"The world changes truly too fast. Relics like us can hardly keep up with the times anymore," Nangong Shirong murmured, looking up at the countdown of "fourteen" displayed on the firmament before falling silent with a sigh.
Standing behind him, Xu Bai smiled and said, "There is no need for your Excellency to take it to heart. Who could have imagined that a Longevity Heavenly Venerable capable of reversing the principles of Heaven and Earth would appear so suddenly without any warning?"
"Utterly mysterious, with not a trace of their origin to be found. It is truly unbelievable."
"Even for a Nascent Soul cultivator, it would be impossible to just appear out of thin air like this," Xu Bai remarked faintly.
Nangong Shirong nodded slightly. "That is why the outside world is speculating that this Heavenly Venerable Rebirth is very likely an ancient cultivator who survived the Great Calamity to this day."
"Just like you," Nangong Shirong added slowly, casting a sideways glance at Xu Bai.
Xu Bai lowered his head in thought. "An ancient cultivator, is it...?"
Cultivators across the world were exceedingly curious about the true identity of this Heavenly Venerable Rebirth. Yet after digging for so long, not a single shred of information about him had leaked.
After all, the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals had only so many Dao Integration cultivators. When ruling them out one by one yielded no matching candidate, the most probable conclusion was that this newly ascended Heavenly Venerable hailed from antiquity, having remained hidden in the mist to observe and comprehend the principles of Heaven and Earth until attaining the Dao only recently.
As for the possibility that Heavenly Venerable Rebirth was a cultivator from the Five Elders Association...
The Five Elders Association's frequent actions of late had ruled out that hypothesis.
First came an official proclamation congratulating the birth of the new Heavenly Venerable. Immediately afterward, they recalled all cultivators who had been conducting friendly visits within the Alliance's territory. Along the bordering regions, their active forces fully withdrew and holed up...
Clearly, the Five Elders Association was still deeply wary of the emergence of this new Longevity realm powerhouse.
"Castellan, do you think that under the blessing of Heavenly Venerable Rebirth's power, cultivators can truly be revived after falling?" Xu Bai asked suddenly after a long silence.
"Personally, I remain skeptical. Though the Heavenly Venerable's divine might inspires reverence and awe, revival is simply too fantastical," Nangong Shirong said, shaking his head. "Even if it can be achieved, it would likely require certain conditions to be met. If a cultivator's corpse has already been obliterated and their soul scattered to the winds, trying to revive under such circumstances..."
Nangong Shirong let out a cold snort. "Forget a Longevity Heavenly Venerable; even a legendary Daluo Golden Immortal would likely be powerless."
"Still, what will actually happen will reveal itself in fourteen days. You and I need only wait patiently."
Hearing this, Xu Bai focused his gaze on the number in the sky, visible to all.
The calligraphy seemed both black and white, swirling seamlessly as it drifted quietly across the firmament. According to official explanations from the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals, the countdown represented the progress of Heavenly Venerable Rebirth's reversal of principles.
Once the countdown reached zero, the Principle of Life and Death in the Xuanhuang Realm would be completely reversed.
An era where anyone could be revived would arrive with it.
"Let us see what methods this Heavenly Venerable Rebirth possesses, then." Xu Bai narrowed his eyes slightly, retrieving a folding fan and fluttering it gently.
As the countdown in the Xuanhuang Realm's sky continuously ticked down, Blue Feather, the loser in the struggle over the principles, did not seem resigned to accepting his fate.
Rather than halting the bounty for longevity-extending treasures, he raised the stakes.
He even put up his cultivated Tiandu Feathering Technique as a reward.
It seemed Blue Feather was doing everything in his power to delay the arrival of his impending doom.
However, Heavenly Venerable Rebirth had no intention of letting him off.
On the day the countdown turned to "one," the anomaly signaling the fall of a Dao Integration cultivator abruptly appeared over Yuandao Province without a sound.
"Dao Integration cultivator Blue Feather, having cultivated the Dao in all for..."
Unlike the universal lamentation of Heaven and Earth that Li Fan had witnessed in previous lives, perhaps because Blue Feather had attempted to defy the principles of Heaven and Earth in this life, a falling anomaly identical to that of new method cultivators appeared in the heavens.
Yet shortly after this phenomenon appeared, before the cultivators of Yuandao Province could even react, the countdown number on the firmament of the Xuanhuang Realm transformed into two intertwining streams of black and white qi, shooting straight toward Yuandao Province.
Shrouding the anomaly of Blue Feather's fall, the number instantly dropped from "one" to zero.
The entire Xuanhuang Realm trembled faintly, as if some wondrous transformation were taking place.
When the sky cleared once more, all cultivators could faintly see an ancient, solemn manor looming across the firmament of the Xuanhuang Realm.
"Manor of Rebirth."
The three large characters on the manor's plaque were clearly visible.
In the minds of all cultivators who saw the Manor of Rebirth, information regarding revival under Heavenly Venerable Rebirth naturally surfaced.
Under the aegis of the Manor of Rebirth, whenever any cultivator fell, a speck of their true spirit would enter the Manor of Rebirth.
Once the eighteen-year cycle of reincarnation concluded, the true spirit, carrying the cultivator's memories, could return from the Manor of Rebirth into the world.
If a vessel had been prepared beforehand, it could directly enter it.
If death occurred in haste without time to make preparations, it would be randomly reborn into the body of a newly born being in the Xuanhuang Realm.
...
Upon seeing the detailed rules of the Manor of Rebirth, the cultivators of the Xuanhuang Realm were thrown into an uproar.
They had not expected that the so-called "revival" was actually real.
Yet this method of revival was somewhat beyond what they could accept.
Survival and reproduction were fundamental human instincts.
If one's own Dao path was hopeless, one might place one's future hopes upon the next generation.
Yet according to the rules of the Manor of Rebirth, a newborn treasured by a family could actually have its body taken over by a cultivator who died eighteen years ago...
How was that any different from possession?
Who could guarantee whether the cultivator who had died back then and now returned to life held a grudge against them?
If one painstakingly raised a newborn to adulthood only for them to turn around and stab them in the back, what then?
To have everything one accumulated in life eventually benefit an "outsider"—how absurd was that?
The Manor of Rebirth's workings clearly ran counter to the ethical values of present-day cultivators. For a time, the cultivators of Xuanhuang could not accept it at all.
Fortunately, more detailed explanations from the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals soon followed.
Within the Manor of Rebirth, the true spirit would only retain the memories of its past life. Emotions such as love, hate, resentment, and rancor from the past life would all be washed clean. Looking back upon past-life experiences would be like viewing a dream, without deep emotional attachment.
Furthermore, the true spirit's descent into the world was not a direct possession of the body. Rather, the two merged together. The fundamental nature of life did not change; the newborn merely possessed an additional set of memories from a "past life."
...
Following this explanation, although the cultivators of the Xuanhuang Realm still harbored resistance in their hearts, the grand trend could not be stopped, and the Heavenly Venerable's principle could not be defied.
Willing or not, they had no choice but to quietly accept it.
And so, heated discussions regarding "rebirth" and "revival" unfolded across every corner of the Xuanhuang Realm.
Chapter 722