Chapter 978: The Flesh-and-Blood Cultivation Puppet
"She can't cultivate it?"
Li Qing was no ordinary clone. She had been forged from the very blood essence of Su Yuqing—the incarnation of the Great Li Realm's Heavenly Dao—and had established her foundation with the Black Sword, a Heaven's Wonder. A lack of talent simply wasn't a possibility.
It seemed the limitation lay within the Common Lives Spirit Essence Art itself.
Li Fan turned his gaze to the Spirit Element Sect cultist slumped in the corner.
"Interesting," he mused. "He obviously knew the technique, yet there's no trace of its memory in his soul. The only way to get it was through forceful interrogation. Does this mean the technique is stored within the flesh itself?"
Li Fan's spiritual sense swept over the unconscious cultist, beginning a meticulous inspection.
With Li Fan's profound understanding of the human body, he quickly found what he was looking for.
Deep within the cultist's body, engraved into his very flesh and blood, was a unique imprint. It appeared to have no adverse effects, yet Li Fan's sharp senses immediately detected the lingering traces of the cultivation technique's flow upon it.
Even though the cultist had now switched to the New Method, the imprint left by years of practicing the technique hadn't faded in the slightest.
A short while later, Li Fan withdrew his spiritual sense from the Spirit Element Sect cultist, who was now nothing but a pool of flesh and blood.
It wasn't that he was cruel enough to kill the man just to silence him.
Rather, as he delved into the imprint of the Spirit Element Art, he had triggered its inherent defense mechanism. The imprint self-destructed, tearing the cultist's body to pieces along with it.
Fortunately, however, Li Fan had already committed the entire imprint to memory before that happened.
Despite its immense complexity, a single glance was all it took for the Dao Transformation Stone to replicate it perfectly.
Li Fan narrowed his eyes. Using his hand as a brush, his fingers danced through the empty air.
The imprint of the Spirit Element Art gradually took shape.
It formed the figure of a person, composed of over one hundred and twenty-eight thousand different, interlocking 'components'.
The moment the imprint fully manifested, it began to stir, as if it possessed a spirit of its own.
It first seemed to look around in confusion, as if getting its bearings, before slowly drifting toward the bloody mess on the ground.
Li Fan didn't intervene, merely observing the unfolding events.
Once the humanoid imprint attached itself to the flesh, the chunks of meat, previously devoid of any life, began to writhe. The imprint became its skeleton, the flesh its outer layer.
Donning its flesh once more.
The entire process was deeply unsettling, but what truly astonished Li Fan was yet to come.
Although the technique's imprint had reshaped the body, it hadn't resurrected the cultist. The result was merely a mindless husk, its gruesome appearance unrepaired.
It was a creature purely of mangled flesh and tissue. Its first and only purpose upon its creation was to sit cross-legged and begin circulating the Common Lives Spirit Essence Art.
Spiritual energy slowly gathered within the flesh-and-blood creature, and before long, Li Fan could sense the fluctuations of the technique operating within it.
It was like a machine built from flesh. Even without the cultist's life to act as a 'vessel,' it could tirelessly cultivate the Common Lives Spirit Essence Art.
The flesh-and-blood machine, devoid of intellect and consciousness, ignored Li Fan and Li Qing, simply executing its predetermined task.
"No wonder that mysterious Master of the Spirit Element Sect was able to find enough cultivators to practice the technique in the beginning, allowing its benefits to reach the threshold needed to counteract the side effects of the Law of Incompatible Cultivation."
"So he relied on these mindless, flesh-and-blood puppets."
A look of keen interest flashed in Li Fan's eyes.
"To be able to circulate a technique through fleshly instinct even after death... it must be because of that imprint. I've never heard of anything like it before. It seems the Master of the Spirit Element Sect was a man of many secrets."
"What a pity. When faced with a Heavenly Venerate's power, he was no different from an ant, unable to escape his fate."
Of course, there was a chance the Sect Master hadn't been in the Nine Mountains Prefecture at the time and had luckily escaped the catastrophe.
A simple verification would clear things up...
At Li Fan's signal, his clone Li Qing immediately sat cross-legged and began to engrave the imprint of the Spirit Element Art within her own body.
Meanwhile, Li Fan's main body carefully sensed the subtle changes occurring within her as the imprint was steadily engraved.
Only when the imprint was fully replicated and connected as a whole did Li Fan faintly perceive its effect on the flesh.
To put it simply, it was like stamping a seal onto the physical body.
"Cultivate the Common Lives Spirit Essence Art," Li Fan said, his eyes narrowed.
Li Qing nodded slightly and once again attempted to circulate the Spirit Element Art.
This time, the process was seamless, and she quickly grasped the fundamentals of the technique.
"Besides us, no one else in the entire Xuanhuang Realm is practicing this technique anymore."
"It seems the Master of the Spirit Element Sect is well and truly dead."
Li Fan shook his head.
The reasoning was simple. While the Sect Master himself might not have practiced the Spirit Element Art, the technique was clearly of great use to him. Otherwise, he wouldn't have gone to such lengths to establish the Spirit Element Sect and spread its teachings far and wide.
If he were still alive, he would have undoubtedly tried to regroup. With this method of controlling flesh-and-blood puppets, making a comeback wouldn't have been difficult.
Yet, so much time had passed since the destruction of the Nine Mountains Prefecture, and still, no new cultivators had begun to practice the Spirit Element Art. In fact, even those who once practiced it had all given it up.
"No matter how cunning your plans, they are ultimately useless in the face of an absolute disparity in power."
The Master of the Spirit Element Sect had died an unremarkable death, but his legacy had fallen right into Li Fan's lap.
Although the Common Lives Spirit Essence Art certainly held more secrets, that wouldn't stop Li Fan from putting it to use first.
He could slowly unravel its mysteries later.
"Go and create some flesh-and-blood puppets. Get the Spirit Element Art up and running," Li Fan instructed.
Li Qing accepted the order and departed.
"If everything goes smoothly, the small worlds will soon be able to produce a continuous stream of cultivators."
"I don't expect them to confront the Five Elders Council head-on. I just need them to help me with [Mending the Heavens]."
"The bloody river of history is nearly endless, its time span too vast. But most of that history is irrelevant. What matters are the few critical junctures..."
"From the Xuantian King's return through the Immortal Realm passage and the founding of the Xuantian Sect, to his mysterious disappearance."
"The end of the Ten Great Immortal Sects' reign, when the Dharma Spreader Heavenly Venerate rose to prominence and Mr. Bai became the Heavenly Venerate of both ancient and modern laws."
"..."
"First, I need to figure out what happened during those two periods."
Li Fan knew full well that relying on these cultivators from the small worlds to obtain fragments of history from the Creation History Book was like fishing in the Fishing Pool.
It was completely random; what he could get depended entirely on luck.
But with enough attempts, he was bound to reel in something of value.
Li Qing was highly efficient.
Cultivating the technique still required considering the effects of the Immortal-Mortal Miasma. Under the pressing circumstances, she ultimately had to source her materials from the Xuanhuang Realm.
In just over ten days, she had created a sufficient number of flesh-and-blood puppets.
As for the numerous Foundation Establishment cultivators who had vanished without a trace from the Ten Thousand Immortals Alliance's territory, their disappearances barely caused a ripple.
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