"I wonder how the battle is going over at the Five Elements Great Grotto-Heaven."
To Li Fan's knowledge, the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals and the Five Elders Association had not gone to war for roughly three hundred years.
Even when occasional friction flared between them, it was confined at most to a single province.
A situation like this, where their entire territory was placed on wartime footing, was exceedingly rare.
Li Fan continued asking his friends one by one about the reason hostilities had broken out, seeing if his suspicions held true.
Unfortunately, the war seemed to carry an extremely high secrecy classification. The replies Li Fan received were universally, "Not quite sure."
The dark clouds of war hung over everyone's heads.
Wanxian Island's originally carefree atmosphere turned bleak and grim.
Faint traces of unease surfaced on every face.
As an array repairer for the Formation Planning Hall, Li Fan received mission assignments as well.
He was assigned to a squad alongside members of the Martial Practice Hall to patrol the borders of the Congyun Sea.
Furthermore, they were tasked with laying arrays and maintaining constant vigilance against infiltrating spies from the Five Elders Association.
The squad Li Fan belonged to was led by a mid Golden Core cultivator named Shan Wu.
Among the ranks were Huan Sui and several other Foundation Establishment cultivators who had previously joined Li Fan in slaying the red-haired mutated beast.
Their patrol was far from the only squad.
Virtually all mobilizable grassroots personnel on Wanxian Island had been called up, demonstrating just how seriously the Alliance authorities viewed this war.
Meanwhile, Jiang Zhengji and Du Xingchang were reportedly requisitioned by headquarters and dispatched to the front lines.
"Combined, Jiang and Du can manifest their consummate technique, Glazed World, rivaling an ordinary Nascent Soul expert.
"And Array Grandmaster Zhang Zhiliang seems to have been transferred to the frontline as well.
"Nascent Soul cultivators are serving as the main battle force, then..."
Li Fan mused inwardly.
The immense scale of this war had clearly exceeded his expectations.
"Everything else aside, I only worry about that 'reincarnator' Ye Feipeng. If he realizes reality isn't matching what he remembers...
"Given how suspicious and cautious that kid is, he might just abandon his scheme to slay Crimson Flame.
"Wouldn't my own plans for this life go down the drain, then?"
With a shift of thought, his vantage shifted to the chubby youth, Ye Feipeng.
What brought Li Fan slight relief was that the Congyun Sea was vast enough.
And because Ye Feipeng had consistently steered clear of the Alliance during his movements, he remained completely oblivious to the great war engulfing the cultivation world.
"Hopefully the war ends quickly and doesn't spill over into the Congyun Sea."
As the saying went, supernatural prowess could not overcome heavenly destiny. Faced with an unexpected variable of this magnitude, Li Fan was powerless despite having reincarnated across multiple lifetimes.
One had to admit that the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals exercised immense control over its grassroots.
Its operational secrecy regarding the war had been taken almost to the extreme.
On the surface, the atmosphere across the Congyun Sea had merely grown tense, showing no traces of the smoke of battle.
Were it not for his merit level surging continuously under wartime conditions, Li Fan wouldn't even have realized that an earth-shattering war was unfolding in some distant, unknown region.
Time trickled by.
Several months passed, and Anchored Year 16 drew near its close.
During this period, aside from occasionally repelling a few small bands of Five Elders Association incursions, the flames of war, just as Li Fan hoped, scarcely touched the Congyun Sea.
Through steadily completing wartime merit missions, Li Fan's authority level rose to Yan-18.
On this day, an alert from the Heavenly Profound Mirror finally arrived.
The war had settled; the combat readiness status that had lasted over eight months was lifted.
As for the outcome, the Alliance had naturally emerged victorious.
Once the intelligence embargo was lifted, Li Fan finally pieced together a rough picture of the war's origins and aftermath from the heated discussions and post-mortems among fellow cultivators.
Nine months ago.
A team of Alliance cultivators assigned to develop a wood-attribute grotto-heaven discovered during their research that unlike ordinary grotto-heavens, where depleted wood-attribute spiritual energy required a prolonged period to slowly replenish naturally, the energy here flowed endlessly from an unknown source, self-replenishing and inexhaustible.
It was as though it could never run dry—after large batches of planted spiritual vegetation consumed massive quantities of spiritual energy, the loss was naturally replenished almost instantly.
This discovery thrilled the cultivators.
For this spiritual energy was clearly not generated by the wood-attribute grotto-heaven itself, nor did it hail from the Xuanhuang Realm outside.
After analysis, the cultivators concluded that this wood-attribute grotto-heaven was an exceedingly rare composite grotto-heaven.
And the rapidly generating spiritual energy was being supplied directly from other grotto-heavens.
After a convoluted search, the Alliance team finally uncovered the complete traces of the Five Elements Great Grotto-Heaven.
This was a monumental contribution!
Yet amidst their wild joy, the expedition team could not help feeling a growing dread.
The location where the Five Elements Grotto-Heaven was discovered was awkward, to say the least.
It lay in Lingyu Province, bordering the territory of the Five Elders Association.
Leaving such an immense treasure situated on the front line was truly unnerving.
So the expedition team dispatched a transmission to Alliance headquarters.
Explaining the situation, they requested headquarters to send reinforcements to relocate the Five Elements Great Grotto-Heaven back into the heartland near Tianyu Province.
Who could have guessed that before headquarters' reinforcements arrived, the Five Elders Association got there first?
Somehow, word had leaked.
The surprise assault by the Five Elders Association caught everyone completely off guard.
The expedition team inside the wood-attribute grotto-heaven was wiped out down to the last man.
According to the final messages transmitted before their deaths, the strike force from the Five Elders Association included three Dao Integration powerhouses.
Working in concert, the three Dao Integration cultivators dragged the Five Elements Grotto-Heaven, rapidly relocating it toward Five Elders Association territory.
It was bad enough that infiltrators had slipped into Alliance borders undetected.
Yet in broad daylight, the Five Elders Association had slaughtered numerous Alliance members and plundered a precious grotto-heaven resource.
It was an intolerable humiliation!
Alliance headquarters immediately declared Grade B combat readiness, mobilizing eight Dao Integration cultivators and numerous Soul Formation cultivators to pursue the Five Elders Association scoundrels.
They were ordered to reclaim the Five Elements Great Grotto-Heaven at all costs.
Headquarters then ordered all provinces to tighten security, guarding against any feints the Five Elders Association might use to mask ulterior motives.
Relocating a grotto-heaven was no simple task, even for Dao Integration powerhouses.
When the eight Dao Integration cultivators caught up to the scoundrels with their forces and were about to strike, they suddenly discovered the enemy had long prepared for this.
Beyond the three Dao Integration experts who led the surprise attack, another five lay hidden in ambush.
Eight Dao Integration experts clashed against eight Dao Integration experts.
A cataclysmic battle erupted instantly.
The course and outcome of the clash remained unknown to the public.
All that was known was that after the battle, the Five Elements Great Grotto-Heaven remained in place.
The Alliance and the Five Elders tacitly recalled their surviving Dao Integration forces.
Thereafter, a war fought primarily by Soul Formation cultivators and below unfolded around the Five Elements Great Grotto-Heaven.
The war dragged on for nearly eight months.
Countless cultivators perished.
Anomalous phenomena in the skies churned ceaselessly from dawn to dusk.
In the end, as both sides grew deeply drained, the war came to a sudden, inexplicable halt.
Internally, the Alliance proclaimed that it had won the war.
For the Five Elements Great Grotto-Heaven was indeed subsequently relocated to the heartland of Tianyu Province.
Chapter 244