If Heavenly Venerable Chuanfa had an avatar watching over Xuanhuang, a large-scale war between the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals and the Five Elders Association would never have been possible.
Perhaps the Five Elders Association was merely a tool Chuanfa deliberately indulged to maintain the delicate balance of the Xuanhuang Realm. He might not truly care about wars between them, and might even be pleased to see them unfold.
However, the Xuanhuang Realm harbored far too many monsters and aberrations lurking in the shadows, not to mention the Immortal Ruins looming in the distance.
In a situation where a single mishap could bring destruction upon the Xuanhuang Realm, leaving an avatar behind in the Xuanhuang Realm would undoubtedly have been the most prudent course of action.
Yet Heavenly Venerable Chuanfa, who treasured the Xuanhuang Realm above all else, had conspicuously chosen not to do so.
In the two instances where Li Fan destroyed the world, during one, Chuanfa arrived late from beyond the heavens, letting out an impotent roar of fury.
During the other, he had failed to appear altogether, and only the Heavenly Physician had manifested.
This seemed exceptionally peculiar.
Could crafting an avatar truly be difficult for Chuanfa?
Avatar cultivation methods were indeed scarce in the Xuanhuang Realm, yet Li Fan had repeatedly stirred up tempests using avatar techniques. How much more so could the forefather of the New Cultivation System?
Something that could be accomplished with a wave of a hand, yet he obstinately refused to do so...
In truth, regarding why Heavenly Venerable Chuanfa left no avatar to watch over the realm, while cultivators of the Xuanhuang Realm dared not discuss it openly, private speculation was rampant.
The consensus was nothing more than that Chuanfa had transcended worldly affairs and no longer cared so deeply about the Xuanhuang Realm.
Evidently, they understood neither the Xuanhuang Realm nor Heavenly Venerable Chuanfa.
Yet in Li Fan's eyes, what if Heavenly Venerable Chuanfa himself was an avatar...?
Then everything fell neatly into place.
It was not that he did not want to; he simply could not!
In his 119th lifetime, the strength of his avatar, Li Qing, had drawn infinitely close to his original self, reaching the peak of Nascent Soul.
He was just a single step away from surpassing the true self.
Back then, the question of whether an avatar's strength could surpass the original body had arisen in Li Fan's mind.
Later, after using the core authority of the Heavenly Mystery Mirror to pore over all kinds of ancient records, Li Fan had gained a faint enlightenment.
An avatar's strength surpassing the original body, versus an avatar crafting an avatar of its own.
Between the two, the latter was likely far more difficult to achieve.
For if an avatar could also craft an avatar of its own, the chain could extend infinitely. The ultimate outcome would be a world where only a single individual existed.
It was not strictly impossible, but it had already transcended the bounds of ordinary laws.
In comparison, having an avatar surpass the original body in strength was somewhat easier to accomplish.
"The Heavenly Physician, Chuanfa..."
Two faces surfaced in Li Fan's mind one after the other. He suddenly recalled that when he had first entered the headquarters of the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals, he had seen the Statue of the Dharma-Transmitting Heavenly Venerable within an illusion.
Back then, an instinctual familiarity had caused his body to sound an alarm on its own.
And prior to that moment, the only entity beyond Dao Integration in the Xuanhuang Realm he had ever laid eyes on was the Heavenly Physician.
"Though their faces differed, there was a subtle, uncanny resemblance between them."
"At the Alliance headquarters, a trace of Heavenly Venerable Chuanfa's aura lingers. Any cultivator visiting for the first time feels a stirring in their heart and experiences an illusion. My true self saw the Statue of the Dharma-Transmitting Heavenly Venerable, but my avatar Li Qing saw..."
The Dao Assimilation Stone emitted a faint white glow, faithfully reproducing the scene recorded back then.
Within a hazy cluster of light, several figures stood tall.
Intermittent voices drifted out.
"How confident are you in this departure?"
"I shall do all that is humanly possible and leave the rest to heaven."
"That doesn't sound like something you would say."
"The disparity in strength is too vast. There is no choice but to stake everything on a desperate gamble."
"Very well, go then. Who knows whether it will bring fortune or ruin."
...
Li Fan then recalled the scene he had witnessed within Hanhai's chaotic consciousness when treating him in his 119th lifetime.
"Venerable Heavenly Physician has been gone for a long time. I wonder if the undertaking will succeed."
Seated upon the main hall of the sect, Hanhai listened as the Tortoise-Snake Taiyi, shrunk to the size of an ordinary turtle at his feet, spoke dejectedly.
"Before departing, Venerable Heavenly Physician said there was at least a ninety percent chance of success. You and I should have a little more faith in Him." Unlike Taiyi's gloom, Hanhai appeared quite relaxed, offering a smiling reassurance.
...
Li Fan rubbed his chin.
Under the premise of the hypothesis that "Heavenly Venerable Chuanfa is an avatar of the Heavenly Physician," all the fragmented clues gathered in the past suddenly connected together in an instant.
Li Fan once more combed through his memories of the past.
Sure enough, he discovered even more subtle traces.
...
Yinyin Island.
Pointing to the two human skeletons in his personal collection, Master Yin leaned close to Li Fan and whispered in a barely audible tone, "These two people aren't the same kind of human."
"Not the same kind of human?" Li Fan was startled. "What do you mean?"
Master Yin gestured with his hands for a while and pondered, seemingly unable to find the right words to describe it.
After struggling for a long moment, he clenched his fist tightly, his face fraught with distress. "It's just a feeling—you understand feeling, right? They're both clearly human, but these two humans lived in different eras and different regions. Maybe they looked almost identical, and I dug them both up from the depths of the Cloud Sea floor, but there is an extraordinarily distinct demarcation marking the difference between these two skeletons..."
Master Yin spoke of it in arcane, nebulous terms, rambling for a long time without managing to articulate the exact reason.
...
During the second Simulation of Tianyang's Eternal Lingering Thought.
To cast off Tianyang's frail body as quickly as possible and awaken from his coma, Li Fan had delved into the Heavenly Physician Immortal Scripture, prescribing a medicinal formula for himself and instructing his senior brother to concoct it.
It had indeed been effective, but later, when he woke up, Second Senior Brother Ling Xiao said to him:
"Junior Brother, you were quite lucky, frankly speaking. Several of the medicinal herbs in the pill formula you gave us were unheard of. We asked throughout all the surrounding market towns, but couldn't find anyone selling them. Some even claimed those herbs simply didn't exist in the cultivation world.
"Heh, I didn't believe it. How could it be that in a single prescription, all the other medicinal herbs were available, yet only these few didn't exist?
"So I stood my ground and got into an argument with them.
"Fortunately, a disciple of the Medicine King Sect happened to pass by and, intrigued by our dispute, asked about our specific prescription.
"He then selected several common herbs as substitutes based on pharmacology.
"That was the only reason you were able to take your medicine, Junior Brother!"
...
Back when he had met Immortal Venerable Jicheng to receive the reward of the Dharma-Audience Jade Plaque.
Immortal Venerable Jicheng had once pointed to an Azure Cloud Willow in his courtyard and asked Li Fan, Han Yi, and Ximen Yue if they knew the details of the tree.
Neither Han Yi nor Ximen Yue knew, and only Li Fan, who had thoroughly studied the Heavenly Physician Immortal Scripture, had identified it immediately.
Afterward, Immortal Venerable Jicheng gave Li Fan much guidance on account of this.
At first Li Fan had been puzzled, but upon further inquiry later, he came to understand.
Ancient Ink Bamboo, Wild Green Wood, Innocent Flowers, Hundred-Spirit Hawks, Ninefold Refined Deer, and over a hundred other flora and fauna recorded in the Heavenly Physician Immortal Scripture—these plants and beasts, which should have been quite common, had unexpectedly become scarce in today's Xuanhuang Realm.
The Azure Cloud Willow was currently found in small numbers only in certain parts of Luoyan Province. Luoyan Province also happened to be Immortal Venerable Jicheng's homeland. Jicheng had mistaken Li Fan for a fellow countryman back then, which was why he had shown him extra favor.
...
"The Heavenly Physician was a cultivator from the Tianfa Realm. Between different cultivation realms, subtle variations in species exist. That is why so many spiritual medicines recorded in the Heavenly Physician Immortal Scripture were completely absent from the ancient Xuanhuang Realm. Naturally, when the master and disciples of the Path of Bodily Transformation inquired with surrounding cultivators, they were told everywhere that those herbs did not exist.
"Yet the Azure Cloud Willow, which originally existed only in the Tianfa Realm, has appeared in certain provinces today, countless years later. This is precisely a sign of the Tianfa Realm merging into Xuanhuang.
"The confluence of two realms.
"Of the two human skeletons on the floor of the Cloud Sea, one belonged to a Xuanhuang native, while the other was the remains of a human from the Tianfa Realm. Though both were human, subtle differences existed because they originated from different cultivation worlds. The difference was so minute that even with Master Yin's capabilities, he could not determine the cause.
"It is not just the Cloud Sea that came from the Tianfa Realm. Many more provinces in the Xuanhuang Realm also hail from the Heavenly Physician's homeland.
"Studies of Mountains and Rivers Across Past and Present, authored by Ximen Yu, deduced the shifts in mountains and rivers between antiquity and the present. Rather than simply expanding outward after devouring other small worlds and grotto-heavens, the Xuanhuang Realm seemed to have been dismembered and partitioned, with fragments of other worlds inserted into the gaps as filler."
Li Fan's thoughts churned.
"In the Fallen Immortal Illusion, Ningyuan City and the Zixiao Sect were not far apart. Yet in the real world, Mr. Bai's underground secret chamber in Ningyuan City lies buried deep beneath Mount Taixu, while the ruins of the Zixiao Sect lie far away in Linlang Province in the heart of the Alliance. Once part of the same province, thousands of years later, they are separated by whole horizons.
"Merging, restructuring.
"Like a precision surgical operation...
"The Heavenly Physician...
"Over the span of several millennia, the Xuanhuang Realm underwent such earth-shattering changes, yet ordinary cultivators remained completely oblivious. Even when someone exceptionally gifted like Ximen Yu managed to see through the fog and discern the truth, his work was suppressed by the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals, prevented from spreading."
Piecing all the clues together, Li Fan roughly reconstructed a possible, hazy truth.
After King Xuantian vanished and the Xuantian Sect was wiped out, the Xuanhuang Realm ushered in the era ruled by the Ten Sects of the Immortal Dao.
Yet the threat of the Immortal Ruins did not change with the shifting of power in the Xuanhuang Realm.
The Ten Sects still had to resolve the peril of plummeting into the Immortal Ruins.
The Xuantian Sect's Grand Star-Crossing Array was evidently the most effective method available.
Thus, the Ten Sects continued to drive the grand array, capturing other worlds from the void.
At last, on a certain day, they collided unexpectedly with the Tianfa Realm.
Judging from the combat prowess of figures like Tianjue and Tianyu, the overall strength of the Tianfa Realm back then was hardly inferior to that of the Xuanhuang Realm.
Moreover, the Xuanhuang Realm had just endured internal strife, with its supreme powerhouse, King Xuantian, and the Twelve Dharma Kings beneath him all having their fates left unknown.
The Tianfa Realm naturally would not sit idly by awaiting doom.
An extraordinarily colossal, bloody war erupted between the two sides.
The Cloud Water Heavenly Palace of the Tianfa Realm, the Path of Bodily Transformation of the Xuanhuang Realm—
Neither counted as exceptionally powerful sects, yet in that war, nearly all of their disciples fought to the death until exhausted.
"Perhaps even the Grand Star-Crossing Array was damaged around that time.
"In the late stages of the war, both sides found themselves riding a tiger, unable to dismount, bogged down in a stalemate.
"It was precisely then that the Heavenly Physician devised a scheme to become 'Chuanfa'—infiltrating the Xuanhuang Realm to shake its foundations with a new cultivation system and unravel Xuanhuang from within.
"Yet for unknown reasons, an unforeseen twist occurred; by the time Chuanfa manifested upon the lands of Xuanhuang, a considerable period of time had already elapsed.
"And when the Ten Sects of the Immortal Dao collapsed and the Xuanhuang Realm suffered grievous losses in strength...
"When the Heavenly Physician returned to the Tianfa Realm, what met his eyes was a world of ruins and devastated lives."
...
As Li Fan reconstructed this obscured history as best he could, his brow soon furrowed slightly.
Although most pieces seemed to connect, he still sensed a few inconsistencies.
"First is the timeline of Chuanfa and the Heavenly Physician's appearances in the Xuanhuang Realm. Or rather, a time discrepancy occurred during the Heavenly Physician's journeys between the two realms."
Recalling the peculiar journey of the Medicine King Sect, Li Fan could not help casting his gaze toward the Immortal Ruins outside the Xuanhuang Realm.
"Could it be due to the influence of the Immortal Ruins' immortal power?
"Besides that, there is another puzzle. The Xuanhuang Heavenly Dao should naturally mount some degree of rejection against outsiders and foreign anomalies—much like how the collision of differing laws gives birth to anomalies during the fusion of worlds.
"If Chuanfa truly were an outsider, then preaching on a grand scale and attempting to overturn the world's foundations would have inevitably provoked the murderous intent of heaven and earth. Furthermore, I recall that the Ten Sects of the Immortal Dao once investigated Chuanfa's background...
"Even if his exact true identity could not be uncovered, it would hardly be to the point where they couldn't even determine whether or not he was a native cultivator of the Xuanhuang Realm.
"Chuanfa's identity still seems to harbor mysteries."
...
Atop the summit of Mount Jieli, Li Fan stood for a long time, his thoughts refusing to settle.
Only half a month later did he stir from his deep meditation.
He began making preparations for his plans in this lifetime.
"Since I intend to stay hidden behind the scenes, my true self will not show his face under any circumstances.
"Using an avatar to create a target to draw attention is the ideal choice.
"Hmph. The Faceless Holy Emperor who unifies tens of thousands of small worlds..."
Li Fan drifted down the mountain. Using the essence blood of the youths Sun Erlang and Wang Xuanba, he crafted an avatar.
"The Heavenly Emperor's Qi Canon has no requirements regarding aptitude. Besides, the cultivation talent of these two isn't poor either.
"Sever all memories pertaining to True Reversion and myself..."
As a faceless figure slowly took shape before Li Fan, he observed it for a long while before nodding in satisfaction.
"Destiny Holy Emperor, trampling the heavens, making myriad realms submit.
"You shall be named Li Ping!"
With this thought, Li Fan's figure gradually faded.
When the avatar Li Ping awakened, he first swept his gaze over his surroundings.
Then, as if pondering something, he headed straight for the capital of Great Xuan.
Shortly afterward, Li Fan's true self slowly revealed his figure once more.
"Though he possesses merely the Nascent Soul realm without genuine combat prowess, against the mortals of Great Xuan, it is more than enough.
"The trajectory of Great Xuan in this lifetime should proceed as before.
"However, I will make fine adjustments."
...
Li Fan gazed into the distance toward the Ruins Abyss to the east of Great Xuan.
In truth, with his current cultivation at peak Soul Formation—unmatched beneath the Longevity realm and capable of contending even with ordinary cultivators of the Longevity realm—
Even if he traveled to the Xuanhuang Realm before True Reversion finished charging, as long as he did not actively court death, he was unlikely to encounter any fatal danger.
Yet upon further reflection...
Li Fan shook his head after all, resisting the urge.
"There is no rush."
He turned and returned to the thatched cottage atop the mountain peak, sitting down in quiet contemplation.
Chapter 1136