With the abnormal stirrings in the sea of gloomy darkness, the You people kneeling all across the ground seemed to sense something as well; the expressions on their faces grew increasingly frenzied and devout.
Like a gust of wind blowing in from every direction across the sea of gloomy darkness, it converged near the small hole drilled through by the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals.
Pressure spiked abruptly. Invisible ripples expanded from the breach, and beneath the stacking layers of mighty power, the stable equilibrium at the opening was instantly shattered in Li Ping's perception.
The condensed, compressed Source Power was driven back step by step in an instant, seemingly about to be expelled from this sea of gloomy darkness entirely.
Yet right at this moment, Li Ping actually saw light suddenly illuminate this lightless sea.
It was not an illusion born of the rhythmic pulsing of the sea of gloomy darkness itself as before, but light truly and unmistakably born here.
A golden abacus stabilized the routed Source Power of the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals. Its beads clacked and flickered, sharply increasing the output of Source Power and restoring a state of balance between the two.
Surges roiled across the sea of gloomy darkness, churning up waves, but each time they were flawlessly neutralized through the golden abacus's deductions, mobilization, and regulation.
What amazed Li Ping—observing from the shadows—even more was that the golden abacus did far more than merely regulate Source Power. More importantly, faint wisps of golden light rippled outward in all directions with the constant shifting of the abacus beads.
Though they did not travel far before being swallowed whole by the gloomy darkness, under the influence of this golden light, the raging waves of the sea of gloomy darkness gradually calmed.
Under the soothing rays of the abacus's golden light, the unknown entity that had been awakening sank back into slumber.
As this change unfolded, an eyeball also quietly descended above the breach in the sea of gloomy darkness.
Or rather, it emerged from the golden abacus itself—bizarre and uncanny in the extreme.
The eyeball endowed the abacus with life, carefully searching for any abnormal disturbances within the sea of gloomy darkness.
Cold and utterly devoid of emotion, the eye swiveled and surveyed the surroundings, as though seeking the cause behind the imbalance in the Nether Power extraction apparatus.
The Sacred Emperor's mind tautened, and he concealed and shielded both himself and the hundred-plus You people.
The eye scanned the area for a few sweeps, found nothing suspicious, and finally faded away slowly.
During this time, under the golden abacus's strained maintenance, the sea of gloomy darkness had returned to a state of balance and tranquility.
Standing not far from the breach, Li Ping pondered for a moment and ultimately postponed his plan to destroy the Alliance's apparatus here.
It was not that Li Ping feared clashing head-on with the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals right now; rather, from that abruptly manifested eyeball, he had sensed a familiar aura.
The aura of a cultivator who, theoretically, had vanished completely from Xuanhuang.
It was precisely this suspicion that prompted the Sacred Emperor to alter his decision for the time being.
"If it were merely a matching aura, that would be one thing. But if he himself is still alive, hiding within the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals and aiding them in siphoning the power of the sea of gloomy darkness..."
A flicker of doubt passed through the Sacred Emperor's mind.
Yet before getting to the bottom of the matter, it was best to avoid a direct confrontation.
With these thoughts in mind, Li Ping led the You people back to Great Qi.
Reaching out to the stone slab with his divine sense, he began browsing the records within the Genesis Stone Slab.
"King Xuantian..."
"It defies all common sense."
Scene after scene surfaced before Li Ping's eyes.
King Xuantian, starting as an unremarkable cultivator, defying all odds with one fortuitous encounter after another, eventually became the Xuanhuang Realm's final ascendant.
Not long after shattering the void and ascending to become part of Xuanhuang's eternal legend, he reappeared, shaking the entire world.
After that came the founding of the Xuantian Sect, and finally its joint extermination by the Ten Sects.
The images were intermittent, and at certain critical junctures, they seemed to have been forcibly erased.
Yet even this fractured personal chronicle was gripping and full of tumultuous twists and turns.
"Going by the sensory memories synchronized from the Xuanhuang Heavenly Dao and the Genesis Stone Slab's records, that eye which appeared in the sea of gloomy darkness bears a near one-hundred-percent resemblance to King Xuantian."
"And that is precisely what is bizarre."
The Xuanhuang Heavenly Dao had verified in person that King Xuantian had fallen. Where on earth did the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals obtain his eye?
"The detailed records of the Ten Sects of the Immortal Dao besieging the Xuantian Sect back then are similarly shrouded in obscurity. Whatever could obscure the source power of the Xuanhuang Realm had to be an entity of at least equal standing."
...
The more he pondered, the more confounding it grew.
This ostensible savior of the Xuanhuang Realm was shrouded in far too many mysteries.
Most crucially, his cultivation realm spoke for itself.
A half-immortal physique had vanished just like that. It was truly hard to believe. Li Ping himself was now faintly touching the Xuanhuang Realm's limit, and so he understood that terrifying might all the more.
Only an entity at or above the level of a True Immortal could perhaps erase King Xuantian without a sound or trace.
Yet had such a being truly manifested in the world, the earth-shattering upheaval would inevitably have dragged the Xuanhuang Realm into ruin alongside it.
Yet in the memories of the Xuanhuang Realm's Heavenly Dao, no such catastrophe had taken place.
Perhaps that True Immortal deliberately concealed their aura during the act...
Which brought forth another question.
In the eyes of a True Immortal, mortals were nothing more than ants.
Even as a half-immortal, King Xuantian was no exception. If a True Immortal wanted to kill him, why would they ever need to hide their tracks?
"Perhaps some clues can be found from the surviving Dharma Kings of the Xuantian Sect from back then."
The Faceless Sacred Emperor flipped through the Genesis Stone Slab, attempting to uncover any shred of a trail.
Meanwhile, far away in the Ash pocket world, Li Fan's divine sense avatar furrowed his brows slightly.
Ever since personally experiencing how troublesome the Dharma Kings of the Xuantian Sect were, Li Fan had deliberately shielded the Sacred Emperor's memories of Mo Rubin to prevent unnecessary complications in this lifetime.
Never had he imagined that through all manner of coincidences, the Sacred Emperor was showing signs of becoming entangled with Mo Rubin once again.
"Since the Alliance could track down Mo Rubin's slumbering ground from various clues, the Sacred Emperor should be able to do so as well. Now this is getting interesting."
"That eye belonging to the Alliance cannot possibly be King Xuantian himself. Otherwise, back when Mo Rubin took over a Dharma Transmitter's body and learned all of the Alliance's secrets, he would already have discovered it."
Li Fan pondered while driving the Boundless Mirror to analyze the realm-protecting array.
"Still, considering how he later died in the sea of gloomy darkness, perhaps one could deduce that the eyeball must have some inexplicable connection to King Xuantian. Could it even be part of King Xuantian's authority?"
"Mo Rubin discovered the existence of this Alliance eye and realized its connection to the sea of gloomy darkness, which was why he ventured deep into that perilous place and ended up dead without even a corpse left behind."
"Authority..."
"Great Heavenly Venerable Xuanhuang, the realm-protecting array!"
A sharp gleam flashed across Li Fan's eyes. Within the unfinished array model being deduced by the Terminal Dissociation Disc, a point of light suddenly flared up.
Even though he still could not see the whole picture, Li Fan understood in an instant what this point of light signified.
"Just like the Xuanyuan Primordial Spirit Array, this unknown realm-protecting array is likewise composed of several subordinate arrays. Each subordinate array has its own dedicated control core and hub."
"This point of light is where the core lies!"
Amid the Boundless Mirror's ethereal light and analysis, the array lines buried deep beneath the Ash pocket world finally revealed the location of the corresponding "core."
Yet the site that should have served as the array's hub—where the lines were densest—was currently completely hollowed out.
As if someone had gouged it out directly.
Just as the Boundless Mirror sought to peer deeper into that vacant core region, a sudden surge of crisis welled up in Li Fan's heart.
It prompted him to halt the Boundless Mirror's movements in an instant.
Li Fan narrowed his eyes, gazing toward that void.
An elusive, spine-chilling aura lurked within it.
It was not that nothing existed there!
Rather, its existence transcended the realm of what ordinary mortals could perceive!
"True. Immortal. Seal. Characters!"
Li Fan muttered in his heart, pausing between each word, his vigilance raised to its absolute peak.
They were distinct from the [Hunger], [Perish], and [Chaos] that Li Fan had encountered before, nor were they entirely identical to the remnant forces lingering in the Pitch-Black Star Sea.
They were not even found in the records of the Profound Immortal Boat.
A brand-new, unknown, and profoundly bizarre force that attacked nothing else, targeting only the core of the realm-protecting array.
Having achieved their objective, they now lay quietly atop the "corpse" of the realm-protecting array's hub.
Chapter 1267