Vitality Devours Ruomu
With no other choice, He Zhenghao could only agree to Li Fan's demand.
"The Heavenly Profound Mirror is the Alliance's greatest treasure. Powerful as this man before me may be, he surely cannot harm the precious mirror." Having led Li Fan into a hidden chamber at the deepest end of the Administration Hall, trembling with fear, He Zhenghao activated the Congyun Province Heavenly Profound sub-mirror and could not help but comfort himself with these words.
Amid a flicker of faint light, an ancient mirror materialized out of thin air.
"Indeed, deeply familiar." Pondering the subtle feeling welling up in his heart once more, Li Fan did not hesitate. He took a single step forward; his form shattered, and he slipped into the mirror.
He left behind only He Zhenghao, standing to one side with his mouth agape.
Though Li Fan had entered the Heavenly Profound Mirror,
the Heavenly Profound Mirror did not notice his intrusion.
Functions that had originally required unlocking tier upon tier of authority were now all laid out before Li Fan without a single barrier, neatly sorted into their categories.
Even every item and resource within the Heavenly Profound Mirror, every divine ability and cultivation method, Li Fan could take freely.
Even the Heavenly Profound Mirror's computing power was his to draw upon.
And so long as he did not trigger any major anomaly, the Heavenly Profound Mirror would not detect him.
Were it not for the many memories in his mind that plainly ranked above the Heavenly Profound Mirror, Li Fan would almost have believed that he himself was the mirror's human body.
"I wonder whether this is a convenience brought by those previous simulations."
Over the next three months, Li Fan dwelt within the Heavenly Profound Mirror, reading through countless classics and secret records.
Though the records held in the mirror were vast, each time Li Fan looked at them he felt a familiar-yet-not-quite sense of recognition. Often a single cursory pass was enough for comprehension to well up in his mind of its own accord.
And the more he mulled things over, the more clear memories formed out of his shattered recollections.
His reading speed grew ever faster as well.
By the end, he no longer needed to seek answers from the Heavenly Profound Mirror at all.
"Defying the principles of Heaven and Earth to prove the Longevity realm. This is plainly a flawed method of cultivation, one whose practitioners are bound forever by the Chuanfa Heavenly Venerable. Perhaps my earlier self ended up in open conflict with him in the end..."
Li Fan was in no hurry to set foot on the path of cultivation.
Three months of reading—and though he had not cultivated at all, his body had continued to grow stronger.
"The Heavenly Venerables' method seeks its answer in external things. Because the human body is frail, anyone who wishes to go against Heaven must borrow outside strength to change his fate."
"But such formidable power already exists within my own body. So there is no need for me to practice a method that defies principle."
Li Fan sat cross-legged within the Heavenly Profound Mirror, eyes closed in thought. With every breath, motes of green light surged from his body like tides.
They emanated from within him yet did not leave. They simply piled up around him, casting the outline of his body in a deep, eerie green.
By the time Li Fan opened his eyes again, his appearance had not changed much, but within his dantian a brilliant starry sky had already taken form.
Except that the countless stars filling that sky all shone with an overflowing green light of vitality.
"Strictly speaking, what I am doing is not cultivation. It is True Cultivation—opening up one's own potential."
"Though it is said that every person possesses a human body's secret treasure, a mortal's secret treasure cannot be mentioned in the same breath as the boundless vitality contained in my body. A single green dot in this starry sea, taken at random, would perhaps equal the sum of ten million living beings." Li Fan studied the strange phenomenon within his dantian and spoke thoughtfully.
Once he was strong enough, a mere lift of a hand could twist and alter the Great Dao of Heaven and Earth.
Moreover, Li Fan instinctively sensed that his ability to tame the Heaven and Earth of Xuanhuang seemed exceptionally pronounced.
Just as it had been with the Crimson Flame, summoned by nothing more than a thought.
With the boundless starry sea gestating inside him, Crimson Flame—the first to offer submission—had reaped enormous benefits as well. Its crimson, blessed by endless vitality, turned a blazing white. It no longer held human shape but was pure, like leaping flame.
"Changed from a man into raging flame—it looks like a demotion, but in truth it has leapt free of Xuanhuang Realm's shackles. Though it still counts among the Heaven-and-Earth Essences of Xuanhuang Realm, a part of it now lies beyond this world."
"What is true of Crimson Flame is true of me."
Understanding welled up in Li Fan's heart.
"And all of this is the doing of that vitality."
As for the strange condition inside his body, Li Fan had of course considered getting to the bottom of it. But three short months of accumulation, drawn only from the Heavenly Profound Mirror, were plainly not enough to unravel vitality's true mysteries.
"Besides, what I have learned and seen is only the portion of the Heavenly Profound Mirror connected to the outside world. Another part of the mirror remains sealed. Only by entering the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals headquarters, where the mirror's main body resides, could I glimpse it."
For the time being, Li Fan had no intention of walking into danger.
Xuanhuang Realm was not large, yet it hid countless secrets. Next, he might begin elsewhere to restore his own knowledge and experience.
Li Fan searched hard through the endless illusions for a destination best suited to him at present.
Suddenly, before another ancient mirror, his thoughts came to a halt.
"This is... the Boundless Mirror?"
"Sun Luyao, Sun Luyuan..."
All manner of information about the Sun Clan surfaced along with the names.
"A direct line of the Mirror Keepers. Getting close to them will not be as easy as getting close to He Zhenghao. Powerful as this body of mine is now, it is still not so strong that I can brush aside a siege by many Dao Merging cultivators."
After a moment's thought, Li Fan summoned He Zhenghao.
He Zhenghao was, at that moment, both full of high spirits and trembling with fear—all because of the vast quantities of supplies that had, for no reason he could fathom, been dispatched through the Heavenly Profound Mirror.
Ten times the usual amount. He Zhenghao would swear that the Alliance headquarters would never be so generous!
Yet returning what he had already received—that he simply could not bear to do.
With money at your back, your spine stiffens. As vast supplies were distributed downward, everyone below assumed He Zhenghao's connections in the Alliance headquarters were at work. Every one of them held him in heartfelt awe and affection.
Now He Zhenghao had finally tasted what it was to truly be the master of a province.
But this beautiful dream, with his summons by Li Fan, was about to come to an end.
"How do you feel about the tenfold dispatch of supplies this time?"
He Zhenghao's body shook, and he did not dare answer.
Li Fan said mildly, "Don't be nervous. It is only a string of numbers. Never mind tenfold—if you dare to think it and dare to want it, I can easily dispatch a hundredfold for you."
He Zhenghao shook even harder and repeatedly protested that he would never dare. He knew that everything came at a price, and that now was when the other party had come to collect.
"Whatever you command, senior, I will do my utmost."
"Each time, the top ten in every province's performance evaluation may go to the Alliance headquarters to receive titles and rewards. Make that your goal, and work hard. The next evaluation is five years from now. Whatever you need, simply tell me," Li Fan said mildly.
He Zhenghao's expression changed abruptly.
Where under Heaven was there any sense in a thief stealing something and then showing it off up and down the streets? Once you had gained a benefit, you quietly digested it. Who would then go and compete in a performance evaluation?
Any rise in ranking had to be backed by vast supplies. To leap from the very bottom ten all the way into the top ten...
That would never survive investigation!
Yet Li Fan's eyes told He Zhenghao that if he agreed, then even if the matter came to light later, he would die five years from now. If he did not agree, this very day would be the day He Zhenghao died.
There was no second option. Gritting his teeth, He Zhenghao could only agree.
Having boarded the bandit's boat, He Zhenghao simply let everything go to ruin. With a sweep of his hand, he submitted a supply list several times what he required.
Who could have known that Li Fan would not so much as blink, and would agree on the spot.
In less than half a day, mountains of supplies began appearing within the Congyun Province Heavenly Profound sub-mirror.
The sight left He Zhenghao both shocked and afraid.
Besides the various supplies needed to keep governance running, Li Fan had actually also provided a detailed account of the grotto-heavens, great and small, and the impending transformations of Heaven and Earth within Congyun Province and the neighboring provinces.
With this information, birthing more than a hundred Nascent Soul and Soul Formation cultivators within five years would be no problem at all.
He Zhenghao wiped the cold sweat from his forehead, yet felt not the slightest excitement.
"Right, there is one more thing."
"Take a trip with me, and place this item anywhere underground in Daoyuan Province." Li Fan handed over a seedling as he spoke.
It looked like an ordinary sapling, but strangely, He Zhenghao sensed no vitality from it whatsoever. He could not even sense that the sapling existed.
Held in his hand, it offered no sensation of touch at all.
Were it not for the motes of green light that flickered across it from time to time as a reminder, He Zhenghao would almost have turned around and forgotten the thing entirely.
He Zhenghao dared not delay at Li Fan's instruction.
He headed straight for Daoyuan Province.
It was not long before he had entered Daoyuan's borders. He found a blessed spot where earth veins converged and planted the sapling there.
Only then did he hurry back.
Through a part separated from his own body, scenes of Daoyuan Province began to surface in Li Fan's mind as well.
"This place seems to hold great peril."
"But to me, it also seems to be an immense store of resources."
"I will have to wait for the right moment, and set a hidden hand in place first."
The seedling took root within the earth vein and then began to grow wildly, without limit.
In growing, it drew no power from the earth vein. Instead, it radiated its own vitality outward.
And this was with Li Fan having suppressed the overflow of vitality as much as he could.
Xuanhuang Realm looked lush with life, but in truth its sickness had long since reached the vitals.
The vitality this seedling brought was now like the fragrance of a wondrous medicine smelled at the brink of death.
It drew the attention of certain holy spirits within Xuanhuang Realm at once.
The first to notice it was an ancient tree with withered yellow leaves, its branches laden with cultivators!
Barely the time it takes to burn a stick of incense after the seedling was planted, Li Fan sensed that his body in Daoyuan Province seemed to have been fixed upon by someone.
And the aura the other party sent over felt somehow strangely familiar to him.
"Hmm?"
A hunched, crazed figure flashed through his mind, and moments later Li Fan saw the owner of that figure appear before the seedling.
"This is... Ruomu?"
Ruomu's appearance triggered Li Fan's lost memories.
And when Ruomu greedily reached out a hand toward the seedling, a trace of coldness flashed through Li Fan's eyes.
"Since you want it so badly, I may as well grant your wish."
With only three months of cultivation from nothing, Li Fan was not yet certain whether the present him was a match for this ancient tree of Xuanhuang.
But if the other wanted to devour a part of his body, then there was a countermeasure to hand.
A streak of green light abruptly rose in Li Fan's originally pitch-black eyes.
As if a volcano had erupted, boundless vitality appeared from the seedling beneath the ground of Daoyuan Province.
Then it poured into Ruomu.
Ruomu, already ancient and decrepit, sensed this great mass of vitality and instinctively showed delight.
He absorbed it with insatiable greed.
But when he found that no matter how he absorbed, the seedling's vitality did not diminish in the slightest—and even seemed to grow vaster and vaster—delight turned at once into fright.
The withered yellow branches and leaves all returned to vivid green. Affected by the outside drawing of vitality, countless new buds began to sprout across the sky-propping Ruomu.
Except...
there were simply far too many of these new buds!
Dense and numberless, they pushed out from every part of Ruomu's body.
Every place where there was space was taken over by them.
In only half a day, the total of these newborn shoots had already grown larger than the original Ruomu!
Yet they showed not the slightest sign of stopping their growth.
Even though a panicked Ruomu had already fled the place where the unknown seedling stood,
still boundless, countless vitality rose from the green energy he had earlier inhaled into his body.
Ruomu felt only that his body was growing heavier and heavier.
Those newborn green branches were seizing his body from him!
But Ruomu was utterly helpless. He could not even find a way to resist.
Strictly speaking, the newborn green branches were also a part of Ruomu.
It was only that they grew far too fast, so that they exceeded Ruomu's control.
Once they matured, they in turn suppressed Ruomu himself.
Like the parts naturally discarded in an organism's metabolism.
In panic, Ruomu sensed that he was about to die!
Not from vitality running dry,
but from vitality bursting forth.
This way of dying, which he had never once imagined, still filled Ruomu with boundless terror.
He strained to do something, only to find that before this incomprehensible vitality, he could do nothing at all.
"Where on earth did that thing come from?" Ruomu's heart was full of bewilderment.
Just as the new branches were about to devour Ruomu entirely, they suddenly stopped growing.
Even so, Ruomu had already lost command of the ancient tree of Xuanhuang Realm.
He could only cling to life in a remote corner of the ancient tree.
Once the situation was settled, a figure shrouded in hazy green light arrived in this space.
Knowing that the other was the culprit who had seized his body, Ruomu stared fixedly, but dared not make the slightest sound.
The newcomer was, of course, Li Fan.
Seizing Ruomu's body had been even easier than he imagined. This was also the first time Li Fan had unleashed the full vitality within his body without restraint.
Its tremendous potential left Li Fan—whose memory had not yet fully returned—somewhat stunned.
Ruomu, who held command of Xuanhuang's vitality, was utterly insignificant next to the vast vitality in his own body.
Had he not later noticed something was wrong and withdrawn in time, there would probably be no Ruomu left in this world at this moment.
Li Fan looked over this new body of his.
With a slight frown, he shook all the countless hanging cultivator fruits down to the ground.
Though they were still asleep, they had been affected by the overflowing vitality all the same. Not only were the injuries from their ceaseless Golden Core formation fully healed, their life potential had been further awakened as well. In the future, forming their Nascent Souls and reaching Soul Formation would be as easy as drinking water, so long as resources were sufficient.
Chapter 1525