After pondering for a moment, Li Fan did not ask He Zhenghao directly.
Instead, he sent a message to Daoist Jingxuan.
As He Zhenghao's direct superior, his standing was far above He Zhenghao's. If Lü Junyi were promoted to Commander-in-Chief, he ought to benefit substantially.
Jingxuan did not reply right away, and Li Fan did not press him.
Next, he checked into the matter of Immortal Venerable Jicheng offering rewards for lifespan-extending treasures.
Barely eight months remained until the three-year deadline.
According to rumors circulating among the populace, aside from the already confirmed Everlasting Life Fruit—which could extend life by five hundred years and held an almost unshakeable grip on first place—the competition beneath it was exceedingly fierce.
It had reached the point where professional cultivators were hired to appraise items and confirm the exact duration of longevity extension, down to the very month.
"The Transformation Longevity Fruit offers only three hundred years..."
Li Fan sighed softly to himself.
The chance to use the Yanfa Jade was simply too enticing, and the sheer brutality of the competition exceeded imagination.
"It's cutting it close. But finding another lifespan-extending treasure now is already impossible.
"I can only leave it to fate in this lifetime."
Closing the interface of the Heavenly Profound Mirror, Li Fan suppressed his stray thoughts, settled his mind, and began cultivating wholeheartedly.
Yet not long into his seclusion, Li Fan was interrupted by a sudden surge of feedback cultivation.
It flowed continuously. Though not as immense as what He Zhenghao, Su Xiaomei, and the others had fed back when breaking through to the Golden Core realm, it was nonetheless an unexpected windfall for Li Fan at this stage, greatly hastening his progress toward the mid-Golden Core stage.
"This is..."
After sensing it for a moment, Li Fan was somewhat surprised.
"Xue Mu?
"He went to view the Mortal Transcending to Soul Formation Wall, and he actually gained something from it?
"Judging by the sheer volume of feedback cultivation, he must have formed at least a Three-Dharma Golden Core.
"Intriguing. 'Mortal Transcending to Soul Formation' truly lives up to its reputation. It seems once things wrap up here, it is indeed worth going to see."
While Li Fan was musing to himself, he received an ecstatic transmission from Xue Mu.
"Haha! Fellow Daoist Li Fan, I did it!
"I truly cannot thank you enough! If you hadn't recommended that wondrous spectacle surging with the resonance of myriad dharmas, how could I have achieved a Golden Core with three dharmas?
"I will never forget your great kindness, Fellow Daoist!"
...
Li Fan smiled faintly and did not reply.
*Cultivating diligently is the best repayment you can offer me,* Li Fan thought to himself.
Stowing away the communication talisman, Li Fan once again calmed his mind and resumed cultivating.
Unexpectedly, barely two months later, he was disturbed by another powerful wave of feedback cultivation, forcing him to halt his practice once more.
This influx of cultivation was several times greater than what Xue Mu had provided. Clearly, this person shared a far deeper bond with Li Fan.
"Is this... Xiao Heng?
"He broke through to the mid-Golden Core stage?"
Feeling the connection transmitting from the unseen, Li Fan felt pleasantly surprised.
"He should be in Shilin Province right now. A pity the distance is too great to check on him with Formless Killing Intent.
"To break through again so quickly, he must have run into some fortunate encounter."
With another strong boost, the difficulty and requirements for advancing dropped once again.
"It seems reaching the peak of the early Golden Core stage before the deadline shouldn't be much of a problem.
"I just wonder whether the Heavenly Calamity bottleneck for this minor realm will be troublesome."
Spurred by a trace of excitement, Li Fan threw himself into cultivation once more.
However, the events of the ensuing months, while bringing Li Fan a bountiful harvest, also stirred an inexplicable dread in his heart.
Because besides Xue Mu and Xiao Heng...
Over the course of more than half a year, apart from Su Xiaomei and Zhang Haobo, who had vanished into the Chaoyuan Sect ruins, He Zhenghao, the Yin sisters, and even Zhao Dabao and Su Changyu broke through one after another.
One had to remember that Su Changyu intended to cultivate using the method of establishing the foundation with oneself. The sheer amount of cultivation he fed back this time was far unlike that of an ordinary Foundation Establishment cultivator. Could it be that he had actually succeeded in establishing the foundation with himself?
Master Yin had dissected over a hundred corpses of himself and only managed to succeed halfway. When had Su Changyu's aptitude become so remarkable?
Moreover, what bothered Li Fan even more was this:
If one or two cultivators broke through at the same time, it could be explained away as a coincidence. But when a widespread wave of breakthroughs occurred within such a short window, Li Fan could not help suspecting that some inexplicable shift was underway.
To verify his conjecture, Li Fan could no longer bother with cultivating. He began gathering intelligence and searching through the Heavenly Profound Mirror.
Using "breakthrough" as a keyword, Li Fan discovered that posts and information over the past year had indeed grown far denser than before—even showing signs of a blowout.
From the excited accounts of cultivators, Li Fan learned that during their recent breakthroughs, the vast majority had miraculously encountered no bottleneck of Heavenly Calamity at all. Once their cultivation reached its peak, their advancement followed naturally.
Nor was this an isolated phenomenon.
Even many cultivators who had been stuck at bottlenecks for years had inexplicably broken through to the next realm.
"Cultivation seems to have gotten easier," many cultivators remarked one after another.
Because low-tier cultivators were so vastly numerous and many still had not advanced, most people brushed these claims off as mere post-breakthrough boasting and paid them no mind.
Li Fan, however, did not think so lightly of it.
"Could the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals' desperate rush to construct the Heavenly Profound Spirit-Locking Formation be connected to this?"
Li Fan could not help linking the two matters together.
The number of cultivators could not be too large, nor could it be too small.
Through that earlier mission to hunt the red-haired beasts on the deserted island, Li Fan had realized that the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals was deliberately controlling the number of cultivators under its banner.
And their urgency in building the Heavenly Profound Spirit-Locking Formation implied that something capable of affecting—or even overturning—the Alliance's rule was imminent. To maintain their own stability, they were forced to resort to such an extreme formation.
"Anomalies stirring in heaven and earth once more... Is the number of cultivators about to spiral out of control?"
Li Fan narrowed his eyes.
If his suspicion held true, then it was almost foreseeable that in the near future, the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals and the Five Elders Association would inevitably begin culling cultivators on a massive scale through various means.
Overt slaughter was probably out of the question.
It might be another war.
Or it might be...
As if struck by a thought, a sudden chill seized Li Fan's heart.
He stood straight up, feeling as though he had plunged into the depths of winter.
In the Alliance's propaganda, the establishment of the Heavenly Profound Spirit-Locking Formation was meant to root out spies lurking from the Five Elders Association. The formation's practical efficacy had already been thoroughly proven in Jiushan Province, and cultivators placed immense faith in its miraculous power.
Once the Spirit-Locking Formation was complete, as pillars of light pierced through heaven and earth, no spy would have anywhere to hide.
However...
The core array hub of the Heavenly Profound Spirit-Locking Formation was none other than the Heavenly Profound Mirror itself, possessing its own conscious will.
What if the Heavenly Profound Mirror deliberately marked legitimate Alliance cultivators as members of the Five Elders Association?
Enveloped beneath those pillars of light, would any other cultivator believe you were innocent?
The more Li Fan thought about it, the colder his heart grew.
An open, fully justified slaughter might soon be upon them.
Chapter 329