Yet if the design were slightly more plausible—suppose the Nascent Soul True Monarch ran into an enemy while flying, fought desperately, and fell in defeat—then once Life and Death Interlink was activated, it could trace back the conditions necessary for those two foes to meet.
Although it might require a lengthy period of deduction, the odds of success were high.
In short, the more comprehensive the information—especially regarding the "death" link—the easier Life and Death Interlink was to trigger.
With True Reversion granting him foresight, Li Fan was uniquely positioned to push the advantages of precognition to their absolute limit. Slaying a Soul Formation cultivator while merely in the Qi Condensation stage would be well within his grasp.
In this lifetime, for example, all he needed to do was lure the target Soul Formation cultivator into the Congyun Sea when the crimson flames burned the ocean. He could then leverage the might of the crimson flames to execute them.
"Discerning karma, killing invisibly." Li Fan could not help feeling a surge of joy. "What a divine ability."
To his surprise, his clone transmitted yet another realization alongside Life and Death Interlink.
This was a second divine ability Lin Fan had grasped during his sudden enlightenment, sparked when Li Fan previously noticed the shift in Zhang Haobo's fate across two lifetimes.
Heavenly Sight and Earthly Hearing.
Integrating Li Fan's various insights into qi signatures and the workings of fate, Heavenly Sight and Earthly Hearing was an upgraded form of Formless Killing Intent.
The destinies of all things lay under the watchful gaze of Heaven and Earth. By observing the intertwining of qi signatures and fate, one could observe from the perspective of Heaven and Earth itself.
Put simply, if Formless Killing Intent had previously only allowed him to vaguely pinpoint a target's location, the mastery of Heavenly Sight and Earthly Hearing now enabled him to observe that locked target from the vantage point of Heaven and Earth.
Once he grasped what Heavenly Sight and Earthly Hearing could do, Li Fan was truly overjoyed.
Even with his composed mindset, he could not suppress a thrill of excitement. Three pleasant surprises arriving in rapid succession almost left him uneasy, making him wonder faintly whether the crimson flames burning the sea might arrive ahead of schedule.
He quickly pushed that absurd thought aside and began testing Heavenly Sight and Earthly Hearing.
Settling his mind, he sensed the strand of Formless Killing Intent locked onto Zhang Haobo.
A vision immediately surfaced in Li Fan's mind.
Above vast swathes of azure waves, Zhang Haobo stood suspended in midair.
Twenty-four increasingly vibrant blue water swords circled him at high speed, forming a profound and mysterious formation that shifted ceaselessly like the constellations of the firmament.
As the formation of water swords transformed, dragons of water materialized within it.
Zhang Haobo pointed toward the open sea ahead, and the water dragons surged from the formation, dancing wildly across the sky.
"Detonate!"
Zhang Haobo barked in a low voice, and the dragons instantly exploded.
Every single water dragon broke apart into countless tiny water swords. In a flash, a tempest of water swords battered an immense area before him. The sea erupted with countless towering spouts of water in a breathtaking spectacle.
Tireless as ever, Zhang Haobo absorbed the flecks of blue light drifting back into his body and began running through the technique once more.
...
Li Fan watched, utterly transfixed.
From the perspective of Heaven and Earth, he saw far more than just the surface spectacle. The circulation pathways of spiritual energy inside Zhang Haobo, the flow of qi behind every stance, and the inner mechanics of this enhanced Water Dragon's Chant formation were laid bare before him without reservation, crystal clear.
Granted, a considerable gap remained between watching and truly mastering it.
Yet... if he watched it enough times, wouldn't he learn it all the same?
Like a flash of lightning, an epiphany struck Li Fan's mind.
Overwhelmed with excitement, he withdrew from the state of Heavenly Sight and Earthly Hearing.
Springing straight to his feet, he cried out involuntarily, "Only today do I know my Dao!"
What was Li Fan's Dao?
Ever since he began cultivating, a single question had loomed over him.
His aptitude for cultivation was genuinely subpar. Dispersing the miasma and condensing qi had already been an uphill battle, and the journey ahead—Foundation Establishment, Golden Core, and the grand path of the Nascent Soul—would only grow steeper and more treacherous.
The world was teeming with prodigies, many blessed with staggering comprehension. They could grasp techniques and divine abilities with effortless ease.
How could Li Fan ever compete with them?
If one day the chasm between two realms proved too vast, leaving him unable to break through no matter how many times he restarted, what would become of him?
Today, Li Fan finally had his answer.
A grand path to the heavens that belonged solely to him, one no one else could ever replicate.
"True Reversion, the Mountain-Sitting Art, Heavenly Sight and Earthly Hearing..."
"What does supreme aptitude matter before my gaze?"
"A lifetime of their comprehension shall all become mine."
Li Fan's emotions gradually settled. He sat back down and murmured softly, "Though the world's heroes are many, they must all fall into my grasp."
The realm's geniuses were as numerous as carp crossing a river, emerging endlessly year after year.
Li Fan's Dao would take the finest among them as stepping stones. He would gather individuals of extraordinary talent, employing them as eyes, ears, and pawns to deduce divine abilities on his behalf. Drawing upon the strengths of ten thousand schools, he would assemble them within himself, then innovate upon them to forge his own singular Dao.
"The Dao is established. What remains is to see how the board is laid."
With Li Fan's Dao established, his clone Lin Fan was equally elated and transmitted another ripple of divine sense.
This was not a divine ability, but a piece of knowledge perceived during the epiphany.
Through this realization, Lin Fan learned that the cultivation world prior to the great calamity had placed immense value on comprehending the Dao. Ancient cultivation emphasized grasping the Heavenly Dao.
There were mortals who experienced sudden enlightenment, entering Qi Condensation in the morning and achieving Foundation Establishment by dusk; forming a Golden Core within three days, and attaining a Nascent Soul in five.
There were even those who sat in seclusion for a century, attained sudden enlightenment, and stepped from mortality straight into Soul Formation, soaring to the heavens in a single leap.
Alas, such individuals were extraordinarily rare. Throughout the entire history of cultivation, there had been no more than seven or eight.
Most merely advanced a minor sub-realm or grasped a divine ability through their comprehension.
In this era, however, hardly anyone was capable of comprehending the Dao anymore.
"Prying into the laws of Heaven and Earth, seizing their essence, extracting their marrow..."
"If Heaven will not bestow it, I shall take it myself."
"What Dao is there left to comprehend..." Li Fan murmured under his breath.
...
Having grasped two divine abilities, Li Fan spent another half-month inside the Heavenly Profound Mirror consolidating his insights.
Afterward, he resolved to set out and seek the auspicious opportunity to break through his bottleneck.
Comparing the coordinates in his mind with the map of the Congyun Sea, Li Fan discovered that his destination was a place called Yinyin Island.
It bore this curious name because there were no mortals living there—only a solitary cultivator known as Master Yinyin.
Master Yinyin's cultivation was not particularly high, sitting merely at the Foundation Establishment stage. However, he had little interest in cultivating, preferring instead to research all manner of strange and eccentric subjects.
Among his research subjects, the most notorious was the immortal-mortal miasma.
The live experiment involving the extraction of immortal-mortal miasma that had previously killed Su Changyu had been Master Yinyin's handiwork.
Because of this, many cultivators held him in low regard and refused to associate with him. He had consequently relocated to this remote islet, quite content with the peace and quiet.
How could his own breakthrough opportunity be connected to such a person?
Intrigued, Li Fan set out immediately for Yinyin Island.
Chapter 106