By all reason, if these were merely ordinary skeletal remains, Li Fan should not have sensed the slightest aura of a living being from them.
Yet the two bones before him...
They caused Li Fan's heart to clench abruptly, as if the gaze of some unseen existence was fixed upon him.
The stone statues formed by the bones seemed poised to come alive at any moment, faint wisps of an eerie presence leaking from within.
Li Fan acted decisively, immediately cutting off the Boundless Mirror's probe without a word.
The scene before him shifted in an instant.
The bones vanished, and what met his eyes were once again those two seemingly ordinary stone statues.
Only then did the sense of crisis in Li Fan's heart gradually subside.
"Senior..." Terrified by the sight just now, Sun Luyao was at a complete loss.
"Tell your brother to stay far away from those two statues," Li Fan instructed with outward calm, though tumultuous waves were already churning in his mind.
Were those two bones truly the Archmage's?
Judging by their outward form, eight or nine times out of ten they belonged to Archmage Tiandu.
Yet why would he, possessing the body of a half-immortal, have two bones left in the Yishi Sect?
*Could he have been so gravely wounded that he was powerless to reclaim his own bones after they were taken by cultivators?*
The thought flashed across Li Fan's mind for an instant.
Yet he immediately cast a giant question mark over it.
Was that possible?
The power that shrouded all of Yuandao Province and could devour ten years of time indicated that the Archmage had likely not yet fallen.
No matter how severe the injuries of a half-immortal might be, their might was not something cultivators below the immortal realm could contend with.
To say nothing of the fact that he was once an ancient Longevity master.
*Unless...*
*The Boundless Mirror.*
Li Fan looked toward the cowering Sun Luyao, this new spirit of the Boundless Mirror.
Back when the Sun brothers found the battered Boundless Mirror, its immortal artifact spirit was already gone, which was how two mortals had managed to take advantage of the opening.
Judging from the obliteration wind calamity that had erupted from within the Boundless Mirror not long ago, it seemed that in the course of resisting this disaster, its artifact spirit had dispersed and the mirror had been damaged.
*The Boundless Mirror was an ancient Xuanhuang immortal artifact, bestowed upon the Boundless Sect by the Immortal Realm. Even if the Immortal Realm fell to an unspeakable catastrophe, it shouldn't have affected the Boundless Mirror. Yet somehow, this obliteration wind calamity, which should never have appeared in the mortal realm, played out inside the mirror...*
In that instant, Li Fan recalled what had happened on the other side of the star sea, when his Sacred Embryo divided sense infiltrated the Xuan Immortal Boat and brought the formless calamity from the Pitch-Black Star Sea along with it, leading to the gruesome deaths of several cultivators.
*Transmission...*
*From outside Xuanhuang...*
In the history of the Xuanhuang Realm, the only known person who could have had contact with the Immortal Realm and came from beyond Xuanhuang was Archmage Tiandu alone.
*Seen this way, the Boundless Mirror, and perhaps even the Yishi Sect, might have been swept up by the Archmage.*
The past of this place was far too tangled and obscure, and the clues currently at hand were far too sparse, so Li Fan could only make such conjectures.
*Still, if my guess isn't far from the truth, then perhaps the trouble with the Boundless Mirror can be resolved.* Li Fan's eyes flickered.
After learning of the danger here, Ji Hongdao and Sun Luyuan made the sensible choice to temporarily leave the secret chamber.
However, regarding what to do next, a slight disagreement arose between the two.
"The remains of Archmage Tiandu are of monumental importance. We should report this to the Alliance as soon as possible," Ji Hongdao said solemnly.
Sun Luyuan, however, voiced explicit opposition: "Brother Ji, you are being foolish! The Archmage is said to be the teacher of the Ten Sects of the Immortal Dao. If word reaches the Five Elders Association, they will surely stop at nothing to seize them back. A great war would be inevitable, plunging all living beings into misery! Given the current state of the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals, can you guarantee this news won't leak?"
Ji Hongdao was left speechless.
Sun Luyuan continued, "With the way the Dharma Transmitters only have eyes for the Heavenly Venerable..."
"Even if these are the bones of a half-immortal, I doubt they will hold any reverence for them. Once brought to the Alliance, their fate will be either to be researched or to be placed in the Museum of Divine Archives for people to gawk and point at."
"Besides, the Archmage is a legendary half-immortal. Whether he has truly perished is still uncertain. If we desecrate his remains today, we might invite his vengeance tomorrow." Sun Luyuan stopped there, his face full of sincere earnestness.
Ji Hongdao felt somewhat helpless. "Then what do you propose we do?"
"Leave them untouched," Sun Luyuan said resolutely.
"Brother Ji, think about it: even if they are the bones of a half-immortal, what good do they do us? With the new method before us, achieving Longevity is almost hopeless, so how can we speak of becoming immortals?"
"Taking them might invite catastrophic disaster in the future without offering any real benefit. Why bring trouble upon ourselves?"
...
In the end, Ji Hongdao was persuaded.
The root reason was simply that these were merely two bones.
Furthermore, they were only the bones of a half-immortal who had failed to ascend.
Sun Luyuan was right; for Dao Integration cultivators like them, they were of little use.
Naturally, if these had been the remains of a true immortal, the choice would have been entirely different.
"Though we won't take them for now, we can't let anyone else take them either. Brother Ji, your mastery of formation Dao borders on the miraculous. Why not completely seal off this ruin with formations? Combined with the original protective arrays here, we can ensure nothing goes amiss," Sun Luyuan suggested again.
This was his way of making his own stance clear.
Sun Luyuan knew virtually nothing about formations; as long as Ji Hongdao laid down arrays here, it would be impossible for him to sneak back alone and take the remains.
Ji Hongdao did not stand on ceremony and immediately set about establishing the formations.
Once the ruin was sealed once more, as the two were making their way back, Sun Luyuan spoke in a faint tone: "If either of us ever manages to attain Longevity, we can bring these remains out to study. Perhaps we could even take another step forward."
Ji Hongdao shook his head with a bitter smile, paying the thought no real mind.
If before Dao Integration, in their youth, they had harbored grand ambitions and ideals of attaining Longevity through their Dao,
then now, having reached the Dao Integration realm, they had long since abandoned any thought of achieving Longevity.
The four steps of Dao Integration—every step was as difficult as ascending to heaven.
The more they understood, the deeper the despair grew in their hearts.
The two fell into a mutual silence.
After a long while, Sun Luyuan let out a deep sigh. "I truly wonder what kind of peerless genius it takes to succeed in defying heavenly principles."
"In all these years in our Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals, aside from the Heavenly Venerable, there has only been one person. And their whereabouts are unknown."
"If there were just one more, our Alliance's situation would be vastly different."
"Tell me, on what grounds does the Five Elders Association have five Longevity masters? Could they really be more talented than those of our Alliance, accomplishing what we could not?"
This was also an unresolved doubt harbored in the hearts of countless cultivators of the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals.
Hearing Sun Luyuan's lament, as if recalling something, Ji Hongdao started to speak, then hesitated.
"Between the two of us brothers, could there still be something you can't say?" Sun Luyuan teased.
Chapter 1211