This time, it was not some supreme powerhouse crossing possibilities to launch a direct onslaught.
Rather, Li Fan had an inexplicable premonition—outside this world, a gaze had suddenly swept across from somewhere far beyond.
Yet this person did not possess the caliber of Black Heavenly Physician or Evil Su Bai, who could precisely pinpoint specific possibilities. Or perhaps it was because Li Fan was inside the Great Wall, sheltered by its protection.
In short, this sweep was merely an indiscriminate probe; the owner of the gaze had not actually found Li Fan.
Even so, an intense dread welled up in Li Fan's chest, as if he were being watched by an ancient, primeval beast.
He had nearly called forth Revert to the True on the spot.
Fortunately, the sensation of being stared down arrived quickly and vanished just as fast.
In an instant, it disappeared without a trace, almost as if it had been a hallucination.
Yet Li Fan knew in his heart that what had just occurred was no illusion.
"That gaze must have come from another Yin Changshou."
"My weakening of the Yin Changshou in this possibility actually drew the attention of his counterpart in another..." Li Fan fell into deep thought.
Looking at the utterly withered young man before him, a daring thought suddenly crossed Li Fan's mind: *Could my divine power of True Also False act simultaneously across all counterparts in every possibility?*
The idea certainly excited him.
Yet after careful consideration, Li Fan dismissed it.
If the divine power of True Also False synchronized across countless possibilities, the World-Crossing Mysterious Coffin would not have failed its verification earlier simply because a fraction of its particles had been erased.
Besides, Li Fan was self-aware.
Perhaps later, when his comprehension of the Dao of the Real and Unreal ran deeper, he might truly be able to act on the same target across all possibilities at once. But with his current newly initiated level, he was utterly incapable of such a feat.
Thoughts surged through his mind, and he soon deduced why the Yin Changshou of that other possibility had cast his gaze here.
"Judging by the actions of Black Heavenly Physician and Evil Su Bai, experts of their level need to constantly devour their other selves across different possibilities to grow stronger."
"It can be viewed as a method of cultivation—the so-called All Selves Unify into One."
"Theoretically speaking, anyone who can reach that step in a given possibility must possess extraordinary innate talent. His counterparts in other possibilities might differ in cultivation due to varying fortunes and opportunities, but they would never..."
"End up in a situation where all paths forward are severed, as he is now."
"Even if someone were a complete cripple incapable of cultivating, dealing with it wouldn't be difficult for a powerhouse capable of traversing possibilities. The vast Star Sea holds countless wondrous treasures; there are always means to forcefully alter destiny. Devouring them would still strengthen oneself. But the current Yin Changshou is an outright, unadulterated poison pill."
"Consuming him would bring a hundred harms and not a single benefit."
"Among countless selves, an anomalous, paradoxical self has suddenly appeared..."
"If Su Bai and Heavenly Physician had been struck by this divine power back then, perhaps they wouldn't have been targeted."
It was not that Li Fan's divine power of True Also False directly affected the powerhouses capable of traversing possibilities. Rather, it poisoned the 'materials' they needed to attain the Dao, severing their future prospects through an alternative method!
Of course, it seemed only Li Fan, who held Revert to the True, could deliver this kind of poison.
"Though I cannot face them head-on yet, this move is enough to thoroughly sicken them." Li Fan was quite pleased.
There might still be critical details about the cultivation of All Selves Unify into One that Li Fan did not understand. Yet from the obsession Evil Su Bai had once displayed, every single 'self' was of immense importance.
If one of the 'selves' in an existing possibility suffered such a mutation, it would be utterly unacceptable to an expert of that level.
"Severing an individual in just one possibility might not completely ruin their chances of achieving All Selves Unify into One. But due to this acquired flaw, they would likely end up a cut below the rest. And it would be irreparable."
Li Fan looked out beyond the heavens once more.
He seemed to glimpse the silhouette of Black Heavenly Physician, and an itch stirred in his heart.
"Toward the end of this lifetime, I can conduct an experiment on Heavenly Physician. I'll apply the divine power of True Also False first, then actively send him outside the wall, just to see how the abruptly arriving Black Heavenly Physician reacts."
Li Fan dismissed the ten experimental subjects.
He then consolidated his divine power of True Also False until exhaustion set in and his immediate insights hit a bottleneck, bringing this stage of comprehension to an end.
The brief episode in the Xuanhuang Realm had lasted only a moment.
Li Fan's focus returned once more to the starry expanse beyond the Great Wall.
Due to the discrepancy in the flow of time, roughly thirty-odd days had elapsed here.
The divine power of True Also False had forcefully interrupted the mysterious coffin's world-crossing transit. Deterred by this display of might, the two immortals inside had remained silent for quite a while.
During this time, through contact and analysis using the power of the Immortal Soul of Mo Sha, Li Fan seemed to have discovered a method to forcefully pry open the coffin lid.
Ultimately, the Immortal Soul of Mo Sha approached the force of the Dao Annihilation Tribulation—the most terrifying destructive power in the mortal realm, bar none.
Even though Li Fan's current realm was somewhat lacking, under continuous erosion, not even a vessel bearing the name of the World-Crossing Mysterious Coffin could hold out indefinitely.
Still, Li Fan did not act rashly.
Given the divine powers the two immortals in the coffin had demonstrated, relying solely on the power of his Immortal Soul of Mo Sha to subdue them was far from enough. He needed other means.
Qian Ruochang was relatively easy to handle. The Immortal Soul of Mo Sha could sever the Dao Net; without its power, he was merely someone with a slightly formidable physique.
The difficult one was Immortal Wu.
When Immortal Wu had previously hidden among the novice Immortal Hunters, Li Fan had come into close contact with him without noticing a thing. Clearly, his strength was superior to Li Fan's. He might fall slightly short of the Hunger Immortal in the Immortal Ruins, but the difference was likely minimal. After all, he was a True Immortal who had survived from the Great Tribulation to the present day.
"The trouble with him lies entirely in his attribute of 'Nothingness'—severing every connection to the world..."
"So what I must do is forcefully tie cause and effect to him."
In Li Fan's mind, the methods at his disposal flickered one after another.
The shifting lights and shadows suddenly halted upon a chessboard covered in black and white pieces.
"An immortal domain fragment..." Li Fan's eyes gleamed.
Even though all Li Fan had managed to collect were the faded chess pieces of the losers, the presence of the Southern Immortal Heavenly Pillar within that domain was proof enough of the profound depths involved.
"I wonder if he can still treat everything as nothing when burdened with the weight of an immortal domain."
With a concrete countermeasure in place, the current problem was how to send the chess piece outside.
All of Li Fan's current actions relied on the power of the Wuyou Dreamscape.
While dream power could reshape a body beyond the wall, it could not construct an immortal domain chess piece.
"However, the Great Wall exists to restrain those below the True Immortal realm."
"Perhaps it was never meant to restrain an immortal domain fragment in the first place."
After a moment's contemplation, Li Fan vaguely found his answer.
He did not take out all the immortal domain fragments, only a single one.
Guided by Li Fan's power, it arrived at the flaw in the Great Wall.
Outside the Great Wall, the power of the Wuyou Dreamscape had long been waiting to receive it.
To prevent unexpected accidents, Li Fan's true body remained on high alert, prepared to execute Revert to the True at any moment.
At the frontier of the Pitch-Black Star Sea, beyond the continuous Great Wall of Remnant Realms, Li Fan's phantom manifested.
Two fingers of his right hand gripped the chess piece.
With a solemn expression, he hurled it forward with full force.
Just like the desperate gamble of the Shang Celestial Vessel in the past, slamming violently against the Great Wall, the chess piece shot from Li Fan's hand like a flying sword.
It surged straight toward the Great Wall.
Unlike the tremendous commotion Li Fan had caused when instigating the Xuan Celestial Vessel's collision with the wall, the immortal domain fragment struck without making a sound.
From inside the Great Wall, the chess piece appeared to be swallowed directly, vanishing in an instant.
Yet from the perspective outside the Great Wall...
Li Fan waited for a long time, but the immortal domain chess piece he had thrown never emerged!
His expression shifted slightly.
At this moment, his dream power permeated this entire pocket of the Annihilation Lands.
If the chess piece had crossed the Great Wall and appeared here, Li Fan would certainly have sensed it.
Yet it had failed to appear for so long...
Li Fan unleashed a massive reservoir of accumulated dream power, probing beyond the Annihilation Lands in an attempt to find the missing piece.
Yet after a long while, he came up empty-handed.
"Even the imprint I left on the chess piece is gone?"
Li Fan's mood turned somber.
He reviewed and replayed everything that had transpired in that brief instant.
"Could it be that the immortal domain chess piece failed to cross the Great Wall?"
Inside the Pitch-Black Star Sea, Li Fan thoroughly searched the area where the piece had disappeared.
He found no trace left behind.
"Could the time disparity between the interior and exterior of the Great Wall have caused this? Do I need to wait a bit longer?"
Thinking this, Li Fan patiently waited a while more. Yet an entire day passed, and the chess piece remained nowhere to be found.
"Could the problem lie within the Great Wall itself?"
Within the Annihilation Lands, dream power gathered beside the perceptible presence of the Great Wall.
The so-called Great Wall had no physical form.
It had simply appeared out of nowhere when the collapse of the Great Dao, brought on by the Dao Annihilation Tribulation, arrived. It had precariously propped up the collapsing heavens, carving out a narrow pocket where life could survive amidst an otherwise utterly devastated region.
It was, in essence, the space preserved beneath the leaning ruins of broken walls.
Li Fan stared intently at the void ahead.
He suddenly recalled how, under his instigation, the Xuan Celestial Vessel had made a desperate bid and crashed violently into the Great Wall.
Back then, when a bridge seemed to form between the inside and outside of the wall, the Star Spirit of the Pitch-Black Star Sea had appeared to witness something utterly terrifying and fled in panic.
Li Fan, too, had experienced that same unsettling sensation, as if some horrifying existence were observing him through transparent glass.
"Outside the Great Wall lies the Shuo Star Sea. They know nothing of the Pitch-Black Star Sea within, as evidenced by Qian Ruochang passing the Great Wall without ever entering."
"So, this inexplicable chill, combined with the vanished chess piece..."
An incredible thought suddenly surfaced in Li Fan's mind.
"Could there be something inside the Great Wall?"
In this lifetime, Li Fan had used the power of the Wuyou Dreamscape to escape the Great Wall through an unconventional method.
Yet he had seen only the inside and outside of the wall, never what lay within it.
That was because the wall was formless and immaterial.
However, since it could prop up the Pitch-Black Star Sea and the nearby immortal domain from destruction during the Dao Annihilation Tribulation, the Great Wall could not merely be composed of intangible laws.
It was highly likely to be a physical object, much like the thigh bone of the Nameless True Immortal or the Southern Immortal Heavenly Pillar.
However, this object was concealed through some extraordinary method.
Leave aside Li Fan—even figures like Immortal Wu and Qian Ruochang, powerhouses approaching the level of the Nameless True Immortal, had failed to notice it.
"Yet Immortal He Gan was no stranger to the Xuanhuang Realm, and even had extensive contact with Xuanyuan Hong. Could Immortal Wu not be Immortal He Gan as I've always assumed?"
Doubts arose in Li Fan's mind.
Still, the most critical matter right now was determining whether there truly was an 'inside' to the wall.
Dream power from the Wuyou Dreamscape wrapped around the World-Crossing Mysterious Coffin layer upon layer.
Li Fan chose to set aside the two True Immortals in the coffin for now and deal with this unexpected mystery within the wall first.
"The Xuanhuang Realm and the vast stellar region around it were faintly an ancient, secret testing ground of the Upper Realm's True Immortals. Though later abandoned, the Great Wall serving as a protective measure must have been part of that testing ground as well."
"..."
Though eager to investigate, Li Fan did not act recklessly.
"Judging by the sensation of being monitored that I felt before, living beings might still dwell within the wall. I must remain on guard."
"Furthermore, the Great Wall might only intercept selectively. After all, the Tianjian Sect and the Shang Celestial Vessel genuinely leaped across it. Or did they discover something inside the wall?"
He recalled that neither faction had possessed supreme might within the Star Sea. Yet after leaping across the Great Wall, they had suddenly gained the strength to hunt True Immortals.
Even accounting for the time disparity and millions of years of accumulation, it still seemed rather implausible.
"If they discovered something inside the wall, within the remnants of the ancient Immortal Realm testing ground, it would all make sense."
At this thought, Li Fan became genuinely curious about the interior of the wall.
The lost immortal domain chess piece would return the moment he used Revert to the True, so losing it was of no consequence.
"However, placing myself inside an immortal domain chess piece and crashing into the Great Wall might be an effective approach."
"This is a matter of great consequence; I must handle it personally."
Li Fan's true body pondered for a moment and made his decision.
With a single thought, an array of materials for crafting an avatar materialized before him.
After a long absence, he intended to forge another clone.
He had been in the Immortal realm for some time now. Having comprehended how to give form to the divine soul through mental intent, and having uncovered the secrets of the Shuo Star Sea's Dao Net, Li Fan had developed new ideas regarding methods of avatar refinement.
"Qian Ruochang's Dao-string skeleton is an example worth emulating."
"For this exploration inside the wall, the avatar's strength cannot be weak."
With a stir of Li Fan's mind, the diverse materials fused together in an instant, as if baked by raging flames.
A human form gradually took shape.
"The projection of the Great Dao shall serve as the spirit of the heart."
The human body suddenly turned transparent, like a mirror reflecting the Great Daos of the myriad heavens.
Dao light converged, weaving an intricate web within the body.
"A fragment of the Immortal Realm shall serve as the bones of the form."
Li Fan chanted softly, casting out an immortal domain chess piece.
The chess piece unfurled continuously, transforming into a solid, pillar-like mass that slowly merged into the Dao Net.
Chapter 1459