Thud! Thud! Thud!
Uttering the words "Heavenly Physician" seemed to have utterly triggered the inverted monster's emotions.
With great force, it slammed its head against the ground blow after blow, striking hard enough to crack the desolate, unyielding earth.
At the same time, broken sobs constantly slipped from its mouth as tears of blood streamed down its face.
Though the creature had a hideous appearance, this scene gave Li Fan an uncanny sense of its profound wretchedness.
"Could the massacre here truly have been the Heavenly Physician's doing?"
Instantly, the image of that amiable, kindly old man like someone living next door surfaced in Li Fan's mind.
On the surface, he appeared benevolent, gentle, and smiling.
Yet his actual deeds were horrifying beyond belief.
A sudden chill welled up in Li Fan's heart.
He then recalled how, back in the Cloud Water Heavenly Palace ruins, the crowd around Qin Tang had collectively unleashed wails of sky-piercing resentment upon seeing the Heavenly Physician's statue.
It seemed the destruction of the Cloud Water Heavenly Palace back then was undeniably tied to the Heavenly Physician as well.
"Still, just where is this place? And why did it become a spatial fragment appearing within the White Mist Barrier?"
"Why did the Heavenly Physician slaughter these cultivators indiscriminately?"
"And...?"
Li Fan slowly calmed the shock in his heart and watched the inverted monster as it continued to kowtow without pause.
It had managed to survive the Heavenly Physician's vicious hand back then and had lived alone in this Lost Domain for so long.
Even Li Fan's proud Great Five Elements Oblivion Sword could not harm a hair on it.
All these signs were enough to prove how formidable its strength was.
Yet now, it looked like a commoner who had suffered a great injustice, kowtowing and crying out its grievances before an upright magistrate like Li Fan.
Having served as an official for many years, Li Fan was thoroughly familiar with such a scene.
Why had this happened?
Naturally, it could not be because Li Fan was stronger than this inverted monster.
Rather, it was because...
"Did it mistake me for someone else?"
"That's right, that must be it. As for why this inverted monster would mistake me..."
In Li Fan's limited reincarnations, being mistaken for someone else had happened once before.
To test his hypothesis, the Golden Core within him revolved, and Li Fan summoned a single wisp of Heaven Fiend power, condensing it into a sword.
Sure enough, sensing that faint, familiar aura, the inverted monster grew even more agitated.
Its wails rang out unceasingly, and it slammed its head down as though determined to batter a crater into the ground.
"The Heaven Fiend Sword... Old Man Yufu."
Li Fan looked at the monster kneeling before him, a sharp gleam flashing in his eyes.
"The reason it pleads so piteously to me is only because it sensed the Heaven Fiend technique within my Great Five Elements Oblivion Sword and took me for the master of the Heaven Fiend Sword."
"Even Old Man Yufu himself nearly mistook me for him. This monster has been trapped here for who knows how many years, its mind shattered, acting entirely on instinct."
"It's only natural that it mistook me."
"From the looks of it, Old Man Yufu might have been a leader among the cultivators who perished in this Lost Domain. When the Heavenly Physician slaughtered everyone back then, he must have clashed with him."
"The Heaven Fiend Sword is broken and incomplete, and Old Man Yufu became amnesic and mad—perhaps that was the Heavenly Physician's doing as well."
Yet soon, Li Fan sensed something amiss.
If it truly were the Heavenly Physician's doing, having lived for so much longer, his current strength would surely be far greater than at the time of the massacre.
It was impossible for him not to know of Old Man Yufu's existence.
Why didn't he cut the weeds and dig out the roots, but instead allowed Old Man Yufu to continue living in the world?
Or was it really as Li Fan had previously conjectured—that Old Man Yufu had already become an anomaly and simply could not be eliminated?
"The Heavenly Physician..."
Li Fan narrowed his eyes.
He was by no means a magnanimous man. Back then, the Heavenly Physician had used his technique of Looking, Listening, Questioning, and Feeling the Pulse to discover Li Fan's true body.
He had directly breached the protection of the Heavenly Profound Mirror, intending to capture him alive.
Li Fan had never been able to forget the terror he felt at that time.
It was just that the gap in strength between him and the Heavenly Physician was currently far too vast, forcing him to keep any thoughts of revenge firmly buried in his heart.
Now that he had discovered Old Man Yufu and the Heavenly Physician might be mortal enemies, Li Fan felt a stir of anticipation.
"In the next life, perhaps I can cause some trouble for him."
"If Old Man Yufu recovers the Heaven Fiend Sword and happens to come knocking right when the Heavenly Physician and the Master are fighting..."
Li Fan's eyes flickered. Drawing upon his experiences across several lives, a rough plan formed in his mind in an instant.
With a cold sneer, he set the matter aside for the moment and looked back at the inverted monster before him.
"The Black Death Talisman can last only one more day. Perhaps my hope of escaping lies with it."
Withdrawing the Heaven Fiend power, Li Fan attempted to soothe it and communicate.
Through his words, he conveyed that he, too, had been deceived and trapped here by the Heavenly Physician, and was currently looking for an exit to seek revenge in the outside world.
The inverted monster had lost its sanity, and it took the better part of a day before it finally understood Li Fan's meaning.
Stopping its kowtowing, it grew quiet, its head continuously swiveling around as if pondering something.
Before long, it suddenly scuttled outward with a rustling sound.
From time to time, it turned its head back, motioning for Li Fan to follow.
The territory near Ruin No. 12 was still permeated by forces that distorted spatial orientation.
Within his perception, the inverted monster leading the way would suddenly appear behind him, then abruptly flash forward some distance, its position shifting erratically without pattern.
Li Fan followed closely behind the inverted monster, using it as a reference coordinate and constantly adjusting the direction of his flight.
Less than half a day later, the black light wandering across the Black Death Talisman grew increasingly faint, seemingly on the verge of dying out at any moment.
Following the inverted monster deeper and deeper, Li Fan seemed to have arrived at the center of this Lost Domain.
Inside a massive circular crater that looked as though it had been gouged out by a meteorite stood numerous figures.
Like those Li Fan had seen before, they were all corpses devoid of life.
However, unlike the previous ones, these corpses were no longer lifelike or preserved with their living appearances.
Instead, they had all undergone bizarre mutations.
Some were petrified, turned into stone like statues.
Some were jade-like, emitting a clear, crystalline glow.
The surfaces of others resembled trees, covered in uneven, cracked bark.
What sent the greatest shiver down Li Fan's spine was an insectoid mutation.
At a glance, the body seemed normal, but a closer look revealed that the inside had been completely hollowed out.
It was composed entirely of countless minute black maggots.
Even after so many years, these maggots were still writhing ceaselessly.
...
The closer to the center of the crater, the more pronounced the mutations became.
There were no longer any standing corpses.
Instead, they had turned into inexplicable substances stuck to the ground.
As if something up ahead filled it with immense dread, Li Fan faintly noticed that the inverted monster's pace had slowed.
Its body was even trembling with nearly imperceptible shudders.
Upon reaching a certain boundary, it came to a complete halt, refusing to advance any further.
After trying to comfort it, Li Fan had no choice but to proceed alone.
At the same time, he raised his vigilance to the absolute peak, ready to activate True Reversion at any moment.
Contrary to what he had imagined, there was no terrifying monster at the center of the crater.
There was only a shattered stone lying quietly on the ground.
Some writing seemed to have originally been inscribed upon the stone.
Now, however, it had faded almost beyond recognition.
Yet through the faint traces lingering on the stone, Li Fan could still vaguely discern what it was.
It was the character for "Chaos."
Chapter 358