Chapter 971: The Return to Ruins Restoration Point
"If you wish to pry into my secrets, you must be prepared to pay a devastating price."
Setting aside his 'As Me' ability, which was nearly impossible to defend against on a first encounter, Dharma Transmitter Jiang's actual combat prowess wasn't as formidable as Li Fan had imagined.
Li Fan hadn't even deployed his many trump cards; he had crushed the man with nothing more than the collective divine will of a million gods and demons.
"Even if he isn't dead, he's gravely wounded!"
But the most crucial blow was the patch of gray mold he had sent into his opponent's divine consciousness.
The small, divided patches of mold, cultivated from the flesh of strange beasts and sealed with seven-colored divine light, had finally been unleashed by Li Fan as a world-ending weapon.
It was true—Li Fan had indeed fallen into the trap, completely unaware.
He had genuinely believed he was the Dharma Transmitter.
He revealed he was in the Spirit Wood Realm, but that was a name Li Fan himself had given this small world; it was unknown to anyone else.
There were countless small worlds in the Xuanhuang Realm—how could anyone find the one called the Spirit Wood Realm?
The million gods and demons, though born from the [Three Disasters and Hundred Tribulations Mind God Technique] derived through the Yanfa Jue, were merely a transformation of a different art. Their true origin was the [Three Perils of Ghosts and Spirits]. Therefore, it wasn't a lie to call it a secret art of the Xuantian Sect, an inheritance from the Immortal Realm.
He revealed that Mo Rubin had infiltrated the upper echelons of the Ten Thousand Immortals Alliance, but his opponent only learned the name.
As for Mo Rubin's identity...
With so many people at the Alliance headquarters, they could guess one by one and never find him.
He let it slip that he knew of the Hunger Immortal in the Immortal Ruins and that he possessed the power to drag the entire Xuanhuang Realm down with him...
That, however, wasn't necessarily a bad thing. It served as an unseen deterrent.
The truly dangerous reveal was the existence of [Truth].
This was precisely why, the moment he came to his senses, Li Fan had unleashed the long-sealed gray mold in a swift counterattack.
And the reason he hadn't used [Truth] immediately was...
Li Fan carefully replayed his opponent's reaction in his mind.
"It was more confusion than anything else. No shock, no pleasant surprise."
"He only knows I possess [Truth], but he doesn't know what it actually does."
"Of course, I can't rule out the possibility that he might figure it out later."
"Assuming he can stay alive that long."
After a long moment of contemplation, Li Fan decided to wait and see. He would observe how events unfolded in the Xuanhuang Realm before making his next move.
After all, his consciousness was now one with the Spirit Wood Realm. If a powerful enemy truly did come to his doorstep, he would have more than enough time to use [Truth] without haste.
"As for the million gods and demons born of thought... they truly had to be abandoned."
Faced with this immense power, Li Fan didn't hesitate for a moment before issuing the command to recall them.
From the bodies of the countless fiends in his sea of consciousness, silver threads began to fly out. These threads were the strands of psychic energy that allowed him to dominate and control the divine beings.
Once Li Fan extracted them, all that remained were empty shells.
They still possessed power roughly equivalent to the Soul Transformation stage, but now they were mindless, acting purely on instinct, and would no longer receive Li Fan's command to expand and multiply.
It would still take considerable effort for the Ten Thousand Immortals Alliance to suppress them, but the cost would be far less than before.
In the final moments, Li Fan informed Mo Rubin of his decision.
Then, he severed all connection to the gods and demons.
"Using the consciousness of a million cultivators as an incubator... in such a short time, the strength of my own divine will has nearly doubled."
Li Fan mused to himself after retracting the energy and inspecting his gains.
"A truly supreme technique. It's a shame I can't use it regularly."
"Now, let's see how the Ten Thousand Immortals Alliance deals with the remaining gods and demons... and that lethal gray mold."
"I hope they can hold out for a few more years."
Li Fan remained within the Spirit Wood Realm, unmoving, using the followers of the Red Dust Compassionate Immortal to closely monitor the developments in the Xuanhuang Realm.
At the headquarters of the Ten Thousand Immortals Alliance, within the Return to Ruins Realm.
Dharma Transmitter Jiang, whom Li Fan had defeated, manifested once more.
His appearance now was a stark contrast to his former youthful visage.
His face was covered in a web of cracks, like a parched and fractured landscape.
His hair had turned completely gray and white.
More terrifying still, parts of his flesh had become blurry and indistinct.
With a sickening squirm, they would simply vanish into thin air.
Even with all his efforts to hold himself together, Dharma Transmitter Jiang was riddled with holes, on the verge of collapse.
Yet, Dharma Transmitter Jiang did not seek help from his fellow Dharma Transmitters.
He knew that the gray mold responsible for his condition was highly contagious.
He was using his own body as a cage, channeling every ounce of his power just to contain it. Were it not for the fact that this was the Return to Ruins Realm—a space of utter nothingness where the mold had no path to spread...
...the Ten Thousand Immortals Alliance, and perhaps the entire Xuanhuang Realm, would have already been plunged into utter devastation.
As his life drew to a close, Dharma Transmitter Jiang's face showed not a single trace of fear.
He remained perfectly calm, analyzing the situation. "An immortal's seal script... its structure is remarkably similar to that of the 'Chaos' Character. They must share the same origin..."
"Could the calamity from all those years ago be connected to the Xuantian Sect? No, that's impossible..."
Dharma Transmitter Jiang's face was a mask of doubt and confusion.
Before long, Dharma Transmitter Jiang was completely consumed by the gray mold.
All that remained was a large, writhing, grayish-yellow shadow, which strained to spread outwards.
But the Return to Ruins Realm was nothing but absolute void.
Thus, the gray mold was trapped within this small pocket of reality.
It roamed, but could not advance.
An unknown amount of time passed.
A powerful wave swept through the Return to Ruins Realm at a constant speed.
As if sensing something, the gray mold began to churn like boiling water.
Then, it began to expand rapidly in all directions.
It spread out like a vast sheet of grayish-yellow paper, threatening to consume the entire realm.
But then, something strange occurred.
Wherever the wave passed, the gray mold—this terrifying substance of unknown origin that might have annihilated an entire cultivation world, a substance that even Li Fan feared—vanished, inch by inch, in an instant.
And with its disappearance, the Return to Ruins Realm reverted to its former state of absolute nothingness.
No...
Besides the void, there was something else in the Return to Ruins Realm.
Without any warning, Dharma Transmitter Jiang—who should have been long dead—reappeared in the Return to Ruins Realm.
Dharma Transmitter Jiang seemed unsurprised by his own resurrection.
He merely glanced around, a flicker of surprise on his face. "This [Reversion]... left no information behind?"
"What in the world did I encounter?"
"Something that can even corrupt the information itself?"
As Dharma Transmitter Jiang murmured to himself, records of all events that had transpired within the Ten Thousand Immortals Alliance, both recent and past, flooded into his mind.
"The hunt failed, and I was the one who died."
"Interesting."
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