizing them by force would be difficult, so he had set that task aside for the time being.
The Empire's synthesis technology was highly inefficient in its energy conversion.
But it had the distinct advantage of being cheap to produce.
If the beasts could be bred on a massive scale, resolving the issue of sourcing raw materials...
...then it could provide a nearly limitless supply of spiritual energy.
For a small world that lacked natural spirit veins, it was an excellent solution.
Li Fan made no attempt to hide how the Immortal Spirit Tower produced its energy.
On the contrary, he revealed the inner workings of the tower to Su Yuqing, showing her the "flesh factory" within in vivid detail.
Having never witnessed such a gruesome sight, Su Yuqing's face went ashen, and she immediately threw up.
Li Fan scoffed. "Compared to the survival of an entire world, what is a little slaughter?"
"How is this any different from the chickens, ducks, and fish that you mortals consume every day?"
"Stop your posturing!"
he admonished her without a trace of pity.
Su Yuqing opened her mouth, a retort forming on her lips out of pure instinct.
In the end, however, she fell silent.
With a wave of his hand, Li Fan cleansed the room of the mess. He then proceeded to lay out the full salvation plan for Su Yuqing.
First, they would select the most gifted individuals in the Li Realm. Using the Immortal Spirit Tower, they would train them to become the first generation of cultivators in the Great Li.
Second, these new cultivators would venture deep into the Fire World. Their mission would be to absorb the various flames that contained the World Origin and bring that power back.
Third, these cultivators, now fused with the power of those potent flames, would use their newfound strength to transform the Great Li.
As one world weakened and the other grew, the Li Realm would become increasingly powerful.
Meanwhile, the Fire World would inevitably begin to decline.
"This is merely the deduced outcome," Li Fan said with a soft sigh. "As for the details, we will have to take it one step at a time. The conflict between worlds involves forces on a scale too vast for any cultivator to fully anticipate."
Su Yuqing committed the immortal master's every word to memory.
She had a premonition that this immortal master before her would not remain in the Great Li for long.
"The immortal path is an arduous one."
"And immortal laws cannot be cultivated by many at once."
"I can only help you take the first step. If you wish for more, you may need to journey to the Xuanhuang Realm and seek it out for yourselves!"
As he spoke, Li Fan tapped a finger to the point between Su Yuqing's brows.
Twenty cultivation techniques, including the *Jade Cosmos Thousand Variations Sutra*, flooded into her mind.
Only one, the Golden Scripture itself, was a Nascent Soul-grade technique.
The others were merely at the Qi Refining and Foundation Establishment stages.
They were masterless techniques Li Fan had gathered over the course of his many cycles.
"Cultivate the *Jade Cosmos Thousand Variations Sutra* yourself."
"The others," Li Fan instructed, "may be taught to those you deem worthy."
"Immortal Master... are you leaving already?" Su Yuqing couldn't stop herself from asking.
Li Fan smiled. "I am but a traveler who chanced upon this realm. I could not stand by and watch its people perish, so I offered my aid. Now that I have done what I can, it is time for me to depart."
*This world is merely fodder for my cultivation of the Sitting Immortal Technique,* he thought. *I certainly won't waste any more time here than necessary.*
He only needed to set things in motion. He was confident that with Su Yuqing's talent as an incarnation of the Heavenly Dao, she was more than capable of guiding the people of the Li Realm toward a new future.
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