Along the way, Sun Luyuan could clearly feel the restless stirring of the Boundless Mirror in his robes, as well as his brother Sun Luyao's familiar, frantic roars. He forcefully suppressed it until he had safely returned, and only then did he let him out.
"Brother, give it to me! Quick! I can't take it anymore!"
The mirror's surface shook violently. Sun Luyao's smokelike black shadow twisted erratically, as though battered by a howling gale.
"Calm down!"
Sun Luyuan barked in a low voice. With practiced ease, he offered a drop of his own essence blood to soothe his brother's frenzy before finally producing the mirror he had retrieved from the ruins of Baishi Grotto-Heaven.
The shared, identical aura proved that the core of this mirror was indeed a fragment of the Boundless Mirror. However, it had been reforged into a standalone magical treasure.
Sun Luyuan cautiously broke the lingering restrictions upon it before tossing it to his brother.
With the shackles removed, the darkness greedily drifted above the mirror.
A murky beam of light sprayed from Sun Luyao's mouth, eroding the ancient relic.
As the mirror gradually vanished into the black light, the somewhat weathered, broken Boundless Mirror that Sun Luyao possessed began to transform at a pace visible to the naked eye.
The scars of time slowly faded. The antique decay disappeared, replaced by a weathered solemnity born of weathering countless tribulations.
From time to time, a heart-palpitating luster surged across the Boundless Mirror's surface, causing even Sun Luyuan's heart to tremble slightly.
*Is this the might of an immortal artifact...?* he thought to himself, growing increasingly eager to see what his brother would be capable of once he awoke from the devouring.
Meanwhile, the true master of the Boundless Mirror—Li Fan's divided sense hiding inside—was able to witness its metamorphosis, or rather its restoration, even more directly.
The Wuliang, Primordial Chaos Squared Array, which had been rife with missing sections, was slowly being pieced back together.
As though it had regained a core, an indescribably wondrous power poured forth like a gentle stream from the array, nourishing the Boundless Mirror's battered, aged form.
This was the very reason the immortal artifact seemed to rejuvenate in the blink of an eye to outside eyes.
In the process, Li Fan's divided sense benefited as well, beginning to transform from a divided sense into a divided soul.
Li Fan even had a feeling that if he kept seizing the chance to absorb energy from the Boundless Mirror, his divided sense might eventually grow stronger than even his true self's soul!
One had to remember that Li Fan had reached his current realm one solid step at a time, building an extraordinarily unshakeable foundation.
Setting aside the theoretical accumulation gained across multiple cycles of reincarnation, the Five Elements Great Grotto-Heaven and the Xuanhuang Creation and Destruction Transformation alone embodied the very essence of the Xuanhuang Realm.
Yet the pinnacle of the Dao Integration stage forged upon such foundations could actually be matched by the energy within this single broken mirror!
Even if it was only in the realm of the soul, it still left Li Fan deeply shaken.
He voiced the exact same sentiment as Sun Luyuan: *Is this the might of an immortal artifact?*
The energy surging within the Boundless Mirror felt like order, yet also like vibrant life.
Just as Li Fan thought it would completely restore the Boundless Mirror, however, the mirror suddenly slipped from control and plummeted to the floor.
A burst of light and shadow projected from the mirror's surface, washing over the subterranean chamber.
Scenes flashed past at lightning speed.
The prophetic visions within struck both Sun Luyuan and Li Fan with tremendous shock.
The peaceful land of Xuanhuang was engulfed in war.
Cultivators of the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals were locked in a slaughterous clash against another, unknown faction.
Beams of light flew across the skies like arrows; wherever they struck, earth-shattering explosions tore through the land.
A golden, gleaming giant fought fiercely against a bare-chested, black-haired man, neither able to overcome the other.
Buffeted by their clashes, even the White Mist Barrier between heaven and earth twisted and ruptured.
What was even more terrifying was the presence of a figure in black imperial robes towering above everyone on the battlefield, their face shrouded and indistinct.
Opposite this figure stood another equally blurred silhouette.
*Boom!*
As though pushed to the absolute limit of deduction, the projected images warped together in an instant, erupting into a violent burst of white light.
Once the light died down, only a deathly, pitch-black silence remained.
*Hiss!*
A fresh crack appeared across the recently mended surface of the Boundless Mirror.
Sun Luyao let out a miserable scream as his black shadow was violently sucked back inside.
"Brother!"
Snapping back from his shock, Sun Luyuan's expression changed, and he reached out to grab the Boundless Mirror.
Yet the moment he drew near, his hand jerked back as though scalded by a scorching blaze.
Sun Luyuan stared grimly at his outstretched right hand.
In just a fleeting breath, it seemed to have weathered thousands of years. The flesh had shriveled, and deep wrinkles had emerged.
Nor was it merely his physical body.
Sun Luyuan felt as though a portion of his soul had genuinely experienced the passage of immense time, leaving it impossible to restore to its original state.
If a mere careless touch did this much, one could only imagine what Li Fan's divided sense inside the mirror was enduring.
Earlier, when Li Fan saw the future of the Xuanhuang Realm spontaneously deduced within the mirror, he had wanted to scrutinize it closely amidst his astonishment.
Yet a sudden, fatal sense of crisis surged within him, leaving him no leisure to care about any of that.
This obliterating power had been concealed in the deepest recesses of the Boundless Mirror. Even Li Fan's divided sense, which had largely gained control over the artifact, had failed to detect the slightest trace of it before it erupted.
And when it arrived, it struck with devastating, explosive fury.
As though capable of grinding away time itself, the Boundless Mirror—which had just absorbed the fragment and regained some vitality—instantly weathered the frost and storms of countless calamities, decaying once more.
At the mirror's core, the Primordial Chaos Squared Array looked as though a tempest had torn through it, its newly restored structures shattering into ruin once again.
Naturally, Li Fan's divided sense could not escape unscathed.
Already nothing more than a wisp of a remnant sense, it quickly dwindled like a candle in the wind, on the verge of dispersing entirely.
Fortunately, he had previously used formation refining to largely bring the Boundless Mirror under his control. Residing within it, he was able to draw on the mirror's power to put up a measure of resistance.
Furthermore, at the critical moment when he sensed his divided sense was about to collapse, Li Fan instinctively began chanting the Xuanhuang Immortal Heart Incantation.
While it could not reclaim what had already eroded away, it vastly slowed the rate at which his divided sense faded amidst the storm.
After a long, bitter struggle, the terrifying disaster within the mirror finally began to disperse.
Li Fan realized it had not vanished.
Rather, it had retreated once more into the depths of the Boundless Mirror, returning to dormancy.
Only then did Sun Luyuan's anxious voice faintly filter in.
"Brother, what happened to you?"
Having suffered catastrophic damage, Sun Luyao was utterly unable to respond.
Seeing this, Sun Luyuan reacted swiftly.
He immediately carried the Boundless Mirror into the Sun Clan's essence blood pool.
Though called an essence blood pool, it carried not the slightest stench of blood. Instead, it was filled with the rich fragrance of heavenly treasures.
Nor was the water a bloody red; it shimmered with the dreamlike, iridescent hues of a rainbow, like flowing celestial light.
Submerged within it, Li Fan's visibly aged divided sense finally felt a wave of relief.
"Why is it being depleted so quickly?" Sun Luyuan exclaimed softly upon seeing how fast the pool's water changed color.
Gritting his teeth, he turned and left, clearly heading out to gather more essence blood.
Chapter 1207