Li Fan faintly sensed an aura resembling that of the Southern Immortal Heavenly Pillar from several key nodes of the Dao Net.
Before he had time to ponder further, the magnificent Dao Net before his eyes abruptly faded and vanished from sight.
Within the City of Ultimate Bliss, the bustling clamor seemed to drop away entirely for a split second, only to return to normal an instant later. Most likely, only Li Fan—the maintenance worker responsible for conducting the Dao Net inspection—or the Lord of the City of Ultimate Bliss could perceive the shift that had just occurred in the sky above the city.
If the Dao Net was like a blank sheet of paper laid over the surface of heaven and earth's Great Dao, then inspecting and servicing the net was akin to first splashing ink across that paper, and then pressing down hard upon it.
"The imprints of the Dao Net grow clearer by the day. Bound tight, what is caught in the net cannot escape."
Squinting, Li Fan seemed to picture Scholar Zhu's sinister face. Yet he made no move to halt the Dao Net's encroachment upon the City of Ultimate Bliss; he simply watched in silence, letting his "toy" sink deeper and deeper into this net.
After the roar of the Dao Net subsided, Scholar Zhu cast a final glance in Li Fan's direction.
Li Fan offered a slight bow, adopting a tense expression.
Only after three full breaths did Scholar Zhu look away, his figure fading into the city.
Li Fan paid no heed to the veiled threat, setting aside all stray thoughts for the moment. He recalled every detail of the Dao Net he had witnessed just moments ago.
As a low-level operator of the Dao Net, Ma Tiande was not purely a consumable pawn. In truth, being able to interface with and observe the Dao Net up close was itself a supreme opportunity that every cultivator dreamed of!
The Dao was formless, invisible.
Cultivators sought high and low precisely to draw closer to the Dao, the source of all things.
Though Ma Tiande was a so-called Dao Controller, his actual cultivation was merely equivalent to the Nascent Soul realm. At such a level, let alone beholding the Great Dao of heaven and earth, even perceiving a single branch among the countless Daos was far beyond his reach.
Yet precisely because of his special identity as a Dao Controller, he could regularly catch glimpses of the Dao Net—which was the cast reflection of heaven and earth's Great Dao.
"It's just that Ma Tiande's aptitude is truly mediocre; within the Pitch-Black Star Sea, he probably wouldn't even have set foot into Qi Condensation. On top of that, the Shuo Star Sea Governing Council deliberately withheld concepts and knowledge related to cultivation from him. That is why, despite drawing so close to the Dao countless times, his cultivation remained mediocre."
"Possessing a priceless treasure without even realizing it!"
Li Fan sighed softly, slowly digesting the profound insights swirling in his mind.
"True Immortal seal characters are the Dao-Inscribing Immortal's paraphrasing. By studying True Immortal seal characters, mortals are able to glimpse the worldly Dao through the Dao-Inscribing Immortal's eyes."
"The Dao Net, on the other hand, is directly the Dao's shadow—or rather, a duplicate."
"It is even closer to the Dao itself than the True Immortal seal characters."
"Remarkable!" Even with his vast knowledge and experience, Li Fan could not help but praise it from the bottom of his heart.
Li Fan's comprehension was naturally leagues beyond Ma Tiande's.
With this first glimpse, inspiration surged more violently than ever before. Li Fan cross-referenced and verified the scattered fragments of the Great Dao he had observed through various channels in the past against the true Dao Net.
His depth of comprehension of the Dao climbed steadily, like raging ocean waves, each crashing higher than the last.
In a sense, this was a breakthrough born of long accumulation, an inevitable triumph whose time had come.
Although it was merely a wisp of divine sense, once brought into harmony with the Great Dao of heaven and earth, even that meager wisp could undergo a miraculous transformation, turning the mundane into the extraordinary. His divine sense became like a thin membrane, across which emerged countless faint, crisscrossing lines.
It bore a seventy to eighty percent resemblance to the Dao Net Li Fan had just witnessed!
Li Fan had astonishingly used his divine sense as paper to take yet another rub-tracing of the Dao Net, that duplicate of the Great Dao!
Though it was a duplicate of a duplicate, its ultimate origin was the Great Dao of heaven and earth!
Even though the membrane of Li Fan's divine sense had barely replicated the most rudimentary form, it was enough to manifest might that truly belonged to the Great Dao.
Lines of light flickered across the membrane, seemingly echoing the Great Dao of heaven and earth from afar.
As if imbued with boundless vitality and drive, the shimmering light and shadow fleshed out Li Fan's "weak" divine sense.
Gradually, this wisp of divine sense began to incubate into Li Fan's complete appearance!
Only the finer details remained somewhat blurred.
"Is this... Mind Soul Formation?"
The instant this Soul Formation of divine sense was born, Li Fan's true body far away in the Xuanhuang Realm underwent a sudden shift in expression. He sensed everything occurring in the City of Ultimate Bliss within the Shuo Star Sea.
He had clearly severed all direct connections with that divine sense. Without the power of the Dream Paradise bridging the gap, separated by a distance equivalent to dozens of Pitch-Black Star Seas, and with an invisible Great Wall standing between them...
Yet Li Fan could still establish a synchronized resonance with this phantom divine sense of his.
Li Fan's expression grew increasingly animated.
"This isn't a direct connection between us. Heaven and earth's Great Dao is acting as a relay."
"From top to bottom, all things in the world are projections of the Great Dao. The portion belonging to me also occupies a unique projection coordinate within the Great Dao."
"Even if separated by endless distance and blocked by various means, as long as we both exist beneath this same Great Dao of heaven and earth, nothing can hinder this synchronization."
Li Fan quickly deduced why such a seemingly miraculous result was possible.
Relying on his profound understanding of the Dao, he had audaciously used the Dao Net as a blueprint to construct an alternative miniature Dao Net upon himself!
At the same time he connected with the divine sense in the Shuo Star Sea, the divine sense of Li Fan's true body underwent a corresponding change.
It didn't manifest a clearer pattern on the membrane simply because one was the true body and the other a clone; everything depended on one's comprehension of the Great Dao.
In his sea of consciousness, once Mind Soul Formation took shape, Li Fan's phantom stood erect.
The Dao Assimilation Stone abruptly erupted with dazzling blue light, then transformed into myriad rays of light that flooded into the phantom, further completing the pattern of heaven and earth's Great Dao upon it!
Some rays of the Dao Assimilation Stone fused seamlessly into the phantom of the Mind Soul Formation. Others circled around but found no suitable place to settle; unable to usurp an existing spot, they spun in confusion for a few turns before slipping back out of the phantom.
They coalesced once more into a Dao Assimilation Stone.
However, because part of the Great Dao composing it was now missing, the stone's quality had plummeted from the Mother Stone tier down to the medium grade.
Yet this did not bother Li Fan.
As long as he was given a little time to continuously stack the transformation of true and false, restoring the Dao Assimilation Stone's quality would be effortless.
"This phenomenon with the Dao Assimilation Stone confirms my earlier assessment."
"The Dao Transformation Mother Stone was indeed transformed from a complete Great Dao of an alternate possibility. It's just that this possible Great Dao is not identical to the Primordial reality I inhabit; in fact, it is considerably weaker. That is why only a portion of the Dao within the Dao Assimilation Stone surged forth to complete the picture of the Great Dao within my Mind Soul Formation."
"Even so, with the replenishment from the Dao Assimilation Stone, this miniature Dao Net I built transformed in an instant from an eyesore into something truly decent."
Li Fan's mind roamed within that net of the Great Dao inside his divine sense, unable to tear itself away.
Because of this substantial influx of outside aid, Li Fan temporarily couldn't command it with the instinctive ease he had initially enjoyed. Every advantage came with its drawbacks.
Nevertheless, since it was constructed upon Li Fan's own divine sense, he still retained absolute control.
Only after immersing himself for a long time did Li Fan finally return to his senses, letting out a long breath. "This is already very close to the theoretical Mind Soul Formation."
"Supporting the shadow of the Great Dao with one's own mind."
"By a stroke of fortune, I actually bypassed several preliminary steps of the new method and arrived directly at this stage."
"Albeit with some flaws..."
If this were the theoretically perfect state of the new new method, what appeared upon the phantom of Li Fan's divine sense would not be merely a distorted, warped tracing. Instead, his divine sense would be like a mirror, reflecting and manifesting the Great Dao of heaven and earth in its entirety.
"Divine sense tracing from below all the way up to the source of the Great Dao. Every thought and impulse endowed with the power to invoke the Great Dao."
"What a pity that what I have reflected is merely an incomplete duplicate."
Li Fan felt a faint twinge of regret.
Yet he also knew that even at his current half-immortal realm, daydreaming of spying upon the true Great Dao of this world was utter foolishness.
"A counterfeit manifested with the help of peerless powerhouses is by no means a bad temporary substitute."
Manifesting the miniature Dao Net through his mind brought benefits far beyond merely communicating in real time across vast distances.
At the very least, Li Fan now possessed the ability—like the Immortal Hunt cultivators of the Shuo Star Sea—to directly invoke the power of the Great Dao against his foes.
"Granted, my miniature Dao Net cannot compare in power to the Dao Net constructed by the Shuo Star Sea."
"Yet its efficiency is still over a hundred times greater than directly using True Immortal seal characters."
Now that Li Fan possessed a Dao Net uniquely his own, he naturally understood the operational disparity compared to conventional methods.
"Perhaps this method is devoid of risk only now, when the Immortal Realm has fallen and the immortals no longer show themselves."
"Had it been in ancient times, when several Nameless True Immortals had integrated with the Great Dao, my invoking the Great Dao's power through a Dao Net would inevitably have been sensed by Them dwelling within the Dao."
"I would have become public enemy number one to all Nameless True Immortals... At the very inception of my Dao attainment, I would likely have invited a joint pursuit. I wouldn't even know how I died."
After absorbing the Dao contained within the Dao Assimilation Stone, even though the stone's quality had dropped, the agility of Li Fan's thoughts remained entirely unaffected.
In an instant, many things flashed through his mind.
"As for now, who knows how many Nameless True Immortals even remain? Moreover, there is another, vastly larger Dao Net acting as a screen and drawing the fire."
"It simply won't draw the attention of the Nameless True Immortals."
"In fact..."
A sudden, unwarranted surge of confidence rose in Li Fan's heart. Now that his Mind Soul Formation had replicated his own Dao Net, even if he were to face a Nameless True Immortal, he was no longer entirely powerless to fight back.
"A Nameless True Immortal possesses complete mastery over a Great Dao of heaven and earth."
"Though my Mind Soul Formation is only a duplicate of an incomplete rubbing, and the Great Dao's power I can invoke is exceedingly limited..."
"Its advantage lies in sheer variety and quantity. What's more, it is still the power of the Great Dao. In theory, I am wielding the very same kind of power as the Nameless True Immortals—only with far less strength behind it," Li Fan realized in his heart.
This was by no means arrogance born from a lucky breakthrough.
It was a reasoned deduction founded upon his understanding of the Great Dao.
"And this is merely my half-baked Mind Soul Formation."
"If it were the truly ideal state of the new new method, perhaps Mind Soul Formation could genuinely wrestle with a Nameless True Immortal."
"If even the Soul Formation realm can achieve this, what about Star Sea Dao Integration or Dao-Resonating Longevity?"
"Could those be the realms where the likes of the Black Heavenly Physician and Sinister Su Bai reside?"
Li Fan could barely restrain his imagination.
Only after a long while did the surging tide of thoughts recede.
"My ability to achieve Mind Soul Formation is truly a matter of serendipity."
"Across a hundred past reincarnations, I have not only seen numerous True Immortal seal characters, but also caught sight of an intact Immortal Domain, a True Immortal's leg bone, and even the descent of the black mist and the annihilation of the Great Dao. Witnessing the birth and demise of Daos accumulated my comprehension of the Dao to a degree unimaginable to ordinary men."
"Relying on these alone was still far from enough. Only with the Shuo Star Sea's Dao Net as a stepping stone could I fully convert my past accumulation into reality. Though a duplicate of a duplicate is further removed from the original, it is the best method allowing a 'novice' like me to accomplish a tracing."
"Besides this, what is even more critical is..."
Li Fan's divine sense phantom examined every corner of his being.
For the very first time, he truly and faintly sensed the presence of Trueness.
Just as elusive as the Great Dao of heaven and earth, in Li Fan's perception it was merely an unspeakable, shadowy form. Yet having been accompanied by Trueness for so long, Li Fan was certain in his heart.
That was indeed Trueness.
"The transformation of true and false contained within Trueness seemingly encompasses all the Great Daos of heaven and earth."
"My deepening comprehension of the transformation of true and false is, in a sense, a deepening perception of heaven and earth's Great Dao."
"Now, I can already briefly sustain the existence of objects manifested through 'false becoming true.' Perhaps that is the fundamental reason why my divine sense phantom can accommodate an entire possible Great Dao."
"Were it anyone else..."
Li Fan mused, pondering for a moment before shaking his head slightly.
"Only someone of peerless genius, blessed with the right time, place, and people, could perhaps achieve it."
"I had originally thought I truly forged a path for the new new method."
"To think I still cheated with Trueness, skipping the earlier stages entirely. This is an isolated case, impossible to replicate."
However, Li Fan never cared whether others could cultivate it.
As long as it proved effective for himself, that was enough.
"Though it is merely a half-baked Mind Soul Formation, it has inadvertently pointed out my path forward."
"Interact with the Dao Net as much as possible to perfect my tracing."
"Advancing on two fronts—the transformation of true and false alongside comprehension of the Great Dao of heaven and earth. By reflecting the Dao Net, I can steadily draw closer to the Dao's very root..."
Li Fan was overjoyed.
Though the immortal path was severed, enlightened by the civilization of the Shuo Star Sea outside the Great Wall, he had discovered a new potential path in such a short span of time.
"This was certainly not the work of mortals achieved in a single generation."
"Leaving aside the involvement of True Immortals, there is also the disparity in the flow of time inside and outside the wall..."
Li Fan frowned slightly, calculating.
Chapter 1439