Anchor Year 1. Great Xuan, the summit of Mount Jieli.
The twenty-year-old Li Fan stood alone atop the peak, hands clasped behind his back, gazing out at the distant sea of clouds.
The morning sun rose slowly in the east, bursting forth with ten thousand beams of radiant light that stained the clouds crimson.
Yet on Li Fan's youthful face, his eyes revealed a trace of the vicissitudes of time.
"Living through the passage of three thousand years... it seems it hasn't left me entirely unaffected after all."
Li Fan sighed softly.
At the moment True Reversion was automatically triggered, returning him to the summit of Mount Jieli, everything he had experienced during his transformation into an object rushed back like a tidal wave.
It was a stretch of time far longer than all the hundred-plus lifetimes he had lived in human flesh combined since transmigrating into this world.
Even though transforming into an object meant he could not remember everything in vivid detail as a human mind would, and even though for the vast majority of those three thousand years he had been nothing more than a solitary object lying upon a ruined land, absorbing the memories of the Formation-Breaking Jade Platter all at once in such a short span still made Li Fan feel the terrifying, wearing power of time.
Fortunately, after roughly a day, he had completely dispelled the adverse effects and at the same time sorted through the more than three thousand years of Xuanhuang Realm history that unfolded after his demise.
Some events, such as the struggle between the Profound Net and cultivators, had been predictable before his transformation.
Yet the complete ruin of the Xuanhuang Realm in just a thousand years was something Li Fan had never anticipated.
"After the members of the Heaven-Overturning Society obtained the blueprints for the Heavenly Profound Spirit-Locking Formation, what on earth happened?"
"Logically speaking, no matter how fierce the battle between the two sides was, one of them should have emerged with a pyrrhic victory. How did it end up looking like mutual annihilation?"
At the thought, Li Fan could not help feeling somewhat helpless.
At the most critical juncture, that kid Han Wuyou had pulled the plug and shut off the lights, causing a gap in information spanning centuries.
"Still, I can't blame him."
"With the decisive battle between the Heaven-Overturning Society and the Profound Net imminent, the Formation-Breaking Jade Platter sent by me—supposedly the descendant of an old friend—was bizarre in every way. It even contained absolute secrets like the blueprints of the Spirit-Locking Formation."
"He really couldn't afford not to be on guard."
"By then, he had already become a Soul Formation cultivator, no longer the naive and innocent youth of the past. The final battle concerned the survival of countless cultivators in the Heaven-Overturning Society."
"His choice to seal me away was only natural."
"For the sake of the Crucible of a Hundred Manifestations, I won't hold it against you."
Li Fan smiled faintly, reaching out to draw a black-feathered, red-tailed bird from a treetop into his palm.
Spiritual energy circulated through its body as he closed his eyes in contemplation.
A few hours later, Li Fan suddenly opened his eyes.
He released the bird and took a deep breath.
Golden light immediately enveloped his whole body. Within the shifting radiance, Li Fan's form shrank continuously.
In mere moments, a bird looking identical to the one before appeared at the summit of Mount Jieli.
Moreover, not a shred of a cultivator's aura emanated from it.
Even the black-feathered, red-tailed bird took Li Fan for one of its kind and curiously flew closer to inspect him.
"That kid Han Wuyou truly has extraordinary talent. To independently comprehend such a divine technique from the Heavenly Doctor Immortal Scripture while only at the Golden Core stage..."
Li Fan marveled, reverting to his original appearance.
His sudden return immediately frightened the bird away.
After Li Fan transformed into an object and was tempered by Han Wuyou's essence blood, a marvelous connection had formed between them.
Even though Li Fan was reduced to a mere speck of true spirit, it allowed him to observe and perceive the world through Han Wuyou's eyes.
Thus, when Han Wuyou comprehended and practiced the Crucible of a Hundred Manifestations, Li Fan, who was equally well-versed in the Heavenly Doctor Immortal Scripture, also mastered this marvelous technique.
"A pity that as his age and cultivation increased—especially after the tragic deaths of Xiao Heng and the others—his temperament changed as well. He even grew cautious of the Formation-Breaking Jade Platter he had carried since childhood."
"I was unable to synchronously perceive his subsequent Soul Formation cultivation technique."
"Though even if I knew it, it would probably be useless. After all, that Chaotic World Tribulation-Crossing Formula is most likely still controlled by the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals right now."
Li Fan shook his head, turning his thoughts back to the future course of history in the Xuanhuang Realm.
"Up until Anchor Year 711, before I was sealed, many things seemed to happen."
"In reality, though, they can be divided into two main categories."
"First are the events destined to occur along the Xuanhuang Realm's established historical trajectory."
"For instance, in Anchor Year 51, Immortal Venerable Blue Feather failed to attain Longevity..."
Recalling the roar of 'Who is it?!' that shook heaven and earth right before Blue Feather vanished completely, Li Fan frowned slightly.
"Another example is how, over several centuries, anomalies proliferated in the Xuanhuang Realm to the point where they could be used to manufacture Heaven-Rousing Arrows on a massive scale."
"I just don't know whether the ultimate ruin of the Xuanhuang Realm was related to these anomalies."
"Right, and there was also that group of Alliance cultivators who walked out from the Essence-Devouring White Mist, dead yet seemingly alive..."
"Wait..."
Li Fan froze for a moment.
"Blue Feather's failed attempt to attain the Dao, and the cultivators emerging from the white mist unaware that they were dead..."
"Could it be...?"
A gleam flashed in Li Fan's eyes.
"In my twelfth life, I learned from that black-robed Dao Integration cultivator that before Immortal Venerable Blue Feather fell, he laid out the Essence-Devouring Rebirth Formation in an attempt to reverse the principles of life and death and attain Longevity."
"Judging from the outcome, he ultimately failed."
"And that cry of 'Who is it?!' has two explanations. One is that someone disrupted Blue Feather's process of defying the principles of Heaven and Earth."
"The other is..."
Li Fan narrowed his eyes. "The principles of life and death had already been reversed by someone else. The path to attaining the Dao was already occupied, yet he was completely unaware beforehand—which was why Blue Feather was so aggrieved."
"There are only so few Longevity Heavenly Venerables in this world. As a seasoned Dao Integration cultivator, Blue Feather wouldn't be ignorant of how they attained their Daos."
"In that case, could a powerhouse in this world have hidden the truth from everyone and silently attained the rank of Longevity Heavenly Venerable?"
Even Li Fan found this conjecture somewhat astonishing.
Then he felt a pang of emotion. "To activate the Essence-Devouring Rebirth Formation, Blue Feather did not hesitate to sacrifice the lives of all cultivators in Yuandao Province."
"Yet little did he expect that he himself could not escape the fate of being toyed with by a supreme powerhouse."
"Longevity Heavenly Venerable..."
"The thoughts and schemes of experts at such a realm are truly elusive and impossible to fathom."
"In my previous life, the war between the Profound Net and the cultivators was so catastrophic, yet those Longevity Heavenly Venerables seemed to have vanished as a collective, never once appearing from start to finish."
"Even when cultivators were on the verge of extinction, they remained completely indifferent."
Li Fan had actually harbored suspicions about why this was so.
The key lay in the soaring golden obelisks erected across the Xuanhuang Realm after the Profound Net began its rule.
Those obelisks had shot pillars of light into the sky four times in total.
Li Fan guessed that the Heavenly Alliance might have wanted to use the propulsion of the golden obelisks to tear the entire Xuanhuang Realm free from the influence of the Immortal Ruins.
Chapter 418