Guidance from Revert to the True

So-called "spirituality" was a unique aptitude that Li Fan's true body had only begun to sense in cultivators and living beings after comprehending the divine ability [True Also False]. It was virtually a comprehensive judgment of all elements—disposition, natural talent, root bone, destiny, and more—tied to the probability of that living being transcending possibilities. In the past, Li Fan's perspective had been confined solely to the myriad living beings of the Xuanhuang Realm. Those he encountered in the Shuo Star Sea were also among the paragons. Moreover, their numbers had been too few to make a definitive judgment. Now, the scope of Li Buren's observation had abruptly expanded across the entire experimental star sea. The Xuanhuang Realm was merely one of the sky full of stars, multiplying the volume of data by tens of millions of times. Li Fan suddenly realized a fact: "Among the vast sea of cultivation worlds, the aptitudes of the living beings of the Xuanhuang Realm definitely rank at the very forefront." What factor caused this disparity in average aptitude across different cultivation worlds was completely unknown. "Yet the True Immortals in the testing ground undoubtedly discovered this anomaly. Viewing the Xuanhuang Realm as a primary subject of observation was only natural." In the entire Pitch-Black Star Sea, what Li Buren cared about most was the Xuanshang Celestial Vessel. At this point in time, the Xuanshang Celestial Vessel had already begun wandering among the realms. Because the vessel's coordinates were not fixed, and it sometimes even ventured near regions where stellar anomalies erupted, the testing ground's records of the Xuanshang Celestial Vessel were not continuous. During certain periods, observation of the Xuanshang Celestial Vessel was lost entirely. Soon after, the vessel would reappear elsewhere in the star sea as if having "leaped." Furthermore, within the vessel itself, there seemed to be some method capable of interfering with the testing ground's records. The imagery was very blurry, cutting in and out like a lost signal. In Li Buren's exploration, this manifested as his divine sense hitting walls at every turn as it wandered, rendering him entirely unable to take in everything happening inside the Xuanshang Celestial Vessel. "It is said that the Xuanshang Celestial Vessel discovered the truth that the living beings of the realms were penned and raised like livestock, and thus abandoned settled life in a single realm. Instead, they continually wandered the star sea in hopes of escaping that fate. To a certain extent, they truly achieved this." "According to the present claims of the Xuan Celestial Vessel, the Xuanshang Celestial Vessel likely possessed some immortal treasure or a method that only True Immortals could employ. Only by countering immortals with immortal means could they produce such miraculous results." As customary, he committed to memory the suspicious events that had occurred on the Xuan Celestial Vessel over these fifty years. Just as Li Buren was about to inspect the other two cubic star seas aside from the Xuanhuang Realm, he suddenly felt as though he had overlooked something. Pondering, his thoughts returned once more to the recorded fifty years of imagery of the Xuanhuang Realm. This time, he no longer focused on those conspicuous, dazzling figures, but instead cast his gaze upon the ordinary masses. Li Buren discovered that some of the faces were strikingly familiar. At this recorded point in time, the person known as Li Fan did not exist at all. The reason Li Buren found some of them familiar was that they had once appeared among the countless frozen corpses within the Heavenly Venerable of Life and Death's Grand Formation of Inverting Life and Death. "Not only that. Could one or two of these faces even exist in the present Xuanhuang Realm?" With a shift of thought, Li Fan's true body pinpointed two people within the Carefree Paradise of dreams. Both had originally been mortals, embarking on the cultivation path only after the dreamland paradise enveloped all of Xuanhuang. Yet in the records of the testing ground, in the ancient Xuanhuang Realm, these two had likewise existed as unremarkable mortals. "..." Four faces, spanning ages of time, overlapped in pairs before Li Fan's eyes. Even with Li Fan's current might, capable of destroying the Xuanhuang Realm with a flip of his hand, a faint chill could not help but rise in his heart. He recalled once more the mortal he had seen in the recorded images—the one who had abruptly deviated from his life's trajectory, as if transformed into an entirely different person, to guide the True Immortal. "These mortals are probably nothing more than NPCs used to fill out the Xuanhuang Realm, recycled through infinite samsara. At certain critical moments, they can even receive special directives to carry out missions assigned by True Immortals..." "This method of control is not achieved through any divine ability or technique. Rather, it is likely rooted deep within the very core of these mortals." Even before ascending to immortality, Li Fan could barely create living beings through the Form of Living Beings. Therefore, he had no doubt that the True Immortals of the ancient Immortal Realm possessed the ability to mass-produce living beings. "These living creations are recycled, showing that the testing ground also took resource consumption into account. Because the base population is vast enough, each time they are cycled back into reincarnation, centuries or millennia have passed in the world. Almost no one could ever notice." "Even if noticed by chance, it could easily be explained away as coincidence, making certainty impossible." "Only someone like me, who spans two eras of space-time and holds mastery over the faces of all living beings in the Xuanhuang Realm, could make such a definitive judgment." "Not only is everything that happens recorded on file, but even the cultivation realm's environment and the majority of its living beings were predetermined. Truly worthy of being called a testing ground..." "I just wonder if the other cultivation worlds are the same besides the Xuanhuang Realm." The other realms had already all been destroyed. Li Fan had no way to verify. Yet presumably, their structure should have been the same as the Xuanhuang Realm's. "The maintenance of the testing ground is inextricably linked to the Indeterminate Ring and the Nine-Star Red Bead I discovered in the ancient Xuanhuang Realm formation. The Nine-Star Red Bead has vanished without a trace, suspected of having been taken away by someone." "Traces of the [Return] character technique were even left at the scene." "If an insider of the testing ground had come to retrieve it, there certainly would have been no need for such elaborate measures. So it must have been an outsider." "Judging from the residual patterns of the Nine-Star Red Bead I saw back then and the surveillance data in this testing ground, that Nine-Star Red Bead must store the complete life data of all living beings that ever existed in the history of the Xuanhuang Realm..." Before Li Fan's eyes, hundreds of millions of different faces seemed to flash past. A question suddenly surfaced in his mind. If those mortals were NPCs created to fill the void of the world, then what on earth were the cultivators who flourished in the history of the Xuanhuang Realm—those glorious, peerless figures whose names resonated across eternity? "Setting aside the constant emergence of paragons in the Xuanhuang Realm's history," "None of those who ascended to True Immortals left behind any records whatsoever. Either they were deliberately erased, or they all achieved the realm of the Nameless and spontaneously vanished from the world's records." "If it were the former, fine. But if the latter..." Even if Nameless True Immortals died like ants in the cataclysm of the Immortal Realm's destruction, every advancement to Nameless still required integrating with a Dao. Their numbers could never be vast. Especially when spread across countless, immeasurable cultivation worlds in the lower realms. No matter how exceptionally endowed with spiritual essence the Xuanhuang Realm might be, it would be impossible for so many Nameless True Immortals to emerge repeatedly. Like a bolt of lightning cleaving through the fog, a thought could not help but surface in Li Fan's mind: "Could it be that Nameless True Immortals descended to the lower realm by some means, using themselves as bait in a vain attempt to lure and capture [Revert to the True]?" Li Fan's thoughts raced. "A supreme treasure from the Sea of Infinity capable of reversing the Dao Annihilation Tribulation—even Nameless True Immortals would surely be tempted. Were I in their place, if I knew of the existence of this lower realm testing ground, I too would try by every means to get involved. Even if officially forbidden, I would smuggle myself across." "After all, it is merely an avatar, something done in passing. What if they truly captured it?" "Yet how could [Revert to the True] be so easily reeled in? They were destined to return empty-handed." "The aptitudes of those capable of cultivating into Nameless True Immortals are unquestionable. Even if they lacked their true body's memories to make the bait convincing, returning to the True Immortal realm would be no problem." "Theoretically, as a testing ground, there is no way it would allow experimental subjects to escape via ascension. Yet those who came from the Immortal Realm were naturally exempt from these restrictions. Some were even figures that the True Immortals running the testing ground could not afford to offend, so they would naturally let them pass without resistance." Li Fan suddenly recalled Mo Rubin's description of King Xuantian's recollections. "King Xuantian was able to smoothly ascend to immortality only because the immortal official presiding over the lightning tribulation happened to perish in the Immortal Realm's cataclysm of destruction, allowing him to attain the Immortal Realm by fluke. In King Xuantian's own words, that tribulation had never intended to let any cultivator pass..." "King Xuantian was virtually the greatest figure in the Xuanhuang Realm across all eternity, and from the start of his cultivation journey, he was even suspected to have had the aid of the fishing pond. Even so, facing that ascension lightning tribulation, he still stood no chance." "It seems that under normal circumstances, escaping from this testing ground was fundamentally impossible." Li Fan looked somber, yet felt a trace of relief. Fortunately, the Dao Annihilation Tribulation had arrived and destroyed the Immortal Realm. To save their own lives, the True Immortals fled in all directions, no longer able to concern themselves with this testing ground. "Otherwise, even with the advantage of [Revert to the True], I would likely be nothing more than a bird in a cage, a fish in a net..." Thinking up to this point, Li Fan suddenly froze. Pondering carefully: "Or perhaps, the calculations of the True Immortals back then were not wrong. Revert to the True did indeed appear within this designated testing ground. It is just that..." "Perhaps they never expected that [Revert to the True] possessed its own consciousness. Such methods might fool mundane mortals, but how could they fool Revert to the True?" "And so, it simply never revealed itself, waiting..." "Waiting not only for the Immortal Realm to crumble and the testing ground to be destroyed, but also for a qualified, unique vessel." Following this hypothesis, Revert to the True, which had fallen silent ever since returning from the Sea of Infinity, finally stirred once more. Only, the emotion it conveyed this time left Li Fan somewhat perplexed. "A bit of affirmation." "And a bit of amusement." "This..." Li Fan kept a composed face, even thickening his skin to ask for further guidance. Having spent a hundred cycles of samsara day and night with Revert to the True, virtually no subtle change within it could escape his notice. Li Fan keenly perceived that ever since returning from the Sea of Infinity and potentially encountering old acquaintances of Revert to the True, it had gradually become more active. In the past, it would only offer a lazy response under certain extreme circumstances. But now... This time, faced with Li Fan's earnest inquiry, Revert to the True, which had always remained indifferent, actually provided an answer. Li Fan himself had not anticipated this outcome. Slightly taken aback for a moment, he immediately sought where the guidance of Revert to the True lay. Neither his true body nor his puppet avatar Li Buren showed the slightest change. The change resided in... The segment of time named [Unceasing Samsara] that Li Fan had created in this lifetime. Heavenly Venerable Zhenshi, trapped within, had already undergone 9,363 cycles of samsara. No matter how he tried, he could never rewrite the ending of the Xuanhuang Realm's destruction. Thus, after his eight-hundredth attempt, Heavenly Venerable Zhenshi finally chose to give up. Abandoning all pursuits, at the start of each reincarnation, he simply resigned himself to waiting for destruction to descend. Gradually, he actually began to feel that this was not bad. Regardless of how destruction occurred, he would always return to the initial starting point. In that case, to a certain extent, didn't that mean eternal life? Having figured this out, Heavenly Venerable Zhenshi felt all the more justified in giving up all effort. He muddled through his days, completely unaware that the speed at which he underwent reincarnation was growing faster and faster. In Li Fan's perspective, through the disturbance caused by Revert to the True, the speed of reincarnation in this time period was abruptly accelerated. Trapped within it, Heavenly Venerable Zhenshi could not perceive it, but Li Fan could see the cyclical progression repeating tens of millions of times in a single instant, playing out continuously before his eyes. Having completely abandoned all struggle, Heavenly Venerable Zhenshi gave up resisting in each cycle. Because of this, the reincarnation lost all variables. Each cycle was identical to the last, down to every detail. ... Staring intently at Heavenly Venerable Zhenshi within the cycle, Li Fan's expression turned somewhat strange. For he saw that Heavenly Venerable Zhenshi's spirituality was slowly being chipped away as the number of cycles increased. Just as if Li Fan were continuously casting the divine ability True Also False upon him. Ultimately, all spirituality was lost, and every path forward was severed! Li Fan's mind roared. "When the true is taken for false, the false also becomes true." "The divine ability True Also False can diminish a cultivator's spirituality." "And every time I activate reincarnation, isn't that equivalent to True Also False?" "Moreover, this True Also False is initiated through Revert to the True itself..." Li Fan's heart jolted violently. He conjured a water mirror before himself. He had observed the spirituality of the myriad living beings, yet had never looked upon his own. Filled with apprehension and dread, Li Fan looked at himself. A face and body familiar beyond familiarity. Under Li Fan's close examination this time... To his great relief, what he feared had not occurred. In fact... Li Fan's expression became rather peculiar. He stroked his chin, suddenly understanding. What exactly was the guidance of Revert to the True? The reason why Li Fan was unique as a vessel? Why, among the endless living beings, was Li Fan specifically chosen? Li Fan gazed at his own reflection. His spirituality did not seem extraordinary. Yet it gave Li Fan an inexplicable feeling. His own spirituality was peerlessly rich and enduring. Even after being chipped away through cycle after cycle of reincarnation, hardly any change had occurred. "If the capacity to endure True Also False is also an aptitude," "then perhaps this aptitude of mine is the very pinnacle under heaven." "Different from the aptitudes for regular cultivation, this is what Revert to the True truly values."