Chapter 9: Fate has Unforeseen Paths |
Li Fan gazed at the confession on the table, feeling disheartened.
Kou Hong hadn't lied to him. He truly didn't know how to help mortals leave this isolated realm.
"The Land of Immortal Extinction..." After five cycles of reincarnation and three hundred years of anticipation, all his hopes had turned into unachievable dreams.
With his hopes of immortality shattered, Li Fan seemed to have aged overnight both physically and psychologically.
"Land of Immortal Extinction..." He once again recited the name in his mind, and endless unwillingness welled up in his heart.
"Why did I have to be reborn in such a place? If I had been reborn in the cultivation realm outside, with the power of [Truth], I would have had a genuine chance at immortality. But fate had to place me in this Land of Immortal Extinction!"
The information in Kou Hong's confession once again crossed Li Fan's mind.
The so-called Land Immortal Extinction, as the name suggests, is a place where immortals are extinct. Thousands of years ago, the ancient immortal cultivation world suffered a great change.
At first, it was just a plague that swept through the mortal realm, and no cultivators paid it much heed.
After infecting the immortal cultivator, the plague seemed to have been inexplicably strengthened, becoming able to spread amongst cultivators.
The medium of transmission was none other than the spiritual energy that cultivators relied on for their cultivation.
Through the spiritual energy of heaven and earth, the plague quickly spread throughout the entire cultivation world. Cultivators infected with the plague would regress in their cultivation, while the less fortunate would lose their cultivation overnight and become no different from mortals. Within only a few days, they would die and return to heaven.
With the deaths of a large number of cultivators, a wave of despair began to spread among the cultivator community.
In desperation, some cultivators vented their anger on the source of it all, the mortals.
Thus, a mass slaughter began.
Facing the towering cultivators, the mortals had little power to resist and could only be slaughtered.
But it wasn't long before this slaughtering was forcibly terminated, not out of a guilty conscience, but because of the horrific discovery that the plague didn't dissipate with the deaths of the mortals. Instead, the plague was released into the world, infecting the currents of spiritual energy that pervaded heaven and earth.
For a while, the concentration of the plague within the cultivation world skyrocketed.
This led to the fall of even more cultivators.
Helpless, cultivators gave up their slaughters of mortals.
However, sitting back and waiting for death was obviously not cultivators' style of action. On the one hand, a group of cultivators began to develop treatments to resist this plague, and on the other hand, cultivators came up with the infamous [Great Migration Plan].
Although this plan was opposed by a significant portion of cultivators at the very beginning, most eventually agreed for the sake of their survival.
The so-called [Great Migration Plan] was based on the following considerations:
Since mortals couldn't be killed, and cures were nowhere in sight, the plague would only spread more and more as mortals reproduced.
But because the plague relied on spiritual energy for transmission, a logical solution was formed: banish all mortals in the cultivation realm to small realms, broken pocket dimensions, and other places without spiritual energy. Then, formations would be used to isolate them forever, forbidding the mortals from returning.
In this way, the plague of mortals would be contained, allowing cultivators to slowly study cures for the plague.
Moreover, the world was filled with countless undeveloped pocket dimensions, so there were no concerns about running out of space for the exiled mortals.
Thus, under the arrangement of the unified will of the entire cultivation world, all mortals began their centuries-long migration.
The question of how many mortals would die during this century-long migration was not within the consideration of the cultivators. In the face of the strength of cultivators, mortals had no room for resistance.
In this way, after hundreds of years of migration, the mortals of the entire cultivation realm were dispersed across various small worlds. It took nearly a thousand more years for the plague's concentration to finally decrease to a manageable level.
During these thousand years, cultivators finally found a way to purify this plague after continuous research.
However, despite purification, the plague would still remain latent within mortal bloodlines, much to the dismay of cultivators.
Even if there were no more mortals in the world at that time, not every offspring between cultivators had the aptitude for cultivation, and more mortals would be born over time. Inside these mortals lay the threat of the plague.
Furthermore, because the plague was especially lethal to immortal cultivators, mortal offspring wishing to cultivate had to first purify themselves of the plague.
Over time, this plague became synonymous with the divide between immortals and mortals, so it was named the Immortal-Mortal Miasma.
In order to prevent the resurgence of the Immortal-Mortal Miasma, cultivators agreed to avoid places where mortals had been banished.
Over time, these places became the so-called Lands of Immortal Extinction.
There were countless Lands of Immortal Extinction both big and small, but the number of cultivators willing to risk their lives to enter these places was very few.
It was already a blessing for Li Fan to stumble upon two of them.
Now, these cultivators did not have a way to bring mortals out. How could Li Fan expect another cultivator of a higher cultivation level to break in?
What's more, as a mortal, his lifespan was limited. Even if he could constantly simulate reincarnation, it would only be repeated within his lifespan.
This year, he was already seventy years old, and the upper limit of his physical lifespan was eighty-six.
The possibility of meeting another cultivator within those sixteen years was basically zero.
Since this was the case, how could Li Fan not feel despair?
Though he had glimpsed the path to cultivating immortality, in the end, it proved hopelessly distant.
Could it be that he could only repeat the life of a mortal over and over?
Li Fan was truly unwilling.
The road to immortality was right before him, seemingly within his reach, yet it was impossible to take the first step.
Thinking about everything he had experienced in his several lifetimes, his nearly three hundred years of bitter anticipation, Li Fan wasn't resigned to giving up the path to immortality.
Was there really no way?
Suddenly, like a bolt of lightning cutting through fog, Li Fan thought of something he had overlooked.
How had a large number of mortals migrated thousands of years ago?
Although the Land of Immortal Extinction and the cultivation world were adjacent, they were separate realms.
Surely these mortals didn't come here on foot, right?
There had to be some means of transportation, right?
Perhaps those means were still around today?
If he could find those means, could he use them to travel to the cultivation world?
Even if it was just a slim, almost negligible possibility, it sparked a glimmer of hope for Li Fan.
His excitement surged, and he immediately headed to the prison cell where Kou Hong was being held.
He wanted to consult Kou Hong on the feasibility of his idea.
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