Yufu and Han Yi stood facing each other.
A surge of violent energy abruptly descended.
Yufu's face was calm, his form steadfast and motionless as a mountain.
Even the straw raincoat upon him seemed steeped in tens of millions of years of time, clinging snugly to his body amidst the storm without being affected in the slightest by the outside world.
As for Han Yi, billows of monstrous black baleful qi surged and churned outward from deep within him.
Under the shroud of this inexplicable energy, although the expression on Han Yi's face remained frozen at the exact moment Yufu had looked upon him, it appeared unspeakably eerie and terrifying.
His pupils vanished, and cracks spread across his face like shattered porcelain.
His entire body flickered now and then, disappearing into the rolling black mist, only to quietly reappear a blink of an eye later.
The change occurred in merely a fleeting instant.
After that single glance, Yufu slung the fish basket he had placed on the ground back onto his back and strode off toward the Congyun Sea.
As for Han Yi...
After Old Man Yufu departed, the churning black mist abruptly retracted into his body.
Yet he did not return to normal.
He merely remained standing quietly in place, devoid of any further movement, like a stone statue that had stood there since the beginning of time.
His hollow eyes stared blankly ahead.
After an unknown length of time, an ordinary white bird in the sky flew over the statue of Han Yi.
A strange thing happened.
Without any warning, a wound on the white bird's wing that had already healed suddenly split open once more.
It instantly lost its balance, spinning several times in midair as it plummeted continuously downward.
It failed to recover before hitting the earth, crashing to its death right before Han Yi's statue.
Another unknown span of time passed.
A group of mortals from the nearby small city passed by, laughing and chatting.
As if completely blind to the statue of Han Yi, they paid no heed to him standing in the middle of the road.
They did not swerve, walking straight into him.
Even more bizarrely, Han Yi's statue seemed entirely ethereal.
No collision occurred.
The mortals passed straight through him.
Their expressions remained casual, entirely unaware of anything amiss.
Yet before they had gone much farther, one of the mortals suddenly clutched his chest, his face turning deathly pale.
Amid the cries of alarm from the others, he collapsed heavily to the ground.
Before long, he breathed his last.
These mortals had originally intended to venture into the nearby mountains to gather herbs.
With such a misfortune befalling them, they naturally lost all heart for herb-gathering.
Weeping, they carried back the deceased, who had suffered an unfortunate sudden heart failure.
Some time later.
A cultivator in a cyan Daoist robe swept over Han Yi's statue, his face beaming with excitement.
"After going through untold hardships, I've finally gathered the last primary herb. Combined with the cauldron I bought earlier..."
"This batch of the Mystic Ice Treasure Pill is practically guaranteed to succeed!"
He muttered under his breath, his eyes brimming with anticipation.
A day later, an inconspicuous anomaly marking the demise of a cultivator appeared in the sky above Luoyan Province.
The gist of it was that a cultivator had made an operational error during alchemy, causing his cauldron to explode.
Not only did the pill fail to form, but he lost his life in the bargain.
In this day and age, dying from a cauldron explosion during alchemy was exceedingly rare, but not impossible.
Moreover, the deceased was merely an unremarkable Golden Core cultivator, so people merely sighed over it for a bit before it faded without a ripple.
Yet certain subtle changes were quietly occurring across Luoyan Province, temporarily unknown to outsiders.
***
Back to Old Man Yufu.
Though he did not ride the wind or fly, merely walking with his feet planted firmly upon the earth, his speed was terrifyingly swift.
With one step taken, the next had already carried him ten thousand li away.
His figure flickered repeatedly as he advanced relentlessly toward the Congyun Sea.
Just as he reached Yuandao Province, a mere step away from his destination, a blue figure suddenly barred his path.
"Fellow Daoist, you had best turn back..."
Yufu frowned and looked the other over.
Dressed in a blue Daoist robe, with grizzled hair and a face etched with wrinkles, the man was senile and doddering, looking as though he were on the brink of his life's end.
"Have I... met you before?" Yufu asked with some uncertainty.
The blue-robed cultivator coughed a few times and said in a rasping, aged voice, "Fellow Daoist, you truly are growing more and more forgetful. When we last met, you could still recall me. Now, you cannot even remember who I am? Let me see... that was merely two hundred years ago."
Yufu bowed his head and fell silent for a moment, seemingly pondering the meaning behind the blue-robed elder's words.
Before long, he shook his head. "I truly do not remember."
"No matter, though..."
"You are about to die anyway."
Old Man Yufu muttered to himself.
The blue-robed elder froze.
"Indeed, I am about to die..." A touch of sorrow colored his tone.
"Do you still intend to stop me?" Yufu asked.
"Duty demands it; I have no choice," Blue Feather replied without the slightest hesitation.
Hearing this, Yufu wasted no further words.
Extending his right hand, he made a grasping motion forward.
Crisscrossing black lines instantly manifested around the blue-robed elder like an enormous net, surrounding him tightly on all sides.
The blue-robed elder let out a muffled grunt, his figure abruptly vanishing.
Only a single blue feather remained, radiating bursts of light within the shrinking fishing net.
The next moment, the net contracted and disappeared back into Yufu's hand.
Looking at the blue feather in his palm, Yufu raised an eyebrow, appearing somewhat startled.
Then, shaking his head slightly without dwelling on it, he placed the blue feather into the fish basket on his back and continued toward the Congyun Sea.
Not long after Yufu departed, a faint, illusory figure reappeared in the area.
"After I die, what care I if the deluge follows?"
"Hmph!"
He cast a deep glance at Yufu's receding back, then vanished from the spot.
***
In Qingyun Province, two provinces away from Luoyan Province.
The instant the perspective he used for spying vanished, Li Fan knew things had gone awry.
His reaction was extraordinarily swift. He immediately retrieved a Manifest Heavenly Venerable Statue previously bestowed by the Five Elders Association from his grotto-heaven.
It was not the five-faced, ten-armed one that could establish contact with the Five Pivots Court, but a statue with lowered eyes and a countenance of boundless mercy, representing Heavenly Venerable Wuyou.
The divine statue had only one function: when the sea of consciousness suffered a fatal strike, it could protect the sea of consciousness from scattering into ruin.
Its effect was remarkably potent.
As though struck violently over the head with a cudgel, Li Fan felt a deafening roar erupt in his mind.
Countless overlapping afterimages swam before his eyes, swaying ceaselessly.
Spitting out a mouthful of blood, Li Fan instinctively shielded his head tightly with his hands.
Even the protective charge progress of True Reversion dropped by 5%.
Fortunately, he had only suffered minor injuries, and his life was not in danger after all.
Within him, the power of the five elements circulated through his grotto-heaven domain.
In an instant, Li Fan's vitality was fully restored.
Chapter 595