This method of concealment—where its secrets could only be discerned on the premise of already knowing that the object possessed a certain uniqueness—was precisely characteristic of Sun Piaomiao's relics.
The statue before Li Buren was similar in style to several relics Sun Piaomiao had left on the Xuan Celestial Vessel. It served as a timely wake-up call.
"Nearly every object left behind by Sun Piaomiao had its own singular purpose. The human-shaped figurine could double the charging speed of Revert to the True. The Three-Forked Tree granted an extra simulation opportunity out of thin air. And from the bronze immortal crane, destroying it caused a cryptic spoken message to echo in one's ears."
"Tianluo Era 213. Commencing at Shangzhang Dayuanxian, Zuo'e Efeng; concluding at Zhuoyong Chifenruo, Yanmao Xuanyi..."
Reflecting on this, Li Buren paced slowly toward the human-shaped figurine statue.
The items that had abruptly materialized in the great hall all seemed tied to the experiments of this testing site. Though he had obtained visitor clearance to view them, their true forms did not seem to inhabit the same spacetime as Li Buren. They could only be observed from afar, impossible to touch by any means.
Only this figurine statue could be faintly touched by Li Buren, courtesy of the subtle resonance established between Li Fan and Sun Piaomiao's other relics.
His fingertips felt as if they were dipping into a layer of cool moisture rather than brushing against the solid surface of a figurine.
Even with merely this nebulous sensation, Li Buren experienced the same profoundly arcane feeling he had felt when facing Sun Piaomiao's relics before: "If my true body were here, he might be able to bypass this place's protective restrictions entirely by having Revert to the True directly absorb it. Unfortunately, this site seems to have been constructed specifically to capture Revert to the True. Before fully unraveling its secrets, my true body would never venture into such peril."
He had no choice but to seek another way.
Though a preliminary connection had been forged with the figurine statue, he found it impossible to take any further action.
Every form of energy, even his mental thoughts and divine consciousness, failed to affect this statue poised between illusion and reality.
After countless fruitless attempts, Li Buren recalled everything about Sun Piaomiao. Suddenly, that cryptic transmitted whisper surfaced in his mind once more.
"Tianluo Era 213..."
*Hum! Hum! Hum!*
The instant those words replayed in Li Buren's mind, the figurine emitted a deep, rumbling groan. It was like a long-dormant machine starting up again after countless years. The figurine seemed to shift from intangible to solid, and its previously hanging hands slowly rose before its chest.
Its right hand extended, pointing toward the center of the circular mural wall ahead.
With that single point, the celestial vistas of thousands of cubic pocket worlds displayed across the cylindrical hall underwent a drastic transformation.
The circular mural wall flickered rapidly with intertwined light and shadow.
It was like a book being flipped quickly backward, page by page. Or like a playing recording subjected to the rewind button.
Star seas whose vitality had extinguished into deathly black radiance shone brilliantly once more.
The continuously flickering cubic star seas gradually ceased their jittering, stabilizing into steady views.
Those few regions where life had clung to existence suddenly surged with power, expanding from faint glimmers into dazzling celestial brilliance.
Before he knew it, Li Buren found himself encircled by an immense sea of vibrant stars. The entire star sea monitored by the testing site seemed to have returned to the era before the Dao Annihilation Tribulation erupted.
The celestial lights and shadows leaped and shifted incessantly.
At last, in a singular moment, they froze. After a brief pause, the imagery upon the circular mural wall resumed playing at normal speed.
The pictures shifted with extraordinary velocity. Even with the strength of Li Buren's divine sense, fully analyzing and distinguishing them proved somewhat taxing.
Yet after watching for a short while, Li Buren quickly caught on. What played before his eyes was a recorded scene being looped.
"It hasn't reversed spacetime and returned to the days before the great tribulation struck. Instead, through this figurine, it has called up the surveillance data once logged by this testing ground."
"Tianluo Era 213..."
"Then the words that follow must correspond to..."
Li Buren silently recited in his heart once more: "Commencing at Shangzhang Dayuanxian, Zuo'e Efeng."
In response to this command, the figurine altered its motion again.
Its left arm, previously hanging by its side, slowly lifted.
This time, rather than a simple point, it moved just like the stroke that had encircled the Great Void, circumscribing a perimeter amid the constantly looping scenes.
Li Buren saw that not only was a portion sheared from the beginning of the recorded imagery of Tianluo Era 213,
but ninety percent of the cubic star seas on the circular mural wall vanished with that single stroke.
The dazzling sea of living stars abruptly dimmed.
Li Buren continued reciting the final phrase of the cryptic whisper.
"Concluding at Zhuoyong Chifenruo, Yanmao Xuanyi."
The time span of the looping recorded imagery narrowed once more. By Li Buren's reckoning, Tianluo Era 213 had originally spanned roughly one thousand years of the Xuanhuang Realm's history.
Filtered by the two commands, however, the timeframe shrank drastically. Watching the repeating scenes, Li Buren calculated that it covered a span of about fifty years.
Likewise, this was not merely a precise narrowing of the timeframe. The figurine swept its hand once more, carving through the starry expanse.
This time, a mere three cubic star seas remained brightly flickering.
Those three previously inconspicuous little cubes suddenly magnified, filling the entire circular mural wall.
The events that had once transpired within this cubic star sea during that timeframe replayed swiftly, scene by scene.
And one of those star seas was intimately familiar to Li Buren.
It was none other than the Pitch-Black Star Sea, where the Xuanhuang Realm resided!
With a flicker of thought, he tried sending his divine sense into the recorded scenes before him.
This time, no protective power barred his path; it felt as though he were truly roaming through starry space. Li Buren quickly locked onto the location of the Xuanhuang Realm.
"No Ten Sects of the Immortal Dao."
"No Xuantian Sect."
"Desolate Gods, Reincarnation, Divine Wood. This is the distant antiquity when the Immortal Realm still existed. There is not the slightest sign of the impending catastrophe, and the cultivating sects can still communicate with the Immortal Realm."
Spanning fifty full years, Li Buren could not examine everything that had occurred on the Xuanhuang continent down to the smallest detail.
He could only focus his attention on unusual events.
"The number of Desolate Gods that the Desolate God Sect could summon peaked in the fifth year. A total of twelve distinct Desolate Gods manifested simultaneously, crushing all defiance. Within the Xuanhuang Realm, they were at the pinnacle of power and prestige. Yet in the forty-third year, one of the Desolate Gods suddenly lost contact with the Desolate God Sect. Such a thing had never occurred in the sect's entire history.
"Although they managed to connect with a new Desolate God eight years later, this incident still left the sect master and elders of the Desolate God Sect burdened with deep anxiety.
"Compared to the Desolate God Sect, the Reincarnation Sect was far more low-profile. The Reincarnation Sect sought not to establish a great reincarnation across the Xuanhuang Realm, but a minor reincarnation within the individual. Relying on the Reincarnation Undying Physique, they could reincarnate and be reborn endlessly. Though each reincarnation stripped away all cultivation, certain critical memories were preserved throughout.
"And what they pursued through continuous rebirth was not ascension to immortality, but..."
Li Buren narrowed his eyes.
The scenes recorded upon the testing ground's circular mural wall encompassed virtually everything that had transpired in history.
By whatever profound means it operated, Li Buren's divine sense could freely explore even within secret chambers and sealed formations.
He could even clearly overhear certain divine-sense transmissions.
Yet not everything was recorded.
Whenever a Xuanhuang sect contacted the Immortal Realm, the recorded imagery distorted. In certain mysterious regions, the recording also failed, turning into blurred static or entire stretches of void.
The Sect Master of the Reincarnation Sect seemed almost perceptive of this omnipresent surveillance.
Whenever he imparted the ultimate arts of the Reincarnation Sect to his direct disciples, he would bathe, burn incense, and connect with the upper realm.
The recording would break off as a result.
"This Reincarnation Sect Master is named Jiang Lianshi.
"I don't recognize his direct disciple, Chu Zhiyi. However, one of Chu Zhiyi's apprentices looks rather familiar."
This apprentice was named Zhang Ruyu, currently a boy of about ten. Yet between his brows, the faint shadow of Zhang Qianmo was already discernible.
"The Reincarnation Sect."
Though the ultimate attainment of the Reincarnation Sect's arts could not be gleaned from the surveillance, Jiang Lianshi's conduct was deeply suspicious.
Aside from evading surveillance every time by contacting the Immortal Realm,
Jiang Lianshi often sat in quiet meditation on the top floor of a high pavilion in the Reincarnation Sect.
The top floor held only a single large hall.
Hung within it were tens of thousands of portraits of Jiang Lianshi himself.
These paintings appeared to have been executed by Jiang Lianshi's own hand. In every portrait, his expression, attire, and posture differed.
Apart from painting, Jiang Lianshi simply sat in that pavilion facing tens of thousands of portraits of himself.
Throughout the entire process, not a ripple of spiritual power arose.
Yet as an observer from countless years later, Li Buren still felt a hint of strangeness from this bizarre cultivation scene.
At times, he even had the illusion that for a single instant, all the portraits within that pavilion had sprung to life.
Over the fifty-year span, Jiang Lianshi achieved no breakthroughs. The entire Reincarnation Sect remained low-profile and quiet.
His only recorded engagement occurred when an elder of the Divine Wood Sect came calling, seeking to borrow the Reincarnation Sect's treasure, the One-Glance Ten-Thousand-Year Pearl.
According to this Divine Wood Sect elder, the One-Glance Ten-Thousand-Year Pearl could stimulate the growth of their divine tree without side effects. He pleaded earnestly, offering anything in exchange.
Jiang Lianshi dismissed him with a single refusal.
The Divine Wood Sect elder pleaded repeatedly, but the answer remained unchanged. Enraged, he attempted to take it by force, only for Jiang Lianshi to tap a single finger against his forehead.
A man in his sixties seemed to experience a reversal of time, reverting to an infant babbling at the breast.
Not only was his cultivation stripped away, but his intellect appeared to have regressed to infancy as well.
Jiang Lianshi did not take the elder's life; he merely ordered his disciples to carry him back to the Divine Wood Sect, accompanied by a talisman written in his own hand.
It seemed an ordinary strip of yellow paper, inscribed with a scrawled talismanic eye.
Upon receiving the talisman, the Divine Wood Sect offered apologies and gratitude to the Reincarnation Sect, seeking to present gifts of equal stature.
Jiang Lianshi politely declined and strictly forbade his disciples from having further dealings with the Divine Wood Sect.
...
"Jiang Lianshi's cultivation..." Li Buren had observed Jiang Lianshi across fifty years, yet with his current discernment, he still could not see through him.
On the surface, it appeared to be merely the Dao Integration realm. But that single finger capable of reversing time spoke volumes.
Considering that the Reincarnation Sect could continuously reincarnate and cultivate anew, there was no telling how long Jiang Lianshi had lived. Moreover, the tens of thousands of self-portraits hanging at the top of the pavilion inevitably brought one word to Li Buren's mind: "possibilities."
"Could the deepest secret of the Reincarnation Sect involve one's self across other possibilities? Though unable to cross over, could they faintly connect?"
Li Buren grew increasingly curious about Jiang Lianshi's ultimate fate.
Yet the recorded imagery was fixed within these fifty years, precluding further insight.
Beyond the events within these powerful sects over those fifty years, another matter in the ancient Xuanhuang Realm caught Li Buren's attention.
In the thirtieth year, in the southeastern corner of the Xuanhuang Realm, a True Immortal appeared to descend to the mortal dust.
A vast expanse of light and shadow distorted there, leaving the details impossible to discern.
Furthermore, this True Immortal had not descended alone; an escort had long been prepared within the Xuanhuang Realm.
The guide seemed to be an ordinary mortal.
For the first thirty years, he had lived as an utterly ordinary mountain farmer. But in the thirtieth year, he abruptly left his wife and children behind and journeyed deep into the mountains.
He laid down a welcoming ritual.
Having accomplished all this, he returned home as if nothing had happened.
Barely half a year later, he passed away.
As for the welcomed True Immortal, they seemed to escape the unseen surveillance and vanished without a trace from then on.
What caught Li Buren's attention most was that the place where this guide had lived was extremely close to where the fishing pond was located.
Yet no trace of the fishing pond appeared within this recorded light and shadow.
Thus, it remained impossible to judge whether the Fishing Immortal was involved behind the scenes.
"In this segment of spacetime, neither the Medicine King Sect nor Sun Piaomiao existed.
"What was he trying to reveal through this cryptic message left inside the bronze immortal crane? Or could it be that even he could not fully ascertain the truth, and was only able to roughly narrow down the timeframe?"
Li Buren's gaze temporarily drifted away from the Xuanhuang Realm,
arriving beyond the star sea.
It had to be said that the ancient cultivation world differed immensely from the present. Vibrant with vitality, anomalies frequently manifested across the star sea.
Li Buren finally understood why rumors claimed that whenever a star sea anomaly erupted, even True Immortals had to keep their distance.
"If my senses are correct, the eruption of a star sea anomaly interferes to some degree with a True Immortal's connection to the Sea of Infinity.
"Stripped of the property of infinity, a True Immortal might not emerge unscathed from these bizarre, ever-shifting anomalies."
Over the course of fifty years, the Pitch-Black Star Sea experienced seven anomalies on a scale capable of threatening True Immortals.
The hazy recorded imagery spoke of these magnificent scenes that had once occurred in the history of the star sea.
Li Buren's divine sense wandered across those fifty years of the Pitch-Black Star Sea,
quietly committing every anomaly across the various cultivation worlds to memory.
"Indeed, the Xuanhuang Realm is unlike any other.
"If nothing else, communicating with the Immortal Realm is something no ordinary cultivation world could achieve.
"Moreover..." Li Buren distinctly sensed that the "spirituality" of living beings in other cultivation worlds was far weaker than in the Xuanhuang Realm.
Chapter 1464