The killing intent in Gongsun Qixuan's tone was entirely undisguised.
"Then, fellow Daoist, please prove yourself!"
He stared at Li Fan and spoke chillingly.
And so, the pressure shifted onto Li Fan.
More and more gazes converged on him from all directions.
"Since you claim to be able to deduce future events, please perform a demonstration for us on the spot."
"Since you could pinpoint the exact price movements of a specific item, deducing something else at random should surely be child's play for you," Gongsun Qixuan said in a deep voice, leaving no room for Li Fan to refuse.
Li Fan pondered for a moment and had no choice but to agree.
"Then allow me to make a humble attempt!" Cupping his hands, Li Fan took out the Heaven and Earth Qiankun Die he had prepared beforehand. He closed his eyes, centered his mind, and stood motionless where he was.
The hall fell instantly silent, every eye fixed on Li Fan's next move.
Among the jade slips acquired from the ruins of the Heavenly Mechanism Sect, there were indeed a few future divination techniques.
However, they were all bottom-tier arts; if one hit the mark once in a hundred attempts, one ought to burn incense in gratitude to the heavens.
After studying them thoroughly, Li Fan had grasped their basic principles of operation. Putting on a show with them was no problem at all, but genuinely deducing anything was utterly out of the question.
Under the watch of countless eyes, Li Fan dared not be careless.
He prepared himself to immediately activate True Reversion and flee if exposed.
At the same time, he circulated the secret art Covering the Sky with One Hand, and a deeply enigmatic aura instantly enveloped his entire body.
The Heaven and Earth Qiankun Die flew up before Li Fan of its own accord, spinning rapidly.
Across its twenty luminous facets, fragmented scenes flashed in succession.
Li Fan knew that even though these images flickered by for only a fraction of an instant, they could not escape the sharp eyes of the cultivators concealed in the hall.
Thus, the scenes appearing on the Heaven and Earth Qiankun Die were by no means careless fabrications.
Instead, they were as real as could be—fragments culled from the various events Li Fan would experience in the future of his past life.
The false masked by truth, the truth resembling falsehood.
Only in this way could he fool the crowd within the Martial Practice Hall.
Yet no matter how lifelike it seemed, Li Fan knew this forgery could never withstand close scrutiny.
Therefore, as the Heaven and Earth Qiankun Die spun faster and faster and an ink-black darkness began to well up across its faces, Li Fan made his body tremble uncontrollably and let his face turn increasingly pale.
The look of horror on his face grew ever more intense.
Circulating the Creation Furnace Technique, Li Fan violently spat out a mouthful of blood and cried out in shock, "Heavenly Profound Spirit Lock, Xuanhuang united as one?!"
At that exact moment, as if having lost all spirituality right on cue, the twenty facets of the Heaven and Earth Qiankun Die turned pitch-black and ceased spinning.
Appearing utterly drained, Li Fan collapsed weakly to the ground.
An uproar broke out across the Martial Practice Hall.
For good reason: the meaning hidden within the phrase "Heavenly Profound Spirit Lock, Xuanhuang united as one" was simply too terrifying.
A cultivator clad in black robes whose features were indistinct appeared out of thin air in the hall.
Paying no heed to the gravely wounded Li Fan, he looked toward Gongsun Qixuan.
"Fellow Daoist Gongsun..."
He was clearly asking for his opinion.
In his view, this cultivator named Li Fan seemed somewhat like he was putting on an act to mystify the audience.
Yet he himself was not versed in divination, and Gongsun Qixuan was reportedly an ancient cultivator who had slept since antiquity.
One could not rule out the possibility that ancient methods differed from modern ones.
Furthermore, the conclusion Li Fan had deduced was indeed quite shocking.
To err on the side of caution, he decided it was best to defer to the professional's judgment.
Gongsun Qixuan's lips parted and closed, seemingly repeating the words Li Fan had just blurted out.
His expression grew heavier and heavier.
A scroll appeared before him and slowly unfurled.
The canvas had originally been completely blank.
Yet as Gongsun Qixuan waved his hands, using them as brushes, colors gradually intensified upon it.
It seemed as though a scene was about to take shape on the surface.
This splash-ink painting appeared to take an immense physical toll. Gongsun Qixuan had already looked somewhat sickly, but in the course of this deduction, he grew even frailer.
It was as though an enormous weight was bearing down upon his back, bending his frame lower inch by inch.
The motions of his drawing also grew slower and slower.
At last, just as the scene in the painting was about to become distinguishable, Gongsun Qixuan's fingers trembled violently.
As if meeting tremendous resistance, no matter how hard he tried, that final stroke would not fall.
A glint of ferocity surfaced on Gongsun Qixuan's face.
Biting the tip of his tongue, he spat out a spray of fresh blood.
As the blood scattered in midair, he clenched both fists and slammed them down with force.
Using blood as ink and fists as brushes, he completed the painting!
Just as the cultivators in the Martial Practice Hall—and Gongsun Qixuan himself—looked toward the canvas, longing to see what it depicted...
A brilliant, dazzling green light suddenly surged from the scroll.
While submerging the painting, it swept outward in all directions!
The first to bear the brunt was Gongsun Qixuan.
Forcing the deduction had already depleted most of his stamina.
Caught off guard by the assault of green light, he had no strength to dodge and took the full impact head-on.
"Ahhh!"
Gongsun Qixuan let out a bloodcurdling shriek as his body dissolved instantly into the green light.
Only a wisp of ink remained, drifting far away into the distance, vanishing to parts unknown.
"Not good, karmic backlash from the heavenly secret?!"
"Elder Gongsun?!"
...
This sudden turn of events stunned the cultivators in the Martial Practice Hall.
But immediately afterward, they barely had time to look after themselves.
The green light surged outward like a tidal wave. Everywhere it passed, anything tainted by it was completely assimilated.
Those bizarrely shaped giant boulders, along with the living beings atop them, dissolved without a trace like ice and snow dropped into boiling water.
The black-robed cultivator's expression changed dramatically, and he attempted to halt the spreading green light.
Yet this green luminescence seemed to originate from nowhere, defying all resistance.
He had no choice but to retreat.
Within a few short breaths, what had been an open trial turned into a race to see who could flee the fastest.
Amid the wails of countless cultivators, the scene became increasingly chaotic and horrifying.
The moment Li Fan saw that all-too-familiar green light emerge from Gongsun Qixuan's deduction scroll, he had sensed trouble.
Though he had no idea what had gone wrong—or why Gongsun Qixuan's divination would trigger the power of the yet-unborn Profound Net—that did not stop him from slipping away at the earliest opportunity.
Following the panicking cultivators, he rushed out of the Martial Practice Hall.
The anomaly in the Martial Practice Hall soon drew the attention of other cultivators across Wanxian Island.
The originally magnificent, towering structure suddenly began to tremble.
Then, amid violent shuddering, it came crashing down.
Just as the green light threatened to spill outward, a rainbow beam streaked in from the horizon, arriving in an instant and descending upon Wanxian Island.
Countless transparent patterns surged from the rainbow light, weaving into a colossal net that captured the leaking green radiance.
A crisis was neutralized into nothingness.
Mingling among the crowd, Li Fan lowered his head almost imperceptibly.
For the newcomer was none other than the Chief Formation Master of the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals' Formation Planning Hall—Lu Xichan!
Chapter 461