“All living beings have form...”
Countless real, concrete individuals arrived in an unending stream, pouring into Li Fan’s mind.
Like sparks of fire gathering bit by bit, they slowly thawed Li Fan’s mental state, which had frozen like ten-thousand-year glacial ice through numerous cycles of reincarnation.
It must be said that Li Fan was not an utterly cold, unfeeling man.
It was merely that across his endless reincarnations, all the joy, anger, sorrow, fear, laughter, tears, life, and death he witnessed had come to seem like fleeting dreams and illusions.
Whenever Li Fan activated True Reversion, everything they experienced lost all meaning in an instant, returning to the initial anchor.
Since it was all nothing more than an illusion, how could he treat any of it with gravity? Thus, as time wore on, Li Fan had become as he was now, looking upon all living things beneath the heavens with apathy.
Yet at this moment, with the aid of the Heavenly Profound Mirror, Li Fan saw that even without his attention, the living beings of the Xuanhuang Realm still lived on along the trajectories of their own destinies.
They had their own friends, their own schemes, and their own Dao paths.
Their very existence was neither illusory nor meaningless.
The more Li Fan glimpsed, the greater the feedback and influence he received from all living beings. Likewise, the desire within his heart to observe the destinies of even more souls grew all the stronger.
Gradually, in this process, Li Fan’s utterly indifferent eyes seemed poised to change.
...
Right at that moment—
A sudden jolt of palpitations seized Li Fan, startling him awake from his fixation and epiphany.
His gaze once again turned into unmelting ice, barring external contamination.
When Li Fan looked once more at the countless vibrant cultivators in the Heavenly Profound Mirror, a touch of wariness had already taken root in his heart.
Looking back on what had just occurred, Li Fan knew clearly that he had not fallen into anyone’s trap.
He had simply lost himself somewhat in the vividly real lives of one cultivator after another.
“No wonder those legendary deities and immortals often sit high above the clouds, viewing wallowing in the mortal dust as a tribulation.”
“Even with my current mental state, I was nearly drowned in it, changing without even realizing it...”
Li Fan suddenly recalled that in the first act of the Fallen Immortal Realm, Retrieving Longevity Fruits in Ningyuan, Song Hesong had sacrificed tens of thousands of mortals in blood to unleash the All Living Beings Spirit-Refining Array, forcing out the true might of Zhang Qianmo’s purple core.
“Though from my current perspective, that array was far too crude and possessed nothing more than a grandiose name, judging by what I just went through, it might not be impossible to borrow an idea or two from it...”
“I shall refine the myriad gods using all living beings.”
Under Li Fan’s instruction, the Terminal Dissociation Disc—which had recently been continuously studying Myriad Spirits Returning to Numerical Order and whose array deduction abilities had advanced by leaps and bounds—embarked upon its first deduction since having its horizons broadened.
Yet soon enough, Li Fan noticed something abnormal.
Unlike past deductions of arrays, which answered his beck and call and completed their targets almost in an instant, this deduction task of the Terminal Dissociation Disc experienced involuntary stutters every short while.
It was as if its load had already reached some limit, struggling immensely to operate.
After observing for a while, Li Fan understood why this was happening.
“It’s caused by a mismatch between the Terminal Dissociation Disc’s capabilities and the plan.”
“It is no longer satisfied with deducing ordinary arrays; the plan is to deduce an Immortal-grade array, or something infinitely close to the might of an Immortal-grade array.”
“Yet it is ultimately only a secondary body split off from the Heavenly Profound Mirror. Asking it to accomplish something like this is simply too much of a strain.”
Li Fan sighed inwardly and temporarily aborted the task.
He instructed the Dissociation Disc to resume its analysis of the Array of Myriad Spirits Returning to Numerical Order for the time being.
“Judging by this, if I want to break the restriction left behind by the Dharma-Transmitting Heavenly Venerable, I will likely need to upgrade the Dissociation Disc first.”
“I wonder how things are progressing on Mo Rubin’s end.”
Li Fan was hesitating over whether to take the initiative to inquire.
Just then, he suddenly sensed what had happened to his clone, Li Qing, and his expression shifted slightly.
With a flicker, he arrived at the clone’s side.
A thick stench of blood lingered in the air, with faint remnants of burst flesh and blood still visible.
His physical body had already vanished; Li Qing manifested the black sword grotto-heaven, seemingly locked in a struggle against some sort of power.
As though being relentlessly crushed under some invisible colossus, strained rumbles echoed from all across the grotto-heaven.
Were it not for its quality as a wonder of Heaven, formed from the physical manifestation of worldly laws, the grotto-heaven would likely have crumbled inch by inch by now!
“What happened?”
In an instant, Li Fan reviewed the clone’s experiences.
It turned out that over this period, with the widespread distribution of countless Furnaces of Heaven and Earth, the spiritual energy in those pocket worlds had gradually grown denser, becoming suitable for cultivation.
Meanwhile, Li Qing had begun organizing large-scale teaching of the Common People Lingyuan Technique within those pocket worlds.
He had even occasionally raided several cities of mortals from the territory of the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals in the Xuanhuang Realm to supplement the sparse populations in the pocket worlds.
By now, the number of individuals simultaneously cultivating the Common People Lingyuan Technique had long exceeded a million.
The technique’s unique trait—where the more people cultivated it, the faster their cultivation progressed—had also been pushed to the absolute limit.
Not only did it suppress the restriction that multiple practitioners could not cultivate the same technique, but it was also easier and faster to cultivate than ordinary techniques.
Not long ago, Li Qing, who was in charge of overall management and coordination, had a sudden whim.
He actually stepped in to cultivate it personally, seeking to decipher the secret of the Common People Lingyuan Technique.
It was not that he had run out of things to do and was bored; rather, he was preparing for future cycles of reincarnation. After all, the Common People Lingyuan Technique had a true master. It was only by a stroke of fortune in this lifetime that the sect master had been wiped out by the Heavenly Venerable’s Dharma manifestation.
The Lingyuan Sect’s influence spanned Jiushan Province; rooting them out would inevitably cause a massive stir.
If he could develop his own version of the Common People Lingyuan Technique, that would be all the better.
At first, the cultivation and comprehension went smoothly enough.
The clone Li Qing’s aptitude and comprehension were vastly superior to those of ordinary people. Without much effort, he cultivated the Common People Lingyuan Technique to the Nascent Soul realm.
At that exact moment, Li Qing suddenly felt over a million portions of cultivation base surging from across heaven and earth like torrential rivers.
They poured violently into his body.
Evidently accumulated over a long time, each portion was exceptionally substantial.
Over a million portions stacked together, appearing inside Li Qing’s body in a single instant.
The clone’s physical form could not withstand such immense pressure at all and exploded violently in an instant.
Even his black sword grotto-heaven had nearly buckled under the strain.
“This is a qualitative change brought about by quantitative change. Speaking of which, this cultivation base is...”
“From every single person cultivating the Common People Lingyuan Technique?”
Li Fan’s eyes flashed.
“Isn’t this just like the Cultivation Dissolution Chapter of the Taishang Primordial Scripture? Stealing a little portion from each of them.”
“Yet the beneficiary of the Common People Lingyuan Technique is simply whoever has attained the highest realm in cultivating the technique?”
“Was the Cult Master of the Lingyuan Sect really that confident in himself?”
“Or is there some special peculiarity in this that I haven’t noticed?”
Li Fan frowned slightly.
Chapter 1008