Jiushan Province.
"Today is truly a fine day." Zhao Xian penned his name upon the golden covenant before him. Once a wisp of golden light entered his body and established the contract, he burst into delighted laughter.
The delegation from the Five Elders Association inside the shop put away the covenant, their faces likewise beaming with delight as they chimed in with agreement.
For most of the rest of the day, Zhao Xian engaged in further, detailed consultations with the Five Elders Association regarding the trade agreement. Only after seeing them off to the reception cave abode within the city to rest did he finally exhale a long sigh of relief.
Rather than returning to his own cave abode, he turned back to the shop and went down into an underground secret chamber.
Gazing at the faceless stone statue cloaked in darkness, a complex expression crossed Zhao Xian's face, a thousand thoughts racing through his mind.
Ever since the Myriad Realms Association had been eradicated by the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals and placed on a permanent hunt-and-kill list, Zhao Xian, as a hidden pawn of the Federation in Jiushan Province, had lived in constant dread and terror.
Every day, restless and on edge, he would frequently suffer hallucinations of the Alliance coming knocking at his door to arrest him without warning.
Without the Federation supplying goods, the shop's inventory had also suffered a tremendous blow. Customer traffic dwindled daily until he was nearly at the brink of giving up. In the end, he had begged everyone he could, burning through all the family fortune he had accumulated over the years, before barely managing to rebuild the supply chain.
"Fortunately, it has all passed," Zhao Xian told himself.
The storm surrounding the Federation had subsided.
Even during the days of the Alliance's fiercest crackdowns, they had failed to uncover his true identity. Going forward, there should be virtually no danger left.
After several years of painstaking management, the shop's business had gotten back on track. Recently, he had even secured a commercial agreement with a merchant caravan from the Five Elders Association. Each year, the guaranteed transaction volume alone was valued at over ten million contribution points.
"Though I no longer receive the True Immortal's rewards, the shop's profits alone will be enough to support my cultivation all the way to the Soul Formation realm."
"With the Federation wiped out, there is no need to hand over profits; everything goes straight into my own pocket. Life is even more comfortable than before..." Zhao Xian thought, somewhat smugly.
"Misfortune and fortune indeed depend on each other; how fickle the world's affairs are."
Taking one last glance at the faceless stone statue, Zhao Xian decided in his heart to seal this underground chamber permanently.
From now on, the secret that he had once been a member of the Myriad Realms Association would never be known by anyone.
"The True Immortal is merciful and surely will not blame me." Zhao Xian respectfully performed one final bow, then sealed the secret chamber shut.
Having done all this, Zhao Xian felt as though a great burden had been lifted, like a man reborn.
Yet on his way back to his cave abode, as he looked up at the azure sky of the Xuanhuang Realm, waves of unease suddenly surged within his heart for reasons he could not fathom.
Zhao Xian had always placed immense faith in his intuition, and his steps instantly froze.
Carefully reviewing every detail of his recent daily life, he pondered for a long time without finding a single thing amiss.
"Strange..."
As the disordered feeling grew increasingly potent, Zhao Xian felt a sudden premonition and looked toward the people around him.
What he saw instantly made cold sweat break out all over his body.
It was not just him.
In the free trade city of Jiushan Province, at this moment, nearly all the cultivators strolling through the streets seemed to faintly sense that something was wrong. Their minds were a tangled mess, their expressions fraught with tension.
Some were even drenched in cold sweat, their footsteps unsteady.
"This..." Zhao Xian's mind suddenly conjured the image of ants migrating en masse just before a torrential downpour.
"Could a catastrophic calamity be about to strike?"
Zhao Xian inexplicably recalled the origins of this Jiushan Trade Province.
Originally, this had been a chaotic province where nine mountains stood side by side and dragons mixed with snakes. During a clash between the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals and the Five Elders Association, a single glance from a Heavenly Venerable's Dharma manifestation had leveled mountains and rivers into a plain.
Only then did the present, flourishing Jiushan Province come to be.
*Could it be that the events of that day are about to play out again?* Zhao Xian shivered involuntarily at the thought.
Though reason told him that neither the Alliance nor the Five Elders Association would reignite conflict in Jiushan Province for the sake of their mutual interests, the bizarre scene before his eyes made him certain: a disaster was definitely about to unfold!
"Flee!"
After just a split second, Zhao Xian made his decision.
Yes, he loved wealth.
He also wanted to become a great Soul Formation cultivator, dominating an entire region.
Yet the prerequisite for all of that was keeping his life.
With the abilities he had honed in Jiushan Province over the years, even if he were reduced to absolute poverty, he could rise again in another place.
Besides, Zhao Xian had always kept the most valuable items from the shop on his person.
With this thought, Zhao Xian immediately changed direction. Disregarding the city's ban on flight, he sped toward the border of Jiushan Province at top speed.
His abnormal behavior naturally drew the attention of the cultivators in Jiushan City. As if sparking a chain reaction, without rhyme or reason, they too began to flee in panic.
It was like the primal struggle of beasts sensing a mortal threat.
And as it turned out, their premonition was not mistaken.
They had not fled far when a terrifying tremor descended from behind them.
The sky instantly plunged into darkness.
Before countless cultivators could even let out a scream, they were swallowed up by an unknown horror.
Sensing tens of thousands of auras vanish in an instant behind him, extreme terror seized Zhao Xian's mind.
At this juncture, his thoughts spun frantically at unprecedented speed.
*Some terrifying catastrophe has definitely struck Jiushan Province.*
*My strength is clearly insufficient to survive this calamity.*
*I am still far from Jiushan Province's borders. There simply isn't enough time to reach safety.*
*The reason Jiushan Province has no teleportation arrays is that its spatial structure is extremely unstable. Activating a teleportation recklessly will not only fail to reach the intended destination, but randomly transport me somewhere else—or even cause me to be lost in the void forever...*
*Yet at least there remains a sliver of hope for survival...*
Zhao Xian's mind whirled, and his body acted on instinct.
He directly triggered the random teleportation diagram in his storage ring.
The surrounding scene warped and blurred.
After a brief dizzy spell, Zhao Xian escaped Jiushan Province and arrived in an unfamiliar place.
Yet what met his eyes granted him not the slightest joy of having survived a brush with death.
Instead, he felt as though plunged into an icy abyss, his mind going completely blank.
It was as if he were suspended high in the air, looking down upon the Xuanhuang Realm.
Upon the earth, over a thousand black spots were densely scattered.
Like pitch-black abysses, they swallowed everything around them.
The entire world seemed on the verge of being ripped apart by these black spots into curling scraps of paper.
No matter how the cultivators on the earth struggled, they could not last a moment within the black domains.
One after another, they turned into twisted rays of light and vanished into the black spots.
...
"So the catastrophe isn't happening only in Jiushan Province?"
"What is this?"
"Has doomsday arrived? Is the world being destroyed?" Zhao Xian was struck dumb.
Soon, however, his attention was captured by another wondrous spectacle juxtaposed against this apocalyptic scene.
Above the Xuanhuang Realm, which had been torn in an instant into a thousand twisted sheets of paper, there suddenly appeared what looked like an ink-wash painting casually splashed with countless pigments.
Upon this splashed-ink painting, countless scenes shifted rapidly with every passing moment.
Before this bizarre painting, a figure stood with hands clasped behind his back.
As if sensing Zhao Xian's gaze from afar, the figure turned his head.
Before he could even clearly see the figure's face, Zhao Xian's body and divine soul, unable to withstand the immense pressure, detonated with a boom into countless fragments.
Leaving not even an intact corpse behind.
"Hm?"
A moment later, Li Fan already knew how this unfortunate soul had ended up here.
Shaking his head slightly, he paid him no further mind and focused his attention on the myriad changes of heaven and earth gushing forth from the Xuanhuang Realm before him.
Those countless black spots were naturally the immortal power he had drawn forth by launching his world-destroying plan, sending the bait puppets flying toward the Immortal Ruins.
The power of the Immortal of the Immortal Ruins had traveled along the puppets' resonance into the Xuanhuang Realm,
wreaking a boundless, world-ending disaster.
And just as Li Fan had expected, the moment the immortal power of the Immortal Ruins appeared, it triggered an automatic reaction from the statues of the Faceless True Immortal he had placed beside the bait puppets.
None of these statues had physical form; rather, Li Fan had condensed them purely from the Faceless True Immortal's Source Power Essence.
When the world-destroying might of the Immortal Ruins swept toward them,
an unspeakable power emerged inexplicably from the Source Power Essence.
Like a butterfly breaking from its cocoon, or a flower falling to reveal fruit,
the Source Power Essence vanished outright like melting ice and snow. In its place remained only a power incomprehensible to mortals, colliding against the immortal power of the Immortal Ruins.
Like two titanic waves crashing into each other, stirring up tens of thousands of billows,
the Xuanhuang Realm was torn into a thousand fragments in an instant.
Yet it seemed precisely because of the clash between the two that the riddled, battered Xuanhuang Realm did not instantly shatter to pieces in the first moment.
"It seems my worries were superfluous after all."
"The Faceless True Immortal does not appear to have sensed my presence,"
Li Fan thought to himself.
"Extract the marrow of Heaven and Earth to attain its divine essence."
Chanting under his breath, he drew the eerie splashed-ink painting before him entirely into the phantom silhouette of the Five Elements Great Grotto-Heaven behind him.
Before Li Fan's eyes, scenes of the Xuanhuang Realm—its past, its present, and what would have transpired in its future along its original trajectory—played out in succession like a revolving lantern.
Besides this, Li Fan sensed from within it an intense, defiant desire to survive.
The imagery spun rapidly like a vortex, as if something were about to be conceived and born from it.
Savoring it closely, Li Fan unexpectedly detected the Xuanhuang Realm's intention to beg for cooperation.
"When a world is about to die, it is no different from a person."
"Clearly having discovered that I am Falsifying the Heavenly Dao, yet for the sake of a possible sliver of survival, it not only doesn't blame me, but is even willing to cooperate with me..."
"This is something I hadn't anticipated before."
Li Fan let out a cold snort, neither agreeing to the Xuanhuang Realm's plea
nor outright rejecting it.
Instead, he accelerated the speed of extracting the marrow of Heaven and Earth.
As countless about-to-be-born changes merged into his body, earth-shaking changes began taking place within the Five Elements Great Grotto-Heaven.
In stark contrast to the Xuanhuang Realm nearing its apocalypse, the inside of the Five Elements Great Grotto-Heaven exhibited an unprecedented scene of prosperity.
Amid the cycling of the five elements, they tended toward unity.
Metal, wood, water, fire, and earth fused into one, and the once prominent barriers separating the individual grotto-heavens slowly ceased to exist.
A brand-new world teeming with boundless vitality was taking shape.
...
Yet at this moment, just as Li Fan was on the verge of successfully advancing to the Soul Formation realm, he inexplicably sensed a thread of danger.
A beam of light arrived in an instant from beyond the void.
"No!"
After clearly seeing the current state of the Xuanhuang Realm, the newcomer roared in fury.
Then, in an instant, crossing vast distances of space, it locked onto Li Fan.
Their eyes met, both of their faces betraying surprise.
Li Fan was surprised because he had originally thought the one returning would be Chuanfa.
Never had he imagined that in this lifetime, the figure appearing...
would be the Heavenly Physician.
And the Heavenly Physician was stunned that Li Fan, ostensibly the last successor of the Tianfa Realm, was somehow here.
Moreover, he was ruthlessly extracting the Xuanhuang Realm's marrow of Heaven and Earth.
*He sure returned quickly,* Li Fan sighed internally.
"True Reversion."
Without the slightest hesitation, Li Fan immediately chanted in his heart.
Under the influence of the immortal power from the Immortal Ruins, Li Fan sensed that the True Immortal's net binding him had loosened.
The Heavenly Physician had also discovered him.
Thus, no longer being greedy, he activated True Reversion directly.
The surrounding scenery abruptly became illusory and void.
At this exact moment, Li Fan distinctly saw the shock on the Heavenly Physician's face, along with the sudden burst of brilliance erupting from his cloudy eyes.
*What did he notice?* Li Fan's heart tightened abruptly.
Yet the surrounding scenery had already ground almost to a halt.
Even as formidable as the Heavenly Physician was, his movements appeared unimaginably sluggish in Li Fan's eyes.
Thick fog enveloped every sight.
All things in the world were about to turn from real into false, from substance into illusion.
Right at this moment...
From within those thousands of black spots across the Xuanhuang Realm, dazzling radiance suddenly erupted.
The immortal power of the Immortal Ruins, capable of easily tearing the Xuanhuang Realm to shreds, was forcefully suppressed at this moment!
Among all the frozen frames, only this brilliance was least affected.
Even though it still seemed in slow motion to Li Fan,
it surged toward him at an astonishing speed nonetheless.
"The Faceless True Immortal!"
Li Fan's heart felt as though it had been violently seized by a hand.
Any threat from the Heavenly Physician was thrown to the back of his mind in an instant.
*He noticed me after all...*
"Heaven and Earth Myriad Spirits, All Living Beings Spirit Refining!"
A colossal crimson net unfurled around Li Fan.
Layer upon layer, dense and closely packed.
It was visibly composed of countless hideous human faces.
Rising from Li Fan, the red net expanded wildly outward.
Living beings in the net, hundreds of billions, trillions, let out their death throes in unison.
The dazzling radiance ignored the giant red net, advancing unswervingly toward Li Fan.
Li Fan had never felt True Reversion's activation time to be so agonizingly slow.
Seeing the dazzling white light about to crash before his very eyes,
his body could not help but grow rigid and cold.
Even his thoughts began to freeze.
Fortunately...
the giant red net had, after all, provided a fraction of hindrance.
In the split second before the dazzling radiance could lock onto Li Fan,
Li Fan successfully triggered True Reversion.
All scenes turned illusory.
Only that dazzling white light remained blindingly bright.
...
Anchored Year 1.
The summit of Mount Jieli.
Having narrowly escaped death, Li Fan was drenched in sweat, panting heavily in ragged gasps.
"Is this the might of a True Immortal?"
"Even the wills of trillions of living beings are so pale and powerless before it."
As Li Fan was thinking this, he suddenly felt that something seemed strange with his body.
He was not seeing through his eyes at this moment, because...
Li Fan reached up and touched his face. His body instantly trembled slightly.
His face was gone.
Chapter 1126