In the Xuanhuang Realm, across the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals.
At the exact same instant, urgent bells abruptly began tolling throughout every floating Heavenly City.
Cultivators of the Alliance halted whatever was in their hands, freezing where they stood.
After a momentary lapse, they gradually remembered what the tolling signified.
This was the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals' highest-level alarm.
It was activated only when the Alliance faced an existential crisis of survival.
After a brief, stunned silence, tumultuous clamor erupted in a flash.
People were gripped by panic, at an utter loss for what to do.
Far away in the Spirit Wood Realm, Li Fan naturally heard the bells at the very first moment.
At first, he thought his World Extinction arrangements had been discovered.
Soon, however, Li Fan realized that this sudden tolling had to be connected to what had transpired within the Grand Formation of Life and Death.
When the footage recorded by the array left behind with the True Immortal remains arrived, it confirmed his judgment.
The images ended with the group of Dharma Transmitters vanishing into the white mist.
Afterward, the recording array had likewise been destroyed by that surging, boundless white mist.
Li Fan reviewed the images repeatedly, a flicker of gravity passing through his eyes. “For the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals to react so strongly, could it be…”
“Did those three Dharma Transmitters die?”
Suspicion and uncertainty instantly gripped Li Fan’s heart.
He knew very well that every Dharma Transmitter enjoyed the protection of the Dharma-Transmitting Heavenly Venerable.
As long as that sheltering power did not vanish, they were virtually immortal and indestructible within the Xuanhuang Realm.
Though restricted by this and unable to advance to the Longevity realm, they were almost indistinguishable from Longevity beings.
Yet to think that before Heavenly Venerable Rebirth, this newly risen Longevity Heavenly Venerable, they were so utterly fragile.
“He can instantly kill Dharma Transmitters?”
“If those three Dharma Transmitters truly died just like that, then Rebirth’s strength…”
Li Fan’s eyes narrowed slightly.
A trace of doubt followed in his mind.
“If He is truly this powerful, what was His reason for killing the three Dharma Transmitters?”
“They clearly only wandered in by mistake, and committed no acts of sabotage or disrespect during that time.”
Li Fan slowly watched the array’s recorded footage once more.
Finally, he noticed something amiss.
“It seems that right up until the moment before their departure, Rebirth had no intention of revealing Himself.”
“Yet Dharma Transmitter Wei appeared to have noticed something, which brought about Rebirth’s emergence.”
“So He was silencing them?”
Li Fan’s expression grew somewhat strange.
Silencing someone through murder seemed rather beneath the dignity of a Longevity Heavenly Venerable.
Yet He had done precisely that.
There was only one explanation: if what Dharma Transmitter Wei discovered leaked out, it would produce an incalculable impact on Him.
To prevent any variables from arising, Rebirth chose annihilation.
“Before his death, Dharma Transmitter Wei was likely pondering the Grand Formation of Inverting Life and Death.”
Following this line of thought, Li Fan placed himself in that perspective. With his current mastery over array methods, he naturally deduced the crux of the matter before long.
“Just as I sensed before, inverting life and death… its ultimate goal is not to reverse the life and death of cultivators.”
“Cultivators rising from the dead is merely an incidental shift in the principles of Heaven and Earth brought about during this process.”
“The true target whose life and death this Heavenly Venerable wishes to invert is a world.”
A sharp light flashed in Li Fan’s eyes.
“To conceal this purpose, He had to slaughter the entire Alliance party.”
“This means the target He wishes to resurrect is not the Xuanhuang Realm. Rather, it is one of the many cultivation worlds that have been swallowed by the Xuanhuang Realm over the years.”
“Interesting. Is He yearning for his lost homeland?”
After combing through the sequence of logic once more, Li Fan nodded slightly. “No wonder this person has kept a low profile all these years, never exposing Himself to the public eye. This move can truly be called borrowing a corpse to return a soul. Once successful, His homeland world might indeed be restored to life.”
“Yet the fate of the Xuanhuang Realm itself would be hard to say.”
“If this leaked out, it would certainly face violent resistance from the native cultivators of the Xuanhuang Realm.”
“Turns out, just like me, He is doing things that cannot see the light of day.”
The corners of Li Fan’s mouth curved into a faint smile.
“However, all these designs are destined to come to naught.”
The smile vanished in an instant.
Li Fan’s attention returned to the True Immortal remains.
By now, it had already returned to the Xuanhuang Realm.
As the direct culprit behind the fall of the three Dharma Transmitters, it was pursued and intercepted by the Alliance the moment it showed itself.
This time, the Alliance was moving in earnest.
After all, during the previous incident involving Mo Rubin’s soul possession, not a single Dharma Transmitter had perished.
Now, three had fallen all at once; the shockwave reverberating through the Council of Dharma Transmitters was easily imagined.
More than a dozen Dharma Transmitters appeared in unison, locking onto the True Immortal remains in the center.
Among the crowd, Li Fan even spotted the curator of the Shenzang Museum, that beast-race Di Sanmo.
Compared to his image in the Fallen Immortal Realm, he looked considerably older.
Yet he seemed hardly concerned with the Alliance’s manhunt.
Expressionless, his eyes were half-closed.
Evidently, his presence was merely going through the motions.
Besides him, Li Fan finally laid eyes on the lineage of Mirror Keepers.
They were all clad in dark-green Daoist robes, with mirror-like marks engraved upon their foreheads.
The three powers that truly controlled the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals were gathered here together, demonstrating the sheer magnitude of the fallout from the deaths of the three Dharma Transmitters.
Under the influence of these converging powers, Li Fan sensed his control over the True Immortal remains weakening.
Just as he prepared to detonate the remains, tearing open the passage between the Xuanhuang Realm proper and the Nether Realm to unleash a Nether Sea surge, something occurred that left him utterly bewildered.
As if receiving some sudden message, the core figures of the Alliance, who had been poised for action, froze.
First came confusion and disbelief.
Then, without hesitation, they acted in complete unison.
Their figures blurred; turning a blind eye to the culprit right before them, they prepared to depart!
Li Fan even saw Di Sanmo, who had previously kept his eyes closed, snap them open as if something arriving had seized his attention.
Far away in the Spirit Wood Realm, an ominous premonition surged in Li Fan’s heart.
Years of experience prompted him to make an immediate choice.
He severed his connection to the True Immortal remains and detonated them on the spot.
At the very moment the body of the True Immortal remains shattered inch by inch, a figure of white mist silently materialized beside it.
It appeared without the slightest omen, arriving with terrifying speed.
Yet it was still one step too late.
Endless gloom poured out from the fractures in the True Immortal remains, colliding with the white mist surging from the misty figure.
The great tide of gloom Li Fan had anticipated did not arrive.
The white mist functioned like waterproof sandbags, or a seawall standing forever firm against the waves, staunchly keeping out the catastrophe-level tide of gloom.
***
Within the Spirit Wood Realm, a trace of coldness crossed Li Fan’s face.
“What does this mean?”
“The two sides joined hands?”
“Just to find me, they don't even care about the deaths of Dharma Transmitters?”
Chapter 1111