Before attaining the half-immortal realm, Li Fan had channeled the power of gloom several times through the faceless stone statue, so he was thoroughly familiar with it.
Now having ascended to half-immortal, seizing the energy accumulated for countless years within the Sea of Endless Gloom was as effortless as turning his hand.
Li Fan was not the master of this gloomy power, so as it was captured, it mounted fierce resistance. Yet Li Fan was far from who he had once been; with overwhelming might crushing all opposition, its struggles were entirely futile.
It all yielded meekly into Li Fan's palm.
Because it had been nurtured from the corpse of a True Immortal as a "near-immortal power," it possessed a trait akin to the "boundless" nature of immortal power. Gathering within Li Fan's palm, it compressed endlessly without limit.
When the entire Sea of Endless Gloom had been absorbed by Li Fan and was no longer murky, only a small, pitch-black yet faintly twinkling orb rested in his palm.
With the darkness that had settled for so long finally dispersed, Li Fan was able to see clearly the remains of the True Immortal here.
Or rather, the residue of those remains.
The True Immortal's corpse had been completely drained by the Spirit Gathering Ascension Array as fuel, leaving behind only a few wisps of traces even thinner than shadows.
Had Li Fan not been observing meticulously from the exalted vantage point of a True Immortal, he likely would not have noticed even this last trace left by the fallen True Immortal.
"The immortal departs..."
Li Fan gazed quietly at the phantom remnant for a long while. The trace was far too frail and brittle to retain a single shred of useful information.
With a gentle breath, he let it scatter into complete oblivion.
It was not that Li Fan had been seized by sudden benevolence to offer rites of passage for this departed True Immortal.
Rather, he wished to use the clearing of this trace as an opportunity to observe whether any other True Immortal remnants lingered within the Sea of Endless Gloom.
There were no unexpected discoveries.
Aside from a few faint snarls rising from the True Immortal's will to survive down below, across the vast Sea of Endless Gloom, the entire Xuanhuang Realm, and even the boundless starry skies of the testing ground, no matching resonance stirred anywhere.
"It seems this True Immortal is truly dead after all."
The original purpose of constructing the Spirit Gathering Ascension Array within the Sea of Endless Gloom had been to serve as the power source for the Xuanhuang Realm to escape the Immortal Ruins.
Yet now, Li Fan could single-handedly haul the Xuanhuang Realm out of the Immortal Ruins' pull by sheer force.
The might he could exert—even if partly aided by the phantom of the Duke of Shouqiu—far exceeded the entirety of the Sea of Endless Gloom.
Subduing it went without a hitch, entirely as expected.
Li Fan turned his gaze toward the final remnant here.
The True Immortal's will to survive.
It resembled the shadow of withered branches, yet also a hunched human silhouette. Sensing Li Fan's presence, it displayed a mixture of dread and yearning.
It was like a wild beast in the forest watching a hunter enter the mountains—spying from the shadows, wavering between flight and greed.
As if feeding a pet, Li Fan separated a wisp of his energy and cast it toward the will to survive.
After circling it several times, as though terrified the morsel might slip away, the True Immortal's will to survive wrapped around it, chewing and swallowing it down.
Seeing this, a faint smile touched the corners of Li Fan's mouth.
"Truly a foolish thing, left with nothing but the raw instinct to survive."
"The Immortal Soul of Mo Sha, and a version merged with the Great Daos of heaven and earth at that. Is that something you can easily digest?"
The True Immortal's will to survive tried to consume the food, yet no matter what it did, it could not whittle down its prey in the slightest.
What was worse, the food inside its belly turned around and began devouring it from within!
The True Immortal's will to survive let out a bloodcurdling roar, like an ancient ferocious beast.
Yet no matter how it struggled, it was powerless against the might of the Immortal Soul of Mo Sha.
Helplessly, it thrashed and rolled in the deepest depths of the Sea of Endless Gloom.
When the dust settled, the True Immortal's will to survive had already been transformed into one of the myriad Dao manifestations of the Immortal Soul of Mo Sha.
Li Fan had wondered whether he might uncover some past memories from this lingering wisp of True Immortal intent.
Yet after a meticulous search, he found that all that remained were primal instincts such as devouring and reviving.
"A pity."
"I couldn't uncover the true identity of the True Immortal buried at the bottom of the Sea of Endless Gloom."
"Still, at most it was merely an ordinary True Immortal. It matters little."
Capable of suppressing the Nameless realm with a wave of his hand, Li Fan was now fully entitled to say as much.
He surveyed the now-empty Sea of Endless Gloom, pondering how such a vast expanse of vacant space might be utilized in the future.
Suddenly, he sensed an inexplicable trace of energy generating here once more.
"Hmm?"
The source of energy here had clearly been completely claimed by him; where did this new surge come from?
Li Fan was slightly surprised, but showed no panic.
Sweeping with his divine sense, he discovered that this tiny energy, resembling countless faint specks of light, was actually arriving from across the Xuanhuang Realm.
These specks of light were even more minute than the remnants of the True Immortal's corpse.
Had they not appeared abruptly within the entirely drained Sea of Endless Gloom, even Li Fan would have subconsciously overlooked them.
Li Fan drew a speck of light over and found that the moment he touched it, it burst and vanished like a bubble.
Nor did it seem to enter his body; it simply vanished without a trace.
After musing for a moment, Li Fan gathered all the specks into his hand, condensing them into an orb of light to inspect closely.
Only when the volume reached a certain scale did Li Fan feel an inexplicable familiarity.
"This is..."
"Spirituality?"
"No. It doesn't touch the level of Revert to the True; it's far more rudimentary."
"Yet it is still, to some extent, an accumulation of cultivation talent."
Bringing the orb of light together with the black orb formed from the Sea of Endless Gloom, Li Fan seemed to understand what was taking place.
"All living beings of Xuanhuang, in the primordial design, were nothing more than chess pieces on a board. When they were first created, their various attributes—height, appearance, talent, temperament—were already predetermined."
"These orbs of light are the power endowed to living beings as talent through the natural operation of the Xuanhuang Realm. The reason it was being drawn toward the Sea of Endless Gloom is that the True Immortal's will to survive sensed its presence and instinctively sought to seize it..."
Li Fan frowned.
"Though the masses of Xuanhuang are chess pieces, they belong to the upper echelons of the Immortal Realm. A mere wisp of a will to survive..."
He looked up toward the beings of the Xuanhuang Realm, intending to emulate the process and plunder the talent of living beings.
Yet clearly, it could not be done.
"The True Immortal's will to survive has been destroyed by me, yet this precipitation of talent still persists."
Li Fan suddenly recalled a topic he had discussed previously with Baihua, Qiaogong, and the others.
During the Great Cataclysm, many cultivators had witnessed from afar the dreamlike spectacle of their homelands plunging into the Immortal Ruins, where all matter disintegrated into a bizarre, twisted ring of light. Even as the cultivation world vanished entirely into the Immortal Ruins, a vast amount of substance seemed to erupt in the opposite direction. Such matter could not be perceived by naked eye or divine sense, yet it truly existed.
In the Tianji Realm, the Progenitor of Immortal Puppets had likewise decayed because of the continuous loss of something due to proximity to the Immortal Ruins. Back then, Qiaogong had even used that as an excuse for becoming "slow-witted."
"The Hunger Immortal has been suppressed by me. The Immortal Ruins are no more..."
With a flicker, Li Fan appeared in the starry sky outside the Xuanhuang Realm.
He brought out half of the specks of light.
Here, they showed no inclination to flow. They merely drifted quietly in the void. Seemingly unable to endure for long, they soon began to dim.
Before they dispersed entirely, Li Fan gathered them back up.
Though it was merely a small orb of light, if bestowed entirely upon a single person, the resulting cultivator's talent would likely be comparable to the likes of Zhang Haobo or Xiao Fan.
"It seems that because the Xuanhuang Realm stayed beside the Immortal Ruins for so long, the world itself developed this trait."
"The talent and spirituality of living beings precipitate outward in the direction opposite to the pull of the Immortal Ruins. Even though the Immortal Ruins are gone, this tendency cannot be completely reversed all at once."
After conducting comparative tests across multiple locations in the Pitch-Black Star Sea, Li Fan reached a preliminary conclusion.
"As long as it isn't some other monster causing trouble, that is fine," he thought, breathing a sigh of relief.
Yet naturally, Li Fan grew curious about why this phenomenon occurred.
In his comprehension of the "Hunger" Formula, Li Fan could be considered second only to the Hunger Immortal himself within the Primordial possibility.
He naturally knew that contemplating the "Hunger" Formula generated a suction around oneself that devoured all things.
Yet he had never noticed anything that resisted this pull, let alone something actively repelled and ejected.
Testing this was not difficult.
At the center of the Pitch-Black Star Sea, Li Fan cast a "Hunger" Formula a short distance away.
Though not quite the reappearance of the Immortal Ruins, a colossal vortex suddenly surged into being.
The star sea churned once more.
Li Fan stood motionless amid the surging waves. He took a group of You people—who had caught his attention earlier as they wailed in despair over the disappearance of the Sea of Endless Gloom—and threw them one by one into the vortex.
Though the You people possessed robust physiques capable of holding their own against cultivators, how could they possibly withstand the power of the "Hunger" Formula?
Without even a chance to struggle, they were all ground to dust within the colossal vortex.
Without the slightest ripple of emotion, Li Fan threw them in one after another and observed.
He had never paid close attention before, so it was only natural to overlook that spiritual substance. Under his meticulous observation this time, he indeed discovered this intangible matter.
In fact, because the You people all carried the bloodline of the initial Great Heavenly Venerable Xuanhuang, a considerable amount of spiritual substance precipitated out of the vortex.
Like a gold panner, Li Fan gathered all the spirituality.
"Intriguing. Why would the comprehension of the 'Hunger' Formula produce such an anomaly?"
"Perhaps it is tied to the Dao path of 'Hunger' itself."
Li Fan recalled the scene when he had suppressed the Hunger Immortal not long ago.
Before the phantom of the Duke of Shouqiu, even though outmatched, the Hunger Immortal had not simply accepted his fate, fighting back desperately instead.
His struggle had been futile, but what lingered in Li Fan's mind was that ghostly, abyssal cry: "Hungry... I'm so hungry."
Rather than coming from the Hunger Immortal, it sounded more as if it originated from a mysterious entity beyond the unseen Great Dao.
As if seeking to swallow mountains and drain seas, reducing everything in the world into its own nourishment.
Li Fan's eyes snapped back toward the Hunger Immortal Heavenly Pillar.
"There seems to be something amiss with this Dao of Hunger."
"Could it be a Dao that did not originally belong to the Primordial possibility? Did it devour what was here and seize the nest like a cuckoo?"
Li Fan could not be a hundred percent certain.
Yet judging from all current indications, it was all but confirmed.
"Spiritual substance is intimately linked to the creation of living beings, faintly touching upon the foundation of how possibilities derive. As an outsider, the Dao of Hunger may have occupied the Dao path on the surface, but fundamentally it has not truly merged."
"Hence, when devouring all things, such an anomaly of precipitation occurs."
The means to prove Li Fan's deduction lay within the Hunger Immortal's memories.
The Hunger Immortal had already been turned into a Heavenly Pillar; his entire past was Li Fan's to peruse at will. The moment the final mystery was unveiled would not be far off.
"Since the exotic beast clan could flee here from other possibilities, it would hardly be surprising if there were other outsiders."
"However, looking from the perspective of a latecomer, one sees the absurdity of it all."
"These outsiders are just like the group of so-called transcendent True Immortals who fled the Primordial possibility. After enduring untold hardships, they thought they had found a safe haven, never imagining that in the end, they still could not escape doom."
"Or rather..."
Li Fan narrowed his eyes as light and shadow flickered within his sea of consciousness, scenes of countless possibilities surging forth. With his current power of deduction, even without knowing the specific names of the individuals involved, he could infer past events to a certain degree based on the outcome.
"These outsiders who fled here never considered this place their final harbor. They merely treated it as a temporary foothold. Since they could flee once, they could flee a second time, a third time..."
"At least, that is likely what they believed. Once the Dao Annihilation Tribulation arrived again, they would simply flee once more."
"In resisting disaster, beyond favorable timing, the most crucial element is unity of purpose. But if such born runaways lurked among the crowd..."
Having served as Grand Preceptor for decades, Li Fan naturally understood the danger of such black sheep.
If they merely fled passively on their own, it would be bad enough. The most terrifying aspect was that they would invisibly infect, alter, and shake the resolve of those around them.
It would spread like a plague, bringing consequences beyond imagination.
"This is no mere conjecture of mine."
"In the Immortal Realm back then, there truly were such people."
A figure suddenly surfaced before Li Fan's mind's eye.
"Sun Piaomiao."
"And that group who forged the immortal domain chess pieces."
"As well as Qing Yin and the True Immortal surnamed Ling, who presided over this Immortal Realm testing ground only to depart with utter resolve."
"And this is merely the tip of the iceberg. One can only imagine how many similar figures existed among the immortals of the Immortal Realm back then."
"Working alongside such people, even if Emperor Tianluo possessed countless grand ambitions, he was destined to fail. Were it up to me, I would first use bait to gather all these runaways into one place, and then slaughter them all!"
"Not only would it demonstrate resolve to unite the people, but it would also yield a batch of expendables to fend off Dao Annihilation..."
Li Fan pondered this, a vicious glint flashing in his eyes.
It was not that he genuinely harbored ambitions of becoming a savior Heavenly Emperor. It was merely a flight of fancy, placing himself in their shoes while deducing the past.
The matters of yesteryear had all turned to foam.
Now, all that remained of the Primordial possibility was dilapidated ruins struggling to hold on.
All Li Fan could do was just like those runaways: change worlds and dwell elsewhere.
Chapter 1484