Time flew by, and in the blink of an eye, the Xuanhuang Realm arrived once more at Year 15 of the Anchor.
On this day, Li Fan repeated his old trick, recapturing the Medicine King Cauldron as it returned from beyond the heavens.
As always, he intimidated the members of the Medicine King Sect into serving him with their lives.
At the same time, he quietly captured Ruan Tianxiao, returned to the former site of the Medicine King Sect, and made him swallow that stone elixir once again.
Just like in the previous lifetime.
After ingesting the elixir, Ruan Tianxiao's figure and demeanor turned ethereal and transcendent, like a banished immortal from the heavens.
At the same time, he began lecturing on the Dao-Refining Medicine King Scripture to his surroundings.
The profound, mystical voice resonated without end.
Even though this was not the first time he had listened to this peerless scripture, all manner of profoundly abstruse insights still welled up within Li Fan.
It was as if his Dao of pill refinement had invisibly advanced another step.
The lingering sound curled around the rafters, persisting for a long time.
Integrating his newfound understanding of the Medicine King Scripture, Li Fan fine-tuned his plan for Xuanhuang's sublimation once again.
"After more than a decade of nurturing and the subtle nourishment of countless measures, the Xuanhuang Realm has gradually recovered from its former debility."
"The heat and timing are ripe. It is time to begin the first step of pill refinement."
A faint glimmer flickered in Li Fan's eyes. His gaze pierced through the firmament of the Xuanhuang Realm, looking upon the myriad pocket worlds connected to it.
"Myriad realms in their thousands, all return to Xuanhuang."
"All dharmas return to one, universal harmony under heaven!"
His tone carried a tinge of eerie strangeness; Li Fan's soft murmur determined the fate of those thousands of pocket worlds.
At this moment, the simulated Heavenly dispositions within these pocket worlds began mobilizing the worlds' power.
Spontaneously expanding their world forms, they seemed to extend tentacles along the conduits Li Fan had long since prepared,
reaching out and connecting to the Xuanhuang Realm.
First, a pinpoint of starlight in the darkness was tinged with the color of Xuanhuang.
Soon after, hundreds and thousands of golden stars lit up, orbiting the Xuanhuang Realm with radiant, dazzling brilliance!
"Falsifying transposition of the principles of heaven and earth..."
At this moment, Li Fan separated an avatar that drifted into the sky.
At the same time, he chanted in a low voice.
The return of so many pocket worlds naturally required the cooperation of the Xuanhuang Realm as well.
Otherwise, it was highly probable that the Xuanhuang Heavenly Dao would treat it as an attack from an unknown external enemy.
"Although the power of an individual pocket world is virtually negligible compared to the Xuanhuang Realm, there are simply too many pocket worlds orbiting it. A quantitative change is sufficient to create a qualitative one."
"If they were injected directly into the Xuanhuang Realm like a rolling deluge, it might provoke a backlash."
"Following the same approach, a medicinal guide is needed."
As Li Fan's thoughts flickered, blurred figures of Heaven-and-Earth Essence descended one after another.
After freezing in place for a brief moment, they flew swiftly toward various regions across the Xuanhuang Realm,
assuming their heavenly offices to absorb those adhering pocket worlds.
Li Fan had roughly designated areas of responsibility for each. Given the bearing capacity of Heaven-and-Earth Essence, absorbing a double-digit number of pocket worlds into themselves was not an issue.
Even so, to accomplish Li Fan's initial plan, hundreds of Heaven-and-Earth Essences were continuously generated at this moment.
Truly like Heavenly Demons descending upon the world, causing the aura within the Xuanhuang Realm to roil violently.
Compared to normal ones, these Heaven-and-Earth Essences falsely summoned by Li Fan had even blurrier figures.
They did not even gather much power of laws.
They were more like empty shells, serving as vessels to bear the return of the myriad worlds to Xuanhuang.
Yet, after all, they still fell within the scope of Heaven-and-Earth Essence.
Disturbances resembling a nocturnal parade of a hundred ghosts naturally soon caught the attention of cultivators across the Xuanhuang Realm.
Consequently, more and more people discovered the strange anomaly in the world.
Was it a natural shift of the Xuanhuang Realm's heavens and earth, or was someone pulling the strings behind the scenes?
The world's people were hesitant and uncertain.
However, even more cultivators were itching to act, eager to hunt down these Heaven-and-Earth Essences.
After all, for the vast majority of people, achieving Dao Integration was already a lifelong dream. As for the quality of the Heaven-and-Earth Essence used for integration, that was completely beyond their consideration.
Just as cultivators gathered in groups of three to five, calling on friends and companions to track the traces of the Heaven-and-Earth Essences,
boundless dark clouds blanketed the skies of the Xuanhuang Realm.
Night descended upon the earth.
All manner of ominous premonitions welled up in the hearts of cultivators,
yet they did not know where this unease originated.
Before long, the dark clouds vanished. The common masses resumed what they had left unfinished.
Everything seemed to have returned to normal.
However, in Li Fan's eyes, the living beings in the Xuanhuang Realm had already fallen into a boundless illusory dream.
The Blurry, Xuanhuang Multitude Grand Array had truly descended upon the beings of the Xuanhuang Realm!
Except for a select few locations such as Daoyuan Province and the fishing pond, all living things in the Xuanhuang Realm had entered the array.
With the empowerment of the boundless power of the star sea, coupled with the massive amount of Source Power Essence accumulated over a decade by the atavistic You people,
Li Fan was able to unleash this peerless immortal array that enveloped the entire Xuanhuang Realm.
This array had advanced a step further than in the previous lifetime when it trapped the Heavenly Physician.
Although the deduction of the Terminal Dissociation Disc had hit a bottleneck,
Li Fan had incorporated into the array his insights into the Dao of pill refinement and the Transformation of Real and Fake,
further upgrading the Xuanhuang Multitude Grand Array.
It was no longer a mere illusion array.
If someone unfortunate enough died within the illusion array, death would truly descend upon them in reality.
And if they underwent various experiences in the illusion and gained something as time passed, those gains would not be synchronized into reality.
Instead, they would be absorbed by this peerless illusion array, becoming nutrients tributed to Li Fan.
Under the shroud of the immortal array, the masses of the Xuanhuang Realm would, from now on, only regress and never advance.
Every bit and scrap of their evolution toward a "better" direction would be intercepted and harvested by Li Fan.
As long as the array remained unbroken, they would serve as industrious servants working for Li Fan for all eternity.
And Li Fan would not monopolize these harvested essences either.
He would keep only a small portion.
The vast majority would be handed over to the Xuanhuang Realm.
This was certainly not because Li Fan had suddenly turned over a new leaf or had a fit of benevolence.
First, it was to gain greater trust from the Xuanhuang Realm. Through Li Fan's various maneuvers in this lifetime, his favorability with the Xuanhuang Heavenly Dao had reached an almost unprecedented level. With the descent of the Xuanhuang Multitude Grand Array, catching all the cultivators—the vermin of heaven and earth—in one fell swoop, this goodwill reached a new peak. Just moments ago, Li Fan had falsified the transposition of the principles of heaven and earth to summon thousands of Heaven-and-Earth Essences, yet the Xuanhuang Heavenly Dao showed not the slightest anger. Instead, it sent a faint, fawning connection, seemingly asking if Li Fan wanted more.
"Every moment the Xuanhuang Multitude Grand Array continues running, the Xuanhuang Heavenly Dao's trust in me increases by another fraction."
"Until..."
"Hehehe."
Li Fan sneered internally.
Ignoring the feeling of intimacy sent by the Xuanhuang Heavenly Dao altogether, Li Fan narrowed his eyes and gazed out over the Xuanhuang Realm within the array.
"Over on the Five Elders Association's side, none were spared except those sheltered under the Carefree Paradise."
"The moment the array descended, Wuyou seemed to want to divide his power to shelter all the living beings of the entire Five Elders Association, just as when the World-Extinguishing Immortal Array arrived before. But for some reason, he shrank back in the end."
Li Fan pondered, choosing not to contest Wuyou head-on.
"As for the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals..."
"Inside the Heavenly Profound Mirror at the Alliance Headquarters, it seems to have evaded the array's encroachment. As expected of an immortal artifact."
"There are also a few other places that actually escaped the immortal array's influence."
His interest piqued, Li Fan inspected them one by one.
He discovered that most survived due to peculiar spatiotemporal locations—either a secret realm or the remnant of some stitched-together severed cultivation realm swallowed by the Xuanhuang Realm.
"With just slight modifications, the next time will cover them all."
Li Fan paid little mind to these exceptions. There were not even any Dao Integration cultivators among them; they could stir up no significant waves.
Among all the exceptions, only one caught Li Fan's attention.
In a mortal town in Liuguang Province of the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals, nearly a hundred people were barely affected by the illusion array.
Saying "barely" rather than "not at all" was because they indeed had not escaped the immortal array's capture and had fallen into boundless hallucinations.
Yet very quickly, these nearly hundred people actually broke free from the illusion array.
One had to know that even the Heavenly Physician had not awakened so quickly!
Extremely cautious, Li Fan detached a strand of will to investigate carefully.
"There are many strange happenings in this world; what the storyteller spoke of in the past actually came true!"
"Still, a dream is just a dream after all. The gentleman told us back then that we only needed to keep in mind: whenever everything goes too well according to one's desires, something is amiss. Then one can wake from the dream!"
"Wait. *Hiss*, going by what you said, isn't our waking up so smoothly also 'going too well according to our desires'? Could it be that we're still in a dream?"
...
Before the words had finished, the hundreds of people in this small town were once again enveloped by the power of the Xuanhuang Multitude Grand Array, plunging back into the illusion array.
"The storyteller." Lost in thought, Li Fan swept his divine sense out and quickly located the one they spoke of.
At this moment, he too had awakened from the illusion array.
His expression was neither startled nor fearful.
Looking upon the mortal world that seemed frozen in stillness, a flicker of pleasant surprise surfaced on his face.
"This person... even I cannot see through his cultivation."
"Could there still be a hidden master in the Xuanhuang Realm?"
"Impossible. During the previous two world destructions, this person displayed nothing unusual."
Li Fan shook his head slightly, not frightening himself with wild guesses.
Reaching out directly, he swept the storyteller over.
"Gr—Greetings, Immortal Master." The storyteller was taken aback at first, but showed no fear; instead, he offered a respectful greeting with a hint of pleasant surprise.
Li Fan confirmed that he was indeed a powerless mortal who could not even truss a chicken.
"How did you awaken from the illusion array?" Li Fan asked slowly.
The storyteller shook his head in some bewilderment. "I do not know either. I only felt that the world before my eyes had an indescribable discordance."
"Discordance?"
The storyteller weighed his words, looked at Li Fan, and explained with some hesitation, "Although the dream felt real, it still looked different from reality."
"I know my own ability. No matter how hard I try, no more than a hundred people will ever come to support my performance. Yet in the dream, nearly half the town came to support me..."
Hearing this, Li Fan frowned at once.
The Xuanhuang Multitude Grand Array could not possibly make such an elementary mistake.
What interfered with the immortal array's judgment?
Li Fan's heart stirred, and he began searching the storyteller thoroughly once more.
Chapter 1388