Chapter 896: The Secret of the Xuantian Sect
"Vile heretic!"
The young Dharma Transmitter stared at the wicked smile on the other's face, a mix of shock, fear, and rage boiling within him as he couldn't help but curse.
However, his actions betrayed his true intentions.
A dark, ethereal light swirled around him, enveloping his body.
Space seemed to tear apart as the young man slowly sank into the void, his figure gradually fading.
"I can feel the fear in your heart."
"Why run? What are you afraid of?"
The Xuantian Sect's Law King watched the young man before him and murmured.
"Face your own heart..."
"...return to your true self..."
The Law King's words seemed to carry a strange power.
As he chanted in a low voice, a transparent dividing line abruptly appeared between him and the young Dharma Transmitter.
The two sides of the line were like the world inside and outside a mirror—perfect, identical reflections of each other.
The figures of the Law King and the young Dharma Transmitter instantly overlapped.
In that instant, the exact same dark, ethereal light that the young Dharma Transmitter had summoned appeared around the Law King!
It was as if he were truly the young man's mirror image!
Even when the young man's face twisted in ever-greater terror at the sight, the Law King's expression mirrored his perfectly!
The dividing line between them grew a little brighter.
A moment later, it was as if the space between them had been excised. The Law King and the young Dharma Transmitter were now much closer.
"You forced my hand!" An indescribable terror surged in the young man's heart. He gritted his teeth and spat the words with hatred.
Then, a thin golden thread emerged from between his eyebrows.
This thread seemed to possess a unique power.
It could not be replicated by the Xuantian Sect's Law King.
The mirror world that had formed failed to reflect the golden thread, creating a slight dissonance.
The mirror world trembled, on the verge of collapse.
Even the Law King's figure grew somewhat blurry.
"You and I were originally one."
"Do you hate yourself so much? Must you resort to such a treasure?"
"Why go to such lengths?"
...
At the critical moment, the Law King's whispers once again echoed in the young man's ears.
The young man's expression shifted from ferocious to bewildered, and finally, it slowly calmed.
And the golden thread, incredibly, retracted back into his brow.
The distance between him and the Law King shrank once more.
"You have lived for a long time, yet your path forward is bleak. I can feel your inner turmoil and resentment..."
"Once you reclaim your true self, you will awaken your hidden, supreme potential. The Great Dao will be within your grasp..."
As the Law King continued his incessant whispers, the young man and he drew closer and closer.
At last, only the dividing line separated them.
Their eyes met, their expressions perfectly identical.
Fear and confusion were gone, replaced by the joy of enlightenment.
The dividing line erupted in a brilliant flash of light.
The next moment, it vanished without a trace.
The world within the mirror descended upon reality!
The figures of the young man and the Law King completely merged.
Only the young Dharma Transmitter remained!
After the fusion was complete, the young Dharma Transmitter stood motionless in the air, his eyes closed.
He seemed to be processing the vast amount of information in his mind.
"Dharma Spreading Heavenly Venerate? The Ten Thousand Immortals Alliance?"
A short while later, he snapped his eyes open, a flicker of confusion on his face.
"I never expected that even in this era, they would still be so wary of our Xuantian Sect."
"The Xuan-Purging Secret Art..."
The "young Dharma Transmitter" scoffed. "I don't know where they get their confidence. Thousands of years have passed, yet the content of this secret art hasn't changed one bit."
"They really underestimate us."
As the young man spoke, his aura underwent a subtle change.
"This should be enough to fool them, as long as I don't use any of the sect's secret techniques."
The young man nodded, somewhat satisfied.
Then, a trace of doubt reappeared on his face.
"I wasn't discovered by chance... I was led here..."
"Recruiting forces under the name of our Xuantian Sect, and even knowing my location..."
"And once exposed, they immediately shifted the trouble my way."
"The Congyun Mutual Aid Association, the Red Dust Compassionate Immortal?"
In an instant, he pieced together the truth from the information he now possessed.
The young man, despite having been manipulated, wasn't angry. Instead, his expression was grave as he recalled the faceless Xuan Tian divine statue mentioned in the intelligence.
He made a quick calculation with his fingers, and a look of astonishment crossed his face. "I can't sense its location?"
"But it is definitely a Xuan Tian divine statue."
The doubt in the young man's eyes deepened.
"Could it be the work of one of our brothers from the sect?"
"Speaking of which, this style of operation does seem like something a member of our Xuantian Sect would do."
The faces of possible candidates flashed through his mind.
"They knew the secret was out and they couldn't handle it anymore, so they planned to use me to clean up the mess?"
"It seems this brother probably woke up not too long ago as well."
As for why the other party hadn't chosen to meet him, the young man had no doubts.
Back then, the Ten Great Immortal Sects had launched a sudden attack at the critical moment when the Xuantian King was in seclusion.
They shattered the Xuantian Sect in a single blow.
The timing of their choice was almost too perfect to be a coincidence.
They even knew the distribution of the sect's defenses and the vulnerabilities of its protective formations with crystal clarity.
The defensive system was rendered useless.
Caught completely off guard, the Xuantian Sect suffered a crushing defeat.
The casualties were devastating.
The whereabouts of the Xuantian King and the supreme treasure, the Xuantian Treasure Mirror, became unknown, while the Law Kings were either killed or grievously wounded.
It was obvious that for the defeat to be so total, there had to have been traitors within the sect.
And there was likely more than one.
Therefore, every surviving Law King was extremely cautious.
They trusted no one but the Xuantian King.
The young man himself was no exception.
"Back then, before the King disappeared, he sent out a message using a secret art, telling us to lie low and preserve our lives."
"And await his call."
"Unfortunately, so many years have passed, and there has still been no word."
Even so, the young man had no doubt that the Xuantian King was still alive.
After the battle between the Xuantian Sect and the Heavenly Capital, the Xuantian King had been seriously injured.
But he had also managed to forcibly steal some of the enemy's immortal spiritual qi, giving him a chance to forge the body of a True Immortal.
That was precisely why the Xuantian King had gone into seclusion.
"As long as I can reforge my immortal body in the lower realm, I can lead my brothers out of this Darkest Star Sea."
The young man still vaguely remembered the Xuantian King's bold words before his seclusion.
This was why, after so many years, the young man had still not chosen to betray the sect.
To him, several thousand years was merely a slightly longer nap.
But to be trapped here for the endless ages to come—that was true despair.
That was why he could never understand why someone would have chosen to betray the sect back then.
Over the years, the only reasonable explanation he could come up with was that the Ten Great Immortal Sects had also promised a way to escape the Darkest Star Sea.
And that their method was more reliable than the Xuantian King's plan.
Originally, the young man hadn't believed it.
But after absorbing all of this Dharma Transmitter's memories, his judgment began to waver.
He had learned that when the great calamity of the 'Law cannot be cultivated together' descended, a number of high-level cultivators from the Ten Great Immortal Sects had all vanished.
They had even taken a significant portion of the Xuanhuang Realm's resources with them.
And that group of people had never been seen in the Xuanhuang Realm again.
"If that's true, I'm afraid those traitors are already living free and easy."
A glint of murderous intent flashed in the young man's eyes.
"Without the power of a True Immortal, escaping the Darkest Star Sea would surely come at a terrible price. It's likely impossible to replicate."
"So my only hope of escape still lies with the Xuantian King."
The young man wasn't worried that the Xuantian King might have already escaped on his own.
The Xuantian King cultivated the Dao of the Unity of Word and Deed. He did not make promises lightly.
And once a promise was made, it had to be fulfilled. To do otherwise would be to destroy his own path of cultivation; even if he became a True Immortal, he would risk falling back to the level of a mortal.
Therefore, as long as he was alive, he would surely reassemble the Law Kings and fulfill his promise.
If not for this, the Xuantian King could not have won the allegiance of twelve top-tier cultivators back then with his silver tongue alone.
"If I can find that faceless Xuan Tian statue, I might be able to pinpoint the Xuantian King's location."
The thought suddenly occurred to the young man.
The Xuan Tian divine statues were not modeled after the Xuantian King himself.
Instead, they were based on the image of a True Immortal that the Xuantian King had encountered in the ascension passage.
According to the Xuantian King, the aura exuded by that True Immortal was as vast as mountains and seas.
Compared to him, a newly ascended immortal was as insignificant as an ant.
At that time, he had just broken through the void and entered the ascension passage.
Before he could reach the long-awaited Immortal Realm, a terrifying roar echoed from the distance.
The Xuantian King then witnessed a scene he would never forget for the rest of his life.
From far to near, the ascension passage fractured and broke apart.
Countless figures scrambled to escape, only to be sucked into the terrifying black ruins.
Even more countless corpses fell from the cracks in the passage.
A terrible catastrophe must have occurred in the Immortal Realm!
The Xuantian King turned and fled, not forgetting to loot the corpses of the immortals he encountered along the way.
But the speed at which the ascension passage was collapsing was clearly beyond his imagination.
Just as he was about to fall into the black abyss like the other ascenders, a figure flashed past and casually gave him a helping hand, pulling him out of the collapsing spatial passage.
After his initial shock subsided, the Xuantian King came to his senses and thanked the figure for saving his life.
That figure was clearly a being of extremely high cultivation, even among immortals.
The Xuantian King couldn't even make out their face.
"Hurry and run. Any slower and it'll be too late."
The faceless True Immortal shook their head, left these words, and then vanished.
Leaving the Xuantian King standing there, utterly bewildered.
It wasn't until much later that the Xuantian King understood what the faceless True Immortal had meant by "run."
The ascension passage had collapsed, the path to immortality severed.
All that remained was an existence known as the Immortal Ruins.
And the impact of the Immortal Ruins on the lower realms was only just beginning to manifest.
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