"Fuck!"
In a brief span of time, Han Yi had swung from wild joy to sheer terror, and then to utter despair, barely escaping with his life.
Right now, all he wanted was to curse.
"It was just a one-million contribution point jackpot! Did the fortune backlash have to be this absurd?"
Han Yi kept flying until he came upon an uninhabited island, where he finally collapsed onto the ground, panting heavily with lingering fear.
"Fortune and misfortune truly are impossible to predict!"
His expression shifted uncertainly.
His premonition had not been wrong; that place truly held an enormous opportunity.
An anima of Heaven and Earth capable of enabling Dao Integration, plus an anomalous broken sword that could contend with it.
If his strength had been sufficient, he could have slain Azure Wind and claimed the broken sword just now.
In one stroke, he would have become a Dao Integration cultivator while gaining a divine weapon rivaling his own combat strength.
...
At the thought of such a prospect, Han Yi's breathing instantly quickened.
The urge to go back and try his luck again even surged in his mind.
Fortunately, he still had a shred of reason left and hurriedly shook his head, casting the thought aside.
*My strength just isn't enough!* he lamented bitterly in his heart.
*To slay Azure Wind, I would need to be at the Soul Formation realm at the very least. Even though I possess the Heavenly Fortune Scripture, it would take me well over a century to reach that level.*
*What if someone else discovers that place in the meantime?*
*If I'd known, I shouldn't have been greedy for those petty gains. I should have used that million contribution points to raise my cultivation as quickly as possible.*
*What's this nonsense about building a steady foundation? Nothing beats achieving Dao Integration in a single bound!*
With countless stray thoughts crowding his mind, Han Yi grew plagued by anxiety over gains and losses.
-----
Just as Han Yi, guided by the suggestions Li Fan had previously implanted through the Cloud Water Illusory Dream Technique, "coincidentally" stumbled upon Azure Wind trapping the sword, the instigator himself had already set out quietly, departing the Congyun Sea.
He had arrived in Tianling Province.
The truce was now set in stone, and many cultivators conscripted to the front lines had already returned to their homelands.
The former battlefield had once again grown peaceful.
Yet a thick scent of blood still seemed to linger in the air, refusing to dissipate.
Looking far into the distance, deep chasms crisscrossed the earth in every direction.
The sky above was an eerie tapestry woven with red and green.
Squad after squad of green-robed cultivators hurried across Tianling Province.
They cast spells to cleanse the lingering malice from the air and repair the cracked, ruined earth.
From afar, muffled rumbles faintly echoed.
From time to time, one could even catch glimpses of the sky warping and twisting.
It was as though some colossal entity was moving between heaven and earth.
"Bah! That Five Elements Great Grotto-Heaven belonged to our Tianling Province. Why should they get to just haul it away?"
"Sigh, it's better that it's moved away. Rich land though it may be, it brings no good fortune. Far too many cultivators fell in this war."
"Indeed. Our Tianling Province truly suffered catastrophic casualties this time. I've already lost contact with so many old friends."
...
Along the way, the occasional murmur of conversation among the surrounding cultivators reached his ears.
The cause of the war in Tianling Province and the existence of the Five Elements Great Grotto-Heaven were no longer secrets.
The cultivators of Tianling Province harbored complex feelings toward this immensely bountiful Five Elements Great Grotto-Heaven.
Consequently, as the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals officially relocated it toward the interior, quite a few cultivators gathered to watch.
Concealed within the crowd, Li Fan merely cast a distant glance before quietly slipping behind the throng.
Heading in the opposite direction, he sped toward the original location of the Five Elements Great Grotto-Heaven.
In less than half a day, Li Fan reached his destination.
Amid the mountains, where twin peaks converged.
A pitch-black void spanned between heaven and earth, looking as though a chunk of the world had been carved away raw.
It turned the once-scenic landscape into something eerie and terrifying.
Without the Five Elements Grotto-Heaven, the site no longer had any value worth guarding.
The heavily deployed garrisons had all been withdrawn, leaving behind only a few Golden Core cultivators to conduct routine watch.
Evidently, these cultivators did not take their duties very seriously either.
After all, the war had ended and the Five Elements Great Grotto-Heaven had already been relocated. Who in their right mind would come all the way out here for nothing?
Thus, they were exceedingly lax, merely gathering together to chat without maintaining much of a guard.
Because of this, Li Fan, his figure concealed, effortlessly breached their perimeter and advanced toward the black void above.
Coming before the pitch-black void, Li Fan halted his movement and observed in secret.
Unlike the abyss of nothingness he had once witnessed that had been utterly eradicated by Mo Sha, diverse, peculiar auras could still be faintly sensed within this void in Tianling Province.
Even spiritual energy still lingered.
*It isn't a dead zone...* Sensing no spiritual warning in his heart, Li Fan pondered for a moment before leaping into the void.
Light vanished instantly.
In an instant, Li Fan felt as if he had been struck blind, losing all sight.
His divine sense spread outward in all directions like tentacles.
Yet all the feedback he received was simply the concept of "nothingness."
Looking back toward the direction he had come from, the scenery of Tianling Province had disappeared as well.
Like someone plunging suddenly into an endless deep sea, Li Fan lost all sense of direction in an instant.
No matter how he flew up, down, left, or right, he could not sense any change in his position.
It felt as though he remained rooted to the exact same spot, utterly stationary.
The extreme dissonance between motion and stillness caused Li Fan to feel a faint dizziness.
Had it been any other cultivator plunged into such a situation, panic would surely have set in to some degree.
To Li Fan, however, an empty void that posed only the danger of being trapped—without any other fatal threats—warranted no concern whatsoever.
With True Reversion, even the most perilous deathtrap could never hold him captive!
Able to break free from his current predicament with a single thought, Li Fan naturally felt little anxiety.
Keeping his composure, he did not rush to move. Instead, he quietly set about sensing his surroundings.
Though it was a void, something was clearly hidden within the darkness.
At regular intervals, Li Fan could feel ripples of an inexplicable fluctuation wash across his body.
Yet whenever he sought to trace the source of these ripples, the trail abruptly vanished.
It was as though the whole thing had merely been an illusion.
Immersed in the darkness for an unknown length of time, the situation remained unchanged.
*After relocating the Five Elements Great Grotto-Heaven, the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals must have sent people here to investigate as well.*
*That they failed to discover any clues back then shows that the secret hidden within this void runs exceptionally deep.*
Li Fan mused to himself without the slightest urgency.
Time and opportunities were two things he possessed in abundance.
Casting all worldly affairs behind him, Li Fan focused his mind, abandoning the idea of actively pursuing the fluctuations in the void.
Instead, he refrained from controlling his body as much as possible, letting it drift along in the same direction as the ripples.
For a fleeting moment, Li Fan felt as though he were floating along with the current of a river.
He gradually sensed his body beginning to "move" within this space.
Yet the smooth journey did not last. Before long, he felt as if he had crashed into a wall ahead; his body jolted slightly, forced to a halt.
Chapter 577