It was not that Li Chenfeng had stopped flying.
Rather, an impassable chasm seemed to have suddenly appeared between him and Li Fan.
So close, yet worlds apart. No matter how furious Li Chenfeng became, or how rapidly the two pairs of wings on his back flapped, he could not escape this invisible cage.
The Liangyi Microcosmic Formation!
Though Li Fan had set up only a simplified version, it was more than enough to trap Li Chenfeng, whose cultivation was merely at Qi Condensation and who relied entirely on the formidable physical body granted by his fusion with strange beasts.
"Insect Binding actually failed." Looking at Li Chenfeng's ferocious face, Li Fan showed an expression of great interest.
Taking a step forward, Li Fan instantly appeared inside the formation, right behind Li Chenfeng.
Before Li Chenfeng could react, Li Fan unleashed the Great Five Elements Oblivion Sword from his hand, slicing off a large swath of armor-like keratin from one half of Li Chenfeng's body.
Li Chenfeng let out a wail of pain and fury and tried to counterattack, but Li Fan had already exited the Liangyi Microcosmic Formation, leaving his strike hitting empty air.
Ignoring Li Chenfeng's indignant roars, Li Fan held the keratin sliced from his body before his eyes and examined it closely.
To the touch, it still carried biological warmth, yet its texture was extraordinarily hard.
Li Fan controlled the spiritual energy within him, condensing a water blade that shot straight toward it.
Clang!
With a crisp ring, the water blade was deflected directly.
The keratin was left with only a faint, shallow scratch, which soon disappeared as the flesh at the edges of the keratin squirmed.
"An attack equivalent to that of an ordinary mid-Golden Core cultivator couldn't even break its defense." Li Fan was somewhat surprised.
"Its vitality is still remarkably strong, as if it possesses an independent consciousness of its own. Given enough nourishment and time, it might even grow into another complete body."
Having never seen anything like this before, Li Fan looked at Li Chenfeng and the others with an entirely different gaze.
"A small world capable of commanding a hundred thousand Realm-Rifting Whales truly isn't simple.
"Now, let me see just what stage your Empire has reached in its development."
Li Fan's divine sense abruptly enveloped Li Chenfeng and the other two.
Cloud Water Illusory Dream Technique, activate!
The still-struggling Li Chenfeng instantly quieted down.
The keratinous layer of the strange beast receded slowly from his body, turning him back into the harmless-looking, handsome young man he was before.
With eyes closed tight, the expressions on his face constantly shifted.
In contrast, the Foundation Establishment Master and the man surnamed Xiao had already immersed themselves in blissful illusory dreams, unable to extricate themselves.
Time flowed slowly.
Three days later, Li Chenfeng finally lowered his guard, his face breaking into the same satisfied smile.
Li Fan, meanwhile, slowly opened his eyes.
"This is..."
A flicker of puzzlement crossed his mind.
The small world where Li Chenfeng lived was a bizarre realm consisting solely of boundless ocean.
There were no islands in the ocean.
Only gigantic Heaven-Supporting Turtles, with humans residing upon their backs, swimming perpetually through the seas.
In the sky drifted the massive corpse of a Three-Headed Divine Bird.
It occupied nearly one-third of the heavens.
No one knew how many years the Three-Headed Divine Bird had been dead, yet its corpse remained imperishable.
Originally, all kinds of bizarre beasts gathered upon it, feeding on the divine bird's carcass.
Many years ago, among the tribe living on one of the Heaven-Supporting Turtles, an unprecedented genius emerged.
He mastered the ability to manipulate strange beasts and selflessly imparted it to other human tribes.
Under his leadership, humanity successfully routed the strange beasts occupying the corpse of the Three-Headed Divine Bird.
From then on, atop the divine bird's remains, they founded a unified human empire.
Through thousands of years of development, the Empire's utilization and exploitation of strange beasts had reached near-perfection.
Strange beasts had permeated every facet of human life in the Empire.
Not only could people conveniently ride the Broad-Backed Peng—a newly bred cross-species strange beast—to travel across the world, but they could also tame beasts to hunt creatures of the ocean, sky, and even the void outside the small world.
The Empire had even developed technology to fuse the power of strange beasts with human beings: namely, the Beast God Armor Li Chenfeng wore.
Yet even with so many achievements, a shadow constantly hovered over the Empire, leaving its people restless day and night.
For the Three-Headed Divine Bird they regarded as a deity had not died a natural death.
In fact, it had not possessed only three heads in life.
The so-called Three-Headed Divine Bird was actually a Nine-Headed Bird.
This terrifying entity beyond the imagination of the Empire's people had actually had six of its heads severed clean off by someone, after which its corpse was discarded here.
The people of the Empire were not entirely ignorant of the culprit.
They knew it was a being known as an immortal.
To this day, legends were passed down among their people about how immortals had once exiled their ancestors to this place.
Toward immortals, the people of the Empire felt both fear and yearning.
For though the Empire was highly developed, it had never been able to resolve the issue of human lifespan.
In the Empire, living to a hundred was already considered exceptionally long-lived.
Thus, the Empire coveted the legendary immortal arts that could both command tremendous power and prolong life.
After sacrificing countless lives in their attempts, the Empire's pioneers finally breached the blockade of the Immortal Severing Formation and arrived in the Xuanhuang Realm.
Unfortunately, the intelligence they gathered left them sorely disappointed.
To cultivate immortal arts, spiritual energy was indispensable.
Yet in the world where the Empire was located, no such thing as spiritual energy existed.
Furthermore, there was the restriction that dharmas cannot be cultivated concurrently.
For the people of the Empire, who found it difficult beyond measure to acquire even a single cultivation method, cultivating immortal arts and attaining longevity seemed to have become an unreachable dream.
Yet the resilient people of the Empire did not give up.
Instead, they continually dispatched operatives to infiltrate the Xuanhuang Realm and gather more intelligence, while forming think tanks to study ways that immortal cultivation might be realized.
Thus, through the efforts of generation after generation, an almost fantastical plan was proposed.
First was the issue of spiritual energy.
Its resolution was purely accidental.
In the Empire's sacred ground, where the divine bird's severed heads lay, at the stump where the six heads had been cleaved off, remnants of the sword strike that slew the divine bird still lingered.
That sword strike was inconceivably mighty.
Over several millennia, its sword qi remained unbroken, suppressing the vengeful soul of the Nine-Headed Bird.
All strange beasts could sense it and consciously avoided the sword qi.
Yet on one occasion, an Imperial citizen violated the law by bringing his tamed strange beast along while visiting the sword scar.
Who could have guessed it would stir the sword qi?
The citizen emerged unharmed, but the strange beast was annihilated in an instant by the sword qi.
While arresting the citizen, the Imperial Guard made an unexpected discovery: the strange beast, which should have been reduced to nothingness by the sword qi, had left behind a glowing crystal core.
Had it been before making contact with the Xuanhuang Realm, the Empire's people might not have understood what this crystal core was.
However, those Dharma thieves shockingly discovered that the energy inside this crystal core could replace spiritual energy for their cultivation.
Subsequent Imperial research revealed that crystal cores existed only within an extremely rare few species of strange beasts.
Fortunately, one such group, known as Flying Ball Beasts, reproduced very quickly and was easy to domesticate.
After the first batch of large-scale breeding, the Empire harvested hundreds of thousands of crystal cores, among which mutated essence versions were also found.
An early Qi Condensation Dharma thief used these crystal cores to successfully break through to Qi Condensation perfection.
Unfortunately, due to the restrictions of cultivating immortal arts, they could advance no further.
Even so, this allowed the Empire to see the dawn of immortal cultivation and longevity.
What remained to be solved was the requirement of various mediums to cultivate according to the Heavenly Venerables' methods, as well as the restriction that immortal arts cannot be cultivated together.
Chapter 429