Having uncovered the reason he was being pursued, Li Fan did not immediately choose to activate True Reversion.
Sizing up the burly, red-haired man hovering overhead, a dangerous glint flickered in Li Fan’s eyes.
*I assumed whoever came hunting me would be a Soul Formation Immortal Lord.*
*To think that waiting by the tree for the hare would yield only a Nascent Soul cultivator.*
*A hundred years of cultivating immortality, yet I have never once engaged in a formal battle with another cultivator.*
*This is the perfect chance to test everything I have learned upon you.*
Seeing Li Fan standing dazed where he was without making any move, the red-haired Nascent Soul cultivator grew impatient.
“Hand over the Small Medicine King Cauldron, and I shall spare your life!” he bellowed once more.
Were it not for the worry that an attack might destroy the storage ring and lose the Small Medicine King Cauldron, he likely would have slapped this petty Foundation Establishment cultivator to death long ago.
“Is this the Small Medicine King Cauldron Senior speaks of?” Li Fan put on a fawning smile, produced a small cauldron from his storage ring, and held it out in his hand.
The red-haired cultivator’s eyes lit up. “Yes! Yes! That’s the one! You know what’s good for you, kid!”
Watching the Small Medicine King Cauldron fly toward him, he nodded in satisfaction.
He reached out and caught the small cauldron, but before joy could even settle in, a storage ring suddenly emerged from inside it.
Immediately afterward, a vast mass of white mist entwined with golden threads materialized right beside the red-haired cultivator.
*Boom!*
Beside the white mist, hundreds of talismans detonated at once.
A tremendous wave of destructive force erupted violently, and the cloud of Essence-Devouring White Mist enveloped the red-haired cultivator.
“Bastard!”
With a furious roar, the Essence-Devouring White Mist was blown away without a trace.
The red-haired cultivator reappeared, having already put away the Small Medicine King Cauldron. He seemed completely uninjured, yet his slightly trembling hand suggested Li Fan’s ambush had not been entirely useless.
“You’re courting—”
Before the word *death* could leave his lips, he felt himself instantly engulfed by several formations.
The circulation of spiritual energy within his body stalled. Immediately after, the world seemed to brighten.
A cerulean ocean abruptly manifested across the sky.
A brilliant azure sword-light, carrying an unmatched aura, surged forth from the sea and slashed down toward him.
The moment Li Fan struck, he unleashed his strongest killing move: the Single Sword of Congyun.
“A wonder of Earth?!”
The red-haired cultivator gasped, and the gaze he directed at Li Fan turned intensely covetous.
The ground cracked, and the sky grew dim.
A volcano rumbled upward, blocking the path of the advancing sword-light. Unlike the phantom of the ocean, the volcano was solid and real. The surroundings turned scorching hot as rolling magma surged from beneath the fractured earth.
The blue sword-light dimmed slightly, but it still sheared straight through the volcano and slashed toward the cultivator.
A trace of gravity flickered across the red-haired man's face. He could tell this blue sword-light was impossible to evade; he had no choice but to take it head-on.
What was more, this sword-light cast by a mere Foundation Establishment cultivator posed a mortal threat to him.
*What kind of sword technique is this?*
As his thoughts whirled, flames burst from his body. The blazes formed a blazing blade that collided head-on with the blue sword-light.
There was no earth-shattering explosion. In an instant, the blue sword-light converged and contracted into a single thread of water-blue light. The slender thread split the flames right down the middle and rapidly wrapped itself around the red-haired cultivator.
While the red-haired cultivator stared in momentary stunned disbelief, he heard a low shout from his opponent.
“Congyun, Twenty-Eight Swords!”
Within the phantom ocean illuminating heaven and earth, twenty-seven more sword-lights condensed and shot forward in the blink of an eye.
At the same time, all the formations erupted together.
Five Elements sword qi rained down upon him.
The roars of strange beasts shook the mind.
The red-haired cultivator felt a slight rift open between his physical body and his grotto-heaven domain.
Unnoticed by anyone, a blue phantom suddenly manifested, causing the temperature around the volcano to plummet in an instant. The blue phantom flew noiselessly toward the red-haired cultivator, reached out, and pressed down gently in empty air, striking the Nascent Soul cultivator in unison with the twenty-seven Congyun sword-lights.
From the moment the first Congyun sword flew forth to the instant the remaining twenty-seven sword-lights struck, merely a breath had passed.
The red-haired cultivator’s face was filled with utter shock.
Cracks spiderwebbed across his body.
His shattered frame stiffened and went ice-cold.
A gentle breeze swept by, and like a fractured ice sculpture, he scattered into countless tiny fragments that fell across the ground.
The Nascent Soul cultivator’s physical body had been blasted to smithereens.
Yet Li Fan showed not the slightest hint of triumphant joy.
For the volcano confronting the Congyun Sea was still there—and had grown even more turbulent.
“Good!”
“Very good!”
“To destroy my physical body with only Foundation Establishment cultivation! You may well be proud of yourself!”
“Unfortunately, a puny Foundation Establishment cultivator like you can never comprehend the terror of the Nascent Soul realm!”
The red-haired cultivator’s voice rang out once more. Beneath the calm tone lay boundless fury.
“As long as the grotto-heaven is not destroyed, I shall not die!”
Behind the volcano, the phantom of an infant slowly appeared. Like a parasite, it arched its tiny body and clung to the volcano.
“Don’t think you will die easily either!”
“I will torment you with the cruelest means imaginable. Only then can I vent the hatred in my heart!”
Amid the infant’s venomous shrieks, the destroyed body of the red-haired cultivator faintly showed signs of reforming.
Li Fan watched as the infant steadily absorbed energy from the volcano. Then, writhing flesh and blood appeared out of thin air over the infant’s body, like a woven outer garment.
A human husk was slowly taking shape.
“As long as the grotto-heaven is not destroyed, the cultivator does not die,” Li Fan murmured thoughtfully, looking upon the scene.
Exhausting every method he had, catching his opponent off guard, he had only managed to destroy a physical body. Once the man recovered, Li Fan would be the one to die.
*Indeed, fighting across realms is no simple matter.*
*However…*
A sharp light flashed in Li Fan’s eyes.
The aura on his body abruptly erupted; he held nothing back now.
“I still have one final move. Please grant me your guidance, Senior!”
The Dharma-Exploding God-Startling Formation was driven to its absolute limit, on the verge of collapsing at any second.
Bearing energy far beyond what it could endure, Li Fan’s body began to disintegrate inch by inch. His lower limbs gradually dissolved, leaving only his upper torso.
With no fear of life or death, Li Fan unleashed the Ocean-Overturning Palm he had comprehended from the artifacts with Dao charm.
He swept his right hand forward in an unadorned, ordinary motion.
In the split second before the Ocean-Overturning Palm fully coalesced, Li Fan, suspended between life and death, suddenly experienced a flash of enlightenment.
When Xiao Heng and Su Xiaomei had observed the Ocean-Overturning Palm, each had attained their own comprehension.
Xiao Heng’s palm technique was ethereal and otherworldly, impossible to fathom.
Su Xiaomei’s palm technique was overbearingly peerless, suppressing all things.
Li Fan, however, had only ever grasped its form, unable to forge a true intent of his own. He was always missing that final trace, making no progress over several years.
Yet here, facing a Nascent Soul cultivator with merely Foundation Establishment cultivation, fearless of death and indifferent to the disparity in realms, Li Fan resolutely struck out with the Ocean-Overturning Palm—and in that instant, he comprehended his own palm intent.
It was…
Defiance!
So what if he is a Nascent Soul cultivator?
Through two lifetimes of reincarnation and a hundred years of cultivating immortality, countless secrets rested upon him. He had used multiple prodigies as chess pieces to deduce divine powers and cultivation methods. If the paragons of antiquity could slay foes across two major realms, why could he not do the same?
As Li Fan’s body dissolved on the wind, his eyes shone brighter than ever.
He threw his head back and laughed aloud. “Today, your life shall bear witness to my divine power!”
The red-haired cultivator was so enraged he laughed. “Insolent boast—”
Before he could finish speaking, he realized that dark clouds had gathered overhead at an unknown moment.
“It appears to overturn the ocean.”
“In truth…”
“It upends the heavens!”
A gigantic hand whose full span could not be seen descended from the sky, crashing straight down upon his head.
*Rumble!*
The volcano, along with the Nascent Soul clinging to it, was pulverized to dust in an instant.
High above, the phenomenon signaling the fall of a Nascent Soul cultivator abruptly manifested.
Li Fan, however, had no time to care.
His body had disintegrated until only half of his head remained.
Before his consciousness slipped away, Li Fan silently intoned in his mind:
*True Reversion!*
Chapter 161