When the pain subsided, what followed was the rapid expansion of his spirit-soul.
A world's will, even if only the remnant of a single province, was unquestionably an immense boon to a cultivator.
In the past, when Holy Emperor Li Ping oversaw and monitored the myriad affairs within Great Qi, he still received and processed countless trivial matters from the perspective of a mortal. But from now on, having absorbed the consciousness of the Congyun Sea, he might also look down from the vantage point of the world itself, taking in every minute detail of the Sacred Dynasty.
After the consciousness of the Congyun Sea perished, the winds ceased for seven days.
Li Ping remained standing between the sea and the sky, waiting for the fusion to conclude completely.
Even without actively trying, having devoured the Congyun Sea's consciousness, Li Ping could effortlessly perceive everything happening within the sea.
He saw that the vast majority of cultivators affected by the demonic faces had still not recovered from madness after he revoked his divine ability. In the aftermath of this calamity, not even one in a hundred sane cultivators remained.
He saw the anima of Heaven and Earth, Crimson Flame, which had been brewing in the sky, lose any need to descend and incinerate the sea now that the Congyun Sea's consciousness had perished. The gathered power of the laws quietly dispersed.
He saw the Cloud Water Heavenly Palace in the heart of the Congyun Sea—whose restrictions had loosened, bringing it to the brink of resurfacing from its seal—sink back into silence after a mysterious blue halo flashed across it.
He also saw that the disturbances in the Congyun Sea had drawn the attention of certain entities in the Xuanhuang Realm. Several immense divine senses descended in an instant, sweeping across the ocean. Yet Li Ping had now taken the place of the Congyun Sea's consciousness, blending seamlessly into Heaven and Earth. The combined concealment of his own array and the Xuanhuang Heavenly Dao prevented him from being detected.
...
Although he had deceived them for now, the faint sense of crisis in Li Ping's heart did not fade.
"It seems this place is no longer safe to linger," Li Ping mused inwardly once he had fully absorbed and digested the Congyun Sea's consciousness.
However, before returning to the Sacred Dynasty of Great Qi, he still had one thing to do.
With a flicker of his figure, Li Ping arrived in an instant at the seabed near Liuyun Island in the Congyun Sea.
Within an abyssal rift on the seafloor here, a peculiar whirlpool swirled.
At the center of the vortex, a pale-blue pearl emanated a faint glow.
"The Canghai Pearl."
As part of the Congyun Sea consciousness's plan to hedge its bets, the Canghai Pearl was the final escape route it had prepared for itself.
Li Ping reached out a hand, and the pale-blue pearl flew out of the abyssal whirlpool into his palm.
"Since you have already become part of the Xuanhuang Heavenly Dao, then sever all ties with the past."
Golden energy enveloped the Canghai Pearl and poured violently into it.
When the radiance cleared, the pearl in Li Ping's hand had turned from pale blue to an azure hue.
Yet it lacked its former spirit and vitality.
Li Ping had thoroughly wiped away the Congyun Sea's last lingering wisp of consciousness from within the Canghai Pearl.
"From this day forth, the Canghai Pearl is merely the Canghai Pearl, no longer bound to the Congyun Sea."
Li Ping did not keep the pearl. Instead, with a flick of his finger, he sent it shooting toward a random corner of the Congyun Sea to await someone destined for it.
Only after doing all this did Li Ping finally depart from this ocean.
The cultivators of an entire province had all been reduced to imbeciles.
When the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals finally realized what had happened in the Congyun Sea, it was utterly furious.
While sending people to investigate, figuring out how to handle these dangerous, deranged cultivators also posed a difficult problem.
In the end, it took five Dao Integration cultivators joining forces to barely get the chaos in the Congyun Sea under control.
Among these five happened to be the head of the Sun Clan, Sun Luyuan.
Earlier, he had exhausted every means to finally get in touch with Fairy Kongyou.
Sun Luyuan had previously investigated Kongyou's background in detail, learning that she was simple-minded and wore her emotions on her sleeve. Moreover, she happened to be intensely curious about novel things, so Sun Luyuan had fabricated a half-true lie.
"I heard before that you once turned an ungrateful male cultivator into a dog, torturing him day and night, Fairy?
"That spectacle was truly unbearable to watch. Coincidentally, when I traveled through a certain pocket world before, I encountered a similar practice—likewise mutating criminals into strange beasts as punishment..."
Sun Luyuan had selected a few of his experiences from the Sacred Dynasty of Great Qi to recount.
"The emperor of this pocket world shares my exact thoughts? How interesting.
"And from your description, this pocket world's development is quite extraordinary..."
After mentioning it casually a few times, Kongyou had indeed been hooked.
She agreed that if the opportunity arose in the future, she would go on an excursion there with several acquaintances from the Alliance.
Seeing that he had succeeded, Sun Luyuan was naturally overjoyed.
He had even considered taking advantage of Fairy Kongyou's name this time to dupe even more Alliance elites into going.
Who would have thought that before the plan could even be put into motion, tragedy struck the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals? The deception had to be put on hold.
Originally, this mess in the Congyun Sea had nothing to do with him.
However, Xu Yuanxian, the chief of the Protector Hall, had secretly given him a private task.
Only because of this did Sun Luyuan make the exhausting, long-distance trip.
"Qingfeng Hall. This is the place."
After subduing and rounding up all the deranged cultivators who attacked anyone in sight, Sun Luyuan arrived at this building on Wanxian Island.
He sensed no breath of any living creature inside.
Only when Sun Luyuan stepped inside and got a clear view of the interior did his pupils suddenly contract.
An elderly man lay on a wooden chair, with tree-like roots sprouting from all over his body, tightly binding and pinning him to the floor.
Though the elder was not completely dead, retaining a wisp of breath, in Sun Luyuan's eyes he was no different from a corpse.
It was as though his spirit-soul had been drained entirely dry by the bizarre roots, leaving behind only an empty husk.
"So this is the Qingfeng Hall caretaker Elder Xu mentioned. He was a Nascent Soul cultivator at least, yet died so inexplicably."
Sun Luyuan shook his head slightly.
Turning his gaze away from the old man, he swept his eyes across the interior of Qingfeng Hall.
Moments later, he discovered a concealed entrance.
Heightening his vigilance, Sun Luyuan strode through the faintly visible green fissure.
A somewhat cavernous, empty space opened before him.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
Tremors continuously shook the ground.
Sun Luyuan looked toward the source of the commotion. Astoundingly, it was a massive tree that had sprouted two human legs, running across the ground.
At the center of the tree trunk was an incomparably aged face.
At this moment, the arboreal face was filled with endless terror.
The giant tree ran frantically at breakneck speed. Because its two legs were hardly enough to support its massive bulk, it stumbled and fell repeatedly, only to scramble back up. Yet it never stopped running.
It muttered to itself, "Once again, the calamity has arrived! This horrifying sight... not even in Father's most vicious curses was it ever seen!
"Yet it never happened at all!
"It isn't fake! It isn't fake!"
...
The tree-man spoke incoherently, its words contradictory and completely unintelligible.
Deep in the throes of its own hysteria, it proved futile even when Sun Luyuan attempted to communicate with it.
"A-Liu has gone mad."
Right then, a crisp female voice suddenly rang out beside Sun Luyuan's ear.
"Hm?" Sun Luyuan was startled.
He had already searched thoroughly earlier, and apart from the tree-man, there seemed to be no one else here.
Yet immediately afterward, Sun Luyuan remembered the mission Elder Xu had entrusted to him.
He at once asked aloud, "Could you be Daoist Qingfeng?"
The female voice did not reply.
"I have come at Elder Xu's behest to take you back.
"According to him, this spirit tree went mad, rendering the passage inside its body unusable, and thus trapping you here, Daoist Qingfeng."
As Sun Luyuan spoke, he scrutinized his surroundings, trying to pinpoint this "Qingfeng's" location.
Yet despite his perceptive abilities as a Dao Integration cultivator, he found nothing.
"A-Liu has gone mad," the female voice repeated without directly responding.
Sun Luyuan could not help but frown slightly. Could this female cultivator also have been affected by the demonic faces and driven insane?
"A-Liu and I were the closest. Now that he's mad, who will play with me in the future?"
The mournful voice echoed through the modest space.
Mingling with the tree-man A-Liu's occasional wails of grief, it sent chills down one's spine.
For reasons unknown to him, Sun Luyuan felt the same eerie dread rise within him that he had experienced while wandering Great Qi.
"Daoist Qingfeng..." Sun Luyuan coughed softly, braving the discomfort.
Though he did not know the relationship between this female cultivator named Qingfeng and Elder Xu, for the notoriously rigid and merciless Xu Yuanxian to break precedent and approach him privately proved that the ties between them were profound.
Fortunately, things did not develop as badly as Sun Luyuan feared.
Qingfeng seemed to weep softly for a while before finally recovering from her grief.
"So Little Xu sent you. He hasn't forgotten me after all."
Qingfeng's simple sentence made Sun Luyuan's hair stand on end.
"Little Xu? Xu Yuanxian?"
Sun Luyuan almost wondered if his ears were playing tricks on him.
Elder Xu had served as chief of the Protector Hall for over three thousand years, a bona fide ancient monster.
Yet this girl whose voice sounded so young addressed him as Little Xu...
If she was not insane, then just how old was she?
And what in the world was the true identity of this Qingfeng?
Countless thoughts flashed through Sun Luyuan's mind in an instant, but he dared not ponder them too deeply. His demeanor grew tense and deferential.
No longer daring to address her as "Daoist Qingfeng," he cautiously switched terms and asked, "Senior, why do you not show yourself? Has this junior done something wrong?"
After a brief silence in the chamber, Qingfeng's voice sounded from behind Sun Luyuan, tinged with bewilderment.
"Haven't I been here all along?
"Oh, right. I forgot—ordinary people can't see me."
Qingfeng's words made cold sweat pour down Sun Luyuan's neck.
"Elder Xu said that he will dispatch someone later to deal with this deranged spirit tree. Senior, please return with me for now," Sun Luyuan said hastily.
"Ah! That's wonderful! I knew A-Liu could still be saved!" Qingfeng chirped delightedly in the next breath, like an innocent young girl. "It's all because that scene of apocalyptic wailing was so terrifying; it frightened him out of his wits for now. If you hadn't come, no one would have talked to me for a long time."
Qingfeng's voice drew closer and closer to Sun Luyuan.
Eventually, it seemed to settle onto his back.
"All right. I'll listen to Little Xu and leave this place for now.
"The aura here has changed. It's not very comfortable anymore."
Feeling what seemed like a very real weight on his back, Sun Luyuan's heart hammered. He wiped the cold sweat from his forehead.
"This junior can just leave directly like this?" he probed cautiously.
"Yup! I'm already on your back."
Qingfeng's words confirmed Sun Luyuan's suspicion.
Sun Luyuan dared not linger and departed directly from that eerie space.
The mad spirit tree's cries continued to echo incessantly behind him.
"Shall we head back to the Alliance Headquarters?" Sun Luyuan asked, having transformed into an escape light streaking swiftly across the Congyun Sea.
"Not there. That place is even more uncomfortable. Let's go to Luoyan Province."
Qingfeng's mood seemed to have improved, her tone cheerful.
"Luoyan Province?" Sun Luyuan nodded.
Elder Xu's task had merely been for him to bring Qingfeng out and settle her into a Qingfeng Hall in another province.
Sun Luyuan did not dwell on it and hurried toward Luoyan Province.
Along the way, he also pondered the true identity of the figure on his back.
With the immortal artifact Boundless Mirror in his clan, Sun Luyuan considered himself plenty knowledgeable and worldly.
Yet he had never heard of anything remotely resembling this bizarre entity called Qingfeng.
He could not even gauge Qingfeng's strength.
Had Elder Xu sent him thousands of miles just out of concern that she was trapped?
From that angle, Qingfeng's cultivation could not be particularly high.
Yet Qingfeng's strange manner of speaking and various uncanny behaviors sent chills down Sun Luyuan's spine.
Clearly, this formless, intangible entity named Qingfeng was by no means simple.
Sun Luyuan groaned inwardly and quickened his pace, wishing only to complete the task quickly and rid himself of her.
Qingfeng remained quiet for the rest of the journey.
And he drew closer and closer to Luoyan Province.
Just as liberation was within sight, a sudden remark from Qingfeng plunged Sun Luyuan into an abyss of ice.
"You're getting a little impatient, aren't you?
"As expected, there are so few in this world who are truly good to me."
Sun Luyuan felt a surge of chill rise straight from the depths of his heart.
Although Qingfeng did not utter another word afterward, his sense of dread grew steadily stronger.
'What's wrong here?'
Sun Luyuan knew some change was occurring within his own body, yet he could not pinpoint the exact details.
Not until Sun Luyuan crossed into Luoyan Province and inadvertently glanced downward did realization strike him with sudden horror.
He was very close to the ground right now.
A blazing sun scorched overhead.
Yet, impossibly, there was no shadow of him on the ground.
Sun Luyuan knew full well that he had cast no spell to conceal his presence.
Yet his shadow was gone.
He held out his arms in a daze.
He... seemed to be turning ethereal.
His very existence was fading away.
He was about to become like Qingfeng—formless and intangible.
The change had come so swiftly that fear had not even had time to take root in Sun Luyuan's heart.
His mind was simply blank with confusion.
Just as Sun Luyuan felt his connection to this world growing fainter and fainter...
A blazing golden light erupted violently from within his body.
Chapter 1232