"The murmuring sound appears within the sea of consciousness of every cultivator who has ever set foot in the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals headquarters.
"Though it lingers only in memory and appears harmless on the surface, if the secretly accumulated power over time were sufficient to let Xuanyuan Tuo break free, its sudden eruption—purely by its insidious nature—would likely cause the vast majority of cultivators to be drained completely dry by a mere fragment of their past memory." Li Fan's eyes flickered.
The immortal array shrank into a pinpoint of light, carrying the still-slumbering Xuanyuan Tuo and the heavenly demon phantom into Li Fan's palm, where he drew them into his body to suppress them.
Then, turning toward the direction of the Xuanhuang Realm, Li Fan's expression remained tranquil as he slowly extended his right hand.
The might of a True Immortal looked down from above.
A palm descended upon the mortal dust, spanning the sea of stars.
From the edge of the sea of stars, Li Fan struck out a palm from afar toward the Xuanhuang Realm.
He did not employ any immortal-grade techniques, merely utilizing the disparity in momentum and status to deliver a top-down strike.
The True Immortal of the Immortal Ruins was deeply engrossed in enlightenment. Through past cycles of reincarnation, Li Fan had verified several times that as long as there were no True Immortal-level energy fluctuations or phenomena related to the Dao Annihilation Calamity, nothing would disturb her.
Even during the world-destroying immortal array, Immortal Descent, All Things Return to Ruin, she had merely sent out a strand of divine sense to inspect it.
Li Fan's palm strike landed with precision upon the Xuanhuang Realm, on the four central provinces of the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals.
The target was not the Immortal Ruins, nor did any energy spill over or diffuse elsewhere.
The True Immortal of the Immortal Ruins sensed nothing at all. Li Fan's colossal palm silently descended.
Not a single anomaly appeared across the skies of the Xuanhuang Realm.
Yet the four central provinces of the Alliance, without warning, began to shake violently as if the end of the world had arrived.
Li Fan's fingers traversed the sea of stars, touching and sensing.
The four central provinces of the Alliance were the extension of the Heavenly Profound Mirror's internal space into the Xuanhuang Realm.
When Li Fan first entered the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals headquarters, he had witnessed the scene within the Heavenly Profound Mirror, where countless black and white lines crisscrossed. The black and white lines collided and continually intertwined until they formed a tiny point of nothingness. Endlessly, countless dots flickered and wavered, continuously extending outward into the void, ultimately resolving into color.
At that time, Li Fan had not understood the meaning of such a wondrous scene within the Heavenly Profound Mirror. Now, he understood that this was the mirror deconstructing the Xuanhuang Realm in its own way.
A sharp glint flashed in his eyes. Li Fan's fingers turned knife-sharp, severing the connection between the Heavenly Profound Mirror and the Xuanhuang Realm in an instant.
Then he curled his fingers and clenched fiercely!
Feeling a slight recoil, Li Fan exerted a fraction more strength and gave a hard yank.
In an instant, his palm traversed space-time, returning from the Xuanhuang Realm back to the edge of the sea of stars.
It was as though he had simply reached out and salvaged something from underwater.
Li Fan looked down at his palm. Shimmering with faint light, an archaic bronze mirror struggled incessantly within his grasp.
Narrowing his eyes slightly, Li Fan sensed faint, ethereal threads leading from the true body of the Heavenly Profound Mirror before him toward the Xuanhuang Realm.
"These are the various restrictions Chuanfa established back then, as well as the connections between the Heavenly Profound Mirror, his human avatar, and the numerous Heavenly Profound sub-mirrors.
"Worthy of being a former immortal artifact. Even when crossing the entire sea of stars in a split second, it maintains the stability of these connections amid such upheaval."
Li Fan inwardly praised.
The reason he described it as a former immortal artifact was that Li Fan did not sense any fluctuation of immortal spiritual energy from the Heavenly Profound Mirror's true body.
Even after being depleted by generations of use in the Xuanhuang Realm, the few immortal artifacts preserved among Great Heavenly Venerable Xuanhuang's legacy still retained a trace of immortal spiritual energy.
The Heavenly Profound Mirror, however, seemed to have completely severed all ties to immortal spiritual energy.
"In a sense, turning the immortal into the mortal.
"An incomplete severance is no severance at all. Perhaps only in this way could it truly evade the strike of the Dao Annihilation Calamity." Recalling the obliterating wind calamity he had witnessed before in the Boundless Mirror and other surviving immortal artifacts of the Xuanhuang Realm, Li Fan was lost in thought.
With a shift of his thoughts, a white ring flew forth, binding the Heavenly Profound Mirror's true body tightly.
Li Fan divided out a strand of divine sense and entered it.
Knowing that the demonic murmurs had already been imprinted inside the Heavenly Profound Mirror, he still needed to proceed with caution.
Having stepped into the immortal realm, even a single strand of his divine sense had surpassed the mortal realm.
With the Heavenly Profound Mirror suppressed and forcibly seized by a mysterious palm from beyond the heavens, the Alliance Headquarters had plunged into unprecedented chaos. Back then, Chuanfa had established the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals headquarters within the Heavenly Profound Mirror precisely to guarantee its safety to the greatest extent.
Never did anyone imagine that countless years later, this seemingly impregnable defense would be shattered in an instant by an unknown entity!
Even knowing they faced an unimaginably terrifying entity, the people at the Alliance headquarters did not immediately give up fighting back.
All the Chuanfa practitioners gathered together.
Within the Alliance headquarters, formations and restrictions were fully activated, entering the highest state of emergency.
However...
In the eyes of the present Li Fan, all these measures were like children playing house.
If he so wished, with just a single strand of divine sense, Li Fan could obliterate every defensive measure the Alliance possessed.
But he did not do so.
His quietly infiltrating divine sense went unnoticed by anyone.
His divine sense manifested a body and stood inside the Heavenly Profound Mirror. He sensed the faint, wondrous power around him wrapping about him, attempting to pull him into the illusion of Chuanfa's memories.
Although the murmuring sound was of the True Immortal grade, it was channeled using Heavenly Venerable Chuanfa as a vessel after all. Against mortal existences, it might be unfailingly effective, but against Li Fan, who was already at the half-immortal realm, it fell short.
With merely a thought of resistance, the murmuring sound could no longer drag Li Fan anywhere.
Contact was mutual.
While it attempted to erode Li Fan, Li Fan had also, on some level, "seen and heard" it.
In Xuanyuan Tuo's enduring impression, it was meaningless, hollow murmuring.
Yet to Li Fan...
It was a grim, sacred recitation of scripture!
"...Words of void, ceaseless arising. Will, spirit, body, and soul—born of chaos, returning to chaos.
"One exists, all endure. What is lost still abides."
Perhaps because it was relayed through Xuanyuan Tuo, even as Li Fan tried his best to discern it, he could only make out that single passage. The rest was an elusive, rapid chanting.
This sacred, eerie chanting of scripture did not come from a single individual. Rather, it seemed as if countless living beings were singing in unison.
What made Li Fan feel a slight chill was that he could even faintly hear the voices of certain acquaintances within it.
Not merely their vocal tones, but words old acquaintances had spoken during their interactions with him.
"Dao Xuanzi, you bully people too far!"
"A twenty-nine-year-old in the late Qi Condensation stage..."
"Young friend, what are you hoping for?"
"I, Tianyang, will never be second to anyone in my life!"
...
And so on.
Not just from this lifetime, but tracing back through Li Fan's past reincarnations!
Along with these voices, blurry figures appeared one after another in Li Fan's sea of consciousness. Even without faces, Li Fan could easily discern their respective identities.
Under the influence of this scripture-chanting voice, Li Fan even faintly felt the same sensation that Xuanyuan Tuo had once experienced:
It seemed he could use these phantoms in his memory to affect their real, present selves!
Inside the Heavenly Profound Mirror, the divine sense avatar stood quietly with eyes closed, comprehending.
Outside the Heavenly Profound Mirror, Li Fan's true self was already on high alert.
That this profound sound of scripture chanting could reflect scenes of past reincarnations from his soul's memories was enough to prove its extraordinary nature.
Although it did not necessarily mean it had discovered the secret of Reversion's continuous cycle of reincarnation, Li Fan could not afford not to be extraordinarily cautious.
Rings of the immortal array were already in place, guarding around him, ready for Reversion at any moment.
Fortunately, the dire scenario Li Fan anticipated never occurred.
Li Fan did not let down his guard, synchronizing with everything his divine sense avatar perceived and felt.
As he listened, for some reason, an inkling of familiarity welled up within him.
After a brief thought, a vaguely similar voice surged into his mind alongside memories.
"Dao, remote antiquity. Bitter hardship, extinction.
"Action and thought cultivated, connecting intent, reaching toward spirit.
"A thousand courses shifting the soul, a hundred bends turning the spirit.
"No blame."
...
This voice stood alongside the profound chanting of scripture.
As the two resonated together, not only did they fail to interfere with each other, but the sounds transmitted by each grew even clearer!
Before Li Fan, two figures seemed to appear, one on his left and one on his right, recounting to him some profound truth of the Great Dao of the world.
Dazed for a moment, Li Fan quickly realized where this voice came from.
It was an immortal incantation that Archmage Tiandu had chanted when facing the obliterating wind calamity during the lifetime of the Sage Emperor.
In the cycle before the last, when the Wordless Stele appeared to turn everything into text upon its surface, before the cascading, waterfall-like radiance, the Archmage had also chanted this calamity-averting immortal incantation.
At that time, when Li Fan heard it, he had tried to memorize it, only to be met with the Archmage's contempt and ridicule.
Back then, Li Fan had not understood why. Now that he had stepped into the immortal realm and listened to it anew, Li Fan finally discovered that, just like the profound chanting of scripture, though immortals and mortals heard the same sound, there was a crucial difference between them.
"Dao born, passed from remote antiquity. Grieving hardship, Dao extinguished.
"Action mingled with cultivated thought, connecting with the Dao's intent, reaching toward the divine spirit.
"A thousand courses shifting the soul, a hundred bends turning the spirit.
"Boundless, infinite, without blame."
...
What immortal and mortal heard were worlds apart!
Li Fan's mind was deeply shaken, and he could not help immersing himself in this true calamity-averting immortal incantation.
"It seems my body has undergone no change.
"Yet it has somehow erased to a certain extent the scripture chanting's 'erosion' of me..."
A sharp light burst in his eyes. Inspired by sudden insight, Li Fan joined in chanting this calamity-averting immortal incantation.
Shrouded by the profound chanting of scripture, the slight sense of dread and unease in his heart slowly receded.
Li Fan had barely noticed this faint fear himself.
Only when it truly dissipated did the stark contrast before and after make him realize it had been there all along.
"If I were influenced by either one of these profound sounds alone, even as a half-immortal I would inevitably fall deeply into it. But now, with both profound sounds echoing together, they seem to have struck a balance.
"They vie against one another, yet leave me unharmed."
Li Fan exhaled a long breath.
The power of the True Immortal level was truly insidious beyond measure. Coming into contact with it permitted no carelessness whatsoever.
"The Archmage's Dao sound is a calamity-averting immortal incantation.
"It was likely thanks to this incantation that he was able to hide peacefully in the Xuanhuang Realm all along, undisturbed."
Having experienced firsthand the wonder of the calamity-averting immortal incantation, Li Fan turned his attention back to the profound chanting of scripture.
"Affecting and altering reality through the phantoms of past memories, is it..."
Looking at the countless phantoms standing within his sea of consciousness, Li Fan's gaze fell upon one of them.
He focused his mind...
There were no fluctuations of immortal spiritual power, not even any mundane energy ripples.
Yet something exceedingly wondrous happened in an instant.
Xuanhuang Realm, Liuli Island.
He Zhenghao was staring fixedly at his miniature Heavenly Profound mirror. Due to the earth-shattering event of Li Fan's palm strike and the disappearance of the Alliance Headquarters, prices of all materials had run completely out of control, like a runaway roller coaster.
"Dammit, they won't even let people sell anymore!
"This is half a lifetime of my blood and sweat!"
He Zhenghao's eyes were bloodshot, bordering on sheer madness.
But suddenly, his face turned deathly pale.
His head felt as if it had been cleaved open by a heavy blow, and he went limp, collapsing directly to the ground.
Only after who knows how long did he finally recover, drenched in sweat as though he had lost half his life.
"Spirit Mist Grass?
"My contribution points wiped out entirely?
"Mountain River Hidden Dragon Technique?"
...
He Zhenghao stared blankly at the countless memories bursting into his mind.
"Did I suffer such a huge shock that I'm hallucinating?"
The memories surfacing in his head were too complicated and chaotic; it took He Zhenghao a long time to barely sort them out.
"This... feels too real. It's as if I lived through it myself. What on earth is happening?"
The more he sorted through them, the more He Zhenghao's heart leaped in fright, filled with disbelief.
"Still, the Mountain River Hidden Dragon Technique? Isn't this the technique I've yearned for day and night, dreamed of having?"
Suddenly, as if realizing something, his expression changed drastically.
"Could this... actually be real?"
He Zhenghao cautiously and hurriedly wrote down the words surfacing in his memory.
Having written only the opening lines, his body froze uncontrollably.
"There's no mistaking it! This is the genuine Mountain River Hidden Dragon Technique!
"To have it appear spontaneously in my head... doesn't that mean I instantly saved hundreds of thousands of contribution points?!"
He Zhenghao's heart pounded wildly in an instant.
Yet soon, thinking of the strictly enforced Protector Hall of the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals, he deflated like a frost-bitten eggplant.
"No, wait! The entire Alliance Headquarters has disappeared! The Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals can't even protect itself, so who's going to care about leaked cultivation techniques?
"In times of turmoil like this, dragons and snakes rise from the earth. Perhaps this is the opportunity for people like us."
Thinking of something, a dangerous glint appeared in He Zhenghao's eyes.
"Profound Heavenly Spirit-Sealing Array?"
As He Zhenghao sorted through more memories, he reaped harvest after harvest, pleasant surprises following one another.
...
At the edge of the sea of stars, after Li Fan used the power of the scripture-chanting profound sound to alter He Zhenghao's memories, a wondrous transformation occurred within Li Fan as well.
Li Fan keenly noticed that within his body, several strands of spiritual energy had unexpectedly appeared.
Chapter 1411