"Did you make another loss on a deal, Fellow Daoist Jiao?" Li Fan teased.
Seeing a customer arrive, Jiao Xiuyuan instantly wiped the fury from his face and replaced it with a beaming smile.
Yet upon hearing Li Fan's banter, his face darkened once more.
He chuckled sheepishly. "What are you talking about, Fellow Daoist? I, Jiao, never do business at a loss."
Then, gritting his teeth, he muttered under his breath, "That brat actually dared to play me for a fool. Does he really think I, Jiao Xiuyuan, am an easy target..."
Li Fan felt as though he had heard him say this more than once, so he simply smiled without replying.
Looking at the small cauldron resting on the table, Li Fan changed the subject. "Fellow Daoist Jiao, what is this small cauldron...?"
Jiao Xiuyuan's eyes lit up, and he immediately launched into an enthusiastic pitch. "This little cauldron is extraordinary. It cost me painstaking effort to unearth it from the ruins of a destroyed sect."
"Oh? What use does it have?" Li Fan grew interested. Most objects that had survived the Great Calamity and endured to the present day were far from ordinary.
"Do you know of the renowned Medicine King Sect, Fellow Daoist?" Jiao Xiuyuan asked mysteriously.
"Never heard of it," Li Fan replied, shaking his head.
Jiao Xiuyuan's smile froze instantly.
Fortunately, he possessed strong professional discipline and promptly began explaining.
"The Medicine King Sect was also one of the illustrious sects of the ancient era. They were universally famous for pill refinement and herb cultivation.
"Supposedly, after the Immortal Venerable imparted the Dao and before the Great Calamity struck, the sect master of the Medicine King Sect at the time, Liu Ruchen, faintly sensed that a monumental upheaval was about to engulf heaven and earth.
"Thus, Liu Ruchen adopted an extremely forceful stance, leading the entire Medicine King Sect aboard the Medicine King Cauldron as a vessel to cleave through the void and break through the realm's boundary to depart."
This was the first time Li Fan had heard such an anecdote. "Broke through the realm's boundary and left? Where did they go?"
Jiao Xiuyuan shrugged. "That happened thousands of years ago. Who could possibly know? Perhaps they went to one of the stray minor worlds nearby, or perhaps to a brand-new world. Regardless, that's not the point.
"The point is this cauldron!"
Li Fan nodded slightly, while his avatar, Lin Fan, swiftly searched for the keyword: "world."
Relevant information surfaced at once.
It was not cheap—it actually cost over a thousand contribution points.
Purchasing it, he read on.
In ancient times, cultivators had already established a foundational worldview.
The cultivation world they currently inhabited was not the only existing world.
Not only did many attached minor worlds and miniature independent grotto-heavens exist around the perimeter of this world,
but beyond the endless void, there also existed other worlds similar to their own.
Before the Great Calamity, that ancient, flourishing cultivation world had engaged in frequent exchanges with those other worlds.
Back then, cultivators all referred to themselves as "cultivators of the Xuanhuang Realm."
...
Li Fan paused briefly.
"Xuanhuang..."
Thoughts surged through his mind as he continued reading.
However, starting from a certain day, these contacts and exchanges had abruptly ceased for reasons unknown.
Cultivators had once attempted to traverse the void to investigate the other worlds with which they had previously interacted.
Yet none of them ever returned.
Later, the Great Calamity descended, and heaven and earth underwent a cataclysmic transformation.
The Xuanhuang Realm became akin to a world in isolation.
Shattering the void and leaving this place became countless times more difficult.
Only several centuries after the slaughter ceased and order was re-established did new cultivators attempt to make contact with other worlds once again.
Yet throughout all these years, they had discovered nothing.
Even so, relevant research seemed to be ongoing, never truly abandoned.
...
*So that's how it is. The Xuanhuang Realm, is it?*
*Could it be that the Xuanhuang Mind-Clearing Incantation was handed down from the ancient era? But back then, the immortal-mortal miasma clearly hadn't appeared yet. The timeline doesn't quite match up.*
Li Fan pondered in silence.
What truly transpired during the ancient era was not clearly documented in written records, even within the Heavenly Mystery Realm.
What was certain was that there was no shortage of cultivators who had survived from that era to the present day—
such as the white-haired elder Li Fan had met before.
Yet without exception, they all maintained silence on the matter, leaving that period of history veiled in mist, enigmatic and bewildering.
Cultivators of today could only catch glimpses of what had happened in ancient times through hearsay.
What Kou Hong had told Li Fan back then was merely the version universally circulated in the present cultivation world:
that the descent of the Great Calamity and the incompatibility of immortal methods occurred before the prevalence of the immortal-mortal miasma.
Yet later, Li Fan had found the tomb of Yi Xing, an outer disciple of the Taiyan Sect.
Judging by the depictions on the tomb murals, the Taiyan Sect had clearly still existed when the immortal-mortal miasma ran rampant.
Yi Xing had been tasked with relocating mortals.
This contradicted Kou Hong's account.
Li Fan placed greater trust in the "archaeological" evidence he had found himself.
*According to Kou Hong, some time seems to have elapsed between the moment immortal methods could no longer be jointly cultivated and the total descent of the slaughter.*
*Perhaps that period was even longer than imagined.*
*It makes sense. Cultivators back then would have realized the consequences of the incompatibility immediately, so they would have tried every conceivable method to save themselves.*
*The collapse of order didn't happen overnight. Who knows how long the ancient cultivation world had existed; it wouldn't have been so fragile.*
*Moreover, cultivators operate on a vastly larger timescale than mortals.*
*In the ancient cultivation world, cultivators enjoyed immense lifespans.*
*Ten or twenty years to them might have been nothing more than a single period of secluded cultivation.*
*True terror, despair, and slaughter would have fully erupted only when they could no longer make any progress in their cultivation and their lifespans were nearing their end.*
*At first, order could still be barely maintained. But later, the immortal-mortal miasma broke out...*
Li Fan narrowed his eyes slightly.
Naturally, this was only his speculation based on the various clues at hand.
There might be other hidden truths behind the facts.
Even so, the reality was likely not far from his conjecture.
...
While Li Fan was lost in thought, Jiao Xiuyuan noticed that he had received no reaction despite talking for quite a while.
He picked up the small cauldron and waved it in front of Li Fan's eyes.
"Fellow Daoist, what do you think? Do you want this Small Medicine King Cauldron or not?"
Li Fan snapped back to his senses, his expression unchanged. "What are the specific uses of this cauldron? Could you repeat it, Fellow Daoist Jiao? I was thinking about something else just now."
Resigned, Jiao Xiuyuan had no choice but to repeat his introduction. "This Small Medicine King Cauldron was used by disciples of the Medicine King Sect to plant and nurture all kinds of spiritual flora and medicinal herbs.
"It contains an internal space of its own and can continuously generate wood-attribute spiritual energy to accelerate the growth of herbs."
Hearing this, Li Fan frowned. "With such a treasure, why did that person just now refuse it?"
Jiao Xiuyuan gave an awkward smile and told the truth without deceit: "Do you not know yet, Fellow Daoist? The first batch of spiritual flora and medicinal herbs cultivated from that newly discovered wood-attribute spiritual energy grotto-heaven of the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals has already gone on sale.
"The quantity is extraordinarily vast, so..."
Jiao Xiuyuan tilted his head helplessly.
"The prices have crashed."
Chapter 112