Having finished putting on his act before Young Lord Shang, Sacred Embryo Li Fan turned his full attention to observing the changes outside the Dust-Crossing Boat.
By now, the Dust-Crossing Boat had already reached the world's boundary.
The entire Xuanhuang Realm lay stretched out below him, visible in its entirety.
Li Fan had viewed the Xuanhuang Realm from this perspective before. Back then, just as he had seen through the ultra-long-distance teleportation array, it had been shrouded in a hazy yellow radiance, appearing like a massive sphere of light. The detailed landscapes within the world, upon its land, had been impossible to discern clearly.
Now, however, under the influence of the immense suction pulling from the depths of the star sea, that faint layer of yellow light had been partially pulled back.
The true face of the world hidden beneath was unveiled.
Sacred Embryo Li Fan saw the distorted White Mist Barrier, as well as...
"A monster stitched together from severed limbs and minced flesh."
The phrase surfaced unbidden in Li Fan's mind.
Even from high up in the nine heavens, subtle discrepancies between different regions remained distinguishable. Living beings dwelling across the provinces might find them hard to identify, but looking down from outside the Xuanhuang Realm, one could spot this disharmony at a single glance.
Sacred Embryo Li Fan quickly recovered from his momentary daze.
The Dust-Crossing Boat began to groan and creak, a sign that it was enduring tremendous crushing pressure from the outside.
Sacred Embryo Li Fan felt not the slightest dread. Disregarding it completely, he even accelerated the boat's speed once more.
Once he broke entirely free of the Xuanhuang Realm, he sensed his surroundings suddenly plunge into darkness.
It was like dusk, when the sun drops below the horizon in an instant.
Murkiness, freezing cold, dead silence...
All manner of sensations welled up in Sacred Embryo Li Fan's heart.
The Xuanhuang Immortal Heart Incantation began to circulate on its own, shielding Li Fan from these negative emotions.
"Knowing things through recorded images and puppets truly is different from experiencing them in the flesh."
"Neither synchronized puppet sensations nor the impressions left by the Medicine King Cauldron feel as real as this moment."
Even as Sacred Embryo Li Fan was thinking this, he suddenly turned his head to look back.
In that fleeting instant, an unfounded sense of insecurity had surged within him. It was as though something would abruptly appear behind him and deliver a fatal blow. Even though his divine sense sweeps had told him clearly that no danger lurked at his back, the gut feeling kept urging him, insisting that he must turn around and look with his own eyes.
Only after confirming that no imagined threat existed did that strange unease gradually recede.
By this point, the faint creaking of the Dust-Crossing Boat had turned into a thunderous roar.
Cracks began spreading across the vessel's hull, as though countless ancient ferocious beasts were relentlessly slamming against it.
The carved formations also began showing signs of fracturing.
Sacred Embryo Li Fan was already prepared to abandon the boat.
Ninety-nine sword silhouettes flashed into existence around him, wheeling and spiraling to carve out a buffer zone of fractured, absolute space.
Sacred Embryo Li Fan's body slowly withered as well, losing its flesh tone to take on a bizarre, metallic luster.
Although the colossal force from the depths of the star sea had indeed exerted a noticeable effect on the suction of the Immortal Ruins, the Immortal Ruins held the home ground advantage after all. Furthermore, some time had elapsed since the anomaly first erupted, and the unknown power from the star sea had already decayed significantly.
Consequently, the Dust-Crossing Boat did not drift toward the depths of the star sea like the previously placed stone puppets.
Instead, it inevitably began to sink slowly toward the Immortal Ruins.
However...
Whether in the curvature of its trajectory's shift or the magnitude of its velocity's change, it was far different from when Li Fan had steered the Medicine King Cauldron and deliberately plunged into the Immortal Ruins.
"My guess was indeed correct! This truly is a once-in-a-millennium opportunity to escape the Xuanhuang Realm!"
Seeing that the Dust-Crossing Boat was on the verge of shattering completely, Sacred Embryo Li Fan hesitated no longer.
"Myriad Swords as Me!"
The silhouettes of tens of thousands of rusted swords within the Sword Tomb faintly emerged behind him. A moment later, these sword shadows dissolved entirely into his body.
The pitch-black void around the Dust-Crossing Boat was illuminated as a blindingly brilliant white radiance erupted from Li Fan's body, swallowing it whole.
Unity of man and sword.
Then, a dazzling sword light, as though cleaving open the heavens and earth, slashed out in an instant.
The Dust-Crossing Boat was swallowed by the sword radiance, vanishing without a trace.
Yet the white sword light turned its back on the Immortal Ruins and shot resolutely toward the depths of the star sea!
This sword radiance was so bright and dazzling that even in the skies of the Xuanhuang Realm below, a star suddenly appeared in broad daylight, rivaling the sun.
At this moment, countless cultivators turned their gazes toward Sacred Embryo Li Fan's position.
Young Lord Shang was dazed for an instant, a deep sense of loss washing over his heart.
Peerless and unstoppable, the sword light sped onward.
Sacred Embryo Li Fan felt the binding pull of the Immortal Ruins grow weaker and weaker.
The reason he could proceed so smoothly was partly due to transforming into the black sword wonder of Heaven to slash out an ultimate strike, but an even more crucial reason was the influence of that mysterious power from the depths of the star sea.
Having stepped beyond the Xuanhuang Realm, he was free from the interference of the world's various laws, allowing him to perceive the remaining forces in the void with much greater clarity.
"Unlike the eternal suction of the Immortal Ruins, this power of the star sea is like a tide—intermittent, yet rolling and surging endlessly."
Sacred Embryo Li Fan felt waves of boundless, majestic might washing over him, giving him the illusion that he was piloting a tiny skiff bobbing and drifting on a tempestuous sea.
"Hmm? Are those the stone puppets I deployed earlier up ahead?"
Not long after advancing through the void, Sacred Embryo Li Fan once again felt the connection that had previously been severed.
Yet what gave Li Fan a jolt was that not all the puppets were intact.
At least a third of the puppets had vanished for unknown reasons!
"Perhaps they were unfortunate and failed to break free from the shackles of the Immortal Ruins."
"Or perhaps..."
Sacred Embryo Li Fan accelerated toward the location of the puppets.
Yet all of a sudden, he instinctively slowed down.
Just now, out of the seventy-four surviving puppets, another one had vanished without reason!
Right under his senses and watchful eye! It had simply disappeared into thin air!
Li Fan had no idea how that puppet had vanished at all!
"The Pitch-Black Star Sea is indeed fraught with perils."
A trace of chill welled up unbidden in Sacred Embryo Li Fan's heart.
Regulating his flying speed, Li Fan had the remaining seventy-three puppets take the lead while he followed far behind.
In the moments that followed, the puppets that periodically vanished without warning demonstrated to Li Fan the treacherous perils of the Pitch-Black Star Sea's void.
As the number of vanished puppets grew, Li Fan gradually realized the truth.
"It doesn't look like these puppets were attacked by some unknown entity. Rather, where they passed was wrong."
"In those spots..."
"Space itself no longer exists. Only pure voids remain."
"Just like pitch-black, bottomless pits scattered across a flat road—one careless step, and one vanishes without a trace, dead or alive."
Even as Li Fan was pondering this, another puppet disappeared.
Only sixty-one remained.
Chapter 1178