“Moreover, the Tianfa Realm was destroyed so long ago. Even my own memories of it have grown somewhat blurred. Yet this figure before me could restore it so completely...
“He even stated outright that it was made for me. Does he possess the power to see through the human heart?
“The methods of a True Immortal are truly unfathomable.”
In an instant, countless thoughts flashed through the Heavenly Physician’s mind.
In the end, they all dissolved into a bitter smile. “Senior, why must you toy with—”
Yet the figure opposite him seemed truly capable of reading his thoughts. Raising a hand slightly, he cut the Heavenly Physician off. “That this Venerable toys with you should be your honor.
“However...
“If you dislike it, then let it be destroyed.”
Before the Heavenly Physician’s eyes, the faint smile on the young True Immortal’s face vanished in an instant.
His gaze turned infinitely indifferent.
It was a true, silent disregard that viewed all creation as mere ants.
It was several times colder even than the Heavenly Physician’s own attitude when looking down upon the living beings of the Xuanhuang Realm!
The fleeting sense of intimacy that had never truly existed during their light conversation vanished with it. To the Heavenly Physician, it felt as if a bottomless chasm had abruptly opened between them. On the far side, the earth beneath the young True Immortal surged upward, ascending high into the clouds.
The young True Immortal stood lofty and aloof, gazing down upon the Heavenly Physician.
As though pinned under the gaze of a primeval beast from the ancient wilderness, the Heavenly Physician’s heart gave a violent jolt.
Then, he watched as the young True Immortal casually waved a hand. In a flash, his dream-haunted homeland, the Tianfa Realm, crumbled inch by inch into flying ash!
Even knowing in his heart that this Tianfa Realm was an illusion;
even knowing that he was facing a True Immortal;
watching the Tianfa Realm be annihilated before his eyes once more stirred an uncontrollable urge within the Heavenly Physician to fight this lofty young True Immortal to the death.
Yet it was only an impulse born of momentary, hot-blooded passion.
Furthermore, as though having sensed what passed through the Heavenly Physician’s mind once more, the scene in the void where the Tianfa Realm had just been destroyed shifted again.
It was none other than the present Xuanhuang Realm!
Unlike the empty scenery of the Tianfa Realm, countless silhouettes bustled across this Xuanhuang Realm.
As if they were truly living beings, they cultivated and lived within that world.
A smile returned to the young True Immortal’s face, and the vast gulf between them seemed to vanish in an instant from the Heavenly Physician’s sight.
Strolling across the land of the Xuanhuang Realm, he spoke casually with the Heavenly Physician, who was compelled to follow behind him. “Originally, you were not qualified to speak with me.
“Nor would I have any interest in conversing with a mortal. Even if you stand at the pinnacle of the lower realms, so long as you have not taken that final step, it remains so.”
The Heavenly Physician’s expression shifted slightly. He parted his lips as if to offer a defense, but in the end, he spoke only with profound helplessness. “This junior naturally understands that.”
The young True Immortal nodded, appearing quite pleased with the Heavenly Physician’s response. Then, with a soft, reminiscent sigh, he repeated, “Originally.
“Alas, during the great calamity back then, far too many True Immortals perished. In this entire mortal world, how many survived? It is truly far too lonely.
“Not good. Not good at all,” Li Fan clicked his tongue in lament.
“Therefore, toward those of you who have a chance of becoming my peers, I am willing to slightly alter my attitude. I might even lend a helping hand to help you shatter the shackles between mortal and immortal...
“Perhaps.”
As Li Fan finished speaking, the Heavenly Physician’s heart was thrown into uncontrollable turmoil once more.
Before he could ponder whether the young True Immortal’s words were in earnest or mere teasing, Li Fan pointed at the Xuanhuang Realm conjured by the immortal array and said indifferently, “This method of yours is ingenious enough by mortal standards. But to my eyes...
“It is utterly laughable.
“Thousands of years of painstaking effort. Had you spent it on your own cultivation, you might have already ascended to the immortal realm. Once you become an immortal, what matter could you possibly worry about failing to accomplish?”
Looking at the young True Immortal’s commanding, unbridled bearing, the Heavenly Physician hesitated, words catching in his throat.
Yet remembering the cultivation of the True Immortal before him, he swallowed everything down.
The young True Immortal, however, had no intention of letting him off so easily on this subject.
With an inscrutable expression and a dreamy tone, Li Fan said slowly, “Is bringing the dead back to life truly such an inconvenient matter?
“Even creating something from nothing takes no more than a single thought!”
His white robes drifted, and Li Fan appeared before the Heavenly Physician like a ghost.
He extended his right hand, pressing it lightly above the Heavenly Physician’s white-haired crown.
Boom!
Before the Heavenly Physician’s eyes, the vivid Xuanhuang Realm froze in place. After a brief pause, it rapidly shrank, transforming in the blink of an eye into a palm-sized frozen crystal.
It was as though they had returned to the void of the Star Sea; endless darkness enveloped them once more.
The Heavenly Physician could only stare blankly at the Xuanhuang crystal before him, lost in a daze.
Trembling, he reached out and took hold of it.
Though it spanned mere inches, it truly seemed to contain an entire world!
Touching this sacred crystal, a faint premonition stirred within the Heavenly Physician. There was no need to rely on the real Xuanhuang Realm. With just this crystal containing a world, the Tianfa Realm could be brought back to life!
“Such methods...”
The Heavenly Physician’s mind was in utter disarray.
Yet Li Fan’s voice rang out beside his ear once more.
“True Immortals possess varied temperaments.
“The one keeping watch outside the current Xuanhuang Realm...
“Heh, she will not be as friendly as I am. In her eyes, even if she alone remained in the universe, it would make no difference at all.”
Recalling that True Immortal in the Immortal Ruins who had disregarded the lives of all living beings in the lower star sea and nearly extinguished the Star Sea in the midst of her enlightenment, the Heavenly Physician could not help but quietly agree with Li Fan’s words.
“Therefore, if you truly wish to save your homeland, then go and achieve True Immortality!
“Consider this world crystal a small gift to you.”
Li Fan’s voice gradually faded.
After a twist in the scenery before him, the Heavenly Physician found himself back within the undulating Great Wall of Remnant Worlds.
The young True Immortal had long vanished.
Only the Xuanhuang Realm crystal clasped in his hand reminded the Heavenly Physician that everything that had just transpired was no illusion.
The Heavenly Physician examined the miniature Xuanhuang Realm in his hand once more. It seemed to have resumed functioning.
The living beings within went about their lives without the slightest awareness.
They were entirely blind to the line of large characters floating across the sky.
“By the way, my patience is not particularly great.
“A thousand days is your limit. If there is still no sign of your impending breakthrough by then...
“Hehehe.”
The young True Immortal’s chilling laughter echoed in the Heavenly Physician’s mind.
The Heavenly Physician’s breath caught sharply in his chest.
It felt as though he were once again facing that gaze of utter indifference.
Gripping the Xuanhuang Realm crystal tightly, the Heavenly Physician looked at the countdown across the sky, feeling a weight he had never experienced before.
From their brief encounter, the Heavenly Physician had gained a profound understanding of this young True Immortal’s mercurial nature and his unfathomable, ghostly methods.
Setting aside the immortal array that had trapped him in an instant without revealing a single flaw,
just this feat of conjuring an entire Xuanhuang Realm from nothing and condensing it into a crystal was something the current Heavenly Physician could hardly fathom.
“A thousand days to ascend to True Immortal?” The Heavenly Physician knitted his brows tightly, pondering his options.
“Perhaps the only hope lies in that High Wall...”
The Heavenly Physician could not help but glance toward a stretch of void not far away.
Over the long years of his relentless contemplation, he had come very close to truly unraveling the secrets of the High Wall.
It was only due to an inexplicable, instinctive warning, combined with his devotion to reviving the Tianfa Realm, that he had not poured all his energy into comprehending the High Wall.
Now, however, it seemed he had no other choice.
***
While the Heavenly Physician was agonizing over his dilemma,
Li Fan’s true body had already arrived before Chuanfa Heavenly Venerable.
Watching Chuanfa, who was able to quickly detect flaws even within a complete immortal-grade illusion array and was continuously searching for a way to break through,
Li Fan could not help but frown slightly.
“As expected of a Heavenly Demon. His resistance to illusion arrays surpasses even that of the Heavenly Physician.”
On the Heavenly Physician’s side, Li Fan had naturally lifted the immortal array’s confinement of his own accord.
Toying blindly with this Supreme of the Star Sea held little practical value.
Having him realize his proper worth was what Li Fan most wished to see.
And matters had unfolded just as Li Fan anticipated; awed by the immortal array and the complete Xuanhuang Realm crystal,
the Heavenly Physician was temporarily deceived.
The immortal array had, of course, been created by the Immortal Series Dissociation Disc.
As for that Xuanhuang Realm crystal...
it was a creation forged from the feedback power that had erupted within Li Fan’s dantian through the Sitting Heaven Technique when the Xuanhuang Realm ascended into an immortal domain in his previous life.
During the ascension process, that boundless feedback power had already been equivalent to several dozen times the combined energy of the Xuanhuang Realm in its critical ascension state.
And once the Xuanhuang Realm had thoroughly ascended into an immortal domain,
what floated within Li Fan’s dantian now was a continuously flickering Xuanhuang cloud mist.
It was like the ever-shifting scenes on an immortal realm coin.
Light and shadow shifted within the mist, seemingly giving birth to a new Xuanhuang Realm with every passing instant.
Of course, Li Fan knew this was likely an illusion of perception.
The reason the Xuanhuang cloud mist flickered incessantly like a revolving lantern was that the total volume of feedback power was simply too colossal. Arranged in sequence, what was static gave rise to the impression of motion.
Though immense in quantity, it was still far from reaching the realm of infinity.
According to Li Fan’s own estimates, the energy gathered within his dantian at this moment was roughly a hundred thousand times the total energy of an ordinary Xuanhuang Realm.
Even to Li Fan, this was an astonishingly vast reservoir of power. In the beginning, he had even entertained the terrifying fantasy that this Xuanhuang cloud mist might abruptly explode within him.
Yet after the initial shock, Li Fan realized that it was fundamentally no different from the infinite power of the Star Sea—in fact, it was slightly inferior.
Quantity alone could not simply accumulate into a qualitative leap.
Gradually, Li Fan ceased to pay it much heed.
Carving out a single slice to fashion into a Xuanhuang Realm crystal and giving it to the Heavenly Physician as a small gift
was something that hardly qualified as an effort for Li Fan.
Moreover, to maintain control over the Heavenly Physician at all times, a trace of residual immortal array power was secretly embedded within that slice of Xuanhuang.
It could erupt at any moment to trap the Heavenly Physician once more.
Turning his thoughts away from the Heavenly Physician and back to Chuanfa Heavenly Venerable within the array, Li Fan did not act with the same casual ease.
Judging from various signs across past cycles, Chuanfa Heavenly Venerable was very likely the reincarnation of King Xuantian, who had subsequently been possessed and controlled by a Heavenly Demon.
A Heavenly Demon was an extraordinary entity that seized the creations of heaven and earth. Its path of inner demons merged with the Heavenly Dao of a world; even in the ancient cultivation world, such a thing had been exceedingly rare.
And as for King Xuantian...
As a fellow half-immortal, Li Fan understood the terrifying might of an immortal far more deeply than anyone else.
Consequently, he was all the more cautious.
At the end of the previous life, when the Xuanhuang Realm had successfully ascended into an immortal domain, Chuanfa Heavenly Venerable’s bizarre behavior remained fresh in his memory.
How could Li Fan possibly take him lightly?
This was the reason why he had sent only an illusionary avatar projected by the immortal array to face the Heavenly Physician, while his true body personally oversaw Chuanfa.
Li Fan’s expression was solemn. Tailoring the array to Chuanfa Heavenly Venerable’s unique circumstances, the Immortal Series Dissociation Disc made subtle adjustments to the immortal array step by step.
At this moment, the world in Chuanfa’s eyes was split into left and right halves.
On the left was the Xuanhuang Realm, which he knew intimately.
On the right was the homeland of the Tianfa Realm venerables, including the Heavenly Physician and Tianjue.
The two worlds flickered and traded places incessantly, like lantern shadows in the wind.
Gradually, an expression of intense agony began to surface on Chuanfa Heavenly Venerable’s perpetually calm face.
It was as though something within his body were struggling to break free of its bonds.
Yet that dividing force was not quite strong enough,
and in the end, it shrank back.
Seeing this, Li Fan urged the immortal array once more, accelerating the switching frequency between the two worlds.
Meanwhile, he flicked out strands of golden thread, piercing them silently into Chuanfa’s body.
Li Fan had once witnessed the Heavenly Physician’s method of controlling Chuanfa.
With his current perspective, reversing the technique to break that control...
was not difficult.
It merely required repeated attempts.
In any case, with the Immortal Series Dissociation Disc presiding over the array, there was no fear of Chuanfa escaping.
Provoked by the shifting twin worlds before his eyes and the relentless covert strikes of the golden threads, Chuanfa let out an earth-shattering roar.
Yet he was truly like a bird in a cage.
No matter how he struggled, he could not alter his fate.
“Found it.”
After a long time, Li Fan’s eyes lit up.
Applying a slight tug, he pulled on the golden threads.
From the far end of the threads, a transparent figure was slowly dragged forth.
The moment the transparent figure emerged, Chuanfa’s physical shell seemed to lose its backbone,
collapsing limp onto the ground in an instant.
Once separated from Chuanfa’s body, the legendary Heavenly Demon grew calm as well.
It floated silently in midair,
seemingly falling into a deep slumber.
Yet in its pure state, the Heavenly Demon’s resistance to the illusion array was even greater than when it had been possessing a body.
The Dissociation Disc operated at high speed, analyzing the Heavenly Demon’s vulnerabilities.
No matter how extraordinary it was, it was still a mortal entity in the end.
It would not be long before it was completely subdued.
Li Fan, meanwhile, turned his attention to Chuanfa’s body first.
“He possesses his own independent consciousness.
“It has simply been suppressed by the Heavenly Demon for far too long, leaving it exceedingly frail. For the moment, there is no sign of him waking.
“While he is weak, let me investigate thoroughly
“and see the true identity of this Chuanfa Heavenly Venerable who has dominated the Xuanhuang Realm for thousands of years!”
Carrying a touch of anticipation, Li Fan manipulated the illusion array.
The scenes within the array began to evolve on their own, guided by Chuanfa’s memories.
Across a vast plain, smoke curled up from kitchen fires.
“Goudan, come home to eat!”
Chapter 1407