Countless black particles surged, descending from the heavens like a tidal wave and corroding everything in their path down to nothingness.
Across the Congyun Sea and upon Wanxian Island, apart from that mysterious Heaven Fiend Sword, there was no longer any force capable of contending with Mo Sha.
With the inky deluge looming overhead, Li Fan's thoughts raced.
"Why did Mo Sha's descent in this life disturb the Heaven Fiend Sword in the Cloud Water Heavenly Palace?"
"When I first entered the cultivation world, there was only Crimson Flame Burning Sea, which evidently couldn't affect the Cloud Water Heavenly Palace."
"In my twelfth life, I sent the statue of the Heavenly Physician into the Cloud Water Heavenly Palace, which drew the Master. The two fought a tremendous battle, and the Cloud Water Heavenly Palace was sealed once more. Thus, when Mo Sha destroyed the world, she never encountered the Heaven Fiend Sword."
"In this life, wary of the Heavenly Physician's terrifying mind-reading methods, I chose not to complete the quest for the Cloud Water Chart and Talismans. Moreover, Sikong Yi—the only person who knew the secrets of the Cloud Water Chart and Talismans—was slain early by my hand. As a result, the Cloud Water Heavenly Palace remained suspended high above the Congyun Sea. Until Mo Sha descended..."
In an instant, Li Fan understood why the Heaven Fiend Sword and Mo Sha were clashing here in this life.
A sharp gleam flashed in his eyes as his gaze seemed to pierce through the boundless sea of ink, reaching straight toward the heavens where the two powers clashed.
"Mo Sha, Heaven Fiend..."
"If I could witness a battle between the two, it would surely surpass countless fortuitous encounters."
While Li Fan was lost in thought, the black particles had already arrived before him.
Showing no trace of fear, Li Fan raised his right hand high, extending his arm before the black particles.
Watching his flesh dissolve into the writhing blackness, Li Fan carefully sensed the process.
There was no pain, not even the slightest sensation.
Had he not seen it with his own eyes, he might not have noticed that a part of his body had vanished.
"Pure nothingness..."
A ripple stirred in Li Fan's mind.
In an instant, the Creation Furnace Technique roared to life.
The power of the secret reservoir within his body surged forth, rushing toward where the black particles were corroding his arm.
Li Fan attempted to use this pure power of life to contest that power of void and oblivion.
It seemed to delay the erosion for a minuscule fraction of an instant.
Yet it also felt like merely an illusion.
The churning ink-blackness promptly swallowed Li Fan's avatar.
...
Tianyu Province, Cosmos Courtyard.
At that moment, Li Fan's true body, just like his avatar tens of millions of li away, held an arm raised high, eyes closed in deep contemplation as if comprehending something.
Only after a long while did he lower his hands.
"The power of the secret reservoir is the power of life, the power of creation."
"The power of Mo Sha is the power of obliteration, the power of nullification."
"As for the power of the Heaven Fiend, it resembles the power of distortion, chaos, and destruction..."
"This may not be the true essence of their powers, but it is my own firsthand comprehension."
"Such comprehension is enough to form a Golden Core!"
Relishing his recent enlightenment for a moment longer, he carefully stored it within the Dao-melting crystal in his mind, feeling a surge of joy.
Heaven and earth possess laws; cultivators peer into them to form their Golden Cores.
If the manifold laws of heaven and earth were compared to exquisite landscape scrolls,
then the modern cultivator's process of "peering into the Laws of Heaven and Earth" to form a core would be like placing a sheet of tracing paper over a scroll and tracing it stroke by stroke.
The resulting reproduction might not compare to the genuine masterpiece, yet achieving great resemblance was not difficult.
A cultivator's Golden Core method was still a far cry from the true laws of heaven and earth.
Yet even through mere imitation, one could still reproduce a fraction of their might.
"Originally, I intended to form a core with four laws: the Heaven Fiend Law, the Hanhai Law, the Blue Flame Law, and the Mo Sha Law."
"From the looks of it now, with my current comprehension, I can take it a step further."
"The Heaven Fiend Law and the Blue Flame Law: distortion and chaos counterbalanced by calm and reason."
"The Mo Sha Law and the Secret Reservoir Law: creation and nullity."
"The Hanhai Law... is ultimately a Law of Water."
"Solitary water struggles to flourish on its own. If I can form a core using the Five Elements Laws, they will generate one another in an endless cycle."
"More importantly, if this succeeds, it will be immensely beneficial for my next step of achieving Nascent Soul."
As the saying goes, he who does not plan for ten thousand generations is incapable of planning for a single moment.
After Li Fan successfully established his foundation using True Reversion, he had laid out a broad blueprint for his future cultivation path.
In this world, the path of cultivation was no secret; the direction had long been cast in stone.
After peering into the Laws of Heaven and Earth to forge a Golden Core, one seized the Essences of Heaven and Earth to form a Nascent Soul.
Having perused countless secrets and interacted with numerous Nascent Soul cultivators,
Li Fan had long known that the so-called Essences of Heaven and Earth were none other than the various grotto-heavens and blessed lands throughout the Xuanhuang Realm.
The Xuanhuang Realm was boundless. Grotto-heavens and blessed lands that had existed since ancient times before being sealed away, those being born anew at every moment, and those re-emerging upon a cultivator's demise were countless in number.
And these places served as the keystones for Golden Core cultivators to achieve Nascent Soul.
For Li Fan, his target had been decided long ago.
It was none other than the one that had once sparked a brutal war between the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals and the Five Elders Association...
The Five Elements Great Grotto-Heaven!
The stronger the grotto-heaven a cultivator seized, the greater their power upon forming a Nascent Soul.
Among the Five Elements Great Grotto-Heaven, just the Wood-attribute grotto-heaven alone had earned the Heavenly Profound Mirror's appraisal: "Extremely grand in scale, exceptionally rich in Wood-attribute spiritual energy, and abundant with all kinds of spirit plants and herbs."
It was difficult to fathom just how precious the complete Five Elements Great Grotto-Heaven truly was.
And how formidable a Nascent Soul formed with it would be.
Furthermore, the Five Elements engendered and restrained one another, giving birth to all things under heaven.
Using it as a foundation and pairing it with the power of [True Reversion], perhaps new transformations would unfold when the time came.
Although seeking to claim the Five Elements Great Grotto-Heaven was bound to carry immense risk—
and for ordinary cultivators, it would be nothing more than a fool's pipedream—
with the help of True Reversion, countless opportunities for trial and error, and the foreknowledge of future events,
the Five Elements Great Grotto-Heaven was destined to be nothing less than an object in Li Fan's grasp.
"To complete the Five Elements Laws, I don't necessarily have to travel and observe them in person."
"Within the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals, as long as you have enough contribution points, there are few things that can't be bought."
"Besides, these are merely the Core Formation insights of Golden Core cultivators; they aren't necessarily that precious."
Li Fan had already made a fortune during the Spirit Mist Grass incident, and later, when Jiao Xiuyuan sold the Minor Xuanhuang Cauldron, he was allotted another 260,000 contribution points.
He had no need to worry about the cost at all.
With that thought, Li Fan immediately searched the Heavenly Profound Mirror for Core Formation insights related to the four elements of Metal, Wood, Fire, and Earth.
The laws of the Five Elements were among the most common in heaven and earth.
Consequently, the search yielded an unexpectedly large number of results.
The prices fluctuated according to their specific power and efficacy,
ranging from fifty thousand to well over a hundred thousand points.
Li Fan browsed through them one by one, selecting suitable candidates for himself.
Worth mentioning was that what recorded these Core Formation insights were not jade slips,
but directly [Golden Core fragments].
By the looks of it, they were the remnants of Golden Cores left behind after cultivators died, processed through some method.
Li Fan merely needed them to complete his Five Elements Laws and had no particular requirements regarding the power of the other four.
Before long, he had selected the appropriate Golden Core fragments.
Chapter 308