Chapter 952: The Heavenly Doctor's Task
Chapter 952: The Heavenly Doctor's Task
Those divine and demonic figures were manifestations of Li Fan's will, deeply rooted in his sea of consciousness from the very moment he mastered the Divine Manifestation Body.
Their every move, even their emotions and thoughts, were entirely under Li Fan's control.
His control wasn't something they could evade simply by choosing "not to use" their abilities.
"It's normal for them to have their own little schemes," Li Fan mused. "As long as they remain useful to me, it doesn't matter. From what I can see, the path of the Strange Beast still holds limitless potential."
Li Fan wasn't concerned about the duplicity of the Empire and the others; no matter what they tried, they could never escape his grasp.
To test the effects of the Heaven and Earth Furnace, Li Fan returned to the Spirit Wood Realm and immediately passed through a spatial channel to the Beast Seed Realm.
He placed one of the finished furnaces atop a mountain and laid a protective array around it.
He then left a sliver of his divine sense behind to observe the changes wrought by the Heaven and Earth Furnace.
Gradually, the high concentration of spiritual energy surrounding the strange device on the mountaintop began to attract the attention of the mountain's strange beasts.
Although most of them were low-level strange beasts that had yet to develop sapience, their innate sensitivity to spiritual energy drove them to swarm and crowd around the Heaven and Earth Furnace, greedily attempting to absorb as much of the pure energy as they could.
Lacking any cultivation methods, they couldn't actively draw the spiritual energy into their bodies. As a result, most of it simply dissipated into the surroundings.
After ten days, the once-unremarkable little mountain had become unexpectedly vibrant and full of life.
"At this rate, transforming a spiritless small world into one that meets the minimum requirements for cultivation would take about a hundred Heaven and Earth Furnaces, operating continuously for a hundred years."
"With ten thousand, it could be done in a single year!"
With this rough estimate in hand, Li Fan immediately summoned the Treant race.
As the Spirit Wood Realm continued to advance and with the feedback from Lin Ling's own cultivation progress, the strength of the Treant matriarch grew by the day.
She had now reached the late Soul Transformation realm and was only a single step away from Dao Integration.
Within the Treant clan, cultivators with the combat strength of the Nascent Soul realm were emerging in endless succession.
The strength of the entire race had taken a qualitative leap compared to when Li Fan first took control of the Spirit Wood Realm.
As a result, the Treants held Li Fan in the highest reverence.
The matriarch came before Li Fan, knelt, and touched her forehead to the ground. "Greetings, Venerable One!" she proclaimed.
Li Fan placed a Heaven and Earth Furnace before the matriarch and explained its construction in detail.
"From this day forward, I want you to devote the full strength of your people to forging these."
"Within three years, I want all the small worlds connected to the Spirit Wood Realm to become suitable for cultivation."
The matriarch immediately accepted the command and departed.
Soon after, Li Fan watched the Treants bustle with activity and nodded in satisfaction.
The tireless Treants were perfectly suited for such labor.
Moreover, as he perfected his Array Refining technique, the entire Spirit Wood Realm had fallen under his complete control.
He could decide their life or death with a single thought, leaving no risk of them getting out of control.
A few days later, a bored Tianyang noticed the Treants' activities and volunteered to take charge of the project.
He thought the act of forging the Heaven and Earth Furnaces and then placing them in every corner of the small worlds was much like planting a forest.
He found it utterly fascinating.
With Tianyang taking over, Li Fan had even less to worry about.
Li Fan taught Tianyang the array derived by the Final Dissociation Disc—one specifically designed to protect and interconnect all the Heaven and Earth Furnaces—and then washed his hands of the matter entirely.
Having once refined his own puppet body using the Ground Fire Return to Origin Array, Tianyang's aptitude for formations was already quite impressive.
His mind had been growing clearer recently, and with Li Fan's personal instruction, he quickly mastered the array.
Li Fan let Tianyang name the new array, and a simple, honest smile spread across Tianyang's face.
He pondered for seven full days and nights before finally coming up with a name he liked: the Heaven and Earth Myriad Spirits Array.
The Heaven and Earth Myriad Spirits Array could use every deployed Heaven and Earth Furnace as a node, forming a spiritual energy network that spanned across the small worlds.
Once the grand array reached a certain scale, even if a node were to be damaged, the spiritual energy network could compensate for the loss, preventing any drop in the overall energy concentration.
Beyond simply dispersing spiritual energy, this network also possessed numerous other functions, including surveillance, offense, and defense.
In Li Fan's vision, the ultimate form of the Heaven and Earth Myriad Spirits Array would be a level higher than even the Mysterious Net—a supreme creation capable of independently creating and evolving entire worlds of cultivation.
"In truth, it's only on a smaller scale for now. In essence, it's already very close."
"However, it still needs a core for deduction and coordination, something like the Heavenly Profound Mirror."
"Only the Heavenly Profound Mirror could support the array at its envisioned scale. Nothing else, not even my Final Dissociation Disc, would be sufficient."
Li Fan's thoughts surged, and he couldn't calm his mind for a long while.
Suddenly, a wave of inexplicable unease washed over him, disrupting his thoughts.
His expression shifted subtly. With a flicker, his form vanished from the Spirit Wood Realm.
He had only just arrived in the Xuanhuang Realm when the Heavenly Doctor's voice echoed in his mind.
"I've finally found you."
"I've sensed that the seal on the Cloud Water Heavenly Palace is loosening. Go and reinforce it to prevent any outsiders from interfering."
As the Heavenly Doctor finished speaking, the knowledge of a restrictive seal called the World-Hiding Void-Concealing Seal appeared in Li Fan's mind.
The Heavenly Doctor seemed quite busy.
He fell silent again before Li Fan could even respond.
Li Fan's face remained impassive, but inwardly, his heart sank.
"Anchor point, Year 11. The Cloud Water Heavenly Palace opens."
"I almost forgot about this."
"But what's the meaning behind this task from the Heavenly Doctor? Is it a test, or something else?"
Li Fan wasn't entirely surprised that the Heavenly Doctor could locate and contact him directly.
After all, they had already met face-to-face in this lifetime, and he had even received the Heaven Mending Record from him.
This was the price of direct contact with the Heavenly Doctor.
Still, the lack of security left Li Fan feeling somewhat unsettled.
Without much deliberation, Li Fan cupped his hands toward the sky in a gesture of acceptance and then set off for the Cong Yun Sea.
He arrived at the center of the Cong Yun Sea, right where the Cloud Water Heavenly Palace was located.
Although the Cloud Water Heavenly Palace had yet to fully manifest, strange phenomena were already beginning to appear in the sky above.
The sight drew the attention of passing cultivators, who would occasionally stop to gaze up at the spectacle.
Using the seal the Heavenly Doctor had imparted to him, Li Fan slipped inside without a sound.
He was on guard, expecting to be drawn into Senior Brother Qin Tang's illusion, but to his surprise, he materialized directly before the main gates of the Cloud Water Heavenly Palace.
He hadn't been pulled into Senior Brother Qin's illusory trial.
Not far away, the stone statue that had once been Qin Tang stood silently, seemingly unchanged for eons.
The entire Cloud Water Heavenly Palace was shrouded in silence.
It was as if all the strange entities within were in a deep slumber.
This was the first time Li Fan had seen the Cloud Water Heavenly Palace in its sealed state, and it was a stark contrast to his previous visits.
In its current state, the palace felt like any ordinary sect, a place where cultivators were simply resting.
It lacked any of the eerie atmosphere that came from being a ruined place overrun with strange, malevolent forces.
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