As the temperature around Li Fan rose, the figure of the Red Flame in his sea of consciousness grew clear once more.
Yet...
even though Li Fan drove the Xuanhuang Heart-Refining Incantation to its limit, completely disregarding the faint smell of burning flesh coming from his body,
at the very moment before the Red Flame phantom spirit could take shape, he was inexplicably cast out of the visualization state.
*Could it be that the scorching heat exceeds my body's physical endurance?*
Pondering this, Li Fan searched the Heavenly Profound Mirror for medicine that could stave off extreme heat.
Spending ten contribution points, he purchased an Ice Heart Pill.
Swallowing it, Li Fan made another attempt.
This time, the instant the burning sensation brought by visualizing the Red Flame appeared, a cool, icy chill welled up from his dantian.
This chill circulated through his entire body, suppressing the heat.
Without needing to distract himself with bodily discomfort, Li Fan focused all his concentration on condensing the Red Flame phantom spirit.
Yet...
it was useless!
The phantom spirit shattered once more at the final moment before taking shape.
As if some unseen presence were deliberately interfering from the shadows, the phantom spirit simply refused to materialize.
After a dozen attempts, the effects of the Ice Heart Pill began to fade.
Li Fan stopped.
*An anima of Heaven and Earth is truly no trifling matter. Even using it as a blueprint to condense a phantom spirit is impossible...*
*There must be some underlying restrictive rule I am unaware of.*
After a moment of thought, Li Fan searched the Heavenly Profound Mirror for information regarding animas of Heaven and Earth.
As expected, the Heavenly Profound Mirror informed him that his authorization level was insufficient, barring him from viewing it.
For a time, Li Fan's goal of condensing a Red Flame phantom spirit reached an impasse.
Even so, he had no intention of giving up.
The greater the restriction, the greater the harvest once he succeeded.
The might of an anima of Heaven and Earth remained fresh in his memory; even if he could harness a ten-thousandth of it, it would be extraordinary.
However, how to accomplish this in practice still required careful deliberation.
Thus, Li Fan maintained auxiliary cultivation, quietly closing his eyes to ponder while in the state of Spirit Enlightenment.
One day, two days, three days...
The days slipped by, and his contribution points steadily burned away.
Finally, seven days later, Li Fan opened his eyes.
An anima of Heaven and Earth was the manifestation of a law of heaven and earth.
If the "Flame" in Red Flame represented the laws concerning flame, then what special meaning did the "Red" hold?
Besides a red flame, were there other flames?
Li Fan immediately began to test his theory.
He continued to visualize an anima of Heaven and Earth, its silhouette and aura identical to the Red Flame in his memories.
The only difference was that the silhouette's color shifted from red to green.
This time, the phantom spirit formed smoothly. Yet it was exceptionally weak, like an empty shell utterly devoid of any lethal power.
Dispersing the newly born phantom spirit from his sea of consciousness, Li Fan tried again.
This time, the color shifted from green to black.
Like the Red Flame, the Black Flame phantom spirit failed to take shape. The difference, however, was that visualizing the Black Flame did not produce that same scorching heat.
He switched to another color and tried again.
...
Li Fan tested every color he could think of.
He discovered four distinct outcomes.
The first was like the Red Flame: it could not form, and the visualization generated a searing, roasting heat.
The second was like the Green Flame: though it could take shape, it was an empty husk without any power.
The third was like the Black Flame: it failed to form, but no anomalous phenomena occurred during the visualization.
And the fourth was the most extraordinary of all.
Within Li Fan's sea of consciousness, an illusion almost identical to the Red Flame slowly coalesced.
Only, its color was blue.
As the Blue Flame phantom spirit gradually appeared, the temperature around Li Fan plummeted drastically.
Layers of frost bloomed outward across the ground beneath him.
White rime frosted his hair and eyebrows, and his body grew as stiff as a block of ice.
Even the Xuanhuang Heart-Refining Incantation running silently within him slowed under its influence, as if it might halt at any second.
Li Fan's heartbeat slowed further and further, his breath rapidly waning.
Yet his consciousness fell into a wondrous state.
It was as though his soul had left his body, watching the changes within his flesh like a detached bystander.
There was not the slightest emotional fluctuation.
Li Fan felt an intuitive certainty that in this state, even if his body were destroyed and he perished the next second, he would not feel a shred of fear.
It was a state of absolute calm and pure rationality.
And it was in this state that Li Fan watched his body become entirely encased in ice.
As if trapped at absolute zero, it sank into complete and utter stillness.
At the same time, within his sea of consciousness, the Blue Flame phantom spirit fully formed.
The temperature did not rise, but life force rapidly surged back into Li Fan's body.
It was as though the absolute cold could no longer affect him.
With a flick of Li Fan's divine sense, the Blue Flame flickered faintly in his sea of consciousness, and the extreme frost vanished in an instant.
In the blink of an eye, Li Fan returned to normal, and he withdrew from that state of absolute rationality.
The bitter chill felt like an illusion, leaving no trace behind.
*Is this the power of the Blue Flame?*
Within his sea of consciousness, the fledgling Blue Flame phantom spirit fell into a slumber.
Yet Li Fan knew he could awaken it at any time to recreate that state.
*The four outcomes encountered when visualizing flames of different colors should correspond to the states of the animas of Heaven and Earth,*
Li Fan mused after some thought, forming his hypothesis.
An anima of Heaven and Earth was the tangible embodiment of a Heavenly Dao law, and cultivators of this world could temper and assimilate one to achieve the Dao Integration stage.
Thus, during his visualizations, those that could form but possessed no power must signify that no such anima of Heaven and Earth existed.
Those that could not form, like the Red Flame, likely still belonged to the natural system of Heavenly Dao laws; while one could draw upon their power, one could not claim it for oneself. Those like the Black Flame had probably already been tempered and assimilated by a Dao Integration cultivator, no longer existing within the realm of this world's laws.
So what did this Blue Flame represent?
*A law about to be born, yet not quite formed?*
*Does that mean in the near future, somewhere in this cultivation world, a true anima of Heaven and Earth—Blue Flame—will descend?* Li Fan sank into deep contemplation.
After a long while, Li Fan let out a slow breath, stowing these conjectures away in the depths of his mind.
Regardless, even though he had not condensed a Red Flame phantom spirit, he had fortuitously visualized a Blue Flame phantom spirit instead.
Their attributes were complete opposites, yet the Blue Flame's power seemed by no means inferior to the Red Flame's.
Pleased with the result, Li Fan struck while the iron was hot and resumed practicing the *Nether Spirit Illusion Art*.
He sought to nurture and strengthen the Blue Flame phantom spirit until it could launch spiritual attacks against others.
Time flowed quietly past during his cultivation.
Before long, Li Fan was abruptly ejected from auxiliary cultivation mode.
It turned out that beneath the toll of prolonged cultivation, his contribution points had dwindled to merely a hundred.
Chapter 68