Though he was only a single step away from finally comprehending that divine ability, Li Fan lingered outside the threshold for a full half-month.
This was entirely to ensure his mind and resolve would not be influenced by the Heavenly Dao of the Xuanhuang Realm.
"The gentleman's nature is no different from that of others; he is simply good at utilizing external things."
Having attained enlightenment, Li Fan chanted softly. With a flicker of his figure, he appeared outside the Spirit Wood Realm in an instant.
With the divine ability newly formed, Li Fan needed to find a suitable place to test its power.
"This move, [Falsifying the Heavenly Dao], shares the same subtle brilliance as my [Formless Killing Intent]. Both borrow the mandate of heaven for personal use. While it can wield the authority of Heaven and Earth, it also carries the risk of being discovered and suffering heavenly retribution.
"For this first test, I need to find a place where the Xuanhuang Realm's Heavenly Dao is relatively weak."
With this thought, Li Fan turned into a dashed line across the sky, speeding straight toward the Congyun Sea.
The Congyun Sea was an area where the fragments of the Tianfa Realm and the Xuanhuang Realm had not yet fully merged.
Like a wooden splinter driven deep into flesh, the Xuanhuang Realm could only fully assimilate it through a thorough purge—the Crimson Flame Burning Sea several years later.
In the Congyun Sea, the Xuanhuang Realm's Heavenly Dao was considerably weaker than in the native provinces.
Before long, Li Fan arrived over a deserted expanse of sea.
Standing above the cloud layer, he held his breath, focused his mind, and cast his newly comprehended [Falsifying the Heavenly Dao].
In an instant, the world transformed before his eyes.
It was like returning to the [Root of Heaven and Earth]—countless crisscrossing threads formed all things under heaven.
Everything caught within this colossal net had to operate according to the rules of those threads.
They were what was known as the laws of Heaven and Earth.
Li Fan's physical form seemed to dissolve into nothingness, while his mental will gradually merged into this gigantic web.
In that instant, the crushing pressure from the countless crisscrossing threads nearly tore Li Fan's divine soul apart. In that briefest of glimpses, he saw countless fundamental laws governing the operation of Heaven and Earth.
He also seemed to witness countless events currently unfolding across the Xuanhuang Realm.
Yet this union with the Great Dao of Heaven and Earth lasted for only that single fleeting instant before Li Fan deliberately terminated it.
Had he continued, his divine soul would have been shredded into countless fragments under the immense force, assimilating into those myriad heavenly laws.
Perhaps a "Heavenly Dao Li" would be born afterward, but that would no longer be Li Fan.
Having withdrawn from the state of merging with Heaven and Earth, Li Fan seized the moment while the profoundly mysterious insight still lingered in his heart and activated the [Falsifying Method] once more.
This time, he did not go so far as to merge his divine soul with Heaven and Earth.
He merely attempted to connect the crisscrossing threads of law between heaven and earth into himself.
With each thread he contacted, Li Fan felt as though a great mountain were bearing down directly upon him.
He pushed Boundless Waxing and Waning along with the Soul Burning Method to their limits to alleviate the strain on his body.
Li Fan steadily channeled the threads of law into his form.
It was like pulling threads from the cosmic web of heaven and earth to form a self-winding knot.
Only when Li Fan felt he had reached the absolute limit his body could endure did he stop connecting further threads.
"So this is the weight of the principles of Heaven and Earth..."
Right now, Li Fan felt as if he were pinned beneath the Mountain of Five Elements, unable to move an inch.
Only when experiencing the magnificent might of heaven and earth firsthand could one truly appreciate how terrifying that vast power was.
"The Longevity realm is about toppling these mountains and reversing the principles of Heaven and Earth...
"I'm still quite a ways off."
Li Fan's eyes flickered, and he suppressed that thought for now.
He turned his attention inward to perceive his current state.
Though immobile, his vision was broader than it had ever been.
Even broader and farther than when he had used the Vast Sea Pearl to watch the Congyun Sea turn from vast oceans into mulberry fields.
From a lofty bird's-eye perspective, all five provinces surrounding the Congyun Sea lay spread beneath his gaze.
All living beings appeared like ants, fully exposed to his sight.
In his ears, countless murmurs of indistinct meaning echoed.
They did not stem from some indescribable monstrosity, but rather from the inner workings of Heaven and Earth operating upon itself.
As the saying went, the Great Dao is soundless.
Heaven and earth were like an endlessly running, extraordinarily precise machine. In the process of its evolution, it continuously emitted its own reverberations.
Yet ordinary people could not detect it in the least. Only someone like Li Fan, who had temporarily become part of the Great Dao, could discern a fraction of those profound sounds amidst the cacophony.
Because he was located in the Congyun Sea, upon closer discernment, Li Fan discovered that the vast majority of these murmurs concerned the celestial evolution of the Congyun Sea.
Among them, the most prominent was the Crimson Flame Burning Sea currently brewing.
Li Fan also heard Heaven and Earth's arrangement regarding Azure Wind trapping the Sword.
Yet to Li Fan's surprise, the profound cosmic resonance of Azure Wind trapping the Sword was ranked only third amidst the clamor.
And the second...
Li Fan cast his gaze toward the source of the resonance.
It was deep beneath Wanxian Island, a shadowy expanse obscured even from the perspective of Heaven and Earth.
An anima of Heaven and Earth named [Golden Seal] coiled like a chain, perpetually suppressing the darkness beneath.
"The Nether-Passage Tunnel Mouth?"
The term immediately flashed across Li Fan's mind.
In his 115th life, Wanxian Island had been snatched away by the Five Elders Association, exposing the Nether-Passage Tunnel Mouth beneath it.
Serving as acting city master, he had received the mission to rebuild the immortal city, while also being ordered by Diyi Jinglun to lay down the Xuantian Nether-Locking Array to plug the tunnel mouth once again.
"So as the Nether-Passage Tunnel Mouth expanded, Wanxian Island's suppression had long since begun losing its efficacy.
"Perhaps that's why anomalies frequently appeared in the Congyun Sea.
"Without any cultivators noticing, Heaven and Earth had already begun quietly dealing with it."
Li Fan suddenly understood.
The style of the Xuantian Nether-Locking Array was exceedingly similar to that of the Profound Heaven Sect.
According to information Li Fan had retrieved from the Heavenly Profound Mirror, the records uniformly confirmed that it was indeed an ancient legacy of the Profound Heaven Sect.
However, with Li Fan's current mastery of formations, he could see at a glance that while ingenious, it clearly had not reached the level of an immortal-grade formation.
It was far inferior even to the Grand Formation of Inverting Life and Death.
"Anomalies arise during the process of the Xuanhuang Realm merging with other cultivation worlds.
"This array already existed back in the era of the Profound Heaven Sect. That means even back then, when the Xuanhuang Realm used the Grand Star-Crossing Array to capture other worlds, the problem of anomalies had already begun to surface.
"Still, the array's energy tier also indicates that anomalies weren't very severe at that time. A crude array of this level was sufficient to handle it.
"Yet as the number of merged worlds grew day by day, this Xuantian Nether-Locking Array...
"...became noticeably inadequate."
Harnessing the spare computing capacity of the Dissociation Disc in his mind, in mere breaths Li Fan deduced a brand-new nether-locking array with ten times the sealing power.
Li Fan shook his head slightly. "After so many years, the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals still makes no effort to improve, treasuring a thousand-year-old relic like a priceless heirloom."
Chapter 1030