Great Xuan.
Following the location in his memory, Li Fan found Yi Xing's tomb and breached its mechanisms with little effort.
After casually laying down an array around the perimeter to prevent anyone from wandering in, Li Fan stepped into Yi Xing's tomb once again after many years.
Passing through the long tomb passage, he arrived deep within the tomb.
Above, luminous pearls shone like stars; beneath his feet, a sea of clouds billowed among a forest of peaks.
With a single glance, he discerned traces of an array.
"How could the array here have endured for several thousand years despite the total absence of spiritual energy?"
Li Fan couldn't help feeling surprised and immediately examined it closely.
Before long, he understood the reason.
"Luminous pearls for stars.
"Soil excavated from famous mountains across Great Xuan for peaks.
"Using the tangible to substitute for the illusory, reducing the array's energy consumption to the absolute minimum.
"Moreover, this unknown array has completely discarded functions like offense and defense. Its sole purpose is...
"Misdirection..."
In Li Fan's perception, the gold-threaded thatched cottage housing Yi Xing's spirit tablet was surprisingly the very source of spiritual energy sustaining the array.
Li Fan flew up to the mountain peak, found the node of the array's veins, and stepped down upon it.
"Break!"
Like a shattered phantom bubble, the mountain peak dissolved without a trace in an instant.
A dark cavity appeared beneath the gold-threaded thatched cottage.
Following the newly revealed passage, Li Fan went beneath the illusion array.
Here was where Yi Xing's true tomb lay.
The tomb chamber was decorated like an ordinary study.
Slumped before a vermilion desk was a skeleton.
Beside it, the faint flame of a candle still flickered feebly.
On the long desk, around the skeleton, and across the entire floor of the study, sheets of paper densely covered in mysterious symbols were strewn everywhere.
Li Fan picked up a sheet and looked at it for a while, unable to tell what Yi Xing had written during his life.
Casually collecting all these papers, he searched for a while longer.
To Li Fan's disappointment, he did not find a Dao Transformation Stone.
Aside from Yi Xing's skeleton and the room full of paper, there was nothing else here.
"Could it be that this still isn't the true tomb?
"Even though Yi Xing was only an outer disciple, he was at least in charge of the mortal migration. His status shouldn't have been too low.
"It shouldn't be this shabby."
Refusing to give up, Li Fan thoroughly searched the place inside and out once more.
Yet the result remained the same.
Pondering for a moment, he put away the long desk and the candle on it, along with Yi Xing's skeleton.
To ensure nothing was overlooked, Li Fan simply unleashed the Single Sword of Congyun, using brute force to completely destroy the room.
The vast power of the Congyun sword completely exposed the geological structure surrounding the study.
To Li Fan's disappointment, this was indeed the lowest layer of the tomb.
Further down, there was only rock and earth.
"It seems I truly made this trip for nothing." Li Fan shook his head helplessly.
Having arrived full of anticipation, he returned disappointed.
After returning to the Xuanhuang Realm, Li Fan cremated Yi Xing's remains and let the ashes scatter in the wind.
Afterward, he returned to the Heavenly Profound Mirror.
"If there's anything I missed, it must be among the three remaining items."
Li Fan pondered for a moment, then under the pretense of liquidating assets, submitted the long desk, the candle, and one of the sheets of paper to the Heavenly Profound Mirror for appraisal.
The first two were ordinary items.
The silver-fir redwood desk and the sea-whale everlasting candle together were worth only thirty contribution points.
But the papers filled with strange symbols were no ordinary paper.
"Heavenly Lock Treasure Box (Incomplete), one contribution point."
Li Fan's eyes flashed. "As expected, there really is a hidden secret."
Without choosing to sell it, Li Fan searched for information regarding the Heavenly Lock Treasure Box.
As the name implied, a Heavenly Lock Treasure Box was a storage box sealed through some special method.
Only by solving the cipher set by the box's owner could the storage box be opened.
Yet even knowing there was a secret inside, Li Fan was at a total loss when facing tens of thousands of sheets filled with incomprehensible scribbles.
Fortunately, Li Fan was not alone.
He might not know, but in the vast Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals, someone surely would.
As usual, he searched for keywords in the Heavenly Profound Mirror.
After eliminating countless pieces of irrelevant, cluttered information, Li Fan searched for a long time before finally finding a clue in an article introducing several leisure activities practiced by ancient cultivators in their spare time.
"Reverse Calamity?"
Li Fan's spirits lifted, and he browsed through it attentively.
The article explained that in ancient times, some cultivators believed the world generally developed from order to disorder.
From the primordial origin to the two energies of yin and yang, to the five elements of heaven and earth, and finally to the myriad things of the world:
Order was being lost, and chaos was accumulating.
Until chaos completely overwhelmed order, an all-destroying power would erupt, returning heaven and earth to chaos.
This was the so-called "Calamity."
And Reverse Calamity was a game of restoring chaos to order, returning disorder to order.
This game had extremely high requirements for—and offered great training to—a cultivator's divine sense and deductive calculation abilities.
It was generally popular among great sects specializing in formations or deduction.
It sounded complex, but in truth was easy to understand.
Take the tens of thousands of papers Li Fan found in Yi Xing's tomb as an example:
Initially, these papers had a fixed sequence.
All Li Fan had to do was rearrange this disordered pile of papers back into its original sequence.
That should be quite simple...
Thinking so, Li Fan retrieved all the papers from his storage ring, intending to give it a try.
But right after, he realized something was off, and his face darkened.
Simple, my foot!
"There are in total..." Sweeping with his divine sense, Li Fan got the answer a moment later, his expression turning increasingly ugly.
"Forty-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine sheets.
"Without other clues, if one were to simply test them one by one through brute repetition..."
Just thinking about it made Li Fan feel dizzy.
"Even if I did nothing else for the rest of my life, I couldn't possibly decipher and restore it!"
Li Fan picked up a sheet and observed what was written on it.
"These seemingly meaningless symbols on it should be hints.
"Unfortunately, it's equivalent to some prearranged cipher key known only to the parties involved.
"Perhaps it was something commonly circulated among the disciples of the Taiyan Sect back then?"
Unable to make heads or tails of it, Li Fan felt somewhat helpless.
"I wonder if the Dao Transformation Stone Jiao Xiuyuan found was encrypted like this as well?"
Li Fan couldn't help wanting to use his clone to get to the bottom of it.
But then, a flash of inspiration struck, and he temporarily set that thought aside.
"...At the end of the day, it's just a passcode with a few more digits.
"If I can't do it, this one surely can."
Li Fan gave a light cough and, with a smile, asked the Heavenly Profound Mirror if it offered decryption services.
The Heavenly Profound Mirror fell silent for a moment before giving an affirmative answer.
However, the fee would be charged based on the decryption difficulty.
Upon inquiring, he learned it would cost at most twenty to thirty thousand contribution points.
Flush with wealth, Li Fan boldly and without worry handed it over to the Heavenly Profound Mirror to crack.
Chapter 212