"To get his hands on the questions for the induction examination so easily, and even claim to possess more confidential intelligence..."
The Five Elders Association cultivator's voice trailed off, clearly sinking into deep thought and speculation.
After a moment, he snapped back to reality and looked toward "Zhou Qing'ang."
"Though there were a few minor flaws, on the whole, you've done tremendous work establishing a connection with the syndicate behind He Zhenghao."
He tossed over a storage ring.
"Inside is the Great Method of Devouring the Heavens and Consuming the Earth you asked for, along with some Dao Comprehension Pills.
"Aside from that, there are spirit stones worth fifty thousand contribution points. Consider it your reward for this accomplishment."
Hearing this, Li Fan caught the storage ring, inspected it, and beamed with delight.
"Fifty thousand contribution points? Since when is the boss so generous!"
The Five Elders Association cultivator gave a snort. "Where there is merit, there will be reward. Next, while continuing your undercover work, you must maintain a good relationship with He Zhenghao.
"If possible, try to pry some information about the mysterious syndicate behind him from his mouth.
"Of course, if that proves too difficult, there is no need to force it. Being able to keep in touch with them and trade spirit stones for secrets is good enough."
Li Fan nodded repeatedly.
"All right, head back.
"We've been in contact a bit too frequently lately, so avoid meeting with the boss for a while to keep from giving anything away.
"If special circumstances arise, we should contact you again."
After giving a few more careful instructions, the man departed Youlan Island first.
Only then did Li Fan's avatar take his time, leisurely making his way back.
On Tai'an Island, Li Fan's true body had already been waiting for a long while.
"5,050,000 contribution points, three bottles of Dao Comprehension Pills, the Great Method of Devouring the Heavens and Consuming the Earth...
"Not a bad harvest this time."
Tallying up the items in the storage rings of both his true body and his avatar, Li Fan nodded slightly.
"With such an immense sum of contribution points, whatever I plan next will be far easier."
With merely a passing glance, Li Fan paid no further attention to the pile of spirit stones.
Once wealth reached a certain scale, anything more was just a string of numbers.
Moreover, for an anomaly like Li Fan who could endlessly start over through True Reversion, the more cycles he underwent and the more information he commanded, the easier it became to acquire contribution points.
Li Fan first began reading the Great Method of Devouring the Heavens and Consuming the Earth.
To be safe, he had his avatar, Zhou Qing'ang, inspect the jade slip.
The writing style differed sharply from the cultivation techniques redeemable through the Heavenly Profound Mirror of the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals.
Instead of being concise and going straight to the core principles of cultivation, it was encrusted with layer upon layer of profound and esoteric phrasing, making it obscure and difficult to parse.
"A distinctive ancient method style..."
Fortunately, Li Fan had already practiced several techniques passed down from antiquity. It took him the better part of a day to read through it completely.
The Great Method of Devouring the Heavens and Consuming the Earth was not a primary cultivation technique capable of raising one's realm.
Nor was it merely a secret technique that changed how a cultivator absorbed spiritual energy. It resembled a divine ability more than anything else—one capable of brutally extracting power from earth veins and spiritual veins, converting it into one's own spiritual energy for cultivation, while also accelerating and fueling the progress of one's primary technique.
Under normal circumstances, there was an upper limit to the spiritual energy a cultivator could absorb. Once they reached their capacity, attempting to forcibly draw in more carried the risk of exploding and dying.
Cultivating the Great Method of Devouring the Heavens and Consuming the Earth eliminated this concern. The excess power absorbed acted as an accelerator for the cultivation technique. The more one drew in, the faster the technique ran on its own—until one broke through to a new realm and could devour even more. It was a self-sustaining cycle, leading ultimately to devouring the heavens and consuming the earth.
Of course, the prerequisite was avoiding discovery, lest one be beaten until their soul scattered.
Without question, this parasitic method of cultivation was even more pernicious than the Heavenly Venerables' new method.
It would inflict virtually irreversible damage upon the world in a short time. Calling its practitioners the public enemy of all other cultivators was no exaggeration.
Yet as long as it raised his cultivation, Li Fan did not care in the slightest about being an enemy of the world.
After contemplating it carefully, the avatar of Zhou Qing'ang attempted to circulate the Great Method of Devouring the Heavens and Consuming the Earth.
In an instant, his eyes turned blood-red.
The entire world in his field of vision transformed.
Gone were the distinctions between people, scenery, and objects.
All that remained was the difference between what was delicious and what was not.
The avatar stared at the true body for a moment before looking down beneath Tai'an Island. An ochre-yellow earth vein stretched from beneath the island all the way to the seabed, linked in all directions to the vast earth. It looked exceptionally mouthwatering.
The avatar gently pressed his palms against the ground, and an attractive force erupted from his hands.
"Hmm?"
To Li Fan's surprise, according to the technique's description, the power of the earth vein should have been drawn into his body without the slightest resistance.
Yet it remained utterly motionless.
"What is going on?"
Li Fan checked everything thoroughly again, and once certain he had made no error in cultivation, he tried once more.
This time, he cast off all restraint and amplified the suction.
The power of the earth vein trembled faintly, but it felt like a unified whole, impossible to budge. A sumptuous feast lay right before his eyes, yet he could not partake.
The avatar's eyes grew crimson.
Growing frantic, he relentlessly increased the pulling force of the Great Method of Devouring the Heavens and Consuming the Earth.
The earth vein resisted continuously.
Under the clash of these two forces, the entirety of Tai'an Island began to tremble faintly.
If this continued, the disturbance would inevitably arouse suspicion.
Yet the avatar paid it no mind, showing not the slightest intention of stopping.
Only when the true body, who had been watching from the side, stepped in and knocked "Zhou Qing'ang" unconscious with a single slap did the shaking of Tai'an Island finally subside.
"This Great Method of Devouring the Heavens and Consuming the Earth is quite sinister..."
Li Fan frowned slightly.
The consciousness of his true body and avatar was one and the same; a situation where the avatar lost control should never have occurred.
Yet just now, under the influence of that desire to "feed," Li Fan's consciousness felt as though it had split in two.
When the avatar looked at the true body, an urge to devour him had even flared up.
He had still been able to suppress it then.
But once the feeding was thwarted and the craving went unsatisfied, the avatar had been completely bewitched.
Even knowing full well the consequences of forcibly draining the earth vein of Tai'an Island, he simply could not stop himself.
"No wonder its creator showed no restraint back then. It wasn't that he didn't want to—he simply couldn't." Li Fan could not help feeling a twinge of regret.
He regretted not the creator's fate, but that this secret art could not be put to use for himself.
"No need to dwell on it too much. I have the Mountain-Sitting Formula, so devouring the heavens and earth would merely have been icing on the cake.
"Besides, I could always have someone else cultivate this method and reap the spoils myself."
After pondering for a while, Li Fan set the matter aside for now. Looking through the layers of barriers, he gazed down at the earth vein beneath Tai'an Island.
"Back then, the Mountains and Rivers Grand Array linked all the earth veins under heaven into a single whole. Although the array has now been replaced by the Tianyuan Creation Formation, the effect remains.
"Even if someone wished to devour the heavens and consume the earth, it would not be as easy as it was in antiquity.
"A peerless, monstrous technique from thousands of years ago, reduced to something so useless by the shifting of the ages.
"No wonder the Five Elders Association was willing to hand it over so easily to a Foundation Establishment spy."
Li Fan shook his head with a sigh.
Chapter 437