Nourished for a century with essence blood brimming with the power of Longevity, the vitality latent within the Xuanhuang Realm had already reached an unbelievable level. Yet, because the pill was not yet finished, all this vitality remained latent, held back and unreleased.
Within the world of Xuanhuang, perhaps a few living beings could sense that a great transformation of heaven and earth was underway. But only Li Fan, the alchemist, could truly see the immense power truly coalescing within the Xuanhuang Great Pill before him.
"They all say that all living things are born of heaven and nourished by earth, taking Heaven and Earth as their father and mother. Yet that you could grow to where you are today is entirely thanks to my essence blood."
"In a sense, it is 'I who nourish Heaven and Earth.'"
Sensing the consciousness of the Xuanhuang Realm's Heavenly Dao fawning upon him with humble servility, Li Fan spoke with a slight smile.
Compared to the past, Xuanhuang's current flattery was less deliberate and contrived, springing from the depths of its heart and born of pure instinct—like a starving infant begging and crying to its parents for milk.
For the Xuanhuang Heavenly Dao knew all too well that, although an unimaginably vast vitality was stored within the Xuanhuang world, it could only burst forth and be truly absorbed by the realm at Li Fan's command.
For an entire hundred years, it could only look and not partake. The Xuanhuang Heavenly Dao had nearly gone mad with longing.
Now that Li Fan had spoken, showing signs of initiating the final step of pill refinement, how would the Xuanhuang Heavenly Dao dare contradict his words?
It immediately assented to Li Fan's jest.
And at that very moment, Li Fan felt through the unseen workings of fate that an indescribable, mysterious bond had formed between himself and the Xuanhuang Realm.
"Having nourished Heaven and Earth, I am as father and mother to Heaven and Earth."
"The bond is forged..."
"Pill... unseal!"
Li Fan pointed a finger into the void. In an instant, the entire Xuanhuang world seemed to fall into absolute stillness.
Grass and trees, gentle breezes, ants and mortals, Foundation Establishment and Longevity realm cultivators.
Even the mountains, rivers, lakes, seas, earth veins, and spiritual energy.
All froze completely.
In Li Fan's eyes, the phantom cauldron that had encircled the Xuanhuang Realm for a hundred years shattered with a roar. Simultaneously, the warm, lustrous white light hovering around the Xuanhuang Great Pill erupted in an instant.
A breath later, it retracted back into the Xuanhuang world.
In this world of absolute stillness, the senescent Ruomu was the first to begin thawing. When a fresh green leaf sprouted from its branch, Ruomu began to grow wildly, expanding tens of millions of times over.
As if a fast-forward button had been pressed upon Ruomu, this ancient tree—which had already stood propping up heaven and earth—tore through the vault of heaven and parted the celestial canopy, climbing upward without limit.
The Xuanhuang Realm did not plunge into turmoil due to the rift in the sky, for heaven and earth began to grow in sync at that very moment.
The power of Longevity harbored for a century finally permeated every corner of the world. In the span of a single breath, the Xuanhuang Realm expanded to cover the entire Pitch-Black Star Sea.
Had Li Fan not used his will to forcibly halt the wild growth of the Xuanhuang Realm, the Xuanhuang Immortal Realm likely would have violently collided with the five Mound-Guarding shadows in the very next instant.
To the other regions within the Pitch-Black Star Sea, the appearance of the Xuanhuang Immortal Realm was utterly eerie. It roughly and forcibly absorbed everything originally in the starry sky into the Xuanhuang world.
Rather than calling it an expansion, it was more like devouring.
All that had once existed in the starry void quietly manifested within the Xuanhuang Realm, giving rise to all manner of bizarre sights that defied common sense.
For instance, the sprawling Great Wall of Remnant Worlds floated over the periphery of the Xuanhuang Realm like patches of dark clouds. Meanwhile, the countless relics of various worlds gathered in the Sea of Relics beyond the Great Wall were swept into the sky by an inexplicable force, carried along by atmospheric currents to drift across every part of the Xuanhuang Realm, finally raining down like droplets of water.
In the center of the Pitch-Black Star Sea, the muddled star sea consciousness suddenly saw its body change masters. After a moment of bewilderment, it instinctively tried to struggle violently.
Yet the Xuanhuang Heavenly Dao swallowed it whole without the slightest concern.
The star sea consciousness possessed no power to resist and vanished completely.
To the former Xuanhuang Realm, the star sea consciousness had been a vast entity far beyond reach, but now it was merely a piece of candy barely sufficient to satisfy a craving.
Though its physical boundaries ceased expanding, the internal transformations within the Xuanhuang Realm were far from over.
As the heavens grew higher and the earth broader, everything within the world underwent a qualitative transformation as well.
Seated cross-legged in midair, Li Fan silently watched everything below.
...
Xuanyuan Tuo, who had been in the midst of an epiphany, suddenly jolted awake.
He looked around in a daze.
No outsider had intruded to disturb him, nor had his location changed.
Yet Xuanyuan Tuo could not shake the feeling...
That the world seemed to have changed somehow.
Filled with suspicion and unease, Xuanyuan Tuo instinctively sought to probe further with his divine sense. A moment later, his expression drastically changed.
For once his divine sense left his body, it could not advance even a hair's breadth.
It was as if the air were packed with exceedingly hard, invisible barriers blocking the passage of divine sense.
"What is going on? What happened?" An ominous premonition welled up in Xuanyuan Tuo's heart.
He tried to rise into the air to search the surroundings and see what was happening.
An even more horrifying thing occurred.
At the peak of the Dao Integration realm, he was actually unable to take flight!
"Have I lost my cultivation?"
Chuanfa subconsciously began to summon the power of the spirit of Heaven and Earth within him, Jin Zhi.
Who would have thought that leaving it alone was better than moving it? With this single attempt, it felt as though he had slammed headfirst into solid rock; gold stars danced before his eyes, and his soul was violently shaken.
"How could this be?" At this point, Chuanfa was thrown into unprecedented panic.
The spirit of Heaven and Earth was still there, but he could no longer invoke it in the slightest!
If the spirit of Heaven and Earth, Jin Zhi, had previously been a handy iron rod, it had now become a colossal celestial pillar whose top was invisible when looking up and whose edges could not be seen in the distance!
Merely looking upon it made Chuanfa tremble uncontrollably, let alone lifting or swinging it.
Xuanyuan Tuo, who prided himself on his vast knowledge and experience, took nearly half a day to recover his wits and accept this incredible reality.
Given his understanding, he could not deduce the cause of these upheavals at all. Yet he faintly sensed that the colossal spirit of Heaven and Earth inside him seemed to be sealed by some power.
Although he could not invoke it, it could not harm him either.
However...
The seal was not permanent.
Rather, it was steadily weakening with the passage of time.
"If the day the seal dissipates arrives and I still do not possess the power to control it..."
Xuanyuan Tuo's face grew faintly pale.
Before his eyes seemed to rise the vision of this massive celestial pillar collapsing with a roar, crushing him to dust.
The very foundation of his cultivation had now become a blade that could claim his life at any moment. This immense contrast was something Xuanyuan Tuo found difficult to accept for a time.
Soon, however, Chuanfa realized something and muttered to himself, "In the end, is it that I have become weaker... or..."
It had been a very long time since he had walked firmly on the ground like a mortal. Taking somewhat awkward steps, he slowly pushed open the door of his seclusion chamber.
Whether it was merely his imagination or not, even this door seemed harder to push open than in the past.
The door swung open with a boom, and the sight of a brand-new world met Chuanfa's eyes.
This Chuanfa Immortal Venerable of the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals stood motionless like a stone statue.
Heaven and Earth had changed.
...
Chuanfa's performance was already among the best of all Xuanhuang beings.
When heaven and earth resumed after the stillness, the vast majority of living beings struggled to adapt to this sudden convulsion.
Scores of cultivators who were previously flying dropped from the sky.
The defensive formations of every major sect lost all efficacy.
It was as though heaven and earth had reopened, completely shuffling everything in the world.
It took a long time for the cultivators of Xuanhuang to gradually grow accustomed to this brand-new world.
Cultivators of the old and new methods each faced their own pros and cons.
For old method cultivators, all past insights into Heaven and Earth had lost their validity. Be it Dao Integration or Longevity, their past realms were reduced to illusions. No different from frail mortals, they had to start entirely from scratch.
As for new method cultivators, the Heaven-and-Earth Strange Objects and grottos they had devoured were still present, but they had undergone dramatic mutations along with heaven and earth, becoming powers that could not be utilized at all for the time being. They too had to begin from scratch, slowly regaining mastery over them. Worse still, if the sealing power inside them vanished before they could grow strong enough, they would be burst alive by their own cultivation.
With the expansion of the Xuanhuang Realm's overall scope, the communication that cultivators had previously enjoyed with ease was severed.
Aside from the sheer distance separating them and the failure of most flight and messaging techniques, the fundamental cause was the appearance of various spirits obstructing the ways across the Xuanhuang land.
These spirits had not existed in the Xuanhuang Realm before and were born purely alongside the world's transformation. They were the manifestation of Xuanhuang's power of Heaven and Earth, endowed with their own intelligence.
To cultivators who had lost all their means, these spirits were utterly invincible beings.
Fortunately, some inexplicable rule seemed to restrain these spirits, confining their activities to fixed territories. Only because of this was the total annihilation of Xuanhuang's cultivators averted.
Yet the cultivators also keenly discovered that these spirits were slowly expanding their territories into the surrounding areas. Undoubtedly, in the near future, a battle between the cultivators and these ubiquitous spirits would be inevitable.
Under the threat of life and death, cultivators of both the new and old methods felt a heavy weight pressing down upon their hearts.
...
"The Xuanhuang Immortal Realm sustains no idlers."
"Giving you a hundred years to adapt is already Great Master's mercy!"
The one who uttered these words with a cold snort was not Li Fan.
Rather, it was a young girl waiting on Li Fan.
She was none other than the manifestation of the Xuanhuang Heavenly Dao's consciousness!
The moment the pill was formed, spurred by the power of the Great Dao of Longevity, the Xuanhuang Heavenly Dao consciousness was finally able to evolve a physical body of its own.
Her face was flawless, without the slightest blemish.
Yet in her brows and tone, there was a faintly discordant malice.
"You must not remain idle either."
"Heaven and Earth have just been forged anew; it still requires you to inspect all places and continually reshape them," Li Fan said indifferently.
The girl's expression shifted instantly, and she hurried to bow her head in compliance. "Your servant respectfully obeys Great Master's command."
Originally, the Xuanhuang Heavenly Dao had addressed Li Fan as "Holy Father," but Li Fan found it awkward and made her change it.
"Truly, mountains and rivers may shift, but one's nature is hard to change."
After dismissing the Xuanhuang Heavenly Dao, Li Fan turned his gaze toward an underground location within the present Xuanhuang Realm.
Originally, it had been the location of Yuandao Province.
The origin of Mo Sha's power.
Having been nourished by the power of the Great Dao of Longevity, everything connected to Heaven and Earth in the Xuanhuang Realm underwent a transformation accordingly.
The source of the spirit of Heaven and Earth, Mo Sha, was no exception.
However, compared to the Mo Sha Immortal Spirit that had evolved when Li Fan previously propelled Xuanhuang's sublimation,
this "Mo Sha" of the Xuanhuang Immortal Realm possessed an alternative change.
Taking a step forward, Li Fan arrived beside the shadow of Mo Sha.
Due to Li Fan's special identity as the father of Xuanhuang, Mo Sha did not attack him.
Yet it still maintained a faint hostility.
Li Fan was entirely unfazed, reaching out directly to beckon a dark cloud before him.
As the architect who single-handedly drove the transformation of the Xuanhuang Realm, Li Fan, with the Sitting Heaven Technique upon him, was the greatest beneficiary of the world's dramatic upheaval.
Only out of caution regarding the mountains and seas had he refrained from taking that step to "become an immortal" in the orthodox sense.
Even so, the unimaginably immense feedback was more than enough for him to disregard the threat of Mo Sha before him.
Exerting slight force, he suppressed the restive Mo Sha into absolute docility.
Squinting, Li Fan sensed how it differed from the Mo Sha Immortal Spirit.
"The Mo Sha Immortal Spirit was the power of mountains and seas fusing together."
"Yet the Mo Sha before me contains more of the Great Dao of Longevity, and the momentum of the mountains and seas fusing has diminished accordingly."
"Its destructive power to annihilate all things is slightly weaker. But what is gained in return is..."
Holding a cluster of dark clouds in hand, Li Fan arrived above the vault of the Xuanhuang Realm.
The four celestial pillars that had originally stood in the Pitch-Black Star Sea now stood erect here.
With the Xuanhuang Immortal Realm as an incomparably solid foundation, even if these celestial pillars had minor flaws, they were largely sufficient to resist the Dao Annihilation Tribulation.
Still, it fell short of the eternal immortal vessel impervious to ten thousand tribulations that Li Fan had planned.
It meant that only the first phase of the renovation project had concluded.
Li Fan was in no hurry to commence further work.
Only when a hundred years had passed and the living beings of the Xuanhuang Realm had barely caught up with the pace of the world's transformation would the second phase of the renovation project begin.
With a shift in thought, the four celestial pillars emitted rumbling roars.
Li Fan forcibly extracted a portion of their power to conduct an experiment.
Four phantoms of the celestial pillars separated from their original positions and fused in the center into an ink-black broken pillar.
Then, Li Fan threw the Mo Sha dark cloud in his grip toward the broken pillar.
As if sensing some irresistible food, the Mo Sha dark cloud lunged like an unchained hound, furiously attacking the broken pillar.
Countless dense black ink dots, wriggling like worms, ceaselessly tried to devour the Great Dao principles coalesced within the broken pillar.
Even though it was the fruit of a Nameless Immortal's Dao comprehension, this seemingly indestructible fused broken pillar was utterly fragile before the Mo Sha dark cloud.
Without much effort, half of it had been devoured.
Yet right at the crucial moment when the Mo Sha dark cloud was feeding voraciously, Li Fan seized it in a chokehold.
He then commanded the Mo Sha dark cloud to spit out the "food" it had devoured.
Food already in one's mouth is hard to give up,
let alone that which has already been swallowed and digested.
How could the Mo Sha dark cloud possibly be willing?
In an instant, it went berserk and turned to retaliate against Li Fan.
Li Fan chuckled softly. Spreading his left hand in an open gesture, countless overlapping phantom images of the Xuanhuang Immortal Realm manifested.
The Mo Sha dark cloud had, after all, been born from the Xuanhuang Realm.
The Xuanhuang Immortal Realm was like its father and mother, possessing an innate restraining power over it.
And now, in Li Fan's hand, were thousands upon thousands of its parents!
Chapter 1558