Chapter 874: Myriad Souls of the Yellow Springs
Li Fan considered for a moment, then laid another seal over the storage ring, this one a shimmering barrier of seven-colored divine light.
With this triple layer of restrictions in place, the faint sense of crisis that had been nagging at the edge of his mind finally began to recede.
“...”
“It appears the calamity wasn't confined to the Xuanhuang Realm alone,” he mused.
“Once the path to immortality was severed, the great calamity fell upon all.”
He casually stored the dangerously sealed object within his personal grotto-heaven, suppressing it under his own power.
Li Fan then turned to Tianyang. “How do you feel now?” he asked.
Tianyang flew to Li Fan’s side and assessed his condition for a moment before nodding. “That crawling sensation has certainly diminished, but it doesn't seem to be completely gone.”
Li Fan, meanwhile, bent down and touched the gray soil once more.
Before the blackness could spread, Li Fan expertly severed his own hand.
It fell to the ground and disintegrated into dust.
Even with the culprit now suppressed by Li Fan, the eerie state of the Soul Yin World remained unchanged.
“This is...”
“Have the fundamental laws of this world been completely rewritten?”
After a moment of contemplation, a shudder of horror ran through him.
“If the Immortal-Mortal Miasma was designed to target cultivators, then this gray blight,” he thought, “is designed to infect entire worlds.”
“The Soul Yin World, as it is now, is nothing less than the corpse of a world.”
“What kind of person,” he wondered, “would be so utterly depraved as to specifically create something like this?”
A flicker of morbid curiosity appeared in Li Fan’s eyes.
“In my 115th life, only twenty-some years passed between this moment and the arrival of the Immortal Alliance’s expedition. What could have happened in this dead land to give birth to those phantom-like soul bodies?”
“Wait, that's not right.”
Li Fan suddenly froze.
The previous investigation had concluded that the vast swarms of Split Boundary Whales outside the realm were sustained by the nourishment of innumerable soul bodies within the Soul Yin World.
But with no soul bodies in sight now, where had all those Split Boundary Whales he'd seen before come from?
Answering that question wouldn't be difficult.
Li Fan and Tianyang remained in the Soul Yin World for another three months.
They kept their auras concealed, waiting in the shadows.
Their goal was to see if the swarms of Split Boundary Whales had a habit of returning to the Soul Yin World to ‘feed.’
Their patience paid off.
Just as Li Fan's patience was wearing thin, a series of long, mournful cries echoed from the distance.
A pod of a dozen or so Split Boundary Whales tore through the void, appearing in the skies above the Soul Yin World.
Compared to ordinary Split Boundary Whales, these were noticeably larger and more robust.
Sensing the danger here, the whales moved with none of the abandon they displayed in the outer void. They swam through the air cautiously, following a distinct pattern.
They made their way toward a specific location within the Soul Yin World.
Li Fan and Tianyang followed, remaining hidden.
The whales came to a halt at the edge of the Soul Yin World, in a location the two had previously scouted without finding anything out of the ordinary.
Led by one that seemed to have made this journey before, the whale aimed for a particular spot on the gray soil and dove headfirst into it.
The lead whale vanished without a trace, and the others followed its example.
The passage, however, was not particularly wide. Three of the ten whales misjudged the exact location and collided directly with the gray soil.
There was no sound of impact.
Instead, the black blight rapidly consumed them, and they crumbled into gray dust that scattered across the landscape.
Li Fan approached the spot where the whales had vanished, hesitating for a moment.
“Senior Brother, I'll go first.”
Tianyang volunteered.
Li Fan nodded, and without a moment's hesitation, Tianyang plunged in.
Li Fan, ever cautious, did not follow immediately. He waited patiently outside the entrance.
Before long, Tianyang returned.
His normally stoic face was etched with a rare expression of utter shock.
From the images Tianyang transmitted to him, Li Fan finally understood what lay hidden within.
It was a vast, surging river of yellow, meandering in a great, circular loop.
Countless souls, old and young, drifted on the surface of the yellow water.
They were clad in an array of different garments, but all had their eyes shut tight, seemingly lost in a deep slumber.
It was impossible to tell how long they had steeped in that yellow river, but the souls themselves had undergone a bizarre transformation.
Their lower halves were no longer human; in place of legs, they had sprouted countless tendril-like roots.
These roots burrowed deep into the yellow river's currents.
It was as if this was the only way to avoid being swept away by the river's inexorable flow.
As for the few Split Boundary Whales that had slipped inside, they behaved as if they had entered a land of milk and honey.
Overjoyed, they began to feast with abandon.
With a single, deep inhalation, they devoured thousands upon thousands of souls.
After consuming the souls steeped in the yellow river, the whales' bodies changed dramatically.
They swelled in size almost instantly, and something seemed to be gestating within their bellies.
Innumerable souls, perhaps hundreds of millions, floated packed together in the yellow river.
The seven Split Boundary Whales ate until they were engorged, yet the souls they had consumed were but a minuscule fraction of the whole.
After they departed, fully sated, Li Fan shrouded himself in the seven-colored divine light and entered the yellow river.
Even after witnessing the countless frozen corpses floating within the Life and Death Reversal Grand Array...
...the sight of the myriad not-quite-human souls in this river still sent a chill down his spine.
The ‘roots’ sprouting from their lower halves were especially unsettling; they were tangled together in dense, overlapping layers.
This caused huge clumps of faces with closed eyes to be squeezed together, twisted and contorted.
They formed grotesque spheres of countless faces, a truly monstrous sight.
“Senior Brother, this place...”
Tianyang's telepathic voice trembled with apprehension.
Li Fan moved through the yellow river, brushing past innumerable souls. Protected by the seven-colored divine light, he felt no discomfort, only a faint sense of revulsion.
This yellow river was far larger than the Soul Yin World itself.
After exploring its full expanse, Li Fan began to understand the origin of this strange phenomenon.
“The Heavenly Dao of the Soul Yin World has mutated, corrupted by the gray blight.”
“Fire becomes as cold as ice, and life becomes as still as death's ashes.”
“But here, life has unexpectedly bloomed. That's because this place was originally the domain of[Death]within the Soul Yin World.”
Li Fan observed that with each full cycle of the yellow river's current...
...certain inexplicable elements within the water were gradually drawn together, coalescing into a vague, human-like form.
As the waters rushed on, the soul's form grew ever more distinct.
Until it took on the complete appearance of a person.
“If the world's Great Dao were functioning normally, this newborn soul would likely be sent into the mortal realm for reincarnation.”
“But the Soul Yin World itself is dead, so the cycle of life and death is broken.”
“And so, for years uncounted, these newborn souls have been endlessly produced, only to accumulate here.”
Having witnessed the Life and Death Reversal Grand Array in its entirety and gained some insight into the principles of life and death, Li Fan now understood the cause of this bizarre phenomenon.
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